It’s almost a year now since that night,
when darkness crawled in like an innocent child,
when the giant city trembled, quaking the ground
across the seven hills of Ìbàdàn—
Bódìjà sang a dirge to the ears of all;
the neighbourhood chorused the grief in response.
At that point, stories began to fly.
Some said Sángo, others said
Agbowó, Mọ́kọ́lá, Ọ̀jọ́ọ̀, Mọ́níyà—
while others had nothing to say.
Uncertainty hung fear in the atmosphere,
the kind of fear only found in gothic narratives.
Five minutes gone by without knowing
what shook the city or the casualties it bore.
If we relied on hearsay, the truth, like a tiny pebble,
would be lost in the sand as many reporters bore witness
to what they never saw. The internet turned into
the road to salvation.
Shot clips of casualties began to fly,
even those that were unrelated to the incident.
Bódìjà draped itself in a dusty gown of
pandemonium—people thronged the site
like bees to a hive, rushing to the scene
as if to earmark their graves.
“Do not go there if you have no business there,”
radio stations aired the warnings of the state.
Rescue teams snailed in
like guest entertainers, shoving aside
the curious to track the source.
But that night, despite press releases
and the lanky assurances,
Bódìjà slept in fear.
Morning came, Bódìjà sat on the lips of many.
The old spoke with the confidence of knowing little,
the ears of the young stood still, eager to pick
stories they could share with friends.
The exact spot was detected.
Images revealed a large
hole the blast bore on the ground.
Bódìjà wore a sunken face of
mangled houses and shattered glasses
like a broken china in the midday sun.
The roof fell on “the naked body
of my mother in bed,” said the son of a woman
who scurried to UCH to meet with her.
Reading this news report, the image
of her frail naked body sends an adrenaline
of sickness through my veins.
Under this same rubble,
some died, countless were injured.
In a flash of a light, investigation
revealed dynamite stored by “illegal miners ,”
in a location “unknown” to the government.
What our government does not know, too, exists.
This story, too, will die—like other crimes.
P.S: On the night of 16th January, 2024, there was dynamite explosion at Bódìjà, Ìbàdàn, that left a few dead and many injured.The lines “across the seven hills of Ibadan” and “like a broken china in the midday sun” allude to some lines of J.P Clark’s poem “Ibadan”.
Author
Olobo Ejile is a poet, writer, and researcher. His writings explore themes of love, grief, trauma, and the fleeting nature of life. Aside from writing, he derives pleasure from singing. His works are recently published (or are forthcoming) in ANA, Fiction Niche, among others.
