A LETTER TO MY PRESIDENT, ASSUMING NIPOST STILL WORKS

1, Somewhere Street,
Lagos State.
09/02/2012

Dear Sir,
The President,
Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Aso-Rock Villa,
Asokoro District,
Abuja, FCT.
Nigeria.
A LOYAL NIGERIAN’S SUPPORT FOR HIS PRESIDENT
I, Akpe Roland Nduka, very human, twenty-something years old, graduate of the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, son of Mr and Mrs Akpe, of the Umu-Ngbor clan, of the Ukwuani ethnic group, from Utagba-Ogbe, Kwale, Ndokwa West LGA of Delta State, Nigeria, am here to show my solidarity, unalloyed, to you, Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, President Goodluck Jonathan.
May I call you Jona, sir? You are silent. I guess that signals assent. I shall, Jona sir, try to point out the great improvements you have made to our flailing and failing infrastructures. I, sincerely, hope that the obvious testimonies I shall enlist shall put paid to claims constantly being spread across the twittosphere by self-acclaimed saints and know-it-alls like Ogunlesi, Onuoha, el-Rufai, Omojuwa and their likes.
Contrary to popular belief, I believe you are doing a great job, Jona sir. It has taken, I am sure, a great deal more than your ‘very’ English last and first names to have introduced a word like CABAL into common use. As a connoisseur of words, myself, the improvement of our falling spoken English standard, by you, is thoroughly appreciated. I feel you should know that my eyes are smarting as I write this. It is not that I am overcome by emotion at the wonders you have performed in converting our Meggido to an Eden. No, not exactly.
It is 2.42a.m and I am writing by the flickering, smoky flame of a lantern. No, don’t feel bad, sir. There has been great improvement in power output from something-something thousand megawatts to something-hundred-and-something-thousand megawatts according to the newspapers and news reels. I read the exact same thing five months ago and, well, it is not your fault that the slice of my budget eaten by candles increased appropriately with an increase in power output.
Forgive the pun, I will exercise patience. Nigerians hardly ever exercise patience. No wonder they cross the Sahara on foot for greener pastures than wait, eight years at the US embassy corridors to be covered in dust and the insult of low-level embassy employees, for visitor’s visa.
Good Sir Jona, I shall not bring up the Boko Haram issue. A nation is just like a man. Harmful micro-organisms live in and on man. Had a lot of your detractors stayed in school, and not hop on home on labour strikes, they would have been taught first year pathology which would have endowed them with better brains to understand that Boko Haram is our cross to bear. Like Staphlococcus aureus is the human skin’s to bear. What is a few hundred dead souls to the rest of us living, sturdy one hundred and forty nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, five hundred and ninety two point two three four two inhabitants of this colonially carved country? Between both of us, statistics shows the insignificance of their lives. Jona sir, we shall bear this cross, with you, with fortitude as long your villa does not go up in smithereens.
I have a lot to give you kudos for, sir. But time is in short, treacherous supply and my laptop’s battery annoyingly low. I, sir, will not for any reason forget to congratulate you on a job well done in finally removing import waivers that have helped ‘Professor-Pella’ the Alhaji’s net worth into double what it was. Even your detractors cannot deny the fact that our own very kinsman, from the ancient city of depleted groundnuts, is the undisputed baba olowo of the whole Africa, even if he imports and repacks his products as made in Nigeria.
I hope this letter gets to you, assuming NIPOST functions as efficiently as parastatals like National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency and the now ‘defunct (?)’ Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria so obviously do. My mother prays for you and the country. I forget to, most times. But I never forget to pray the generators do not go on strike.
Yours Nigerian,
Rolands Ndu Akpe
P.S- I hope you did not mind that I could not come up with any obvious infrastructural upgrade while I wrote the above? I tried, believe me, sir. Nothing jumped at me while I wrote in the dark. I will patiently wait for the dividends of the funds accrued from the partial removal of subsidy. I am very patient, just like my parents were, during Niger-man Babangida’s IMF-induced policy implementations.

:-s

Never understood why I could never love like other dudes
Was fed on cereals of warm memory verses, spooned
into toothless, gumful mouth when I refused
the warm milk of love that Momma grew
. . .from her chest area
. . .no, her age was no criteria
for my hard-headed refusal
to flap my arms and feet in her cafeteria

No, it really wasn’t
Yes, I was less than a dozen
months old, entrapped already
in a growing man’s prison-
#teamyoungboobs
Momma, your boobs
were beautiful
Cutiful too

Refusal to accept your love,
and the bible your first love,
was not an arc-Cos to the Cos (of us)
. . .was not my new found love for busts

Darling mother mine,
Wouldn’t it be a sin to opine
that my refusal to part with lies
and the raunchiness I twitterise
is to be lain on your oh-so-
not-very-pretty-but-better-than-my-soul-
Boobs that you have successfully hid
from my chuk-chuk eye-lids
for years that score, twenty?

No, it is not, mother
I love you far more than
my now modern affection for
sating erections, sated erections
and margarined slices of red velvet cake

. . .straight and narrow is the way to life
Like an arrow, I’m straight; I cuss, I write
I wrestle the homosexual feelings I get and belch
When my fingers kiss the girls Momma recommends

Forgive me, Ma, the one I love, like me, cusses
When she does, I love it
Her orals like scriptures on pages,
worn- a fuzzy teddy bear on cold nights.


oYA, ppL. nNA can comment-insult me now

baby sis

For my little sis, Uche, on her birthday who probably won’t understand this

Let no man or god
dare me. For for you I live,
eat this foul air, breathe


your blisters, my sore
let me act the whore
take it in the butt
from this world of
fumey, wispy smoke and lying mirrors

leave it be . . .

please, leave it be, darling
for it’s for you, I’m living
stooped to pick my bleeding
head from beneath the guillotine.
Headless, head in hand, darling . . .

like a haunting spectre
I traipse rooms and rules, somber
hid my nitrogycerine, saltpetre*
act like I’m a respecter
of genial religio-political mind vandals

let it be . . .
just for you
let it be
*saltpetre- potaaium nitrate, material used in explosives

My head's JISting

Scatter me
gently
real gently,
baby

Random

I. Am. Tired.
Like. GrandDa's
rickety,
wobbly
Methuselah'ed
bicycle

Eff Good Intentions; Grow a conscience

The poor shall always be with you

Good intentions paid the bills last year.
Now I’m paying my debt.
It’s the truth.

The last time I did a good deed was last year
Now, I’m paying the price
It’s the truth

Bukky told me I thought too much
No wonder I stayed a virgin for so long
It’s the truth

I think better than most legislators
You do too. Let’s be candid.
It’s the truth

Like our political bizmen, I’ve never told the truth
I’m telling the truth now. Don’t giggle
It’s the truth

Our truths tire me now
They are in annoying versions like Microsoft Windows

Forgive the word I shall use next but
F**k truth,
Doesn’t it hurt your gut
when a dude with a B.Sced tie and
a suit of almost good English
pleads you for a note in naira, 20?

PS- GROW A CONSCIENCE

With books in my skull
I thought I knew
And understood

I saw Him.
No, Him and thin Him
And understood I never understood.

What does he see with his face to the Sun?
Does he see light like leaves,
in harmattan, hovering and falling to the floors?
Or, does he see light as nothing but
dripping black ink?

When he hears me speak with my baritone
thick like flood crashing down a waterfall,
does he think me well-fed like a Senator’s belly
or, does he see me for what I am-
frustrated, yet testosteroned;
insecure, but cackling;
broom thin with an Adam’s apple
the size of a baby’s head.
Does he see that?

What does he see?
What does he think?
Does he fantasize as I do
about supple, sleekly glossed lips?
Does he see jeaned, feminine bums with his ears
as they scratch-scratch their way in synchrony with their swinging gait?

Do blind men have wet dreams?
They do? What do they SEE when their volcano exudes?-
Dark, doughy, rotund thighs or
Clinking, clanking coins falling into his bowl in staccato?

Photo by a Nikon guru, Rauf Ayodeji Adeleke)

I am not Nigerian

I am not Nigerian,a dot on Europe's drawn map. My heart is. It is, because It represents the learned confusion of the Old, the corrupt survival of Mid-age and the frustrated promise of the young. That is who I am. That is whom my friends are. That is whom my siblings are.
Mish-mashed symbols of what the truth is. 'Truth is truth', I once was told. Sango is evil and the blonde man's God is good, is the truth the Brits told. I know now, 'Power is truth'; 'Money is respect'. Seek ye first the naira in bundles and every other thing shall be added unto thee. Yes, lips to kiss your butt; tongues to sing your praise; bowing heads and award plaques.
I am Nigerian,not as a member of a geographical entity but because my heart is. Because my heart has been taught pessimism and hope on the same side of the coin. My heart is so Nigerian that even when nothing works, I still support the Super Eagles. That's som'n, innit?