Silent one, where were you
When blood-thirsty monsters
Killed over four million Congolese?
Where were you when ethnic warlords
Overran Rwanda and terminated
Over five-hundred thousand lives?
Castrated he-goat, merely bleating
About the town hall, where were you
When Liberia burnt in its needless conflagration
Which killed two thousand five hundred people
And conscripted underaged children to fight the war of blame?
Eunuch atop a virtuous woman,
Where were you when the House of Sierra Leone
Burnt intractably and consumed three thousand of its citizens
Rendering millions homeless and turning them into
Street nuisances across the globe?
Where were you good-for-nothing firewood
When Ethiopia and Eritrea fought one another
And sent seventy thousand souls to their untimely graves?
Where were you when the Janjaweed killed four hundred thousand Dafurians?
Where were you when thunder struck in Uganda, Chechnya, East Timor,
And the Serbs and Albanians butchered and killed one another?
Blind bat, where were you when tigers, leopards
Bears, pythons and alsatian bulldogs forced
Their way to the village to maim, kill,
Destroy and devour innocent souls?
So why should the world continue to keep
This money-guzzling assembly which is not better than
The League of Nations, but has looked the other way
Whilst the Middle East remains perpetually convulsive?
A barren fig tree is good only for the fire,
And a toothless bulldog is good for nothing,
But to be tied and burnt at the stake
Is it not useless wasting precious resources
On a barren land that cannot yield fruits?
If the silent sentinel can play second fiddle to the
The “Great Satan”, why keep him
To guard the village gate?
- JOHN ODEY ADUMA.
From the POETRY OF JOHN ODEY ADUMA, written on August 1, 2006.
ABOUT THE POET
John Odey Aduma was formerly Executive Secretary, Foundry Association of Nigeria; Southern Coordinator and the Public Affairs Manager of President Muhammadu Buhari's pastoralists NGO - THE PASTORAL RESOLVE; Chairman, Editorial Board of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc; member, National Committee for the Nigerian Youth Festival, 1993; Core Committee, the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF)/Ford Foundation, Kano Eastern Bypass Roadside Tree Planting Exercise, 1997; member, core Committee of the National Technology Summit and was the Summit's chairman for two of its sub-committees - Publicity and Exhibition, 1998; member of the Administrative Panel of Inquiry set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo to investigate the illegal trade in and smuggling of endangered species of wild fauna and flora into and out of Nigeria, 2003.
He was the Chairman, Planning Committee of the General Murtala Muhammed Memorial Lecture for two consecutive years, 2001 and 2002 before it attained a Foundation status in 2002, having first been upgraded to that status in 2001.
General Murtala Muhammed was one of Nigeria's former Heads of State and was killed in the abortive coup led by the then Colonel Buka Suka Dimka on February 13, 1976.
That same capacity saw Mr Aduma delivering huge successes during the Daily Times of Nigeria's 75th Anniversary (in which he raked in N6, 000, 000 into the coffers of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc) and also, playing a similar role in a similar capacity during Dr Isma'il Babatunde Jose's 75th Birth Day. Dr Jose, doyen of Nigerian journalism was Mr Aduma's personal mentor. That relationship was so close and solid such that whilst Aduma was leaving the shores of Nigeria for Britain in 2003, Dr Jose gave him N10, 000.00.
In 1992, Mr Aduma's contributions to journalism was recognised with the awards of the Nigeria Media Merit Award as the Investigative Reporter of the Year and the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence as the Reporter of the Year, and the British Chevening Scholarship, which saw him studying International Journalism with Specialism in Environment at City, University of London in 2003-2004.
Aduma is the author of the inspirational best-seller, THE DIAMONDS ARE HERE and the founder of Vigilance, the World's Leading Security Magazine and Scorpion News Corp, in addition to founding the Nationalists Unity Movement of Nigeria (NUMON).
He is also, involved in professional mentoring at Post Graduate level in the City, University of London’s Post Graduate Professional Mentoring Strand.
