Lagos! See What They'Ve Made Of Us Poem by Ibukun Babarinde

LAGOS! See what they've made of us

I pass by the bridge at malom
a beggar beckoned at me, for a paltry to part
as I look at my pocket to pick and part…
alas, the wallet had parted with me.

I looked for it in the swam of bodiless heads at Yaba
I made a search within the hives of Agberos in Okota park.
I search for it in the last buckertaria where I had my lunch at Agege…

At night I returned to where I laid my body the previous night
My wallet was there waiting for me
I was happy to meet it there, but to a grieve
My wallet is now empty…

I enquired of what fatality had befallen it
I was thunderstruck at the revelation-tales…

“ I never missed my way out of your pocket
I was in the hip pocket where you kept me
after you picked your voters card to show the electoral officers

but a hand; indigo soiled sniped me out
then, nothing had happened to my content
before too long, one of them took me to Marina

there, within a sleek rimed pair of glasses
a pair of blood shoot balls roamed my content and depleted me.

Before too long,
I was passed to another one, by then all the wards in me had not yet gone

This other fellow was fine, but more terrible at a grab
I felt his rough grip on my whether battered leather back…

While I waited in a fear laden jacket, a man approached us
Forced us into a van and veered towards Ikoyi…
He had an inscription on his orange jacket…CCFE”


My wallet told me how its ordeal ended.
The man from CCFE collected it from the second Man in Alausa
He simply took all the wards remaining, also took the voter’s card along
So that I wont vote for a third term?


My wallet was not stolen by the Agbero boys,
My wallet was not in the hands of the pick-pockets
My wallet had only seen the evils that suture the tendon and flesh
of a nation in disparity.