To Ademola, with a snigger

As is the practice, we wheeled forth
assets: a barrage of brimstone and mortar and fire
and stomp and die. Our words are dispelled now;
they were packed with all the fury of cgi.

The cattle-prod the bulging belly
that dispatched you into the unknown –
cured you eternally of breath –
needed was the sight of you yearning. He now
reclines recumbent in a cell, ordure
in Stygian feculence, a toy
for the butter fingers of Nigerian law – perhaps
Justice might be served dinner
even if dog-nosed.

But listen:
The overtures of revolution
with which we smoked you out from safety
never survived childbirth. Us midwives,
jubilant, still bask in the afterglow
of that fervent conception
never venturing
a post-mortem: just what caused that stillbirth.
Instead donning our swastikas
stitched by even, undulant talents
of the grand society of groupthink
we offer superficial rationale: death
killed revolution dead that young;
A fatwa upon the grubworm.

The ravishers of the commonwealth
now stalk in broad daylight
brazen in the scope of new engagements.
The president announced concessions
we now ourselves concede:
“aces are a rare thing,
don’t you think?”
In response, we swelled
their ranks to bursting –
Homunculi therefore Men-Mountain;
cyclopean voltronic juggernauts on the prowl –
our revolutionary jingoisms mere bookmarks
in social media archives and astute foraging
to unite the channel with the stream.
General Demagogue reporting for duty sir!

In our usual glibness, we erected a bust
on Thomas Salako to mark your passing. This bust
we now have burst to pave way for a road.
You are twice dead, Ademola. And both times
you died
you died useless, senseless deaths.

Had you known
would you have gettheebehindme
revolution instead embraced trepidation?

Hope may spring eternal
But Pope didn’t mean for the oblivious.

*Ademola was shot dead at Agege by a Divisional Police Officer in January 2012, during the #OccupyNigeria protests.

Nigerian Nostalgia

Wait,
Where is the hurtling furniture
trailing menacingly after
impassioned speech
plunging a national gallery of masses
into fits of delicious mirth.
We miss it.

Wait,
Where are the savvy assemblymen
who quick as lightning’s silver flash
purloin delicate stately mace
plunging a national gallery of masses
into fits of delicious mirth.
We miss them.

Wait,
Where are the men – able-bodied, solid
who dish slaps steaming hot putting
privileged kitcheners in their lowly fiery places
plunging a national gallery of masses
into fits of righteous indignation.
We miss them.

Wait,
Where are the men – swathed in Agbada’s ample folds
who indulge in manly feasts of fists
trading punches as Bashir beads in a busy bazaar
plunging a national gallery of masses
into fits of delirious mirth.
We miss them.

Where’s our circus of parroting freaks?
Where’s our honourable Patrick
our dear bespectacled partridge
weaving through Latin, gobbledygook, easy,
a ringmaster leaping through hoops of fire.

Wait,
We miss them.
We’ll applaud with our laughter
Again.

EL RUFAI’S NADIR

I love Nigeria. Our problems are debilitating to the point of paralysis, but I still love my country because it always manages to bring smiles to my face, despite this unenviable burden. And the wide smiles morphed into maniacal howls of laughter when the good fellows behind Twitter decided to give us Twitter, where opinions make it faster to the air than thoughts make the journey to wherever it is that thoughts go to be resolved in the brain. I’ll look like an idiot if I say Nigerians have taken to Twitter like a baby takes to its mother’s teats, because it is bleeding obvious.

Only recently, the nation was engulfed in hoopla over what ordinarily should be (hoop)laughed off. Even the gentlemen of the cloth gave their two cents – a widow’s mite in all ramifications – and in so doing soiled their expensively tailored divine vestments with watery poo. I try to picture what Mary Magdalene looked like and all I see is Monica Belluci, who played Mary Magdalene in Mel Gibson’s Passions of the Christ. I’m not sure how much of coincidence is going on there. Apparently, kasala burst after someone famous on “Nigerian Twitter” accused the PDP of laying its hands on a time machine and going back in time to impress upon Jesus the importance of getting jiggy with Mary Magdalene whom gist had it was very much enamoured with Christ!

When issues (or non-issues in this case) require that we ruminate mentally, I admire our simple-mindedness. Reason suddenly sheds its chains and escapes from where it normally should be tethered. Red becomes a lighter shade of black and white becomes bleached black. A humorous take on the Jesus-Mary Magdalene relationship and its use to lampoon the treachery of the President’s men becomes fodder for a fire of misguided passions. We are probably more Christian than each other but I did not take offence at the tweet that so enraged passions and I am a Christian, who in fairness, possesses a handy sense of humour.

Of course, the PDP and its stooges capitalized on what must be seen as a gaffe by Nasir El-Rufai to start banging in the nails on the coffin of the government critic’s political career. We are a nation divided and I trust the good and enraged Christians of Nigeria will not forgive this slight in a while. If Mallam Nasir secretly nursed any ambitions for the highest political office in the land, he must realize that, apology or not, he has committed political near-harakiri – he has cocked a shotgun and blown his own foot to oblivion by himself. As we are an impatient people too, the headlines, just the sick and click-hungry headlines, that sprung forth from the debacle have done the maximum damage, in my opinion. And even those who hoped and still hope to leverage on his clout must now think twice. In villages, towns and cities all across Southern Nigeria, millions of minds have been made up – you mess with Jesus, you mess with metaphorical death. It should not be so.

In Nigeria today, the practice is to shout when discussing matters that affect the polity, because the ability to shout over and above all others is the gold standard. The ones who have made it to the top have become very skilled demagogues, able to inflame passions and incinerate reason and reasonable arguments with several depressions of the button “Tweet”. Demagoguery has now claimed the scalp of one of its more famous practitioners, and it will still claim many more careless people.

What would El Rufai have done were the shoes to be on the other feet; if the Prophet-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-Else… were to be employed in creating that joke?

Twitter sucks and I do not say that because it is the clothesline where we dry our stupidity in the sun. Twitter sucks because you cannot dig deep into its annals to fish out tweets that may serve to highlight your points. How did Mallam Nasir react to the Innocence of The-Religion-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named video that caused widespread destruction? I LWKMDed when I saw that video and I LWKMDed when I saw the Jesus tweet. To take umbrage at one and laugh at the other is hypocrisy at Pacific Ocean depths, another one of the amusements Nigerians tickle my belly with. And this inanity of fighting the Lord’s battle – original or merely perceived – is as irrational as it was previously inane. Jesus Christ once went gung-ho with a whip in His father’s house; if he needs to stand up for himself, he knows exactly how to!