A Toast to IBB at Book Launch
By Chudi Okoye
(Second draft: Feb 21, 2025)
What an event they made of it!
Grand, gilded, and glittering
A blistering reminder of their mighty gains
And glistering provenance of our biting pains.
Behold, the power elite at full register
The moguls, our masters, and their muscles
The timber, the calibre, and the macabre.
They came in their fleet to fête a figure
Who fouled our fate to feed their fortune.
He raised ₦18 billion there on the spot
A sizeable portion of our depleted pot
One man. At one glistening occasion
In a nation nearly an irredeemable rot.
One wonders, only with modest mischief:
Would Nigeria have been beset or had a reset
If an asteroid, or maybe a benevolent bomb
Had struck this hour at this ornate gathering
Zapping the movers and shakers, the rakers and takers,
The jostlers and jugglers, juggernauts of our realm
The crème-de-la-crème with their unending schemes
The blunderers and plunderers, the artful sunderers
Who’ve put our lives and nation wholly asunder?
We can but dream, if to suppress our scream.
