OH  IJAWLAND!

 I

 Oh most gracious Izonebe, land of the beautiful morning, adorned with bountiful soils,
I think of the sounds of your rushing waters, and your serenity from day to night
and night back into day, the joy of your peoples,
I eagerly await the day of your liberation! Oh Ijaw Nation! I patiently wait,
Solemnly!

 
II

 Oh thou most beautiful Ijo, home of the tradition of truth,
Cultural activities have all the children of your youth engaged,
You are similar to a virtuous wife, for you are truly a mother to many,
In you the maritime merchants amass stacks of ancient wealth!
How we long for the day of your emancipation. Oh land of the most precious
“Black Gold” – “Crude Oil”
May your true day of independence come in no distant time. Ise.

III

 Your Niger-Delta, laden with endless brooks and evergreen forests, crisscrossed by
creeks with families communing along the riverbanks, and well watered marshes of
mangroves and water lilies – is a constant source of strength and inspiration for me!
You fill me with a desire for and an appreciation of peace – a need to escape the
evils of our time, unharmed, undefiled! Oh Izon!

IV

I visualize your old women, paddling away to their farms at dawn,
And it reminds me of the day of our royal wedding – the day of my birth!
In you are the little crickets chirping into the dark night, and sea gulls showering
your waters with endless kisses,
If the multinationals and the internationals never came to disrupt your normalcy,
If the ‘black poison’ wasn’t exposed, if you had not been plundered at all,
You would have been much more of a mystery – a treasure for posterity!
May the great day of your self-determination arrive! Oh beloved Ijonland!

 
V

 There goes a band of your drummers again, there goes Izon’s sons and daughters,
Industrious, royal, resilient, patient, peaceful!
Convening cultural festivals, celebrating the abundance of fish in you,
Oh land of close family ties & Gemeinschaft – like values,
Your face has been  full of tears for generations, horrors for decades, despair for
ages!  When will we be free, Oh Ijaw!?

VI

Your shrines and temples stand tall in your villages, with priests and priestesses
religiously carrying out their duties, observing the daily rituals and sacrifices,
Your many kingdoms with a common ancestral heritage are unique! In beauty, your peoples are united,
and we share a common destiny,
Hope would remain mixed with faith, in the anticipation of your freedom!
So the blood of all those you lost won’t have been shed in vain! Ijon!
 

VII

 You stand so far away, escaping the pollution from cars and industries, far away
from noise and cacophony, You’re close to nature in all ramifications!
But your rich endowments of Crude oil attract oppressors – your enemies, our
enemies, my enemies – who rape you and put you in this dilemma!
Oh! How I weep because of your woes, which make you “too poor to be rich and yet
too rich to be poor!”
O’ yinma! Nana’Owei! O’Zuo! Sisi!

  Oyinpreye Christopher Dorgu
2003