I have been thinking…
And my thoughts are heavy —
Like wet clothes clinging to the line on a cold morning.
Perhaps — just perhaps.
If I wring them into words,
They might drip into someone's soul.
And spark a needed fire.
The greatest tragedy of this nation
Is not bad leadership.
No.
It is a country starved in the belly,
And shrunken in spirit.
A people trained to believe that crumbs
Are the banquet they deserve.
A people taught never to ask questions.
A population conditioned to cower.
A population of timid people.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
From childhood,
We were moulded like clay in unkind hands.
In many African homes, questions were dangerous.
Every “Why?” children dared to utter
Was a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest.
A slap…
A knuckle to the head…
Swift replies that marked the end of curiosity.
Do not ask questions.
To disagree with an elder?
is a Mortal sin.
Here, a child could be whipped
And told to swallow their tears like bitter medicine.
And after the flogging,
The silence that followed was unnatural —
Like a graveyard at midnight.
We were shushed into obedience:
“Shhhhh… if I hear pim…”
If you dared to cry,
The cry was beaten back into your chest,
Where it pounded like a drum eager to be played.
When you finally obeyed and gulped it down,
Your breath come out in hiccups and hums,
Like a generator with a faulty carburetor.
Coughing in the night.
Some of the broad chests we admire today
Were not built by push-ups or gym hours,
But by years spent
Swallowing tears and storing pain.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
Then came schooling
A rigid box
With windows too small for imagination to crawl through.
No creativity.
No liberation.
We crammed our heads with dead facts,
Only to vomit them onto exam sheets.
We passed, yes… we passed.
But we never knew —
Never asked —
Why or how it will shape our lives ahead.
Some of our teachers
Were captains steering ships they had never learned to sail.
And we?
We stayed quiet in the sinking boat,
Believing that drowning politely
Was better than shouting for rescue.
We never asked questions.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
Then came university
Same story, different verse.
The script grew older and more stubborn.
We were forced to buy needless books and handouts,
As if knowledge could be purchased
Like trinkets at Igbudu market.
Lecturers cancelled classes
Like careless gods.
Tossing aside the prayers of mortals.
No apology for stolen hours.
No regard for our worth.
And we convinced ourselves
This was discipline,
When in truth,
It was training in the art.
Of tolerating the unacceptable.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
And in the workplace?
The same servitude — just a different uniform.
One week in,
Your desk floods with duties you never signed up for.
And the work follows you home
Like a stray dog that will not stop barking at your door.
Ask for a pay raise?
They will baptise in the name of “Troublemaker”
And send you packing.
We learned to bow our necks,
Not knowing the ground we bowed to
Was growing thorns beneath us.
We learned to stay mute,
Believing it kept us out of trouble.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
And so when politics came knocking,
We answered with our same bent backs.
A nation of over 230 million souls —
Brilliant stars across the global sky —
Yet dim torches in our own streets.
We accept governors
Who can barely prove they went to school.
Governors who stumble over budget figures.
Like toddlers tripping over pebbles.
“It is confusing me,” says His Excellency —
And we applaud.
Mr. president promises constant electricity,
Delivers constant darkness,
Then returns for our votes,
Knowing our memories are as short
As an eyelash’s shadow at noon.
We vote.
He wins.
He under-delivers again.
We ask nothing.
We demand nothing.
We stay docile.
Why?
Because we have been taught not to ask questions.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
A governor builds a 300km road
As though roads were miracles from the heavens.
Radio stations sing his praise like a hymn.
Meanwhile,
A ₦1 billion project is documented as ₦3 billion.
The missing ₦2 billion floats away —
Vanishing into thin air
And we do not ask
Where the wind carried it.
We treat our right to speak
Like borrowed clothes
We are afraid to stain.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
We have lawmakers
Commissioning BetNaija shops as constituency projects
As though gambling away hope were a gift to the people.
Local government chairmen
Replaces a mere gate
And throw ribbon-cutting parties
Costlier than the gate itself.
Women in matching wrappers dance in the sun,
A live band booms like victory drums.
But the only victory here…
Is for mediocrity.
We clap for crumbs,
Unaware that the bakery belongs to us.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
Election season arrives —
Young men hired as political thugs.
Young men sharpen cutlasses for masters
Who feed them only palm wine and empty promises.
They trade blood for politics.
But when the rewards arrive —
Scholarships, contracts, lands, foreign trips —
They are given
To the politicians’ children.
Yet the next election,
The same young men pick up the same cutlasses
For the same masters.
A tragic theatre with repeat actors,
Repeat pain.
Each act bloodier than the last.
But the young men ask no questions.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
We have cuddled our suffering
Like a mother rocking a sick child.
We have baptised pain as destiny,
And called hardship heritage.
But leaders are only mirrors —
And the people are the faces they reflect.
You.
Me.
Us
We must kill TIMIDITY
And clothe ourselves in the wild armour of courage.
Bravery is not a dry path without fear.
It is steering your ship straight through the storm.
Even God,
Who reads the deepest diary of the heart,
Waits for you to open your mouth in demand.
Silent prayers are seeds left unplanted.
Until the timid Nigerian awakens
To the truth that dreams are rights — not favours,
That we must speak and never stay silent,
That "all die na die" —
Nothing will change.
The chains will stay.
The whip will still sing.
The hunger will still bite.
The clueless will still rule.
The small man will remain small,
And the big man will remain big.
If we do not speak,
The tragedy will live on.
Nothing will change.
Our TIMIDITY is the root of our pain.
EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO - writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State.
