These are excerpts from the book, “Streets & Corridors, The Untamed Narratives,” a collection of poems that offers an insightful glimpse into a world of unique struggles, aspirations, unease and fears of the everyday Nigerian
By Napoleon Esemudje
Impunity
Ghost tears
And midnight fears
The hollow wares
Of our moral outrage
Of we the people
Followers of a hedonist creed
Worshippers of a mammon deity
With conscience immune to indignity
In our crosshairs
Targets of instant gain
Preys of communal pain
Where the frail strive in vain
On our shared amnesia
For exonerated villains
Whose malignant undertakings
Soiled our national undergarments
Of swords and scales
Blind and gagged
The feeble defender
Of a nation’s honour
For the rituals of sacrifice
Truth and equity
Are but burnt offerings
At the altar of expediency
Here in the amoral cabins
Of the Niger basin
Repercussions reign
Only in the afterlife
Napoleon Esemudje, a Chevening Scholar, is a versatile poet, storyteller, playwright, essayist, banker, management and human resources aficionado