A TRIBUTE TO NNAMDI KANU

Such is the nature of an idea whose time has come

It is borne in the heart and hardly dies a true death

A woman cries out: “Where’s the body of my brother?”

There is a deafening silence as the nation sleeps uneasily

Dead or alive, the body of Nnamdi was award-winning

He’s only a lad whose message has consuming urgency

Enemies prized him above rubbles, above the Constitution

That governs the sacred  land bisected by three rivers

A lawyer cries: “Your Honor, I beseech you entreatingly

Order the Captn’s boys to produce my client in this Court

Stlll, there was rancorous  silence

At last. the pythons went home joltingly

Congratulating the Captain, the shooters:

Intone:“Mission Accomplished. Sir”

“Really, we did it, boys, didn’t we?”

Was Captain’s jubilatory chutzpah, effrontery

My soul  cries: “Fools, they are, aren’t they?

They cannot kill an idea with a gun

Nor trap the wind with a spider’s web”

Nor convict for  murder without a body

You cannot kill an idea with a bullet, can you?

There are better ways for Captain to annihilate

One, incline ears with the patience of Job

You are in the business of persuasion

Not with barrels of the cannons filled with steel balls

Not with guns fitted with bonnet smelling of gunpowder

Gone are the armamentaria days of old

When a soldier shoots, slits and asks questions later

Two, infiltrate the group with healthier ideas

The fastest way to harvest corn is to destroy it

If you kill the kernel by burial in earth’s bowels

It rises in hundred-fold, hundred-fold

Consider the quest  for referendum

Does a government Kill the quest through fragmentation

Infinitesimally in small particles?

Consider the old rugged cross

Where a man spreads agonizing arms across

In an it-is-finished mockery surrender

Only to take the world as if by cataclysmic storm

 Never thought possible by all acounts

Doth not the bones rise again from a lifeless state

In the valley of bleached, dry Bones?

You’ve heard the minstrel sing: Okpukpu ga adi ndi ozo

And The Boys Brigade in khaki strut, gyrate, burst in song

One, two, and three, the bones shall rise again

Indeed, they shall augument, intensify, upsurge

invariably, perpetually, till oge mgbe ebighi ebi

Didn’t they slaughter 300 IPOB officers in the Sixties

Dragged President headless behind a vehicle

Gutted babes out of 100,000 pregnant women

And burned bodies that didn’t fit in gwongwolo?

As if that was not sufficient to abate maddening frenzy

They filed Suburban trains with decomposing bodies

From Kafanchan, Taraku, Oturkpo heading to Enugu

They sent Paulina’s mother home down East

With the beheaded head of Apollos, Paulina’s father

Though 70-year-old Paulina has seen it all

A day before he fell to Kanu’s bullets

The 28-year-old grandson said to 70-year –old Paulina:

“I’d rather have discussions without government

Than government without discussions”

Such is the nature of an idea whose time has come