I Am Dying, Please Refresh Me! By Salisu Suleiman

I own enormous expanses of
land and vast volumes of
water, but cannot feed
myself. So I fritter $10 billion
to import rice, wheat, sugar
and fish. I produce rice, but
don’t eat it, cattle, but no
milk and farmers, but no
food. I am hungry, angry
weary, please transform me.
I am the largest realm in the
world with no railways. My
planes are airborne caskets
and my roads, craters to hell,
so I lose family and friends
everyday on roads for which
resources have been
ransacked, and sap the blood
of my countrymen to clot the
crevasses they crash into. I
am in perpetual sadness and
sorrow, please give me fresh
air.
My schools have no teachers
and my classrooms, no roofs.
I have a million candidates
clanging at university gates,
though my ivory dungeons
only take a tenth. I strain to
hear my teachers through
shattered apertures and
subsist with a dozen others in
a single space. My better
professors have gone abroad
and the rest, mere
merchants. I am a university
graduate, but illiterate, so
live a bleak, blank life and
fear a bland, bleary future,
please transform me.
I have no power, yet chose
to flare gas, so my people
have learnt to see in the dark
and stare at the glare of
naked flares. My homes and
offices choke on diesel fumes
while my people cower in the
cacophony of clanging
generators. I have no
mission, vision nor fission,
please refresh me.
My president had no shoes
and has vowed that our
children too, will have none.
So I have millions of people
in penury and trillions in
stolen money. My hospitals
have no doctors, nurses, or
medicines, so young mothers
give birth in the dark to
offspring already scarred by
lack. I live with polio, typhoid
and malaria, and gaze on,
dazed, as future generations
expire in their prime. I am
hopeless, hapless and
helpless, please transform
me.
I craved to have my way, so
cued up to have my say. But
the chosen had no correlation
with our choices and for
daring to speak, tyranny was
tethered by the men in black.
So my leaders are my
oppressors, and my
policemen are my terrors. I
am run by men in mufti, but
not egalitarian. I have no
verve, vote, nor voice, please
refresh me.
I have 40 million countrymen
with no jobs, no present and
no future. My youths in the
North have become terrorists
and those in the South,
kidnapers. Those who stay at
home die of terror; those
who flee abroad die of thirst
in the Sahara and survivors
drown in the Mediterranean.
Future mothers strut shady
clubs in the dead of night
and the runaways crawl the
cold cobbles of Rome and
Amsterdam. I am harried
and heartbroken, please
transform me.
I have four refineries, but
ran them aground. So I rang
up a cabal that wrapped up
trillions under the shroud of
fuel subsidy and dared
anyone to defy me. I cried to
my legislators for equity, but
they of the Hallowed
Chambers hollowed out my
trust and prostituted their
posterities for pittance. I
want lawmakers with feeling,
not traders out for wheeling
and dealing.
My judges are all for sale,
but only members of Tribe of
Thieves can pay their price.
So justice is bought and sold
in court chambers and under
the tribe’s gold-decked
umbrellas. I want a judiciary
with a conscience and judges
with souls, shame and sense,
please transform me.
My factories reverberate with
the echoes of inactivity, so
my toothpick is made in
China; toothpaste in South
Africa; salt in Ghana; butter
in Ireland; milk in Holland;
shoe in Italy; oil in Malaysia;
biscuit in Indonesia;
chocolate in Switzerland and
my bottled water flown from
France. My taste is feigned,
far-flung and foreign, please
refresh me.
My land is vanishing because
the Sahara and the Atlantic
have sworn to converge;
flooding kills my people
yearly because drainages are
clogged; my fish are dead
because oil companies dump
effluents in my rivers; my
communities are
disappearing into the huge
yawns of gully erosion, and
nothing is being done. My
very being is in peril, and I
am in the deepest depths of
despondence, please
transform me.
My leaders solely seek to
plunder and pillage, so set kit
and kin against each other.
And while the carnage carries
on, steal three billion every
day to feign our safety.
Meanwhile, my people jig to
a macabre, frenzied orgy,
spilling blameless blood and
drenching my drains. I am
reeling from reeking body
parts and ruptured innards,
my humanity dissipated,
please refresh me.
My screams singe the silence
of Space as I recall the
shoeless fisherman’s promise
of fresh air and
transformation. Now with
hopes prostrate, pummeled
yet again by paroxysms of
poverty, theft on epic scale
and ineptitude unmatched, I
perceive plainly, the folly of
voting for clan and creed.
I am dying, please give me
fresh air….

#CONSENSUS 2015