We All Want to Run Away

In my fatherland, freedom is monotonous
Every Nigerian family is autonomous
No one cares to build our central throne
but everyone wants a share of our Precious Stone.

Life in Nigeria is like road traffic in Lagos.
The slow and steady has never won any trophy.
To reach one’s destination in time no matter how sloppy,
one must have seen the movie Fast and Furious.

One day, a poor boy from the Niger-Delta said to his poor father
“I think I am now a man, please give me a land to farm.”
and the poor father replied,
“all my lands have been ruined by crude oil.
How can you say you are now a man when my stomach is still bigger than yours?
To be a man, you must either have a protruded stomach, or own fleets of Jeeps.”
Hence, the boy rested his case, and till this day, he still wallows in the creeks

I have learnt to embrace the marriage of suffering and smiling
I have accepted the way we live in my fatherland
It is not about how grounded or vast you are in knowledge and skills
but about how rounded and fast your links are with kings and queens

Should this now make me run away?
Certainly I have considered running away a thousand times
But the collywobbles of reaping where I did not sow
came haunting my refuge seeking soul.

“A wise man does not abandon his roots”
this saying reminds me of Okonkwo, the man who took his own life
before it would have been taken by foreign brutes
Some say he did it for pride
Some claim it was the custom of his tribe.
I’m sure both custom and pride have nothing to do with true patriotism.
There are very few men like him in our generation of Nepotism

Our predicament is like when a man’s goat eats his yam.
should he kill the goat and save his yam
or should he leave the goat and lose his yam.
Whichever way he pans, he must lose something from his farm

As we have taken the rule of our destiny since 1960
All hands must be on deck, every man working round the clock 360.
The young and the old
your power is in your vote.
We must search among us for a certain man
It is time to find the man with a heart of gold.
That man is not a living ghost
he is only a lamb living among goats
that man could be you or me anyway.
What if we all become like that man
would there still be need to run away?