Over the past couple of years, poet and community organizer Babatunde Babafemi has been running The Yellow House Library in Lagos, Nigeria. Created with a small batch of used books that he purchased and other books donated from around the world, he has (literally) built a gathering place for young people around the local communities …
Revolution My old President sits While his people die My old President sits While his people die There’s no mercy in his heart: I am going to send him home. I am going to shut down his office Chain his door with my people’s intestines I am going to shut down his office Chain his …
NIGHTFALL IN LEKKI Never talk of peace and justice to me When i am a helpless voice Preyed upon by a heartless pharaoh Nightfall has come This land is in doom And i am the lamb slain in this land of helplessness You still have a cause to fight So do not slumber that death …
NUMBER 60 & boys who walked away Warning! They are out to haunt us all. This I know. I’ve always known. Many of us too know this. But sometimes we pretend not to. Where do I begin this rant? You’ve been busy jumping and jubilating for victory. I laugh. You think you’ve won? You feel …
Aniebiet Effiong: “NUMBER 60 & boys who walked away” Read More »
Why Should We Be Held In Bondage Why should we be held in bondage? Why should the brutal men afflict us With their fierce bullets of aggravating tortures. We are humans, yet they treat us as ants On our snowy garments, they throw red pebbles And we are made as the wanders that have no …
Peniel Gifted: “Why Should We Be Held In Bondage” Read More »
Reformation Nee-naw nee-naw nee-naw. At the beginning was a sound of peace. A sound that brought panicked hearts to ease. A sound that sets a robber’s heart ablaze. Their black has always connote friendship to me And their guns has always served as my protective They once weilds the power to protect my properties They …
The Cries For Revolution In an ocean of peril Nigeria’s boat topples ceaselessly Smoke of voices of anguishes Assailed the holes of her children’s ears. In spate of floods of homicides Carcasses of developing seeds Torrent of innocent blood gushes Pockmarked the air of my Mother’s land. The blizzard of deceits and brutality Swooshes of …
Poem 1 Hi… Hello, How are you Esther? Sometimes, you act like a jester! What’s all these I hear in Nigeria? I hear the police is now a molester? Sometimes dressed in an unknown attire To extort, arrest, kill or even pester. I heard at toll gate where you all gathered To make your voices …
SARSAPARILLA There are fairytales being told under the night’s moonlight. Tales as bright as a lone star in the very heart of darkness, Like the root of sars that struck 9ja like a stray thunder. Roots as deep but of sweet fragrances that lures its prey- to having a sour drink from the poison of …
So They Came Out They got tired of being fed lies for breakfast, empty promises as dinner, got tired of seeing the fate of their tomorrow, tossed in the bin to some needless war and killing They got tired of being ruled as servants, of seen as miscreants of SARS, beating them to stupor even …
Borne There’s a Yoruba adage living under her tongue. You listen to this. We don’t talk much in our place So Before you wish my father farewell remember that My mother grew a mustache before the fair; First trade fair is always romantic. A single mother of five at the center of a bidding tussles. …
It was a cloudy day on 10 November 1995, when Nigerian writer and environmental activist Kenule Saro-Wiwa was hung, along with eight other prominent Ogoni activists, at the Port Harcourt Maximum Prison, Rivers State, Nigeria, by the government led by General Sani Abacha. In November 2015, it will be twenty years since the death of …
The Road to Dukana: a Tribute to Kenule Saro-Wiwa Read More »
For now, in our creativity, we have grown to become each other’s keeper. And we stay tied together.
They do this because they know that knowledge is power. And knowledge can mean freedom.
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