Good Morning World
It’s your average Nigerian youth here
Still wondering how long I’ll have to bare
These struggles… Constant tears
Anxiously waiting for the day I cross the borders of our mothers land….we term it japa
Cautiously avoiding the ever present claws of our ravaging menace…Sapa
Our predicament’s becoming a culture
A mindset of accepted inconvenience nurtured
So much so that it has become the focus of our skits
Maybe if we laugh hard enough, we’d forget the shackles we’re bound by and maybe…
If we give our problems catchy names…sapa…japa.. they’d become easier to bare
Small rain, Nepa no take light, we go dey fear
INEC dey announce results overnight
An attempt to keep their vile actions out of sight
Pesin dey use 1500 collect 1k and you talk say that one na country
And leaders have their mind, the effrontery to tell us to maintain peace
Suffering’s becoming a normality we have taught ourselves to bare
Funny thing is we see…
We see these things happening,
The devil we know is better than the Angel we don’t, right?
Accustomed to this society filled of lack
We’d rather sit tight, comfortable in our familiar looking shack…
Corruption and lawlessness like prickly thorns scarring and scratching our backs…
We scream “One Nigeria”
Yet we select our leaders on the basis on who’s Yoruba and who’s not
Turning the efforts of the past activist who fought
For one nation, one Nigeria
Into nothing but useless dust
Aso rock no dey different from Elderly home again
Na grandpa wey we put in power dey claim am as office
Blind men leading ignorant sheeps
But, we tried, we the youths…we tried
We tried to take power
Tried to gain control
But they were too strong
Their claws clenching power for way too long
These old, empty barrels
The “godfathers” of our state
They don show us say they no be our mate
Wetin we wan do again…
Na to japa remain o
Their corruption has taken away any chance for a prodigy to grow.
How do we succeed in a country where the leaders are our greatest foe?
You say “Japa” like it’s a permanent solution
You may be far from our borders
But would your conscience leave you unbothered?
Would you leave your sisters and brothers to an ever approaching hell?
And what about you?
You may be overseas
But with discrimination being an ever present factor
Do you really think these foreigners would leave you to oversee..
..their affairs? Their land?
You’d work twice as hard
Be judged twice as bad
They’d make you mad!
And you’d be able to do nothing about it because it’s their land…
And let’s imagine you are indeed successful
And you manage to pull…
Their attention away from your nationality
You feed their rationality
It doesn’t erase your identity
A successful man from a failed nation is a failed man
What do you want us to do?
How do we bring down a government who holds in their hands every organization in the state
I mean, they’ve proven with this election that even with our collective efforts, it’s still a checkmate…
Don’t you see it?
It’s happening already
The movement has begun,
Ellu P, 74
Although it didn’t gain as much ground as we wanted but it has begun..
Maybe one day it will finally be our turn
But the status quo has changed
A 26-year-old winning a seat in the house of rep
Something we couldn’t even dream of before
If this could happen in 2023
Imagine in the next four years how far we’d soar…
We can’t lose hope
We’ve come way too far
Fought way too hard to stop now
Ogbeni, Gbe body e
What’s the point
We keep screaming change
While the reason for our rage
Keeps gaining ground
With victory no where bound
There’s no point
We have to keep fighting
We have to show them our will is strong
Because Nigeria is the only place we truly belong
We can’t leave our country in the hands of these leeches
Who only want power to increase their riches
The End SARS protest was the first step
In showing them our army’s might
But we won’t stop there
We have our goal in sight
And with God’s light illuminating the way
One day…
We’ll have the Nigeria we dream of and end this political fight
Ojo Ezra (he/him) is a Nigerian poet that prefers to be referred to as Scribe. He loves pouring out his emotions and thought out on paper. Say “hi” to him on Instagram : the_modernday_scribe
Featured image by Thomas de LUZE on Unsplash
