The crying Nigerian child (Ten days of March dayVI)

William Orbih is a writer of #DidacticVerse and a PhD student of World Religions at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana USA. He believes that: 'when you cannot control the moment, just let it flow'

THE CRYING NIGERIAN BABY?

William Orbih

Whose baby has learnt to cry all day

and walk miles on premature bones?

Which toothless baby has to chew grains  

and sip spirits with spirits?

Whose baby has to learn a trade

and thread the murky path of hustlers?

Whose baby must now be exported for gains

and threshed till tainted Naira notes appear?  

Whose baby is constantly maltreated and plundered,

on whose head, slavery has been reinvented?

Whose baby is crying,

Left on the street, beside the stagnant gutters

Dressed naked and prepared,  

waiting to be raped and slaughtered at will?  

Whose baby must whimper day long

harmed mouthful, too soon, of adult lies?

Whose baby is in prison

lacerated, abandoned, annihilated,

guilty of all count charges?

Whose baby has spun out of control:

homeless, hopeless and futureless?

It is the baby of the woman,  

frustrated by society most unconcerned

Whose baby just died,

who cried itself to death

after stretching out too long without succour

innocent hands too meagre to be noticed?

Whose baby was denied the right to life

and the right to live well or just be human  

or the right to be woman and still be really human?

Whose baby is constantly analysed and debated

denied love, denied the human label?

It is the baby of Nigeria, the crying baby.

It is the Nigerian Baby.

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