by Odimegwu Onwumere
Published on: Aug 10, 2006
Topic:
Type: Poetry

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
The lands are arable,
But people cannot plough?
People have built houses
Through suffering with modicum sums,
Trained children through bitter-sweet
And children had not tales:
Than the tales of woes

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
Have you forgotten, or,
Do you not know, that every
African child has a story?
Gory tales parents bequeathed..?
To toil on the trail of hardship and hazard?

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
Children are not schooled, because
Parents suffer malnutrition,
(While stolen money is stashed
Overseas by the Rulers),
Parents had no strength to talk,
While lasses and lads
Took to loose-habits

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
A lot of things have happened,
Then this childish company entered
Like charade of tales
On every kid’s lips:
Power Humiliates the Confidence
Of the Nation

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
They built dam to power stations
Yet abodes are like the Goree
Of slaves in a old West African
Country

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
Who praised them, the same people?
For few days of constant supply of power
That they remembered the pedigree
Of their ancestor based on cheating

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
This has made people
apathetic chronically,
Even when many citizens
Have died because of heat?
That they check their electronic devices,
And people pay, even when the light
They give is minimal?

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
Should the land that generates light
Also generate noise
From generating plants, even
In a noisy nation?

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
There is ruse here, there is rest there!
There is theft here, there is decorum there!

Weep not, Nigerian Child!
Now it’s the fad of the National ID card,
What of the citizens' Death-row cards?
(The ones who have died of hunger)
What of the citizens Hospital cards?
(The Destitute now christened HIV-positive)
What of the citizens’ Illiterate children’s cards?
Youths, all, traveling to overseas cards?
There is cry here, there is laugh there!

Weep not, Nigerian Child!

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