Bermuda Triangle
(Won the 2020 End SARS National Poetry Competition organized by the Society of Young Nigerian Writers in conjunction with the International Human Rights Arts Festival).
Here, it is not safe to wear tattoos, dreadlocks; to look posh, drive a Benz, or own a laptop, because they could pull the trigger that leaves you in a pool of blood- many things are not safe to do.
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It is not safe to sit outside in my neighborhood; you could be forced into a black van to a small bleak godforsaken latrine. Your trip could continue to a Bermuda triangle where a bloody river is both a means of transportation and an untimely arrival to eternity- there is one in Awkuzu.
It is not safe to travel from Edo to Enugu, or ply the Kaduna-Abuja road. This means that the many boys like me who cannot afford the wings of anything that flies, rent our bodies as wages to the brutality of the Police. Sometimes in 2019, after searching even the most private parts of our lives, and there just had to be at least one scapegoat, they asked our driver to continue, leaving this young man behind. They had found a pinch of paper in his wallet; they said he used it to smoke. How could such a tiny thing put a man in a trouble that had my heart racing ahead of the bus? I peeped through the window hoping for the Acts of the Apostles but the quietness of that checking point blurred my heart, and the surrounding bushes seemed to house unspeakable secrets.
Elsewhere, there is an offering box on the highway, where those on pedals are forced off their steering to surrender their tokens to the force of firearms. For Jimoh Isiaq among others, it was not safe to call for an end to Police brutality. And though it is not safe to remember, we will never forget.
