Fr. Timothy Etsenamhe
Seating on the gulf of Guinea with an ambience
of nature’s scintillating grandeur.
Blessed with human and natural resources limitless
Yet groans in pain endure.
Vast with fertile forests, savannahs, and montane lands hitherto bear food
now a safe haven for barbarians to harbor.
Inhabited by dynamic divergent stringing peoples ever effervescent
At 61 these enthralling characters wane into chaos and horror.
Terror trail at every nook and cranny with no one immuned.
Fear has gripped the fabric of human existence to caution.
Arms-men usurped herdsmen to unleash mayhem conscience unchecked.
The wheel of the people seems clogged in thanksgiving feast with the assailants.
The soundtracks of hate and division are pantomimed from North to East, South to West
every day these performances grow heavily ruthless, murderous and fierce.
Cruising over the Niger the tumult is unimaginable owing to the labyrinth of struggles
the region is enmesh.
Vices imprinted in injustice, corruption, nepotism, tribalism, religio-ethno bigotry have taken the
identity of virtue to acquire and relish.
At 61 in deep catastrophe mourners and wailers roughed and mauled into silence
to Wearing the garment that is foolish.
The greens are turning gray and dry while the grains shrink and feeders pale and stark.
My kith and kin toil in vain on self –imagined ventures yielding most times lack.
The wheel itself is exhausted begging and borrowing to the detriment of future stock.
Ludicrously we all have become debtors and more as time clocks.
With hands folded on the back many envision anther Nigeria not too far from now
we await in hope for how long?
The road to that change has begun with cross-carpeting of idealess strides along the path
Of self-benefits and longings.
The common man saturated by the gimmicks of politico-economic mouth watery rhetoric continues to
expect bubbles.
The hopes and aspirations of the ordinary man is the knitting knot of the existence of a near- failed
Country at 61 that hope must not burst into flames.
