MOTHERLAND

MOTHERLAND

I lingered to pen this, but how else would succour be gotten if the ills bedevilling her be untold?

My Motherland.

Heat pervades her and her wind is often at standstill.

She beclouds my awareness and my insightful thoughts were blurred.

Mediocrity reigns in her, bolstered by tribal, religious, age and sexual biases.

Forget the hype about her improved power; blackout is still the order of her day-

Noises from gen-sets causing mental havoc.

We walked with 2 mobile phones, often dual sim, as her networks are unpredictable.

Her Internet perpetually slow, vehicle traffic jam a miniature of hell.

Building fabrics and public roads all in comatose.

She is an ecosystem for survival of the fittest where the physically, emotionally and spiritually disabled are trampled and relegated.

Hypes about spiritual contentions are rampantly felt.

But negative forces seem to me to be gaining more grounds.

In Motherland nothing is secure.

Nerves wrecked even at hands traveling to pocket checking often for phone and wallet.

A warlike arena where fear rules.

Yet in her spite, I beheld some budding hopes.

Budding hopes at the spate of land developments in her towns and cities.

Budding hopes seeing average families possess mobile phones with internet; pay TV to connect cultures; bore holes for readied water and gensets for power generation.

Budding hopes at the deep political consciousness and sensitivity of her populace.

Budding hopes for the gift of spiritual houses giving the poor glimmers of hope.

We may say much of her ills, this mother that brought us forth.

But until we join in curing her ailments and boosting her hopes

Shall our destiny be eternally settled

From this land I was begotten

She brought me forth amidst work and toil

And I shall forever be faithful at the work of her prosperity.

Mother, poor dear Motherland.

ON NAIJA ROAD

The road is our common rendezvous

Big, small; Man, woman; rich or poor.

An exchange of aura, an interaction of spirits, a transfer and mix of forces happens on the road.

The road becomes a locus of relationship in any nation, city, town or village.

It can be said that on the road, we share a common home within the land that we belong.

Live in a mansion house of marble floor with silk hangings

But the communal happenings on your road is what ultimately defines you as an entity in the eyes of an outsider.

Take me along a road in any city and I shall tell of what the average home be like and the condition of the average heart.

And my testimony is that it does not glitter at all on the road of my land.

Each day’s experience of road traffic becomes as of a war.

We blame smokers but fare worse from inhaled fumes translating from vehicles’ exhausts.

Our roads are an ecochaos of lawlessness and disorder where the survival of the fittest reigns.

We have formed a mastery of bullying from horn rages translating from virtually every vehicle.

Swearing and cursing from drivers and passengers alike are taken as norm.

Hell miniature where no commonsensical rule is obeyed

Vehicles proceed even at a beckon of red from the traffic light.

Heaven beckons for pedestrians crossing the zebra line hoping vehicles would stop.

One way route is non-existent as it turns dual at the slightest traffic provocation.

Absolute defiance of commercial riders and drivers: from okada to keke to cabs to danfo to Lorries and trailers; the smaller the vehicle the more defiant and daring its driver.

No chance of ‘African time’ abating soon, not with the perpetual prevalence of unpredictable traffics and hold ups, worsened by alarming road conditions and traffic disobedience.

Long live Tokunbo vehicles, for it makes little economic sense to ply brand new vehicles on roads where potholes are more prevalent than smooth roads.

It may be debatable which comes first: tarring road or tarring stomach

But if we remain silent and the abnormal is not mentioned, it becomes a norm

We owe our

roads a revisit of its nature and culture.