The naija spirit
By Oluwanifemi Adegoke
I
WE don’t talk about how this country holds us like a mother that forgot love on the stove,
Warm enough to stay, hot enough to burn.
The same tired sunshine wakes us up in the morning,
Carrying laughter like first aid because tears don’t have market value here.
Hope is that stubborn neighbour’s generator,
Always noisy, rarely steady, yet somehow still on.
II
We move through chaos like dancers with broken ankles,
Shaky steps, twitching smiles.
Na who dey suffer pass dey dey quiet,
We crack jokes inside the fire,
turning ash to glitter, turning lack to lifestyle.
The country rich, yes,
But na only the ground know where the wealth dey hide,
And the people at the top no dey Google well.
III
In sermons, love is a parable with good lighting;
Outside though, it becomes small change everyone hoards.
You drop offering on Sunday,
but Monday, you dey price somebody’s dignity like ogi for roadside.
It’s not wickedness, just survival wearing musk.
Here, even kindness has receipt.
IV
Sometimes we rise, full chest, loud voice,
ready to scatter silence into pieces.
We march like thunder warming up,
believing this time the sky would fear us.
The sky here is thicker trauma,
It swallows our screams like the ground swallows rain.
And slowly, slowly,
everybody goes quiet, like phone wey e battery don die.
Still, spirit no gree die,
It crawls out of every wound we hide under jokes.
We still laugh, still hope, still gather,
still call this cracked place “our own.”
But here’s the truth we swallow like hot pap:
the Naija spirit no dey die
because we’ve been using our bodies as fuel
for a fire that was never ours to burn!
* Adegoke, themasterpiece, is a voice that turns ache into art and silence into scripture
