Prof Niyi Osundare Boldly Lampoons And Ridicules Judges And NJC In An Illustrative Poetry Entitled: “My Lord, Tell Me Where To Keep Your Bribe”

By Prof. Niyi Osundare.

Do I drop it in your venerable chambers

Or carry the heavy booty to your immaculate mansion

Shall I bury it in the capacious water tank

In your well laundered backyard

Or will it breathe better in the septic tank

 Since money can deodorize the smelliest crime

Shall I haul it up the attic

Between the ceiling and your lofty roof

Or shall I conjure the walls to open up

And swallow this sudden bounty from your honest labour

Shall I give a billion to each of your paramours

The black, the light, the Fanta-yellow

They will surely know how to keep the loot

 In places too remote for the sniffing dog

Or shall I use the particulars

 Of your anonymous maidservants and manservants

With their names on overflowing bank accounts

 While they famish like ownerless dogs

Shall I haul it all to your village

 In the valley behind seven mountains

Where potholes swallow up the hugest jeep

 And Penury leaves a scar on every house

My Lord

 It will take the fastest machine

Many, many days to count this booty; and lucky bank bosses

 May help themselves to a fraction of the loot

My Lord

 Tell me where to keep your bribe?

My Lord

 Tell me where to keep your bribe?

The “last hope of the common man”

 Has become the last bastion of the criminally rich

A terrible plague bestrides the land

 Besieged by rapacious judges and venal lawyers

Behind the antiquated wig

 And the slavish glove

The penguin gown and the obfuscating jargon

 Is a rot and riot whose stench is choking the land

Behind the rituals and roted rigmaroles

 Old antics connive with new tricks

Behind the prim-and-proper costumes of masquerades

  Corruption stands, naked, in its insolent impunity

For sale to the highest bidder

Interlocutory and perpetual injunctions

Opulent criminals shop for pliant judges

 Protect the criminal, enshrine the crime

And Election Petition Tribunals

 Ah, bless those goldmines and bottomless booties!

Scoundrel vote-riggers romp to electoral victory

 All hail our buyable Bench and conniving Bar 

A million dollars in Their Lordship’s bedroom

 A million euros in the parlor closet

Countless naira beneath the kitchen sink

 Our courts are fast running out of Ghana-must-go’s*

The “Temple of Justice”

 Is broken in every brick

The roof is roundly perforated

 By termites of graft

My Lord

 Tell me where to keep your bribe?

Judges doze in the courtroom

 Having spent all night, counting money and various “gifts”

And the Chief Justice looks on with tired eyes

 As Corruption usurps his gavel.  

Crime pays in this country

 Corruption has its handsome rewards

Just one judgement sold to the richest bidder

 Will catapult Judge & Lawyer to the Billionaires’ Club

The Law, they say, is an ass

 Sometimes fast, sometimes slow

But the Law in Nigeria is a vulture

 Fat on the cash-and-carry carrion of murdered Conscience

Won gb’ebi f’alare

 Won gb’are f’elebi**

They kill our trust in the common good

 These Monsters of Mammon in their garish gowns

Unhappy the land

 Where jobbers are judges

Where Impunity walks the streets

 Like a large, invincible Demon

Come Sunday, they troop to the church

 Friday, they mouth their mantra in pious mosques

But they pervert Justice all week long

And dig us deeper into the hellish hole

Nigeria is a huge corpse

 With milling maggots on its wretched hulk

They prey every day, they prey every night

 For the endless decomposition of our common soul

My Most Honourable Lord

 Just tell me where to keep your bribe.

Large, extremely tough bags used for carrying heavy cash in Nigeria

They declare the innocent guilty

They pronounce the guilty innocent.”