Professor Niyi Osundare

By Niyi  Osundare

Here, in plain, unsubsidized language

Are the basic facts

About the fabled Nigerian “subsidy”

Whose endless lies have besieged our ears

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The rampant CORRUPTION of our rulers

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Their fatal incompetence and prodigal greed

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Those government budgets and their recurrent plunder

Those capital expenditures which total up

To the execution of our commonweal

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The Honorables who pad the budget

With frightening figures for constituency projects

Which never veer beyond their bank accounts

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Those countless security votes

Which have only made our lives in-secure

And the countless fortunes of Their Ex-cellencies

We the Nigerian people subsidize

That two million-dollar bra* of our Oil Minister

That billion-naira budget for State House snacks

The mounting misery which consumes our ranks

*                         *                           *

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Our school-less children, foodless stomachs

Death-trap roads, crowded horse-spittles

Murderous bandits and their blatant terror

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Moribund refineries and their mortifying debts

Their viscous load no less crude than

The brains of those who control our fate

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The endless tales about humongous ‘landing costs’

Sponsored raids by untouchable smugglers

In this land where Thief is Chief and Law is lame

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Oil-Block magnates from the  Power-Block mafia

Who tip the scales from their golden bedrooms

And swim and splurge in unearned preferment

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The crimes of rulers who think less

Care less, love less, sin more; from whose

Thunderous prayers minarets tremble and spires fall

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The rampant CORRUPTION of our rulers

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Their fatal incompetence and prodigal greed

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*Reference to Nigeria’s erstwhile Petroleum Minister whose bra was allegedly  priced at more than 2 million naira. And that was just one minor item among her numerous property and possessions whose value ran into billions of naira.