Strange Land, Nigeria | Emmanuel Inya Otu-Nwachi

Can a strong man's house
Be plundered unless he's bound first?
Can a dog eat the bone
That hangs on its neck?
Can a fish drown
In the water in which it swims?
Can a bird be overwhelmed
By the breeze on which it soars?

Yet here in our land
A strong man wasn't only bound
His house devastated and demolished
The strong man was bound
Hand and foot, and bundled off;
We've seen the dog eat up
The very bone hanging on its neck
It munched it like biscuit bone

And sat waiting for more;
Here we've seen too a fish drown
In its own water, dead and bloated
Like bread cast on the waters that ought to give it life;
The birth has been overwhelmed
By the very breeze it soared on;
We live in a strange land, in strange times
Where nought's impossible;

Police men are abducted
By the very criminals they're paid to eliminate
To rub salt into the festering wound
The brigands demand for a ransom,
A hundred million to let their quarry go
And like toothless bull dogs we wait
We pray for a miracle, for God to come down
And save our effeminate men.

Poet's note: Sometime last week a team of police men on the way from Kaduna to Abuja the seat of power were kidnapped by some armed men who demanded a hundred million naira ransom. The poem examines the problem with an Igbo proverb which states a dog cannot eat the bone hanging on its neck. The police are to deal with the criminals. Instead the criminals are dealing with the police. The authorities seem to care less or seem to be helpless.