The looter of Minna

 In this groaning wreck we dare to call a country,

the destroyers still walk among us, unashamed.
Babangida once swaggered in khaki terror,
his iron fist crushing tomorrow before it could breathe.
He ruled as tyrant, blind to every future seed,
power in his palms, yet the nation he bled and looted dry.
A servant for a season, he and his circle served only themselves,
then retired to stolen mansions, fat on the marrow of the land.
He hounded honest tongues to the gallows for daring to speak truth,
while arrogance dripped from his lips like poisoned honey.
Millions he impoverished, helpless souls left to rot,
their dreams ground into dust beneath military boots.
“Maradona” they called him, but never a name of honor,
only a slick trickster dribbling the people’s hope into oblivion.
Now he bows his gray head in the quiet shame of Minna,
too afraid to flee the Nigeria he helped murder,
where criminals like him are strangely shielded by the same broken law.
Destruction has not paid its dividend; the ruin stares back at him daily.
He dares not walk the streets his regime never bothered to pave,
among the multitudes he defrauded and left in chains of want.
Men without vision, who stalled a giant with guns,
turned promise into mockery, greatness into jest.
Obstructers became our leaders through the barrel’s threat,
institutionalizing corruption like a dark, evil genius.
Systemic failure took root, and still it spreads its venom
in this same mess we stubbornly call a country.
Babangida, where are the guns that once ruined us all?


Are you happy now in your twilight silence?
Can you stroll freely among the ghosts of those you killed,
or do their shadows still whisper your name in the night?
Boneheaded barrack boys, drunk on docile masses,
apprentices without brains, idols of every profligate thief.
Generalissimo of morons, bearing arms against hope itself,
you looted the Gulf windfall and left us beggars in our own house.
Detestable men and their fickle friends, protected still by guns,
afflict this land till this very day.
In this groaning wreck, this mess we dare to call a country,
the destroyers live on, and the wound festers.