Sunday, October 30, 2016

"MY LORD, PLEASE TELL ME WHERE TO KEEP YOUR BRIBE" A POEM BY PROF: NIYI OSUNDARE

Prof, Niyi Osundare

My Lord, Please tell me where to keep your bribe?
Do I drop it in your venerable chambers
   Or carry the heavy booty to your immaculate mansion
Shall I bury it in the capacious water tank
    In your well laundered backyard
Or will it breathe better in the septic tank
     Since money can deodorize the smelliest crime
Shall I haul it up the attic
    Between the ceiling and your lofty roof
Or shall I conjure the walls to open up
    And swallow this sudden bounty from your honest labour
Shall I give a billion to each of your paramours
    The black, the light, the Fanta-yellow
They will surely know how to keep the loot
     In places too remote for the sniffing dog
Or shall I use the particulars
     Of your anonymous maidservants and manservants
With their names on overflowing bank accounts
     While they famish like ownerless dogs
Shall I haul it all to your village
     In the valley behind seven mountains
Where potholes swallow up the hugest jeep
     And Penury leaves a scar on every house
My Lord
     It will take the fastest machine
Many, many days to count this booty; and lucky bank bosses 
     May help themselves to a fraction of the loot
                    
My Lord
     Tell me where to keep your bribe?
My Lord
     Tell me where to keep your bribe?
The “last hope of the common man”
     Has become the last bastion of the criminally rich
A terrible plague bestrides the land
     Besieged by rapacious judges and venal lawyers
Behind the antiquated wig
     And the slavish glove
The penguin gown and the obfuscating jargon
     Is a rot and riot whose stench is choking the land
Behind the rituals and roted rigmaroles
     Old antics connive with new tricks
Behind the prim-and-proper costumes of masquerades
      Corruption stands, naked, in its insolent impunity
For sale to the highest bidder
    Interlocutory and perpetual injunctions
Opulent criminals shop for pliant judges
     Protect the criminal, enshrine the crime
And Election Petition Tribunals
     Ah, bless those goldmines and bottomless booties!
Scoundrel vote-riggers romp to electoral victory
     All hail our buyable Bench and conniving Bar
A million dollars in Their Lordship’s bedroom
     A million euros in the parlor closet
Countless naira beneath the kitchen sink
     Our courts are fast running out of Ghana-must-go’s*
The “Temple of Justice”
     Is broken in every brick
The roof is roundly perforated
     By termites of graft
My Lord
     Tell me where to keep your bribe?
Judges doze in the courtroom
     Having spent all night, counting money and various “gifts”
And the Chief Justice looks on with tired eyes
     As Corruption usurps his gavel. 
Crime pays in this country
     Corruption has its handsome rewards
Just one judgement sold to the richest bidder
     Will catapult Judge & Lawyer to the Billionaires’ Club
The Law, they say, is an ass
     Sometimes fast, sometimes slow
But the Law in Nigeria is a vulture
     Fat on the cash-and-carry carrion of murdered Conscience
Won gb’ebi f’alare
     Won gb’are f’elebi**
They kill our trust in the common good
     These Monsters of Mammon in their garish gowns
Unhappy the land
     Where jobbers are judges
Where Impunity walks the streets
     Like a large, invincible Demon
Come Sunday, they troop to the church
     Friday, they mouth their mantra in pious mosques
But they pervert Justice all week long
     And dig us deeper into the hellish hole
Nigeria is a huge corpse
     With milling maggots on its wretched hulk
They prey every day, they prey every night
     For the endless decomposition of our common soul
My Most Honourable Lord
     Just tell me where to keep your bribe.
*   Large, extremely tough bags used for carrying heavy cash in Nigeria
** They declare the innocent guilty
   They pronounce the guilty innocent

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