Blood on the Benue
He was yesterday
He is today and, is poised to
Forever remain, immutable like the Jew’s Jehovah
The implacable guest of horrors on the doorsteps of a peace pastoral.
He is nothing novel but a well-known roving nightmare:
Who locusts the land with the herds herald of his apocalyptic comings;
Who rapes your daughters and wives without your consent;
Who pours into your body the lethal pellets which the deathstick he wields dispenses.
He robs you on the roads
He haunts you in the forests of your homes
He struts remorselessly having substituted your life for that of his beasts
A consummate killing machine, the genocidaire of the janjaweed ilk
Who turns a river to blood – in the food basket of the nation – and blood like a river flows
And trailing the dusts of his departure
Ashes with tears, blood and sorrow.