The Paradox And Power Poem by Emeka GOC

THE PARADOX AND POWER
The Ballad of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu

In the hush between gavel and gun,
Where a nation's heartbeat stumbles,
Stands a man woven into the storm
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, storme the storm
A name that echoes through courtrooms,
Barracks,
And the restless streets of the Southeast.

He won freedom on paper,
Yet the prison gates stayed shut.
A discharge proclaimed from the heights of justice,
But power whispered a counter‑spell
Within fourteen days—
A stay, a freeze,
A bureaucratic frost over a judicial flame.

He won damages for broken doors
And shattered nights,
Courts in Abia and Nairobi
Counting the cost of fear and force.
Yet compensation cannot unbreak a home,
Nor unwrite the story of a man
Dragged across borders
In the dark.

Then came the Supreme Court—
A stern oracle,
Chiding the state for sins of rendition,
Yet stitching the charges back together
Like a torn flag forced to fly again.

And so the trial marched on,
Ten long years of filings,
Adjournments,
Whispers,
And waiting.

Until Justice Omotosho's verdict fell—
Heavy as harmattan dust,
Final as a locked cell door.
Guilty on all counts,
Life imprisonment,
A sentence meant to quiet a region
And seal a chapter.

But chapters do not seal themselves.
They breathe.
They resist.
They appeal.

Now his lawyers hold twenty‑two grounds
Like twenty‑two lanterns
Against the long corridor of delay.
They ask why justice can sprint
When it seeks to restrain,
Yet limps
When it is called to release.

Outside the courtroom,
Leaders murmur of politics—
Of pardons,
Of peace,
Of a Southeast aching for calm
That cannot be legislated
By verdicts alone.

And somewhere in a high‑security cell,
A man waits.
Not silent,
Not free,
But still a symbol—
Of a nation wrestling with its laws,
Its wounds,
And its future.

This is the paradox:
A man who won,
Yet did not win.
A state that judged,
Yet remains on trial.

And Nigeria—
Forever vast,
Forever complicated—
Still searching for a path
Where justice and power
Walk the same road.








THE GLASS CEILING CHANT
A Narrative Poem on Marginalization, Memory, and the Igbo Quest for Belonging*

They say history is a river—
but for the Igbo, it is a river that remembers.
It remembers 1966,
when a coup became a curse,
a story retold in whispers and war songs,
branding an entire people with suspicion
they did not vote for.

It remembers the war that followed—
a three‑year fire that scorched the Southeast
and left behind ashes that still speak.
From those ashes rose a ceiling,
invisible yet unbreakable,
a glass dome over ambition,
over the dream of an Igbo presidency
that always seems almost possible,
almost permitted,
almost allowed—
but never quite.

And so the narrative grew:
Igbophobia,
a word heavy with history,
a theory stitched from trauma,
politics,
and the quiet ache of exclusion.

In the daylight of democracy,
the profiling continued.
Igbo politicians walked into interviews
carrying the weight of IPOB on their backs,
asked to explain every protest,
every separatist chant,
every fire lit by hands not theirs.

Their movements were called secret agendas,
their coalitions whispered into conspiracies,
their campaigns painted as ethnic storms
even when their manifestos spoke
the language of national reform.

Online, the battlefield widened.
Hashtags sharpened into weapons,
xenophobic trends rose like smoke,
and in cities like Lagos,
Igbo traders felt the tremor
of intimidation—
the subtle push,
the loud threat,
the quiet warning
to vote carefully
or not vote at all.

And beneath all this,
the land itself cried.
Roads cracked like old memories,
bridges rusted into silence,
and the Southeast waited
for ports that never opened,
for highways that never healed,
for development that always arrived
late,
light,
or not at all.

In the civil service halls of Abuja,
another silence lingered—
a silence of absence.
Few Igbo names on the doors
of directors,
permanent secretaries,
decision‑makers.
A nation of many voices,
yet one voice consistently softened
in the corridors of power.

And when the Southeast asked for fairness—
for roads,
for ports,
for dignity—
the answer was often a uniform,
a checkpoint,
a label:
"Secessionist."
"Militant."
"Threat."

Justice became a tightrope,
and every Igbo demand
was balanced against the fear
of another war.

Yet still, the people speak.
They speak in markets,
in classrooms,
in parliament halls,
in poetry.

They speak of a Nigeria
where identity is not a burden,
where history is not a weapon,
where the glass ceiling finally cracks
into a thousand harmless pieces.

They speak of belonging—
not as a favor,
but as a right.

And the river of history listens,
carrying their voices forward,
toward a future
that must one day decide
whether it will repeat the past
or finally
rewrite it.