This Corona Wahala Sef

.. Chanting away the pains

This coronavirus sef

Him own too much sef

E sabi worry us

Like say na only him be virus

Wey we don see

 

Everywhere, we meet it with its fear

On streets

In offices

In taxies

In buses

Like bullying motorpark ogbologbo

That won’t allow person pass

 

Even on teevee, radio and dailies

It scares us hourly, daily

And seriously

Just like a shadow that dogs our paths

 

This coronavirus sef

Him own too much sef

E sabi worry us and follow us

Like monitoring spirit

 

Like wicked class monitor wielding ogbonge cane for headmaster:

“Wash ya hand”

“No shake person”

“No hug person”

“No go there”

“Keep this distance”

“No go church”

“No go mosque”

“No go market”

“No touch surface”

“Stay at home”

Chai, this one too much!

 

Haba!

Na waa!

For this corona wahala!

Palaver, so-so Palaver,

Plenty palaver, without cease

 

It makes one fear to watch teevee

You see corpse sotey you no fit chop

You see doctors fear to see sick ones

You listen to radio

And flee with fear to paper

You end up reading horror that happened, real

Your sleep with provoke for whole nights, ending up in nightmare

Scenes upon scenes

Of traumatising spectacles that scare

Tales upon tales

Of baffling narratives

Some sour

Some bitter

Some littered with scare-mongering saga

Some out of the blues

Like macabre stories and conjoured fairies from fantasia

Yet, upon making’em manifest, the wicked virus throws up more.

 

This COVID-19 pandemic of frenzied panics

The turner of all lands to picnic ports of caskets

Renderer of hither jolly-good societies, panicky populace

Deserves tufia!

 

Now those hitherto in opulence

Suffer in haunting silences of sombre homes

Where children desert grannies

Like those sufferers in slums of wantom want too

Ruinate in squalid ailments without food

 

I shudder for this virus which termites down the purse of states

Pause advancing ones

And freezing descending ones

 

In this corona of trying times

We learn not from handwrittings on wall

But odious signposts of times

And unfair lessons that nature too

Can hit the below belts

Even with hammer to the groin of the prepared and unprepared

Lockdowns upon lockdowns

Drowned in hunger-marked tensions

With neither hope of relief nor cure

Nor reprieve amid rip-offs

From stimulus agents

With defrauding sharing formulae

We look at calendar

To notice how long we have stayed

For tey-tey sotey we tire

In long wait for this God-damned Goddot

Whose coming hither and world over

Is marked with tales of tears and trails of death.

 

This coronavirus sef

Him wahala too much

 

But me, I know

Unless no be we,

Unless dem no born us well for here,

We will win –

One day Corona go go with him virus

Like Ebola, like SARS, like Influenza

We will win coronavirus

Like we always delete computer virus

This too will pass!