The palace of vulture-chameleons

They are hovering around us. Sniffing blood and rot while you lie in wait. Waiting has become our game, but the vulture-chameleons play the waiting game better than us. We are more impatient than they are.

And we asked without any expectation of an answer - how does it feel to be sick and bound to power by powers and principalities, politicians? These ones wagging their tongues wherever the wind blows. You have become a paper bag caught by a whirlwind, twirling round and round; waiting for when the wind loses its steam so you can get some rest.

You are now a masquerade, subjected to the dictatorship of his drummers. Handlers with instruments are drumming and clapping for their seven-prong agenda. But remember the vulture-chameleon’s eyes are never far from rot. Praise songs from sycophants’ tongues are talcum-powdered viaticum. How else can they feed on gravel and build marble houses in sand?

Vulture-chameleons are killing each other to oppose the opposition for you. While you are away, power is on layaway for the highest bidder. They too are sick, pray for them and wish them speedy recovery. They need healers, not of the heart but of the mind.

These vulture-chameleons speak with a million tongues and switch gears faster than a racecar driver. They are driving the country to grave danger, heeding nothing. The Constitution will soon go to hell, if not rescued from their beaks. Rudderless ostriches are already burying their heads in rocky sands, exposing their anuses to the world.

The vulture-chameleons have stashed away their brains in deep agbada pockets and sown stolen money in stony farmlands, it will never grow. They scatter their seed into the winds and pray for more from our raped vineyard. As the sick seek haven, they clap and guffaw around in mock solidarity rallies. Deception is the number one rule of this game; why else would a fat-bellied retired soldier squeeze us into this corner with a game of squash?

It takes a tough heart to ward off insatiable vultures and illusory chameleons. It can’t be done lying down. Generals with murderous weapons and eagle eyes couldn’t stop them; some got away with radiculopathy and stepped aside. Yet we expect miracles from a far away kingly desert bed, with knees deep in prayers.

Grown men grovel for bread with sugar-coated tongues. The scent of power has stained their noses and set the noose round their necks; common sense is thrown to the dogs. They swim in lies and wallow in rot darker than unrefined crude oil. Worm and vulture culture is beatified and decorated with ornaments published as press releases in our national newspapers and glossy magazines. Like mushrooms on a dead trunk, support groups are sprouting overnight from ministerial quarters and unknown nuclear families.

The vultures smell rot. The dogs smell blood. The kingfisher smells a fish. We the people smell a rat. Voices louder than a town crier’s community gong serrate our fragile air. Confusion, like helium, floats our balloon of clean democracy to unreachable heights.

Red caps, white caps, black caps all float in the horizon as kleptomaniacs bend their kneecaps in loud bogus prayers, while silently singing a dirge for the living. The chameleons’ eyes are roving 360 degrees, never losing sight of the careless fly; with astonished eyes we watch this macabre dance of the prey and predators. And the vultures lie in wait, beaks sharpened like a butcher’s knife.

In the palace of vulture-chameleons national crocodiles idle away their tears, yet waiting for the fish to go belly up. The hunting season for 2011 comes early; if you cannot spin webs of falsehood don’t join their silk game.

How are you doing over there? Our ruler, uncle, husband, father, grandfather, father-in-law and godfather, greetings to you. We do not kick a man while he is lying on a sickbed, we wish you well. With love we ask - if the country is worth dying for, is power also worth dying for? Whose decision is it that you cling to a feather in the cliff-hanger of life and death?

We stretch our helping hands in friendship and true patriotism to offload this debilitating load strapped on your back like a hunchback’s burden. We are not the land’s enemy; we know you know better than what the vulture-chameleons are preaching in high places.

Only a true friend will tell a king he has soup on his beard. And we believe that a true leader should die for his country, but not when such a death is preventable.

Ruler, uncle, husband, father, grandfather, father-in-law, godfather we are planning a homecoming reception for you. When you return you will see that the vulture-chameleons have perfected the act of ventriloquism. You must remember that what they are saying is not what they are saying; but we will have a good laugh, regardless.

In the palace of vulture-chameleons, the puppets that will entertain you have been stringing the nation along on high stakes and doubling us over with laughter.