Jaws of the Bullion By Al-Mamun Mallam

The Poet 

Al-Mamun Mallam is a teacher and development practitioner. He works with the AfDB funded ATASP-1 as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. He started off as a playwright, and has also penned a number of critical essays in literary pages of newspaper and magazines. Occasionally, he ventures into the windy terrain of poetry.

The Poem 

Jaws of the Bullion 

This voyage of the investigative journalist

And the objective columnist

Into the jaws of the Bullion,

Embellished with lies like layers of onion,

Is amazing.

This trap of crispy notes,

And the hook on minty notes,

With eyes that are denied visas

To Chicago to fish for answers,

Is appalling.

Kemi, come collect your certificate,

No more pens to pen the NYSC you fabricate,

The pens are swallowed by the Bullion-gate

In the belly of Chicagogate

Folks, you’re on your own,

Like Palestine.

Whose home is not her own,

A place, a million light years from fine.

Her Oppression, on the screen, hunting, justified,

Her resistance, on the cross, daring, crucified.

So, no spear will now fight for you,

And no pen to paint the pain you’re passing through.

The Story 

I lay on my sofa, pondering on the state of the Nigerian state- how the narrative is being dominated, controlled by the politicians, how the Sun, the Nation, the Champion, the AIT, the TVC, and many other traditional media outlets are owned by politicians, and the implications of this situation for the country. Then it hit me that even the apparently objective journalists and columnists are being absorbed into the camp of the Nigerian votes beggars. I wonder: where lies our salvation, how long before something give, given the lack of both the will and the skill to arrest the degeneration inflicting pain on the populace, given the ignorance regarding where the country is heading.

While this rumination was ongoing, I switched on the TV. CNN, BBC and the rest Zionist dominated press, who have turned a blind eye to the dehumanization and subjugation of Palestinians by the Zionist State of Israel from 1st January to 31st December, year in, year out, decade in, decade out, suddenly found its voice and began to beam its lights, or its darkness, whichever sits well with you, on Hamas’s attack on the Palestinian land that Israel now controls on 7th, October, projecting and amplifying the horrors of the 7th October attack, turning 7th October into a single story. 

I clearly remembered BBC echoing the former Israel mantra about Yasser Arafat being the problem and that they would isolate him, which the BBC presenter interpreted as their intention to kill him. Now Hamas is the problem that they must destroy, and then the Zionists will continue with the daily slaughtering of human animals in the concentration camp, not unlike the ones the former NAZIS subjected the Jews to. How farsighted the Zionists are to think they can go to sleep after destroying Hamas! Well, haven’t they observed how Egypt is still enslaving the Jews, how Ottoman empire is still lording it over Europe and how the imperial Britain is still controlling America, who has refused to confront the colonial masters with bullets, and is handing the colonialists flowers for their colonial benevolence? 

How far sighted these Zionists are to think that everyone has the passivity of the Nigerian masses for the insensitivity of the Nigerian leaders! How far sighted the Zionists are to think they will live peacefully ever after while maintaining a concentration camp or open prison in people’s land.

I saw the parallels between the Zionists’ controlled media and the Nigerian politicians’ control of the traditional media in Nigeria. Then it hit me that the Nigerian politicians have gone a bit further than the Zionists who owned the global mainstream media, for the Nigerian politicians have resorted to procuring over to their sides the few journalists that are apparently objective even when they may not actually be that.