The prodigal sons have begun killing their prodigal fathers.
Terrorists terrorise our terrain.
Instead of calling a spade a spade, we call it a plate.
They lower the stage to deepen our pain.
They trade truth for headlines, and headlines for silence.
They call bandits by euphemisms to preserve the value chain,
Rebranding wolves as stray dogs for pecuniary gain.
But the value chain has broken—
Broken the fibres of their fathers,
Broken the covenant between soil and seed, between oath and deed.
The prodigal sons now kill their prodigal fathers.
They feast on the inheritance they refused to protect.
Their brothers now come from across the borders,
With foreign tongues and familiar rage.
They think themselves a mafia, carving borders with bullets.
The end will bring a fever—
A fever that burns through the nation.
Being right makes you a terrorist;
Being a terrorist makes you right.
Morality inverted. Justice blindfolded and bound.
Our senses have taken flight,
And reason sleeps in exile.
Children go to school and end in pools of blood,
Their backpacks heavier with fear than with books.
Traders are not traded as cargo, yet our markets have become graves.
Our kin are beheaded—
Like mangoes struck from trees by stones,
The fruits of the nation falling before they ripen.
All we have are jingles while our people rot in the jungle:
Lullabies for the dead, jingles for the living.
Blood-stained relics of failed missions.
Promises laminated, yet paper melts in the rain.
The death of the general is a crimson incision,
A knife that cuts deeper than flesh—
It cuts through our spine.
It leaves a permanent scar upon our national conscience,
A scar we point to when asked,
“Where did it all go wrong?”
Prodigal sons on the prowl,
Picking our citizens like fowls for slaughter.
They hunt in daylight while night wears the badge.
Yet we still wait for a father’s voice to call them home,
Before the land forgets the taste of peace,
Before the last father falls to the last son.
So tell me: who will call a spade a spade again,
Before the plate shatters
And we bleed with it?
By Douglas Ogbankwa, Esq.
douglasogbankwa@gmail.com
