White Robes, Red Hands - (A Poem For A Country Forgetting Its Wounds) Poem by Akwu Sunday Victor

White Robes, Red Hands
(A poem for a country forgetting its wounds)

They say the war is over
and peace, like a stray goat,
has found its way back to the village square.
But look well
what you think is peace is just silence tied with raffia.
The gunmen now chant psalms,
and murderers quote the Qur'an.
One even greeted me last week,
with teeth so white I almost forgot
those same teeth once bit through bone.

Ah, Nigeria q

a land where widows drink tears like garri,
where orphans sleep with headrests made from gravel,
yet the killers now wear white agbadas,
pocketing amnesty like allowance,
and singing reconciliation songs
as if blood dries with the morning dew.

'They have changed, ' they say
because their AKs are now quiet
and their stomachs are now empty.
But why now?
Why repent when your bullets are finished
and your wives are breaking firewood with cracked lips?
Why not when your firepower roared
and villages turned to ash under your proud boots?

Why did you not repent
when you danced around burning churches
like masquerades around shrines?
When you took Halima at thirteen,
forced her to carry twins before she knew what menstruation meant?
When Baba Musa was made to dig his grave
while his sons watched-bound and weeping?
When you wrote sermons with blood
and converted towns to graveyards?

Now the tide has turned
and you tuck your tail like a whipped hyena,
chanting 'we surrender'
as if we are daft, as if we lack memory.
This is not repentance
this is arithmetic.
You counted your bullets and found none.
You counted your wives and found them begging for cassava peel.

But Abuja listens.
They bring white cloth and government rice.
They say 'let's reintegrate'
a big grammar that means
'Let us reward evil, and ignore the tears of the just.'

Yet, Aunty Ngozi still searches the dumpsite
for the wedding ring her husband gave her
before he was blown into memory.
And Hassan, the boy with one leg,
sits by the junction,
selling sachet water to the ghosts of his siblings.

Satire is now our survival
we laugh in the marketplace
because our hearts cannot afford tears.
They parade killers like prodigal sons
while we bury justice in unmarked graves.
They call it peace
but it smells like betrayal served with ogbono soup.

'Let's heal, ' they say.
But how can a wound heal
when the knife is still inside?
How do we move on
when the same boots that crushed our skulls
now march beside us wearing uniforms of forgiveness?

This is no justice.
This is theatre.
This is a masquerade where the dancers wear faces of the dead
and the drummers are paid to silence the truth.

Nigeria, shine your eyes.
Peace without justice
is like pouring perfume on a corpse
and calling it resurrection.

Let every widow's tears become testimony.
Let every orphan's hunger indict the hypocrisy.
For until those who destroyed are held to account,
the land will remain wounded
and peace will be nothing more
than a prisoner on parole,
waiting for the next rebellion
to break her chain.