Yesterday Poem by Tony Adah

I remember the old
Orders that left us
Cold and frozen
Just because we are civilians.
Our guidem gave us
A gamut of orders
No one wore camoflauged clothes
Or drove a deep green vehicle-
Army colour
For that was how
It was popularly known.
I remember
The long queues
At the gas stations
Of men and women foraging
For either motorized spirit
Or cooking parafin
Which prices
Arbitrally skyrocketed.
I can still hear
The blare of national anthem
Signalling the change of batons
There's an announcement
For the proscription of everything-
Newsmedia, unions and associations
Even the air is proscribed
To leave us asphyxiated.
Proscribe the schools
And leave illiterate and pliable
Proscribe the hospitals
And rule corpses in ghostland
Proscribe farming
So that hunger
Will emasculate us.
We waited hopelessly
By the fringes of hope
Until our free and fair
Election was wantonly annulled
But that was yesterday.