Centenary Celebrations, Honoring Abacha.....

I was in Secondary school when Abacha died, I remember spontaneously running out of the school gates with my mates with shouts of joy. I remember scenes of merriments in the streets of my hometown Benin city, men buying beers for total strangers, music blaring loudly from speakers. Infact there were impromptu street parties and bonfires in various areas in town. Now these reactions were not peculiar to Benin, it was replicated throughout Nigeria and it is hardly the reaction of a people mourning the death of a national hero.

Yet as part of honors awarded to mark the centenary, our dear president Jonathan decided to insult our collective intelligence by rewriting history and calling this Abacha one of the “Outstanding Promoters of Unity, Patriotism and National Development”. My fear is that when we honor murderers and thieves from yesteryears, we give further ammunition to current looters and rapers of our common heritage as there is not even the fear of a bad name to deter them. They can reassure themselves that another Jonathan will arise to write their names in gold.

I like to leave us with something I wrote in the wake of Abacha's demise and i would have you bear in mind that this poem are the insights of a 14 year old with no political axe to grind.....

AND THE MAN DIED

Reckless leader he was
Grew fat on the blood of his people
Fed his potbelly
While starving children stared
With there own kind of potbellies.


Poverty ruled the land
Fear it next in command
For my leader he was ironfisted
And allowed no argument
Even from those who rode the tiger’s back


And those who dared
Oya! Into jail they went
Or out goes the assassin’s bullet
And another was down
Great sons and daughters of our land


Then the people wept
Their voice rose to God
And he sent cardiac to arrest him
And the man died, like a rat
People laughed, life was back to normal.