If Nigeria Must Be Great

 
If Nigeria must be changed
From this home of pain and hurt
Fruitless struggles of weak limbs
Where the sunrise critic, voluble and visible
Repots in the mire of a mite prompt
Each of us must read the past
Scrutinise today
And rewrite tomorrow.
 
If Nigeria must be fed
Not left-overs and garbage dessert
But fresh fruits of deserved sweat
If scrawny big-bellied, monster kids
Must wear the sweet, endearing smile
Of the newspaper toddler
And our old ones bent and gray
Must smile wrinkles into the earth
Each one of us must till the land
Fill its womb
And pray for rain.
 
If Nigeria must be well
And our healing havens healed
If we must rid the streets
Of incoherent words of the fleeing head
Rotten wounds like flooded graves
If our wombs must yield
Of grunts and sighs
Live babies with pink toes
Bellowing the pleasing noise of the newborn
If the likes of Nwamaka of Iziala
Must cease to lick your boots
For a fortune to treat little maladies
Each of us must grow a heart
Pump out its blood
Rejuvenate these lives.
 
If Nigeria must be great
It has to wear a new face
Home pleasing to the weary heart
A rebirth must commence
In you and in me
For we are the system
Rotten today, valueless
We are the future
The ones who must die
On this cross.