The year was young

Our woes were old

The day plodded to a dusty twilight

Unfazed by the harmattan hassle

Then came the wails of a lampless night

When supper lost its way to penniless homes

And the night masticated the moon

Like a hapless morsel

The minaret was mum

The bell tower loomed forlorn

In its tongueless height

The wind wound a whisper

Round the restless lips of absent horns

Pigeons coed ceaselessly in their busy holes…...

And suddenly, so suddenly,

A blast, a big, battering blast

And the evening’s blissful quiet

Was shattered into a thousand bewildering shreds

The ground shook beneath our feet

Solid mansions crumbled like cardboard boxes

Flipped luxury cars littered the streets

Like piles of scrap yard junk

The road now is a running tale

Of broken glass and mangled metal

(When a cache of mine-size dynamite lives in a neighbourhood bedroom)

The year was young

Our woes were old

The day plodded to a dusty twilight

Unfazed by the harmattan hassle

Then came the wails of a lampless night

When supper lost its way to penniless homes

And the night masticated the moon

Like a hapless morsel

The minaret was mum

The bell tower loomed forlorn

In its tongueless height

The wind wound a whisper

Round the restless lips of absent horns

Pigeons coed ceaselessly in their busy holes…...

And suddenly, so suddenly,

A blast, a big, battering blast

And the evening’s blissful quiet

Was shattered into a thousand bewildering shreds

The ground shook beneath our feet

Solid mansions crumbled like cardboard boxes

Flipped luxury cars littered the streets

Like piles of scrap yard junk

The road now is a running tale

Of broken glass and mangled metal

It all happened in the famous part

Of a famous city; proud, gentle zone

Of the top cream, tempered by law and learning;

Mapped out and built once upon a very long time

When place-builders doubled as people-builders

And Statesmen were wise and just and clean

Architects of multiple mandates who knew

How to turn a house into a home

That was once upon an epoch

When leaders THOUGHT before they acted

And “life more abundant” was in every way

More than an empty slogan

Now, the Grand Old Dream

Has withered into a deadly nightmare

Where the Law is dead, the wrong is right. . . .

A mountain of military-type dynamite

Has become a furniture item

In a top-class residential haven

A corrupt “carry-go” security conspiracy imperils

Our being even in our safest enclaves

A big battering blast has shaken us to our very roots

Behold venerable old men and women crawling

Out of their rubbled homes, their heads double-grey

From the ashes of their blighted bowers

Here they are in wreck and ruin:

Glorious legacies of Master-Builders of old

Now houses of horror

In this era of prodigal inheritors

 In the evening hours of January 16, 2024, there was a massive

explosion caused by loads of dynamite piled up in a house in a top-

class Ibadan neighborhood, resulting in human casualty and the

destruction of many respectable houses. The vibration from the blast

was felt 20 miles away. The most devastating peacetime blast in this

part of Nigeria. Are you still wondering how deadly dynamite became a

welcome domestic furniture item in a country of multiple laws and zero

compliance. Ask the demon called Corruption and watch it come up with

a thousand answer....