The harmless stone of my clenched fist they do not fear. They are not ashamed, neither are they deterred by the dirt dug up by my fingernails in an attempt to expose and stop them from continuously raping me. Disgusted, I closed my lips and my eyes. But they kept raping me.
The harmless stone of my clenched fist they do not fear. They are not ashamed, neither are they deterred by the dirt dug up by my fingernails in an attempt to expose and stop them from continuously raping me. Disgusted, I closed my lips and my eyes. But they kept raping me. Their body just kept taking, buying mansions, filling bank accounts and not caring about my emotions. Are they raping my senses too? Does my silence mean yes? Should I keep quiet and pretend as if nothing has happened and is happening to me?
No, I can no longer keep screaming silently on the inside. I have been watching, waiting and staring. They know I could tell they have been raping me by the size of their “security vote”, “sitting allowance”, fat belly, flash mistresses, and cars. Every time I looked behind or reached to pull the window blind, I catch a glimpse of a decaying country. The looting that Goodluck Jonathan and PDP could not finish has to be completed by Buhari and his gang.
Were they looking at the ruins as they gang-raped the national wealth? If they looked, were they looking at a stopped watch? Their heads, their faculty; what is their brain made of? Shredded Naira notes? Their hearts, their minds; are they made of stones? Do they ever sleep at night? If they do, what is the color of their dream? Green, White, Green?
Amidst the insecurity, unemployment, hunger, and bigotry, the epidemic of corruption and abuse of political privileges by the political class has taken root in Nigeria. With their emotions and conscience frozen, they have been repeatedly raping me. But who really, am I?
I am aa indigent Nigerian, armed with anger and misery. I am an unemployed youth that is practically Koboless. My eyes vacant looking, bored, sad, and dilated. My body, about three parts submerged and the other one-third left dangling. With one leg in the grave of depression, my mood is envious and grudging. At this time of greatest vulnerability, a warm sad feeling of intoxication ran through me that I want to strike a pen knife into somebody, something, anything!
Everyone I talked to said something must be done. But we go back home and pray- or do something close to that. Amen! Amen!! Amen!!! That's three times, is it not? Why is my generation not fighting back?
We can look through the keyhole as long as we like, no one knows what goes on behind the closed door of the executive and legislative chambers, where armed and dangerous political elites hatch their rape plot. We hear sounds; we even heard banging on the table, voices raised. Then, silence before they team up to rape us and create some mild drama of a fake fight to distract us.
The Nigerian political elites have been raping us to death and getting away with murder. These incurables, the fat-faced political class that also serves as the business class. As they dance, a cloud of dust flew up around them and they were hidden from the crowd, for a moment. But when the dust settled, the treasure, the cursed crude; the wealth of the nation was gone and the freshness of the raw meat is no more. Filth, decay, and rottenness was the by-product they left for us.
Fear and anxiety in the farms and villages across the Savannah of Middle Belt. Thunder blows, eardrum gone. Gunshots, terrible things, little devils swiftly creep into Jos, Benue, Kogi, Taraba, Kaduna and Benue again. They ruffle souls, steal their peace and joy as they shred them out with a machete. Stupid killings, senseless people, crescent smile cast upon a drifting country.
I stopped attending church services and Friday prayers, long before the present senseless killings in the Middle Belt. The teaching I received from our dying gods, fathers of your tarnished faith, can be found in the mass shallow graves, across the plains of the Middle Belt.
Three years already? You can't be serious. Did he just announce that he will be running again in 2019? Or was it just a dream? A nightmare, perhaps, running through me like a stream. What's wrong with me? Nothing. The fault is not mine, but your imagination. Tell me you've not lost it. Vanity and insanity. Where art thou Mr. President?
I wish I could go into a coma or amnesia to see if the raping will stop. Alas, the day is waning now; this cubicle waits not for me. Fingers fumbling, scrambling on top of the toilet. Feet hidden, arms exposed. But, the political elites still dragged me out of the dungeon, found and forcefully kissed my dirty lips as they raped me once again.
As we get ready for the 2019 elections and now that we fully understand that these men have been repeatedly raping us, why do we keep inviting them to come back? Obasanjo? Again? Do we want them to rape us so violently that we will die quickly in order to save ourselves from our longsuffering? The political class in Nigeria has shielded the rays of the sun from radiating through to the malnourished inhabitants of this once beautiful country. Now, they don’t even pretend to care about the dying seedlings.
I closed the nursery window this morning, after listening to the soliloquy from the Police IG last night. He was performing at an empty theater, long after his countrymen had walked out not in jubilation, but with heads bowed, hanging in confusion and disbelief. Ashamed of the incompetence of the man in whose hands we entrusted the safety of our lives and properties. Where art thou Mr. President? When shall we get to land captain?
It’s so bad that I sometimes wish I could kill in my sleep. Why is mine a strange story? Where is the sweet era in the life of a Nigerian youth? To shift from side to side. From sorrow to sorrow; to button up one cause of vexation and unbutton another. From David Mark to Bukola Saraki Ike Ekweremadu by 2019?
If only men were still men. Count yourself, lucky guys. Count yourself lucky that my generation is so impotent to rise up and protect the future generations of Nigerians from your habitual rape. Until it's time, until it is time to count our tongue with our teeth, I will keep waiting for the ship at the airport.
© Churchill Okonkwo 2010
