The people at the top know how to sew divisions like expert tailors.
They cut Nigeria into tribal fabrics,
stitching invisible seams through our hearts.
They sit at their machine, crafting suspicion carefully,
telling us our neighbour’s language is a threat,
training our eyes to see danger in another man’s skin tone.
But they know something we pretend not to know --
only one loud, united youth can break the walls
around their tall palaces.
They keep us apart by feeding us different songs.
They play one beat in the East, another tune in the West,
turn up the talking drums in the North,
and drop quiet guitar strings for the South.
We dance out of time,
never moving in one rhythm,
never shouting in one voice.
Meanwhile they sit together in the VIP lounge,
sharing plates of meat and the fruits of our quiet.
The more we whisper in different tongues,
the more their wallets grow full.
Even the ones who helped them cheat
now eat the same bitter soup.
The ballot-box carriers of midnight hours,
the men who signed bent papers without blinking,
the loud praise callers who clapped for lies --
all now sit at the table of hunger.
The thorns they planted
have grown into a full forest,
wrapping around their own necks.
In this land, the sun burns all skins equally,
there’s no cool shade for any tribe.
We live in a country that rides on our backs
like a tired passenger in a wheelbarrow.
We dig our own wells because water board is on break.
We light our own houses because NEPA is fasting.
We heal our own wounds with herbs
because the hospital pharmacy is just an empty cupboard.
We teach our own children after long work hours
because schools are now empty shells.
Government only comes close to collect and count,
never to give and share.
Now their pockets are dry like harmattan lips.
They have borrowed and borrowed
until even the lenders have left town.
So they turn their eyes to our pockets,
already looking like squeezed biscuit wrappers.
New taxes are lined up like raindrops before a storm,
ready to fall on every roof in the country --
penthouse or zinc shack.
No tribe roof will escape it,
no ethnic face will hide from it.
To those who clap at every speech,
who wave flags until arms ache,
who shout “Yes Sir!” until voices crack,
ask your kings if your food pot will escape the fire.
Ask them if your account balance will dodge their taxes.
The reply will be the sound of silence
and the cough of a man adjusting his agbada.
Hunger is a choir where all tribes sing the same sad song.
There is strange joy in this season ,
a festival where pain is the main performer.
The roads are slow for us all,
the markets cut our pockets the same way,
and no one can run faster than the shadow we built
with our own votes,
our own careless hands.
Yesterday planted it, today we eat the fruits.
And my people,
the fruits are bitter enough to tighten our throats.
The heat of hardship covers the whole nation
like one massive umbrella we cannot close.
It does not care if you speak Hausa or Igbo,
Yoruba or Tiv.
It falls on men in agbada and boys in torn jeans.
It visits Banana Island and Ajegunle without discrimination.
We are all travellers inside the leaking canoe we built ourselves,
laughing until we realise water is already to our knees.
If one day the youth wake up in the same mind,
this ground will shake.
No tribal drums, no party colours,
just one single heartbeat
from Kano to Port Harcourt,
from Enugu to Lagos.
And the stone walls around power will hear
what they try so hard to silence.
Then survival songs will become celebration songs.
What we are paying now is the bill for years past.
Old decisions are still sending debt letters to our doorsteps.
We lit fires of bad choices,
now the smoke lives here with us.
This is the quiet punishment of a broken country,
a theatre where the leaders read scripts of promises,
we clap until our palms hurt,
and still go home to cook hunger stew.
Pain needs no translator in Nigeria.
It speaks every language fluently,
knows every market woman by name,
and walks in both city and village with bare feet.
If someday the youth, the workers, and the forgotten corners
agree on one chorus,
we will write the country’s final rescue verse together.
Until then,
the printer will keep making the receipt of pain
in black ink,
paid for fully by our silence.
EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO - writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State
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