Intensely crowded.
Cardboard huts lived in
More people live on the street
Less in apartments.
Vendors squat on streets
Sell bananas, rice, bushmeat:
Are large grilled rodents.
Vehicle exhaust
Gridlocked throughout day and night
Open sewers stink
Sewers topped with planks
Driveways into walled compounds
But the heady mix?
Life Nigeria’s
Petroleum pollution
Plus sewage tirtha.
Married with two kids
With Wanle , proud and regal
Off to funeral:
Of his friend’s mother.
Buffets exotic meat drink
Tasted roasted dog.
Sunny Ade played
With band from night ten to dawn
With no break at all.
In tune with the band
We danced on the outdoor stage
With musicians.
Honoured them sticking (dollars)
To the sweat on their foreheads
Guests gave food and drinks.
Trailer meat and water
Refrigerated, was Wanle’s
Gift for occasion.
Wealthy few live full
Satellite dishes cell phones
Lavish style mourning.
The majority
Live in abject poverty
Contaminated.
Contamination
Involuntarily thrust
Rights disregarded.
Highest level graft
Ubiquitous with rulers.
Incredible oil rich.
With Wanle the tour
Of Niger River Delta
Of Port Harcourt.
Port Harcourt is site
Of producing the oil.
Weather is real hot.
Hot, humid, sultry.
Hot dry winter with red dust.
From Saharan north.
But in Port Harcourt
Air attacks eyes, nose and lungs,
As locals describe.
Burned off daily are:
Open flares natural gas,
Pungent smell tickles:
Tickles the nostrils,
New galvanised rooftops caked
Rusted two years hence.
Acid rain rusts them
Kilometers of pipelines
Often leak or burst.
Sending down black streams
Sticky liquid into fields
With deadly effects:
Warri city tale:
A pipeline of oil did burst
Poor villagers rushed.
Growing oil pool
Oil for cooking, for cash
Serendipity!
Rejoice not dear friend
To reap oil bonanza
Thousands came in droves.
Vast pool of oil
By accident ignited
Flames engulfed people.
Seven hundred died
In minutes a tribe swallowed
By huge inferno.
20 meter high
Blaze consuming man beast land
Such dangers common.
Villagers murdered
Nigerians protested
The supari deaths.
The oil giant
Hired defence and police men
Who killed unsolicited!
The oil giant’s
Competitor lost a case
Leven years ago.
In Nigeria
The Niger River Delta
Polluted by them.
They must pay locals
One point five billion dollars;
Shell was to appeal.
Leven years have passed
Have local tribes received cash
Ordered by the court?
Wanle showed me all
Destruction wrought by petrol
Should I take a stand?
Bleak waste wrought by greed
Set against the great beauty
And diversity.
The nineteen nineties:
Gasoline cost fifteen cents
So rape Nigeria?
Nigeria earned:
More than 300 billions
Oil revenues.
Nigerians earn:
Less than a dollar a day
A nation’s lowest.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$