I. The fang did not just pierce the skin of a singer in Lugbe;
It pierced the collective throat of a generation.
We mourn the voice that sang the beauty of Adonai.
They looked for the cure on the shelf,
But the cupboard of the nation is bare.
There was no glass vial to hold back the venom,
Just as there is no wheel to steer us through the challenge,
Just as there is no conscience in the capital.
The emptiness in that hospital fridge
Is the emptiness of the promises we were fed.
II. “May Nigeria never happen to you.”
We whisper it like a prayer, a desperate incantation,
While the toxins circulate in the bloodstream of the state.
But prayer is not an antidote to policy failure.
The venom is systemic.
It is a necrosis eating the cell tissues of our flag,
Turning the green into rot, and the white into a surrender flag to foreign wiles.
We watch the luminosity of our best talents
Snuffed out by the fangs of mediocrity.
A trained architect, a soaring soprano—sacrificed.
Not to a reptile from the bush,
But to a reptile system that poisons its young.
III. Do not be deceived by the false security of bigotry.
The real vipers do not slither on their bellies;
They ride in convoys.
This brood of vipers, clothed in flowing agbada and suits,
Possess a nature that survives only through predation.
They devour the budget for health,
They swallow the funds for research,
They constrict the airways of the youth until we gasp.
The venom is in the ink of their signatures.
The venom is in their silence.
IV. And we? We are drunk on the toxicity of our own division.
We retreat to the tribal corners,
We hide behind the altars of religion,
Fueling an elitist understanding of safety that does not exist.
The snake does not check your state of origin before it bites.
The lack of oxygen does not care if you speak tongues or chant surahs.
Yet we chant to our utter recidivism:
“May this venom favour me and my family.”
How counterintuitive!
To wish that the poison destroying the organism
Somehow spares the single cell that is you.
We hustle to steal a slice of the poisoned cake,
Forgetting that when the body dies, the cells die too.
V. Listen to the sound of the city.
It is no longer the siren of rescue.
The ambulance has forgotten its purpose.
It does not race to save; it races to bury.
Wah-wuu, wah-wuu.
It is the wailing of a mother over an avoidable annihilation.
It is the soundtrack of the Toll Gate, echoed in a hospital ward.
The massacre did not end on 20-10-20;
It just changed weapons.
From the bullet to the bite.
From the army to the apathy.
VI. Wake up!
Resignation to fate is the anesthesia they want you to inhale.
They want you to say, “It is well,” while the patient dies.
But it is not well.
The anti-venom is not coming from abroad;
It must be brewed in the streets, in the polls, in the minds of the youth.
Because as long as we sleep,
As long as we pray for the venom to favour us,
The serpent remains coiled around the neck of our Nation.
The venom is still out there.
The glass is empty.
Who is next?
May Ifu Nanyah find admittance into the eternal beatitudes. Amen.
Culled
