Opinion

By Niyi Osundare

Clan over competence, tribe above truth/Square pegs in round holes/And the Nation grabs the reverse gear/And speeds, break-neck, into medieval darkness.

The Quickest Way to Kill A Nation

           1
  
Pepeye, nigba too m’owe
Ki lo be l’udo se?*

Incompetence weds Corruption**
     And a dark, unruly tragedy is born
As the Nation thrashes about
     Like a snake without a head

Do you really wonder
     Why so much power
Should be thrust upon
     Those with so little sense

Do you wonder why
     Those with no eyes
Have forced their way
     To the fore front of our chase?

They who have no heads
     Have stolen our caps
Those with no legs
     Have taken over the daintiest of our trousers

Toasting the talisman of tribe and tongue
     Invoking the charisma of creed and class
They sneak their serpents
     Into the quietest corner of our garden

Jumble up the geography
     Of our bearings
And exploit the sorrowful saga
     Of our grand un-remembrances

Always, the wrong foot forward
     Then our tales of incessant woes
How can a land so lavishly endowed
     Be so medievally misruled?

The mindless clique who rule our pack
     Have killed our soul and frittered our faith
Those incapable of thinking
     Have now turned our “Leaders of Thought”

               2

Lukurumusu wrested our Golden Crown
     And headed straight for the putrid mud
His mouth stuffed with the corpses
     Of assassinated oaths

Fierce and frequent was
     His quest for that Crown
He crawled, caviled cajoled, cried in countless bids
     Till a mongrel coalition rewarded his frenzy

Now up in the saddle
     And finding, so fast, the Crown
Too big for his middling head
     As an unraveling Nation rues its fatal choice

The Nation bleeds from all pores
     Old separatist animosities re-draw the map
As Luku retreats into a conclave of clan and cronies
     Merit and Good Judgement his prime disposable virtues

Clan over competence, tribe above truth
     Square pegs in round holes
And the Nation grabs the reverse gear
     And speeds, break-neck, into medieval darkness

3

Now Bandits stoke our fears
     An oil-drenched Nation lacks
The brain to power its progress
     A mindless paint-over of a battered currency

Has thrown the nation’s debt-drained economy into a tailspin
     The ‘cashless’ country dreamed up by
Emefailure, Chief Witchdoctor of the National Vault,
     Has turned Nigeria into the saddest joke of the Universe

From the rocky seat of power
     It has been silence, empty, disdainful silence
But why did Luku fight so hard for this Crown
     When he knew it was too heavy for his head?   

Unspeakable hardships harass our being
     Untimely deaths deplete our ranks
There is not a single corner in this land
     Untouched by this plague from our mindless Pharaoh

Unhappy the land where rulers cannot THINK
     And/or are too haughty to know
The world asks with impatient consternation:
     Why is Lukuland such a Netherworld of Fools?

Ignorance kills a Nation
     Our own is already close to a disgraceful grave
What do you do with/to a Nation
     Which so conscientiously disables the able?

* Oh Duck, why your frantic craving for the riverWhen you knew you lacked the power to swim?** For more on Meritocracy and Competence, see Nigeria and I: Getting Politics Right to Make Nigeria Work, by Ladipo Adamolekun

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.

Culled from premium Times

A.I

Tags: by Ladipo Adamolekun Niyi Osundare