My Lord, Tell Me Where To Keep Your Bribe? - By Niyi Osundare (Renowned Nigerian poet)<\/strong><\/p>\nMy Lord<\/p>\n
Please tell me where to keep your bribe?<\/p>\n
Do I drop it in your venerable chambers<\/p>\n
Or carry the heavy booty to your immaculate mansion<\/p>\n
Shall I bury it in the capacious water tank<\/p>\n
In your well laundered backyard<\/p>\n
Or will it breathe better in the septic tank<\/p>\n
Since money can deodorize the smelliest crime<\/p>\n
Shall I haul it up the attic<\/p>\n
Between the ceiling and your lofty roof<\/p>\n
Or shall I conjure the walls to open up<\/p>\n
And swallow this sudden bounty from your honest labour<\/p>\n
Shall I give a billion to each of your paramours<\/p>\n
The black, the light, the Fanta-yellow<\/p>\n
They will surely know how to keep the loot<\/p>\n
In places too remote for the sniffing dog<\/p>\n
Or shall I use the particulars<\/p>\n
Of your anonymous maidservants and manservants<\/p>\n
With their names on overflowing bank accounts<\/p>\n
While they famish like ownerless dogs<\/p>\n
Shall I haul it all to your village<\/p>\n
In the valley behind seven mountains<\/p>\n
Where potholes swallow up the hugest jeep<\/p>\n
And Penury leaves a scar on every house<\/p>\n
My Lord<\/p>\n
It will take the fastest machine<\/p>\n
Many, many days to count this booty; and lucky bank bosses<\/p>\n
May help themselves to a fraction of the loot<\/p>\n
My Lord<\/p>\n
Tell me where to keep your bribe?<\/p>\n
My Lord<\/p>\n
Tell me where to keep your bribe?<\/p>\n
The \u201clast hope of the common man\u201d<\/p>\n
Has become the last bastion of the criminally rich<\/p>\n
A terrible plague bestrides the land<\/p>\n
Besieged by rapacious judges and venal lawyers<\/p>\n
Behind the antiquated wig<\/p>\n
And the slavish glove<\/p>\n
The penguin gown and the obfuscating jargon<\/p>\n
Is a rot and riot whose stench is choking the land<\/p>\n
Behind the rituals and roted rigmaroles<\/p>\n
Old antics connive with new tricks<\/p>\n
Behind the prim-and-proper costumes of masquerades<\/p>\n
Corruption stands, naked, in its insolent impunity<\/p>\n
For sale to the highest bidder<\/p>\n
Interlocutory and perpetual injunctions<\/p>\n
Opulent criminals shop for pliant judges<\/p>\n
Protect the criminal, enshrine the crime<\/p>\n
And Election Petition Tribunals<\/p>\n
Ah, bless those goldmines and bottomless booties!<\/p>\n
Scoundrel vote-riggers romp to electoral victory<\/p>\n
All hail our buyable Bench and conniving Bar<\/p>\n
A million dollars in Their Lordship\u2019s bedroom<\/p>\n
A million euros in the parlor closet<\/p>\n
Countless naira beneath the kitchen sink<\/p>\n
Our courts are fast running out of Ghana-must-go\u2019s*<\/p>\n
The \u201cTemple of Justice\u201d<\/p>\n
Is broken in every brick<\/p>\n
The roof is roundly perforated<\/p>\n
By termites of graft<\/p>\n
My Lord<\/p>\n
Tell me where to keep your bribe?<\/p>\n
Judges doze in the courtroom<\/p>\n
Having spent all night, counting money and various \u201cgifts\u201d<\/p>\n
And the Chief Justice looks on with tired eyes<\/p>\n
As Corruption usurps his gavel.<\/p>\n
Crime pays in this country<\/p>\n
Corruption has its handsome rewards<\/p>\n
Just one judgement sold to the richest bidder<\/p>\n
Will catapult Judge & Lawyer to the Billionaires\u2019 Club<\/p>\n
The Law, they say, is an ass<\/p>\n
Sometimes fast, sometimes slow<\/p>\n
But the Law in Nigeria is a vulture<\/p>\n
Fat on the cash-and-carry carrion of murdered Conscience<\/p>\n
Won gb\u2019ebi f\u2019alare<\/p>\n
Won gb\u2019are f\u2019elebi**<\/p>\n
They kill our trust in the common good<\/p>\n
These Monsters of Mammon in their garish gowns<\/p>\n
Unhappy the land<\/p>\n
Where jobbers are judges<\/p>\n
Where Impunity walks the streets<\/p>\n
Like a large, invincible Demon<\/p>\n
Come Sunday, they troop to the church<\/p>\n
Friday, they mouth their mantra in pious mosques<\/p>\n
But they pervert Justice all week long<\/p>\n
And dig us deeper into the hellish hole<\/p>\n
Nigeria is a huge corpse<\/p>\n
With milling maggots on its wretched hulk<\/p>\n
They prey every day, they prey every night<\/p>\n
For the endless decomposition of our common soul<\/p>\n
My Most Honourable Lord<\/p>\n
Just tell me where to keep your bribe.<\/p>\n
*\u00a0 \u00a0Large, extremely tough bags used for carrying heavy cash in Nigeria<\/p>\n
** They declare the innocent guilty<\/p>\n
They pronounce the guilty innocent<\/p>\n
Prof. Niyi Osundare<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The good Professor Niyi Osundare wrote the poem below quite a while back about Nigeria's Judiciary and Legal Profession. Sadly, his words remain ever so relevant today. This is one of many reasons I argue that most conventional \"schools\" offer limited real world relevant preparation - especially in a society like Nigeria. We are supposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1375,1,266,814,1440,103],"tags":[2831,1898,2833,2832],"class_list":["post-11730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excel-vb-solutions","category-general-2","category-my-dn-travel-news","category-my-ideas-for-making-nigeria-better","category-recommended-websites-articles","category-writingblogging","tag-my-lord","tag-recommended","tag-renowned-nigerian-poet","tag-tell-me-where-to-keep-your-bribe-by-niyi-osundare"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":854,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11731,"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730\/revisions\/11731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tayosolagbade.com\/sdnuggets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}