Popular poet mocks Nigerian judges
in new poem
For those who do not know, Professor Niyi Osundare is a
prolific poet, dramatist and literary critic. According to Wikipedia, he is
also renowned for his commitment to socially relevant art and artistic
activism.
A recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) for
academic excellence in 2014, his poem about the hypocrisy of Nigerian judges
and corruption in Nigeria recently went viral for the right reasons.
Read it below:
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 labor
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 manservant
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”
Announced 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 judgment 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 Honorable
Lord Just tell me
where to keep your bribe
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