Matrimonial Poem (For Kabir Musa Yusuf)

Composed: 26th Jan, 2009

The time has come
For us to cheer and celebrate
The marvellous occasion we longed
Of our master's memorable matrimony.

The day we thirsted and starved,
The day we waited with keen,
The day all of us booked
To fill our happiness gap,
Today the day has come.

When longing is longed,
When striving is the task,
When supplication is invoked,
Then yearning is fulfilled
Gratification progress
Then success prevail.

We must celebrate with you
As we've nothing to pay you;
For you are our lead,
Followers to your footprints,
With your voice we speak.

Our sterling tutor, our guide,
Our starting point, our end.
Our educational path, our gate.
Our key to success, our hope.

Without you noun would be neglected
Without you pronoun would be oppressed
Without you verb would be marginalised Without you adverb would be robbed
Without you adjective would be segregated
Without you preposition would be paralysed
Withour you conjunction would be dislocated
Without interjection would be vandalised
Without you parts of speech would be strangled
And without you literature and language will faint and die.

So great you are by emancipating them from emasculation
So brave you are for rescuing them from annihilation.

We are at your door
Jubilating your jamboree,
And to wish you viva
And sustainable married life.




Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

My Personal Experience of Police Savagery and Arbitrariness

It is unfortunate that some police men don't value I'd cards, or is it because many of them haven't been trained to know its value, or are illiterates. Some have only High School certificates, having little education or zero education.
It happened on Thursday December 6, 2012 around 10:34pm in Gwale, in Kano. As I walked along Aminu Kano Way, I heard someone call out my name. It was my friend, Shamsu, standing among four other guys near a shop, which was closed. He left them and joined me at the sidewalk. A couple of minute later, we saw five men carrying guns shouting at us. They rounded us up, including the guys standing aside. They began searching us. I identified myself as a journalist and my friend a Level 200 student at Bayero University, Kano. The man who appeared to be of the team leader called Abbas said that if they searched us and found nothing criminal, we would go. I presented several I'd cards, including NYSC Foundation ID card, my school ID card which I've not yet submitted for my transcript; my press ID card, my Association of Nigerian Authors ID card and my Kano English Club ID card. One of the policemen pointed out a guy called Mubarak and excluded him from us and told to go home. Thereafter, I was roughed up and shoved into the back seat of a truck. I heard the team leader swear that I would sleep in the cell. Why, I was not told; may be it was because I told him I was a journalist.
They kept the rest of us behind the counter; I called people I could reach on phone to come to our aid, but their phones were unavailable. I then twitted and facebooked (before they took away our phones). A friend and two guys whose voices I couldn't recognise were at the station to bail me. He met the police man and even promised to give him money to release me. But he wanted more than my friend had on him; suddenly, he disappeared, but not before ordering his colleague to ensure that we were not released.
We were thrown into the cell, 22 of us. No food, no water, nothing but pieces of faeces combined with stale odour of urine that assailed the nostrils, and mosquitoes and biting insects. It was so dark we couldn't see our palms. I couldn't sleep in that inhumane condition. I couldn't believe that we made it to the next day.
In the morning, I was called out to sweep the rooms; I declined, noting it was not my duty. Some friends came to bail me. But the police on duty said they could do nothing until the DPO returned by 11:00a.m. The DPO eventually came and we were asked out of the cells and to line up as he called our names one after the other. All, except me, would be taken to court. I presented my ID cards and told him how it happened. I noticed the shock in his face. He heaped blames on the arresting police officer, and pledged to look into it.
Many people in the cell told me how they were arrested. Some were sitting in their shops; others were merely enjoying their dinner. Others walking or standing in their areas; like me, who was few metres away from home.

Huzaifa Sani Ilyas
Huzaifasanisarari@rocketmail.com

Published on Daily Trust Newspaper
Monday, December 10, 2012
Also, published on Blueprint Newspaper
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

Things Fall Apart

Things fall apart.
The sky cries
The earth shakes,
The pen dries,
The paper sicks,
The idea shivers

The reader feeble,
The giants' hearts palpable.
The day dark,
the sun hot,
The moon cool,
The oceans dry

It's queer, yet it comes
It's appalling, yet it tears,
It's a hero fall, falling of hope,
To some, and to other, its demise.

The titanic, unsinkable is sunk.
The unbeaten, the cat, beaten.
The failure for all, and to none.
The lenient lead, at the end,

Our lament is death, dead-end.
No longer at ease, untrimmed
March 21st remains indelible
No longer at ease,
The arrow of God thrown;

The man of the people exiles,
To a square hole, no return.
The hole surface, a replica of
Anthills of the Savanna,
The image of Africa ceases.

Racism ends, not only in Conrad's mind,
But in the world the magical poet leaves.
The pillar which withholds the colonist.
The caterpillar which crushes the prison walls.

Marriage is a private affair,
the dead tells story
When he writes with undying pen.
Dead men' path, a nostalgia to lose.
The sacrifice egg for all to taste.
Civil peace the creed he stands for.

Girls at war, ruinous anecdote.
Vengeful creditor, a mystery.
The voter, in his circle, scraps honor.
Beware soul-brother, your soil is wrecked.
Christmas at Biafra is at ebb,
Don't let him die, he tips off,
Christopher Okigbo reiterates.

Today is another Africa, unpredictable.
The refugee mother and child.
The vultures descend to grab,
The left-over treasures left,
Bitterness denies the grab.

The novelist as teacher, surpasses.
Though hopes and impediments exist,
History never forgets its builders,
It's unlike ingrate, shadow,
disappearing when moved,

Morning yet on the creation day,
Creates creative soul, doubting
Over the arts, that Africa bears,
Alas! Losing one side of the coin.
The morning eclipses.

The boss, disburses
the trouble with Nigeria,
The failures in leading,
a nation failing
In peoples' policies as leaders';
Home and exile, an alternative.
The best recipe, as learned
Education of a British protected child
To some, success, to others, failure.

The appreciable legacy left for children
Unforgettable, a reminiscence,
to my childhood
Chike and the river,
enchanting shore scene
From thereon, the poor personae retells
How the leopard got his claws.
He now gets the flute and the drum,
which he flutes
To sing the song of art,
time and more.

Today the days are gone,
Leaving us in mourning
The pain of the great loss,
Will forever remain,
In our hearts and pens
The hero is no more.

When the fate befalls,
When the familiarity befriends,
When the death descends,
When the mightier falls,
Then dearth prevails,
And patience follows,
Then the world tells the bitter yarn:
There was a country
And there was a writer!

(Composed by Huzaifa Sani Ilyas)
1:10 a.m. 23rd March, 2013

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

The Poor

This poem is dedicated to the hopless paupers living in endless penury and tyranny of their counterparts.

Composed: Thu 25 Oct. At 11:50 AM

I see him with sunken eyes
Sunk in a flowing ocean of desperation
Befriending frustration and agony
Exposed in between thunder and lightning,
Brooding over the next hour's meal.

 Living in a dark deadly dungeon
Contained therein blood-suckers
With stinging and poisonous beasts
Stinging and sucking through his veins;
Trippled tribulations like a cripple tripping and falling with no foothold,
Like a ripple in water, uncertain,
Going no further on its path
Like Mars revolving on its axis,
I see the poor exiles from his burrow
After digging it for ages, then the tyrant comes and eject him at once, swapping him for endless jungles
I see the poor with broken bedrock, yearning for a cloth to cover his nude,
Behind his defeat by the vicious right-winger;

I see him, deprived of the pen and ink, then told of paper being hazardous to his afflicted lenses.
Placing anatomy in anachronistic form

He lays the binding blocks of pyramid,
But another comes and sit on the pinnacle
The founder below, the settler on top,
Oh! The poor, when will you be freed?

Congratulatory Poem (for Umar Sa'I'd T/Wada)

Umar Sa'idu Tudun wada is the successor of late Umar Dutse Mohd, the General Manager of Freedom Radio, Kano. He was installed few days after Dutse's departure. This poem was composed by the advice of Kabiru Musa Jammaje as the case of the other poem I composed on the death of Dutse, Condolence, which is an elegy discribing the moral qualities he possessed and how his loss would be in his post-era. I have hinted through this itroduction so that the reader will find the inseparable link between the two related poems namely: CONDOLENCE and CONGRATULATORY POEM. May his soul rest in peace. The poem reads thus:

17/06/09

I know not how I should dictate
My pleasure in this long awaited day;
Waiting in suspense of its approach.
I know not how I could say
My triumph in seeing this day.

Many days have gone in passion and hope,
But this one seems as better as before.
Promotion denotes expertise and proficiency,
To a new world better than the old.
It is like being out of bondage;
And a recovery from the previous pains.

It is being in the progressive life,
The opposite being retrogressive one.
Oh! You present crew;
Wake up from your deep sleep
And imitate what you colleague fought
For becoming who he is now.

The sun and the moon today merge,
Jubilating friendly with smile.
The stars have nothing but to follow;
Cheering and rejoicing without dislike.

The most lovable post is the progressive one,
Never walking slowly like a chameleon or going back.
So your post be as faster as wind,
That never refers back to what she destroyed.

There are such devils who your post despise,
Ignore them and pray day and night.
For your weapons are Almighty's ones.
Let them perish by your sophisticated arms.

UST, my advice is that:
Footsteps of DM you follow,
Tolerant, humble and sincere man,
Genius and capable he proved.
Tirelessly all these should be.
Till death does what she does.

Never let any obstacle win over you,
Smash them and let them be history.
For the crew: let you all co-operate,
Let the obedience and sincerity be your friends.

Lastly, to you UST I pray,
Faithfully and peacefully you serve
The Freedom Radio and your Lord.
Until blissful promotion is blessed,
In your grave and in paradise.
Now victorious you are!

Silent Love

6th August, 2008

What is our bond, 

Friendship or love? 

If it's one, then the type;

Verbally or on face. 

Silent love shoulb be silenced

For we're lost

In the black bush of

Blame and stray.

Silent love should be silenced

We better tell

Our hidden views

Or we lose out 

All ourselves.

Silent love should be silenced

Is it matrimonial, 

Platonic or agape?

Say it or we lose 

Ourselves in life.

Silent love should be silenced

If my request is annoying,

Disregarded or avoided, 

Then I must silence the silent love.

INVITATION

14/08/2008

Let me invite you
To my good and beautiful view.
For myself and for you,
To live my life with you.

If it is fine, say yes,
To my request not something else.
For we'll reach our alliance
In the real matrimonial means.

I say my love for you,
Filled the stomach reaching the gullet;
Passing the mouth to vomit;
Telling the world I and you.

The love I do for you,
Is like the love which you do
To your mum or I do
More than her in view.

Now I will not fear
In saying what I care.
Because I love you my dear,
And I invite you in cheer.