A Satirical Poem
At fifty, they dressed her in gold,
Hung ribbons across her weary shoulders,
Beat drums loud enough
To drown the groaning gutters.
Imo is fifty.
Half a century old.
Old enough to know better.
Young enough to pretend.
The banners read: “Legacy.”
The billboards read: “Progress.”
The streets read something else
They read potholes.
Ah, the roads.
Those cratered confessions of governance.
Where asphalt goes to die
And shock absorbers become martyrs.
A journey of ten minutes
Now requires prayer,
Petrol,
And patience.
When it rains,
The roads do not flood
They confess.
They reveal the skeleton
Beneath hurried contracts
And hurried signatures.
Fifty years.
Yet the drains are faithful historians,
Carrying plastic, sorrow,
And broken promises
Side by side.
But the filth is not only in the gutters.
It lives in corridors with polished floors.
It sits behind mahogany desks.
It signs in blue ink.
It smiles for photographs.
The deeper filth is institutional.
There is another dirt
That soap cannot wash.
The quiet kind.
The careful kind.
The kind that whispers,
“Lower your voice.”
In this golden year,
Speech walks on eggshells.
Criticism wears a disguise.
Truth travels with bail money.
Talk too boldly
You may be invited for clarification
From clarification to incarceration
Talk too persistently
You may be corrected.
Talk too effectively
You may become an example.
Somewhere in an air-conditioned office
That office in charge of mis- information and wrong strategy
Mis-run by a former legislator
From Ubulu
Narratives are ironed flat.
Headlines are perfumed.
Information is curated like an exhibition.
Only certain colours allowed.
And those who insist on different shades
Sometimes discover
That civic space
Has invisible fences.
There is a place
They call it Tiger Base.
A jungle without trees.
Where youth enter
With ambition
And sometimes exit
With silence.
The young man with dreadlocks
Becomes a suspect.
The girl with a laptop
Becomes a narrative.
The handshake between power and procedure
Becomes a rope.
Files move swiftly
When accusation is profitable.
Justice walks slowly
When innocence is poor.
In those cells,
Youth learns patience the hard way.
Metal beds.
Concrete floors.
Names reduced to case numbers.
Many awaiting trial.
Most awaiting attention.
Unreasonable remand
A polite phrase
For borrowed years.
A charge is framed.
A remand is sought.
A signature descends.
And liberty pauses.
The police propel.
The file advances.
The gavel stamps.
And the watchdog
Sometimes naps.
Prison becomes an extension of the police cells.
Justice,
Meant to guard the gate,
Occasionally becomes
The hinge.
And somewhere,
A courtroom nods politely
While handcuffs tighten their argument.
Listen closely
You will hear the pensioner coughing.
Not from illness,
But from waiting.
Thirty years of service.
Thirty years of chalk, dust and public duty.
Now his reward is a queue.
A plastic chair under a leaking roof.
“Come back for revalidation,” they say.
As months stack like unpaid prayers.
His medicine grows expensive.
His grandchildren grow hungry.
His patience grows thin.
But the anniversary cake grows tall.
The pensioner counts months
Like unpaid wages.
Thirty years of service
Reduced to periodic promises.
Yet the fireworks do not delay.
The speeches do not stutter.
The celebration does not shrink
To match his pocket.
In the villages,
Night falls with authority.
Generators whisper like conspirators.
Doors are bolted not against weather
But against men without faces.
Insecurity is a rumor by day,
A headline by afternoon,
A knock by midnight.
Fifty years,
And mothers still teach children
How to lie flat at the sound of gunshots.
A curriculum never approved,
Yet universally understood.
Some voices fade not by accident
But by arrangement.
Critique becomes inconvenience.
Inconvenience becomes agitation.
Agitation becomes paperwork.
And paperwork
Has a way
Of leading to locked doors.
So people adjust.
They whisper.
They survive.
Because in certain climates,
Silence is insurance.
Imo at fifty.
Where suspicion is a uniform
Poetry survives
Where prose might struggle.
If some feel seen in these lines,
Perhaps it is because mirrors
Do not invent reflections.
Imo, filthy at fifty
Not only in her gutters
But in forgotten pensions,
Broken highways,
Frightened youth,
And justice delayed
And hijacked by execu-tiary
Until it expires.
Still, she stands.
Beautiful.
Resilient.
Tired.
Perhaps fifty is not a celebration.
Perhaps it is a mirror.
And perhaps,
One day,
We will trade perfume for soap,
Propaganda for policy,
And anniversaries for accountability.
Until then,
We clap.
We cheer.
We decorate decay.
Imo –
Golden at the podium,
Filthy at fifty.
