By Ozichukwu Chukwu

Iconic mentor, quintessential statesman

Love him, hate him

Has infused composite generations

With character and confidence

Re-engaging in adventures of bygone era;

Yielding and healing;

Crafting rhymes of history and hope.

It takes courage to lead a vanguard,

Wisdom to be a statesman,

And patriotism to be both.

Torch-bearer of all times;

The puzzle of our era,

An enigma.

Touched lives and ignited places;

Turned between conscience and necessity;

Blooming in personal tragedies and rejoicing in tribulations;

No one has been so blessed

In this strange romance of “warriors”

With hunches and punches

This place is volatile

The stage is crowded

Witnessing a testimony of enduring beliefs

Too many battles and no battle field

But the native boy is never lost in the land

Hear some singing

And some wailing

Blurring the rediscovery of lost roots,

Lost mind and voice;

The animation of History

That heralded the siege and silent era.

All were united in facts

But separated by fate and in faith

As superstition and paranoia hold sway

None could pull out from the tiresome game of ego preservation.

And from a toxic environment

Reinvented the medieval with fatal masquerades.

In Abuja, the wilderness of astonishing beauty

And brutal exclusion

You refused the path of wheel tracks;

and rode

Through celebration Highway;

Related News

The guard tower was in your mind; but the radar your reflexes,

You changed the paradigm.

Today History holds spellbound

In retrospect I imagine

The injuries, pains,anguish and scar,

Those legacies in the cloud.

Grandmasters and Supreme Dames

Now face to face with truth

Will neither blink nor go blank

The subconscious has awoken.

Now the weather is clear

The bones will rise again

Those rock-solid mixtures

the “rains will wash away;

Winds  whip into dust clouds,

Torrents carve out the unstable.”

If it’s “Not My Will”;

Can we say, “God wills it.”

As you keep building bridges,

Mending fences

Rebuilding broken walls

Summoning all to the objective square

With a spirit of forgiveness and forbearance.

Time is all-powerful

Fill the trenches, cover the ditches,

The man I know

The Enigma

Always will to dialogue

And to change, which

Again and again he’s done

Living all at no risk, at the crossroads

Today we share your passion

And live with the lessons

As the dust settles

It creates more dust

And the hurricane sweeps away

The footsteps,

The wind erases the fingerprints.

Slip but don’t fall

With hope we remain in

This long march in dry times

It shall be well.