Are you not tired?

As my soul stirs to retire to its abode

I sight the sun dawdling into the dark

Paving the way for the moon to emerge

The night’s darkness beckons.

The sun faded like a shriveled flower

The moon gleaming like the lively roses

The stars flickering to the fullest

My eyes try to obey the sleep calling

But another sleepless night!

Reclined on a lounger, my eyes firmly shut

And my brain in a tabular rasa mode

With utterly nothing I was thinking about

Yet I felt like my brain was burning, as much energy

As when it was in an active form

It burnt more oxygen than my heart beat(s).

Network of my brain nerves connected to the hippocampus,

Where avalanche of memoirs were stockpiled,

Collated and weaved my memoirs into a narrative genre,

Linked with the thoughts about Africa’s gauged future

My brain turned into an energy-hungry thingamajig

Consuming chunk of every of my calorie intake.

My pathways engaged in multitudes of worriment

Synching unending divergent views about my Africa.

Africans, are you not tired of this intolerance; bigotry and extremism?

Are you not tired of seeing distinctiveness; indignation; minority

in the eyes of your fellow Africans each time you take a look?

Bloodsuckers, when will you satiate your bloodthirstiness?

Are you not tired of these crises and bloodshed?

Are you not tired of infesting Africa with wars

in the name of religious honour and loyalty?

Politicians, are you not fed up with your excuses and empty promises?

Are you not tired of seeing parents set aside

their children’s offer letters because they can’t pay school fees?

Are you not tired of plaguing Africa with poverty; hunger; diseases;

and backwardness with your insensitivity and kleptomania?

When will you feed to satiety with your aggrandized wealth

from looted public funds and communal resources?

Youths, shall we let our predecessors’ failures be paradigmatic of our future?

When shall we start taking responsibilities for our countries and continent?

Hush I’m really tired; are you tired too?

You can’t make a change unless you’re tired.

International Women's Day 2013

A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women

MY AFRICA; UNITE TO REWRITE HER STORY

Africa; the land of great ancient myths

With culture diversified, but united mythos.

Traced to bear the ancestry of man

With the found evidence of modern humans.

Africa; like a rule of dynasty bestrides the equator

And encircles diverse unending climate sector

Stretching in awe-inspiring from the North Temperate Zone

Exuding the composite satellite imagery to the Southern pole.

Africa; a resource-rich and second-largest continent

With abundant natural resources that makes it pertinent

To the international community, especially the West

Such that they always want her to be their conquest.

Africa; they much talk about her in the global arena

But always present a mirror image of her aura.

They envy her diamonds, gold, coal, cocoa, and crude oil

That they glow while she mangles yourself in turmoil.

Africa; whose stories are always told in a horrible manner

And images portrayed like all she holds is poverty and hunger.

But we know Africa is fascinating, invigorating, and amazing

With her azure clouds and vivid green lands that are unending.

Africa; embossed in awe moist grayness and magnificent mountains

With swirling long-lasting waterfalls stimulating her fountains

And inter alia scenic view of hills and crystal beaches

Marvels the tourists and the geologists see her as a peach.

Africa; muddled in kleptomania that has left her in wanton hardship

And her people glued to delusions that wash up their craftsmanship

Such that they often let her down by being unable to see

The aura of mystery in her versatile resources given by nature for free.

Africa; still muddling through despite the variegated challenges she faces

Needs her people to be well articulated and embrace with a game face

The clarion call that the time is long overdue to unite to rewrite her stories

For only Africans can tell better the untold stories about Africa’s histories.

Africa; I look at the east, west, north, central and south

I hear; and I see the youths strutting; and yelling for change in loud shouts

For they’re tired of bad governments, rebels, militants, genocide and warring

For their future is not of hatred, food crisis, diseases, but devoid of suffering.

Reflection on today’s Gospel 14

Today’s gospel reading Luke 13:1-9 tells about Christ’s call to penance and conversion from our old evil ways, and demands us to rethink our ways and change. Christ revealed to us in the reading today that danger and calamity come unexpectedly and as such don’t give us the ample time as we expected to prepare ourselves for the judgment day. Today’s gospel reading has some features that demand our attention and response. Those are historic references to the Galileans’ bloodshed executed by Pilate and the crumbling of the tower of Siloh, which revealed misfortunes, regrets and complaints. We were given lessons for us to learn from them and change our ways unless, like Christ said, we would all perish as they did.

Upon my return to Nigeria I have had series of interactions with some young Nigerians. Amid this interaction I found a line of thinking similar to what I found while interacting with young Nigerians abroad. When you ask an average young Nigerian what he/she would do if given the chance to be Nigerian president, to fight corruption is often the readily given answer. Corruption in Nigeria is everybody’s concern, yet it increases everyday at an increasing rate. This is because most Nigerians are incurably corrupt. Corruption has become an intergenerational legacy. It has got so bad that it will require a brain transplant (sucking out the brains of most Nigerians and replacing it with a fresh brain that is free of corruption) to salvage Nigeria from corruption. Christ in today’s gospel brings to us a message of hope. He used the parable of barren fig trees to send to us his warnings about the effects of allowing corruption to take precedence over our lives. Corruption is like a cancer that eats from within. Thus it has to be eliminated from within. Corruption leads to a spiritual death which I think is an apocalypse more severe than physical destruction.

Fig trees as were given in the reading were an important source of food for the people of Palestine. It usually took about three years for a fig tree to mature and when it did mature it produced abundant fruits. But when a fig tree became barren it would be cut down to give way for more possible healthy ones. However, a rotten fig tree and its awful fruit signified to the Jews the effects of spiritual corruption caused by evil deeds and unrepentant sin. The barren fig tree signified the upshot of Israel’s unconcern to God’s message. Israel was described by Jeremiah and some other prophets as a languishing fig tree characterized by calamity and desolation. He associated good and evil rulers and Israelites with figs that were edible- good for eating- and figs that were inedible- rotten and useless. This parable of fig tree is likened to Nigeria’s current situation. Just as Christ said, unless we change our ways, we would all perish as they did.

In a similar vein, in the parable of fig tree, we were presented as the vineyard; the vinedresser symbolized Christ, who pleaded to his Father, the owner of the vineyard, to wait for another year to give the vineyard another chance to bear fruit. Christ would do whatever (for example shedding his blood on the cross) it takes to make us, the vineyard, bear fruit. That’s only if we change our ways. The change we hope for has to come from within; it is a personal change. Everyone needs to find a way to grapple with the challenge of personal change.