4 months ago
8
NIGERIA’S GOD OF DARKNESS
All hail NEPA*
Nigeria’s God of Darkness
I
The bond between Nigeria and Darkness
Only the drastic word can break.
One minute of flimsy flashes
Then, a thousand hours of lightless groping
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Wingless fans mock our misery
From powerless ceilings
The aircon coughed into silence
Many unhappy seasons ago
Failing factories feed our hunger
Our laptops run on the heat
From our feverish groins.
With the rays of the kindly moon
We pen the nation’s epics
While libraries and laboratories suffocate
In the lampless anguish of our benighted Academies.
So wonderfully endowed, we count our blessings
Halfway through the surgical task
A medieval darkness engulfs the theatre
The surgeon’s scalpel veers beyond the veins
Close by, reeking mortuaries with their restless doors
At our ultramodern airports
Darkness taxes faster
Than the speed of light: blind landing gambles
Announce the welcome to our Blackout Country
II
NEPALAND. Blackout Country. Outage Hell.
Candles. Lanterns. Flashlights,
Ancient oil-lamps and their yellow peril:
The cock of our early lights has not begun to crow
Generator country and its deafening madnesses
Where the noise-bomb shakes marble mansions
To their golden bases; an ounce of light
Ten tons of detonating terror
Generators: diesel-driven, petrol-powered,
To every person their own silence-slayer
In a country where noise is the national anthem
In which tribe and tongue consistently differ
Everyone has their share of our national darkness
From the porter who sweats beneath the nation’s yoke
To the rich and ruthless whose private greed
Compounds the public need
Ruler after ruler, from multi-medaled Generals
To tall-capped undertakers of our democratic hoax
Have passed brave budgets to end the national shame
Budgets which never rise beyond their bottomless pockets
NEPALAND NEPALAND LEPERLAND
Grand Distributor of our national darkness
Our rulers grope and grab in patriotic frenzy
The people stumble and slip on their lightless trails.
NEPA: National Electric Power Authority; now re-named Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).
Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.
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