I Was, Am and Will Be Nigeria #IAmNigeria

I was Nigeria

Took my destiny into my own hands

With the digits of Jacob leading me to my promised land.

A land that flowed with honey and milk

Hoping and praying that the honey moon would last forever

Exchanged vows and got into this situationship

Believing it was an actual relationship

Never really committed and also never really friends

Never truly defined yet never wanting to find an end.

Promise of fickle fidelity filled with fragile hope

Belted in the middle, tied together by a rope

Strange bed fellows but at least we were warm at night

Forgetting that vampires always strike at midnight

Today, I am Nigeria

Despondent, desperate, desolate and bare

Where classrooms are now IDP camps; at least those that still stand and dare

Where cows and are now fed with honey and when milked drip the people’s blood

Because this nightmare of a marriage was from time a miscarriage

Fingers stretching into and beyond the middle belt

Stroking below the belt. Probing, searching for treasures untold.

But because I’m a man, I stand my ground; nothing passes through

But the prognosis of self-serving proctologists has no end

This the excuse that empowers them to kick down the back door

Seeking to evacuate the last vestiges of our virtue.

Yet we care not what others think of us in all this abuse

Because we don’t even think of or for ourselves.

The broken vows of our chastity have totally altered our destiny

Because an ill-defined union leaves everything to the imagination

Allowing whosoever wishes to run wild and leave others in trepidation

Because this marriage is tearing at the seams. Still born adults that can’t cease to scream.

Yet divorce is said to be totally off the table.

Separation impossible because of fairy tales and fables

But tomorrow, I will be Nigeria.

Not just some fanciful landscape being reported in the news

Because masterpieces of tragedies are housed in museums.

I’m a 61-year old work perpetually in progress.

And because life begins at 40, I actually just turned 21.

I have only just come of age in this child marriage.

I have only just begun.