I sat at the feast of kings,
And saw a goat wearing the crown!
The loudest drunkard in the clan
Now called “Your Excellency!”
His breath stinks of liquor and lies,
Yet chiefs bow before him!

He who once sold fake fertilizers,
Now chairs the Committee on Agriculture!
And the woman who forged her school certificate
She now signs off on education budgets!
Ha ha ha!
When did pigs begin teaching hens how to fly?

The scholar who read all the books,
Who memorized Orunmila,
Anta Diop,
Yosef Ben-Jochannan
and Nkrumah,
Is now pushing files in a corner office,
Nodding like a lizard
for forty-five thousand Naira a month!

While the dropout who boasted,
“I no sabi book, but I sabi people!”
Now rides a roaring beast of metal;
Black Jeep with tinted shame
Storming through malnourished villages,
Spraying mint Naira notes
Into the belly of a river
That neither drinks nor sings his name;
A river that flows past him
Like a gossip past a deaf man!

Tell me, Ancestor of Ink and Fire:
“Why do the wise beg at the feet of clowns?”

The professor who warned of desertification
They called him a doomsayer.
Now, the rivers are dust,
The children are coughing,
And the same minister who ignored him
Now holds a Climate Summit in Dubai!

Ah, Nigeria!
You spend millions on elections
To choose between roasted yam
and burnt plantain!

And when the people scream,
“All of them are thieves!”
A bigger thief is crowned
To arrest the smaller ones!

The one who shouted “Change!”
Now shouts “Continuity!”
The one who shouted “Youth power!”
Now hires old generals as advisors!

Children of Foolishness!
In this land,
The madman is stoned for saying,
“The market is on fire!”
But when the whole market burns,
The chiefs say, “Nobody told us!”

They build flyovers
Over potholes of poverty.
They buy SUVs
For lawmakers who can’t spell “law.”

A child, eyes like dried mango seeds,
Asked his teacher beneath the old neem tree:
    “Madam, why are we poor?”
The chalk froze mid-sentence,
But the cane did not.
It swooped down like a hawk,
Landing on his back with ridiculed fury,
Sending his legs scattering
Like a dancer who forgot the drumbeat.
Poor teacher, what other answer has she?
Daughter of hunger,
Bride of a torn salary slip.

The university graduate now exchanges
fixed pipes for breads.
The polytechnic girl now fries akara in smoke.
But the big man’s son,
Who copied in every exam,
Now flies to Harvard
To write policies that keep the enpoored!

Ayeeei!
The drum of sanity cracks!

The blind man asked to judge a painting.
The deaf woman, to sing the national ant’s term!

A former warlord becomes a peacemaker.
A former peacemaker is declared a terrorist!

In the court of justice,
The one who greets the judge the loudest
Wins the case!

The one who quoted the constitution
Was jailed for contempt!

The billionaire thief dons a chief’s robe.
But the hungry woman, stealing meat,
wears a necklace of tyres
designed by her own kinsmen!

Haaa!
Madness wears a uniform,
And nonsense is now protocol!

I saw a man flogging a tree
They said, “He is mad.”
But the same man
now leads the Forest Commission!

A soldier once said,
“Democracy is slow, give us gun!”
Now he is retired,
Writing books on human rights!

This world is a drunk goat
staggering in circles,
It is a poem where
logic starves and chaos feasts.

But please, Ogiame
I beg you
Please
Please
Let the horn blow again!