National Sacrifice Poem by laolu Adekanmbi

This morning I awoke in darkness,
We hadn't light
We lacked a reason to have one,
We make the government
But we aren't the government
Thus we sleep in heat
They snore in their pool size beds with
girlfriends and mistresses
They were thinking for me
Of me,
I broke my sleep many times
Fanned my bony-body with my mouth.
Their roads had to be clean
That their heads might think smoothly,
Our roads had too many cars.
The governed should not drive only the governors,
Thus we deserve potholes
We deserve hungry and ulcered tummies,
They beer-potbellied tummies
Like pregnant women
And surgery abroad to calm the raging bellies
Who till now was like ours,
Its rage to contain outrageous meals, imported
sometimes,
Ours the problems of our too many complaints,
The ones that affect their lateral thinking.
My laughter,
Their reason to steal, to build,
To buy bukinghams worldwide and jet cars.
National sacrifice, nation building,
Tommy expansion, wallet swelling
Gutters overflowing, taps drying
Electricity starving, hungry children crying,
dying in old and tired
hospitals.
We cause our problems
They solve theirs and their unborn generations,
they steal,
We steal biros they lock us up in decayed jails
for us to rot.
To serve as examples.
Thieves call us thieves
Larger thieves than we,
Who fly in first class only.
My laughter, my sick dwarfy Nigeria,
Lost and losing daily through their insatiable
filthy filth.