Barine Saana Ngaage (PhD) is an associate professor in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Faculty of Arts, Niger Delta University, Bayelsa State.
Key to success
Reading is the key of information
which opens the sky
and induces the rain of learning to fall
in all areas of specialization.
It equips the mind with facts
in decision making
for solutions which stamp success
on the sky of possibilities.
It unlocks the world of the internet
like a magnet which
pulls in brain wealth
that runs into tiny rivulets.
It is the road to educational diamond mine
which each mind mines
on the scale of intellectual strength
for purposes of pleasure and livelihood.
It moulds the faculties
like the soil nurtures a grain
until maturity makes knowledge flourish
and lifts society to a mountain top.
It shakes hands with literacy and education
in the network of growth and success
for the growth of the individual and society.
Reading, literacy and education are spices
of literariness cooked with knowledge in the pot of
literary society for the development of society
they are clothes washed with the
detergent of socialisation and learning.
Democracy of fenced walls
The Democracy of fenced walls
does not mend broken ethics
The Democracy of fenced walls
does not see paupers beyond the walls.
Do ballot papers breed democracy?
What happens when poverty sells a right?
Can you retrieve it when rights
have merged into authority?
Sustainable democracy does
not play drums of jungle justice
Justice does not question
legitimate candidacy
or leads it with a gun into quietude
or buys it off the shed of availability
or threatens to stuff out its light.
Is your democracy in chains?
Or is it a joyous lamb?
The Democracy of class buys good ideas
in the market of change
applies lavish styles for change
but imprisons them behind the line of class.
The Democracy of self
sitting on the luxury of millions of naira
should not abide in the home.
The Democracy of self-preservation
sleeping on golden furniture allocation
should not live at home.
The Democracy of godfatherism
needs no sustenance in the ocean of plenty
where sons eat excess melons.
Justice does not pinch one grain of salt
Nor does it deprive labour its due;
it gives the retired dancer its wages
without withdrawing the hand of sunshine.
Democracy does not steal privilege
and turn it into fortune
nor does it quests for hegemony.
Justice does not pinch one grain of salt
off the bag of the poor masses
nor does it write new praise songs
in the book of greed.
The Democracy of fenced walls
does not mend broken hearts,
The Democracy of self
deflates the wheel of trust.
The Democracy of race or
class is blind to others.
The Democracy of class is blind to the poor.
Pigeonhole of cassava
I do frog-jump into the creek
Like a log thrown into water
Splashes wet women, screaming
Hooting and rebuking arrest me.
Surprise grips my being
Thunderous voices shake my physique
I look into the mirror of Neene’s face for an answer.
Revelation creeps into my consciousness
After my mind’s flight of confusion
Sudden revelation breaks the ice –
Tactless cow-like steps.
Women resume their work over pigeonholes
Of cassava littered by the banks.
Blocks of cassava sleep in the basin
Of sand beneath the water
Neene dislodges their coats
They scatter, defenseless, fall and
Faint in a raffia sifter that dances
In cyclic order above water
White flour falls like tiny beads
Into the bag and percolates beneath.
Women pick letters from their pigeonholes
And send them through raffia
Shifters to various destinations;
Rodents kill hunger feasting on remnants
They skip like joyous rams and peep at them.
Divine Mbutoh
Divine Mp Mbutoh is a poet, critic, and gender equality activist from the Northwest of Cameroon who currently lives in Yaounde. He was the second runner-up of the HOFNA Spoken Word Poetry Award, 2016. He writes for Radio Health International (RHI), and Positive Peace Group. His poems have equally featured in a Ghanaian online poetry anthology, I Know My God, published by Abotreh, Ghana, July 2016.
“If you vote against Nigeria…”
Dear Alhaji,
Can you hear these coarse brittle voices?
We are forlorn in this valley like purple
Stripes of the entrails of a rich triangular sandwich,
Our long gone twin, his sharp predatory incisors
Arebecome too sharp for brotherly caresses_
He’s bent to eat us up!
Etpuis quoi?he barks.
Dear brother_
Dear adopted brother,
Tafawaour Uncle, your father_warned us,
But we had glided on with spring legs
Like the stubborn fly on harmattan wings.
We had jujued our battered colonised visages
With a thick mask of pride across the Mungo
How could we tell that our own one…
Partaker of a once shared umbilical will_
Ah! This shrinking mount of Southern flesh!
How could we tell that cultural mutation
Had chocked our twin brothers to mopiness?
How could we tell that Passpartouthad
Churned the sanguine ancestry in them?
Etpuis quoi?he barks
Hear us, even for this one time!
They are giving us strong glasses from
Bordeaux to drink, though we had
Asked for Her Majesty’s royal wine!
Etpuis quoi?he barks
Dear uncle Tafawa,
Now we know the elders are always right!
But if we must die in our brother’s yard,
(For we have made resistance a duty)
Dear uncle Tafawa,
Humbly we chew your words in these waxy
Ears of ours_ different attitude towards life…
But if we must die, will you adopt us again?
Will you open up your door of wisdom while
The wounded adventurous prodigal son
Fallsbeside you, even for one last time?
Will you adopt your lost son one more time?
The Mungo is barricaded from emptying its
Entrails into the Niger_
Hear us before we breathe our last;
We fumble like the spectres of great
Endeley and mighty Foncha,
We can still hear innocent resonance of 01/10.1961,
Skipping &throttling like he-goat pulled to the shrine_
I see the lurks of silks in the forest of Manyu,
We’ve cried our tears to the brim of
The Mungo for two Scores & a Dozen_
Etpuis quoi?he barks
Dear Tafawa,
We came, we saw, and were conquered.
The juju that went downhill has come back with
A broken leg, the wimpy fly is at the mercy of
A nonchalant predatory dragon beetle,
The dotting mallard is before the hunter’s barrel,
The vaulting ambition on the eve of 01/10/1961 is clipped.
Etvousallez faire quoi?he barks.