Saturday, May 23, 2009

SHE EATS HER CHILDREN


I am talking about Nigeria, the colonial contraption that is our purported Motherland. She has an appetite that is unhealthy, unwholesome, and ungodly. Nigeria feeds on her children. She is no tree of liberty to be watered every now and again by the blood of tyrants. Indeed, despots of varying ideological and sartorial persuasions have violated her whether it is by unbuckling and pulling down the khakis, or by furling the babarigas.
Our mother is abused and weary, a victim of Stockholm syndrome who returns to molest her offspring.

And now in the delta, she eats yet again, her children and her elderly, two-by-two but in a way that even Noah would not approve. The Nigerian State is at war with the Nigerian Citizen. The Nigerian citizen is doomed, because his compatriots believe that his murder is justified, and that his mother is well within her rights to commit infanticide.

Nigeria, my heart-wrenching country is adopting the tactics of Al-Qaeda in Iraq i.e.: kill the innocents, and the enemy will be pressured to retreat. The murder of the very old and the too young is the subject of the most callous statements on the floor of our parliament. A supposed joke was even made of the entire scenario in the House of Representatives. I can tell you now with all the conviction I can muster that nobody represents me in that house.

Our President is sick, but I do not speak of his body. I’m talking about his mind. He continues in office, the worthy heir to the murderous legacy of his predecessors. He may have declared assets worth a couple of million dollars, but the man is morally in the red. People -poor people- are being killed every day in this onslaught. So if you are sitting at your desk in whatever locale, and you think that this is okay, or necessary, or justified, I can assure you my friend, that you are complicit.

The details upset me too much. I do not want to write, but at the same time, I cannot be quiet. As a friend said to me, to not say anything simply because I do not want to write would be self-indulgent, and I dare add, wrong.

Nigeria eats her children to applause and without remorse.

I’m angry and sad and deeply ashamed.