The Unburied Nation Poem by Emeka GOC

The Unburied Nigeria


The Needle and the Scar of Numerous Scars
Nigeria is a story stitched with fire,
a quilt of nations forced into one garment,
its seams tugged by histories that never healed.
The land learned early that power
could be taken by force and held by fear
and so leadership became a rotating wound,
each regime inheriting the fractures of the last.

In the North, a cavalry of politics rode in
not a people, but a system
that mistook domination for stability,
turning the state into a pasture
where only a chosen few could graze.

In the East, memory smoldered
not hatred of any people,
but the ache of a nation
that once declared itself a bird
and had its wings broken mid‑flight.

The earth still wet with the weight of blood in Asaba,
where unarmed civilians were gathered in open air,
promised peace, then mown down in cold blood
a town turned into an executioner's square.
Alongside them, thirty thousand soldiers fell, unprovoked,
slaughtered in the shadows of a rising sun,
their lives extinguished before the true battles began.

The war ended, they said,
with "no victor, no vanquished, "
yet the silence afterward
was louder than gunfire.

Oil blocks shared to warlords,
Ogoni land bleeding with the Saro‑Wiwa martyrs,
a promise spoken by unstable men
but never lived.

Then came the 3Rs—Reconciliation, Reconstruction, Rehabilitation—
a trinity meant to stitch the country whole.
Shared to the North and West,
the East left to dry,
even with their wealth pillaged,
their daughters and dignity deflowered.
But the needle never touched the fabric.

Reconciliation became a slogan,
Reconstruction a mirage,
Rehabilitation a ghost
wandering corridors of power
where no one listened.

And so Nigeria walked forward
with bones still fractured,
children inheriting the grief of their parents,
leaders mistaking uniformity for unity,
and diversity for danger.

Oil arrived like a false prophet,
preaching wealth while sowing rot.
The Delta bled, the cities swelled,
and corruption became the national anthem
sung in every corridor
where decisions were traded like contraband.

Ethnic suspicion grew like weeds
not born from the people,
but from the architecture of a state
that rewarded division
and punished trust.

Bandits and zealots slice the vulnerable skin,
while the military structure collapses from within.
Inflationary fevers burn through the marketplace,
the currency bleeding out at a frantic pace.
Brain drain is the quiet, final cardiac arrest
as the brightest minds flee to the West.

The monitors flatline on a fragmented land,
an artificial giant buried in the sand.
The autopsy is simple, the verdict is clear
a state killed by greed, negligence, and fear.

And now the nation stands,
a giant leaning on trembling knees,
its dreams scattered like rusted railway tracks
leading everywhere and nowhere.

Nigeria failed
not because its peoples were flawed,
but because its wounds were never treated,
its truths never spoken,
its promises never kept.

Yet even in the ruins,
the soil still hums with possibility
a reminder that nations, like people,
can rise again
if they dare to confront their shadows
and stitch their future
with honest hands.

But questions remain, sharp as broken glass:

Is it possible with an army half‑brave, half‑terrorized?
Is it possible with collapsed checks and balances
that once defined and protected the system?
Is it possible when foreign purses are invested in
while Nigeria's treasures are looted dry
its resources sold from the source out?

When shall our votes count
and our voices be heard?
When will citizens smell the dividends
the beautiful, prosperous fruit
of safety and security,
of prosperity from ground and grassroots up?

When?
How?
Where?

The people are asking.
The nation is listening.
The future is waiting.