In Memory Of George Akabogu Poem by Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna

Our minds gladdened from afar
Unto the plum sets of undetermined fortunes.
When the sweetest scents of nature blossomed
And rain beaten earth granulated amidst stones
Giving life far into the green expanse
Of savannah vegetation coursing miles.
Valleys and rocky petite hills
Over staff garages from assembly grange
Embellished in multi-shades of green
And the purple varsity on the rock,
Blending coarsely with the artistic horizons
Along thread-like tracks buried in meadows
Where micro engines race like studied ants
Sending tense emotions home.

We meandered on rough pebbles and paths
That punctured our feet once and again;
Tall trees adorn overgrown weeds
Hiding scores of snakes and reptiles;
Fierce, hairy, unsympathetic mosquitoes,
Unmistakably announcing their menax,
And sandflies - invisible black itches
Slapped viciously to bring relief and spill blood.
Afikpo!

The good old days were then
Yet we did not know it;
Where at the end of our childhood
We began a hilarious romance with reality.
The walls and landscape lost definition
The narrow gates that lit our salvation
And the surplus of integrity in our backyard
Which our whole nation has searched for
These several years and more.
Our wits blundered so a near
For where have spirits boded in the dust?
Our intellect imprisoned, our souls wept
That we were mangled in our decency.

We read Latin and studied logos
Filled our brains with lines, numbers and angles;
But frauds ruled our decline
And hollowed our mission
Which Egbe set and revised.
A denied soldier, famed to core and courage.

George Akabogu, our mentor!
How far thou art from vanity!
It may be decades or even centuries
Before your incarnation is understood.

George Akabogu!
The alchemist that turned us to gold;
Defined, divined and refined us
For the best a disciplined nation could have.
Egbe! You shot thousands of seasoned bullets
Into Nigeria and the universe
And planted so much on fertile grounds.
You taught us right but Nigeria got us wrong.
The whole world would darken
Even unto the end of this beginning.

Your light was found but yet never known
Even as you so bowed out in such great honour
And pain; royalty without a crown;
Knighted in the grandeur of St. Mulumba.
That brisk energetic drive
Towards organised time
Put hard questions and stun our decency
And values of this modernity.
Your flowers have scattered seeds

That bleep and bloom across the globe.
In each of us you still live!
For a nation that may still be saved
By your sweat and ideals.

1996
Lagos