If God was a Nigerian BY ​Othuke Umukoro

If God was a Nigerian
ASUU would strike him
till his sorrow grows a beard.
 
He would be a Yahoo boy or a pimp or a drug dealer
or an innocent girl on the cold & dark streets of
Italy tendering white men’s amorous dreams
or all of the above.
 
He would be a potbellied politician
that swallowed (y)our children's future,
& that of their children's children.
 
They would have slaughtered him, like
Ramadan rams, in Benue or
bandaged him with bombs in Borno.

His children’s life expectancy in the
Niger Delta would be around
9 or 10 (that’s a conservative statistic)
—all they would ever have are: a bowl
of oil spills for breakfast, a plate of
greenhouse emissions for dinner
& grief sandwiched between.
 
He would die crossing the
Mediterranean or sold for peanuts in Libya.
 
He would yelp & complain on the mad streets of twitter
but will never come out to vote out oppression.
 
The sun would die in his mouth in Kirikiri
or other eyeless places where those who try to
sing new songs are stripped, chained & tortured.
 
He would not be in school but on the
sidewalk, holding a blue plastic
bowl for your damn pity or under
the leprous stare of the sun cleaning
your windshield at a red light.
 
SARS would shoot him & the government hospital
they will rush him to will not have electricity.
 
He would be a broke ass poet like me.

​Othuke Umukoro is a poet & playwright. His demons have appeared, or are forthcoming in The Sunlight Press, Brittle Paper, AfricanWriter, Eunoia Review & elsewhere. His debut play Mortuary Encounters, (Swift publishers, 2019) is available HERE
When bored, he watches Everybody Hates Chris. He is on twitter: @othukeumukoro19