Nigeria wears different songs but plays the same poverty band.
The North beats the talking drum,
the South strums the guitar,
the East blows the flute —
but every tribe is dancing inside hunger’s hall.
The people at the top sew division like Aso Ebi tailors,
cutting Nigeria into tribal fabrics,
stitching invisible seams into our hearts.
They spin the machine of suspicion carefully,
telling us our neighbour’s tongue is danger,
that another man’s skin colour is a warning.
They pretend it is for “national unity,”
but they know one truth we refuse to face --
all it takes is a loud, united youth
to push down their palace walls.
So they keep our music out of tune.
One beat in the East,
another in the West.
Bigger drums in the North,
lazy guitars in the South.
We hop and shuffle,
never in step,
never in one voice.
They sit in VIP lounges deep in Abuja,
sharing meat and laughter,
stuffing their wallets with the fruits of our quiet lips.
The more we whisper in different tongues,
the more their bellies grow round.
Even those who helped them cheat
now chew the same bitter kola.
The ballot-box runners of midnight,
the crooked paper signers with fast pens,
the praise singers who clapped till their palms turned red ,
they all now sit at hunger’s table.
The thorns they dropped in our soil
have grown into a thick forest,
wrapping around their own necks.
Nigeria’s sun burns every forehead the same way;
there is no cold shade for any tribe.
We carry this country like overloaded wheelbarrows.
We dig our own wells because water board is on break.
We light our houses with generator fumes
because NEPA is fasting.
We heal our wounds with leaves and salt water
because hospital shelves are empty.
We teach our children under dim bulbs after work
because schools are hollow shells.
Government visits only to collect and count,
never to give and share.
Now their big-man pockets are as dry as harmattan lips.
They have borrowed until even the lenders have travelled.
The leaders’ eyes are now fixed on our pockets,
pockets looking like crushed biscuit wrappers.
Fresh taxes are lined up like raindrops before a storm,
ready to fall on penthouse roofs and zinc shacks alike.
No tribal umbrella will block this rain,
no ethnic face can hide from this wetness.
To those who clap for every speech,
wave flags until the hands shake,
shout “Yes Sir!” until throats go dry —
ask your kings if your pots will escape the hunger fire.
Ask them if your accounts will dodge the tax knife.
The answer will be silence,
and the soft cough of a man adjusting his shiny agbada.
Hunger has the biggest choir in Nigeria,
every tribe sings its sad chorus.
There is a strange carnival in this season.
Pain is the top artist on stage.
Roads frustrate everyone the same way,
markets cut pockets with the same knife,
and no one can run faster than the shadow ,
we built with our own blind votes.
Yesterday’s careless hands planted it,
today its fruits squeeze our throats with bitterness.
Hardship covers the country like one giant umbrella.
It doesn’t care for Hausa or Igbo,
Yoruba or Tiv,
Ijaw or Itsekiri.
It falls on men in agbada
and boys in torn jeans,
visits Banana Island and Ajegunle
without asking for an address.
We all sit inside the same leaking canoe we made ourselves,
laughing nervously until we notice
water climbing up our knees.
If one day the youth rise with the same mind,
the ground itself will tremble.
No tribal drum, no party flag ,
just one heartbeat from Kano to Port Harcourt,
Enugu to Lagos.
The stone walls of power will hear a sound
they cannot stop.
Our survival songs will change to celebration songs.
What we pay now is the bill from yesterday.
Old votes send fresh debt letters to our doors.
We lit fires with bad choices,
now the smoke lives inside our rooms.
This is Nigeria’s slow punishment,
a theatre where leaders read promise scripts,
we clap until our palms sting,
then go back home to cook hunger stew.
Pain speaks every Nigerian language.
It buys food in Mile 12,
it jokes with traders in Nyanya,
it walks barefoot in Warri
and sleeps in Victoria Island without shame.
The day our youth, our workers, our forgotten villages
find the same chorus,
we will write Nigeria’s rescue verse together.
Until then,
the printer will keep producing the receipt of pain,
signed and stamped in bold black ink,
fully paid for by our silence.
EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO - writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State
