We count our dead in bushels now
not bodies, not names, not prayers. Just numbers on a bleeding screen that scrolls past weary stares.Blood reeling like flood, Tears torrential!
Oyo is dipped in pain and anguish.
Maiduguri weeps in silence.
Zamfara holds its breath. The children of Chibok are ghosts who walk with shadows stitched to death.
At dawn, the gunmen ride the wind
motorbikes, trucks, and dread.
They scatter villages like ash,
leave orphans in their stead.
What God watches from a distance
while schools become a pyre?
What ancestor accepts this offering the harvest of barbed wire?
The farmers leave their scorched fields now.The market keeps a ghost and goblins.And every bride who waits alone knows love is what she lost and never recover from abyss.
We have become a story told
in foreign headlines, small:
“At least thirty killed today—
no motive known at all.”
Ugly humanoids indeed.
To them, death and destruction propel ecstasy.
But we know the motive.
Greed wrapped in a flag.
A hunger that devours children
and calls its hunger jihad.
Humans and properties turns to ashes.
Still, mothers dig with bleeding hands. Still, teachers light a match.
Still, from the rubble of a mosque, and the smokescreen of a church
a boy finds back his patch. His father’s cap, half-burnt, half-whole.
He holds it to his chest.
That small, fierce “no” is Nigeria.
That no will not rest. Death unending. Oh God! Reign supreme in Nigeria!!
‘Niyi Adeleke
Proclaimed Media House
