Lamentations Of A Nigerian Child – Just Put Off The Light -By Churchill Okonkwo

Churchill Okonkwo

As we celebrate children’s Day, I have observed politicians posting pictures on social media with kids. They are creating the fake impression that they care about the plight of Nigerian children. They are once again using us to campaign for the 2019 elections. Saraki posed with internally displaced kids but back in Kwara, school kids it on the bare floor to “learn”. Buhari promised safety for the kids even as hundreds have lost parents and watched their houses burnt across Nigeria.

How could I watch them destroy my future? My spirit has departed me, my heart sickened. Now, I mourn piteously. I mourn the weary step of my parents who bribed the crooks at ‘special centers’ for me to pass my WEAC and JAMB. Give me their hands; I want to touch their cold hearts. Put off the light, I want to see their dark faces. Give me a kiss; I want to feel your dry lips. Take me to the pastor; I heard he has the key to my future.

To paint a true picture of the state of the Nigerian child, I have chosen to turn the light on the dark side of what these politicians have hidden from Nigerians. Here are my lamentations.

As I sat by the fire and watched mother cook, she recalled stories of the dark ages whose significance is now lost. At nine, I ran away. Enough of this blackness and these empty holes.
I will don’t want to see these firewood and black pots anymore. So, I wandered east, as far as Ijora Bridge, stopping at the edge of the black waters that surround the National Theater

A year later, I had joined the men under the bridge. Bus conductor at daylight, monster, smashing car windows at night. I’ve sometimes wondered whether my brain is made of clay. The same black clay pot I ran away from. My origin still blurred and distorted. My destiny ever remote.

What a transformation! I now fight like an ape, with my feet and fists; bottles and knives
I changed my name from Uche to Segun. Big wrists, big hands; brown teeth; scars on my face. But my eyes still look oddly innocent. A child of circumstance? Born to suffer?

As years passed by, I metamorphosed from an indigent child who lacked everything to a monster that has everything. Yet, I have nothing. I had slept at the banks of the river as we await the cover of darkness to ride back to our dungeon in a stolen canoe after an unsuccessful overnight robbery. I had seen hulking figures with sunglasses after dusk driving aimlessly in unmarked vehicles, waiting for marked victims in this city that is drifting. Pilgrims to unholy spots of Lagos that never returned to tell their stories. Men in suits as sinister as men under the bridge

Mother used to call me Nnam when she thought I was the one the chosen one to wipe her tears.
They used to call me Kekere when I moved with the men under the bridge. I later choose Akwa Eke to resonate with the rhythm emanating from my abode

Yesterday, while walking down the dirty alley of Apapa. With hands in the pockets of my cheap coat in search of a whore in the dark, I heard tongues I’ve heard before. I heard her call me Uchenna. The dark part of my brain was lit up and the skeletons of my dead forefathers started turning in their graves. The whore happens to be my kid sister who just turned fourteen. The hovering ghost of my dead mother ran forward with her spider-like fingers and hung my head from an unseen rope, while urine darkened my trousers.

Who am I?

Who really am I? I am a Nigerian child; the lonely fish in a dry land; the hunter’s dog that has suddenly gone mad. I am the bird, crippled at birth; the headless dragon that destroyed itself as elders watched. I am that schoolmaster that can’t read nor write; the golden egg that incubated in the bosom of wild creatures; the child, the gloomy future, the adult with a tale of mindless violence.

Put off the light, and let’s dance to their familiar tune, from the broken drums, under the dark and rainless skies. Just put off the light.

I am the Nigerian child.

You can email Churchill at Churchill.okonkwo@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @churchillnnobi