By Zainab Abdulkabir Gumi
I was raised in your embrace, I grew up to the sound of your welcoming tranquility. As an innocent toddler of yours, I danced to the tune of nature, sang with the morning breeze that swept over my innocence. In my tender age, I knew no borders with your unending resources. But when maturity opened my eyes to reality, everything seemed to be a facade.
Thus refer to you as promised land, but all I could see was a deserted land, a land devoid of milk and honey. The denizens that live in you are nothing but unprinted paper, either to be wiped out or rescue firm the pandemonium that lies within you Promised land they say, but the fertility of your land preserved for the blood of dead oldies if farmers who tried to acknowledge and nourish your fertility. Natural resources you gave in abundance, but your denizens live in abject poverty, their souls speak the language of hunger and their bodies covered with words of distress and agony.
Elites have taken away their rights and they have conquered their
promised land: Now they are left to choose between competition and succession.
Your leaders of tomorrow were left with no choice to compete in theft, a survival mission they were forced to embrace.
Your daughters are being sent off without consent but of their despondent parents who could no longer serve food on their plates.
Your land has become an accommodation for violence and tyranny, with heartless elites showcasing words of greed and powers Your inhabitants have become spectators of their own territory. They have become mute while their eyes keep on playing their roles afraid to speak up the weight that lay on their chest, afraid it could create a storm.
Zainab is Former Head Girl of Albidaayatul Jameela International School, Kaduna
