(Elegy For Asaba Massacre Victims)
By A. Ofili-Okonkwo
Vultures came first.
They always do.
They came ahead of the Troops,
I saw them as they came,
An augury of Death.
Bald, Ugly, Despicable, Abominable creatures.
Predatory birds that feed on flesh,
Came to Asaba and waited.
They waited patiently for carcasses and for
carrion.
For days, a dark cloud of vultures
Flew overhead like drones,
And watched with glee
As Troops went on a murderous binge.
Silent witnesses of a Massacre.
The Fires of Hell belong to those who kill,
No less to those who feed off the carrion.
As the Vultures that waited in a wake,
In patient anticipation of the massacre of the
Innocent.
Repugnant ogres in an orgy of death.
If only they raised their shrill grunting voices
Or flapped their broad wings in protest,
Perhaps those hateful killers may have tarried.
Perhaps both Vultures and Killers may be
saved.
But they awaited a Feast.
A Feast of Carrion and Carcasses,
Provided by Monsters and Murderers,
To Vultures and Scavengers,
In exchange for Silence and Complicity.
If Vultures will speak,
They will tell of a gruesome carnage,
Of citizens who did nothing wrong,
But rallied in innocence,
To welcome troops they thought were theirs.
Their weapon nothing but a chant.
An optimistic chant,
For one united nation
Delivered with trust and faith.
They took their chant of “One Nigeria”
Through the narrow gates of Heaven,
As they fell and died.
Mangled mass of flesh and life,
Massacred in genocidal rage,
With machine-guns that their taxes bought,
By troops they called their own.
A welcoming speech they wrote,
Sourced from the depth of their innocent souls
With an abiding sense of a shared humanity,
Discarded by a spiteful and soulless army
Bent on a savage but senseless massacre.
The Troops took the authors’ lives
Along with the legion of patriots
Who rallied to welcome them.
The unread speech pierced by scorching bullets,
And dripping with the authors’ innocent blood,
Was buried with them in a shallow grave.
Lost forever in a Country of estranged unity,
Of broken promises and shattered dreams.
A nation of gluttonous Orcs.
Monsters and Murderers,
Vultures and Scavengers.
Carrion and Carcasses.
Silence and Larceny.
Cowardice and Complicity.
They are vultures,
All who keep mute in the face of genocide,
All who stand between victims and justice,
All who turn away from truth and conscience.
All who appropriate our commonwealth.
All who accept carrion for silence.
They are Vultures and Scavengers.
Those who pretend to speak but say nothing.
Those who seek to profit from the dead.
Those who built their fated homes,
On the graves of massacred brethren.
Those who violate dignity with brazen greed.
Those who hoist their yearning for material
gain,
On the tragic weight of communal loss.
They are Scroungers.
Those who were too young to have a memory,
But rely on hearsay for their twisted tales.
Toddlers for whom the massacre
Is now a psychedelic drug.
Those who insist that they must be seen and
heard,
But fled to safety across the felled bridge.
Those who seek to rewrite their family history,
On the back of a grief that is not theirs.
They are Vultures
Who accept carrion for silence,
Mumbling like muffled toothless bulldogs.
An ersatz Czar and his petty minions,
Racketeers of a gruesome massacre,
Gathering as larcenous Scavengers in a Sooq
Where genocidal killers trade carrion for
silence.
Here they are, a legion of Human Vultures,
Drenched in lies, deceit and debauchery,
In a land where their men stand for nothing.
Alas, My Homeland.
My Country. My God. And My Soul.
Â
A. Ofili-Okonkwo
Chairman, 50th Anniversary Commemoration of Asaba Massacre Team & Trustee, Asaba Memorial Foundation.
Culled from the Collection of Poems titled: The Vultures Are Gathering
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