Thou woman of sour beauty,
And thy breasts so filthy:
Wouldn’t thou salve thine eyes,
To behold thy children’s cries?
Splendour is thine, oh Mother!
Yet, thou greedily take bread and butter,
Ruins plague thy tubers and grains,
And despise blossoms of rains
Thou hast lost in the pains of diversity,
That you slay the gains of identity,
Thine corrupt hands squander the milk and honey;
And thine heart sold to blood money
Thou art a maid adorned in riches,
But, thy seeds die in their wishes:
You’ve abused the swamps and creeks of black gold,
For by them, thine conscience and heritage sold
Thy land still breeds enormous wealth,
Thine species sadly frail in their health;
Oh Motherland, wilt thou again triumph over thine own war,
And subject thy own injustice to the hands of law?
Biodun Busari is a creative and content writer with penchant for addressing political, social and economic issues in the society. He is the author of a self-help book, The Election Goldmine and a novel, After the Dark Clouds. Biodun is a graduate of Geography from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He lives in Lagos.
He can be reached via – Facebook – Biodun Busari, Twitter – @iconbusary, Linkedn Biodun Busari and Email – abeybusary@gmail.com
PostScript by Blessing Oladunjoye
The Poet writes about his country, Nigeria. He explained the bitter sweet conditions of the country and how the country needs to heed to the cry of the citizens who are not delighted by the current happenings in the country. The poet illustrated Nigeria as a woman with many children, though beautiful outside but not bringing forth good tidings to the children. ‘And thy breasts so filthy’, women are expected to feed their infants with breast milk but the poet indicated that the breast milk is messy and not worthy to be given to the children. The poet begged Nigeria to behold the cries of her citizens.
The poet explained how Nigeria prefers to expend resources on importation and thereby enriching other nations of the world, while she ridicules her own endowment and leaves her citizens to suffer.
The poet buttressed on how Nigeria focuses only on the differences that exist in the diversity of her citizens instead of appreciating and leveraging on it to build the country. He talked about the corruption that has eaten deep into the country which has affected the resources that Nigerians ought to benefit.
Despite the riches that the country has, it doesn’t reflect in the lives of the citizens, instead the children only keep wishing to benefit from the enormous resources of the country but it never comes through.
The poet ends the piece with display of hope – that Nigeria will rise again and wants the country to leverage on her available resources and make the country great again.