Where Are Those People? Poem by Alade Abayomi Idris

Where are those people that told us to go to school?
Where are the floggers that wiped our bumbums whenever we ran away from school?
They said we would be very rich when we finished school
We refused to ask them, maybe out to fear of being caned
Why they themselves were not very rich
Here we are, just like them, then, always hoping
They said we would be leaders when they themselves were led
The old songs we sang gleefully and marched gallantly to
On the assembly ground every morning were scams
Aimed at swindling our poor parents off their hard earned money
Under the guise of school fees
Abi, who wouldn't want his or her wards to be very rich as they preached.
Where are those people that told us to go to school?
Where are they?
I want to ask them
Why they didn't tell us we would be carrying papers around after school begging for jobs?
Why they didn't tell us we would wait for months to get jobs?
Why they didn't tell us fifty thousand graduates would jostled for a hundred jobs?
Why they didn't tell us we would be mountaineers, praying so hard to land our jobs?
Why they didn't tell our parents that they would still be given us money when we are grown?
Maybe they were scammers because that was how scammers behaved
Or they themselves didn't know the future they talked about with enthusiasms
The one that we are now living, would be like this
If the latter was the case, they shouldn't have said it with certainty.
The trade they said we shouldn't learn, is now what is paying of
The ball they said we shouldn't play, now produces billionaires
The songs they said were for bad boys, is now what fetches millions
The clothes they said we shouldn't sew, now what stars wear
Where are those people self?
They need to see what they have turned us into.
Anyway, I have gotten to where they pointed
I will do all that I thought fit to become what they said
I would become.