So pacific was their toil
Which they labor'd in the coast
To preserve the life’s coil
Which has blend them to the toast
’cause they are two great brothers
Two natures in them betide
’cause they have two great oddities
Which in distinct uniqueness stride
To their lives’ deities
Which unthinkable to amalgam
In the coast, at youth, they romp
In a game of hide and seek
To hinder every bump
That could make their future bleak
Against any Lugard
In disguise, the Lugard came
With a gigantic stride he approached
Pledging peace and fame
Into the lives of the duo he encroached
With a vow for civilization
Aah! The brothers, in marvel, gazed
At the gorgeous wealth of this stranger
Which like bait must be razed
With a heavy cost as that in the manger
Which may mar their dignity
The stranger in conceit
Promises the wealth to the two
But must bar the seat
Which holds them in tru’
Amidst their bewildering thirst
The cost so strange and astound
The Lugard brings forth a Shaw
Whom the two are to be bound
In a marital tie in the Niger, a flaw
For the maidenhead of the bride
Eehei! The join thus unimaginable
Two brothers to marry a wife
’cause of a Trojan prize, thus admirable
From a gorgeous stranger in a rife
A pledge for democracy
Their mother, the brothers met in cordiality
Relating to her about the stranger’s fort
And the pledges for civility
To this the mother bears no comfort
’cause it holds a bleak future
To them, the mother gave a great warn
‘Beware of this deceit’, she said
That the stranger’s quest is a pawn
But this maternal plea flew to the stead
An unknown woe to their fraternity
Having left their maternal bliss
The brothers went to the stranger’s embrace
Meeting the Shaw with a kiss
To be tangled in a bond with a lace
A thirst for novelty
Now the labour in the coast, apast
Mercenaries to the stranger now are
’cause they thirst for the white stranger’s repast
To quench their strange cra’e
Which they thought was a new dawn
Having been bound to this Shaw
The duo now share an eve’s orifice
But their compact to this quite a sore
’cause their distinct natures couldn’t suffice
To such reality so strange
This fusion of brothers thus odd
By the alien man, Lugard, a test
May be split from the cord
After the tenth decade of their rest
In the bosom of their guest
To them the stranger appends a label
Gotten from the lips of the eve, the Shaw
A memento of the Niger Area in a bel
’cause their actual self, laid to the shore
The amalgamation of a nation
Their ways of life to the wind ablown
Being forged to the stranger’s bight
The brothers in a conflict thrown
Causing a great strife and fight
To a brotherhood once at peace
The amalgamation, of course, has a cause
To serve the stranger’s quest for power
And a sought for the great natural resource
Which abundantly in the brothers soar
A quest for colonialism
The two brothers as the Northern and Southern protectorates
Forced to a marital union by the colonial masters, the guest
Although they have distinct cultures and dictates
Were made to coexist to suit the white man’s quest
To form the nation they called Nigeria
Nineteen Fourteen, the great year of the join
A century later, but cannot coexist
To be or not to be, but not for the coin
Maybe to split, to free the clenched fist
Which may one day blow up the Mother, Africa.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem