23/08/2025
ONE RIVER, MANY STREAMS
(The illusion of division)
🇳🇬🇳🇬
Kachi Depoet
Na one talk wey dey blow like Harmattan breeze,
Story wey dem dey tell to turn brother to stranger.
We dey talk about lines wey dem draw for sand,
Of a river divided, of a forest with only one tree
The illusion of division.
They point to the soil....red earth, dark loam....and say, "This is yours, not theirs."
They point to the tongue—the rolling Rs of the Hausa, the vibrant vowels of the Yoruba, the lyrical flow of the Igbo...and say, "This is your song, not theirs."
They point to the heavens....the minaret's call, the church bell's chime...and say, "This is your God, not theirs."
But the sun that rises over the hills of Obudu
Is the same sun that sets on the Lagos lagoon.
The hunger that gnaws in a belly in Kano
Is the same ache felt in a home in Calabar.
The tear of a mother for her child knows no tribe,
And the laughter of children playing on the street speaks a single, universal language.
Our identities are not cages.
They are threads...gold and green, indigo and crimson..
Woven into a single, magnificent cloth.
To pull one thread is to unravel the whole.
Our diversity is not a weakness to be managed,
But the very rhythm of our nation's heartbeat.
Do not let them trade our symphony for a single, lonely drum.
Do not let the noise of the few drown out the harmony of the many.
For we are not separate islands in a vast, lonely sea.
We are streams, each with its own melody, its own current, its own story,
Flowing from different lands,
But all meeting to become one great river, mighty and indivisible.
The River Niger does not ask the name of the stream that joins it.
It simply welcomes the water, and together, they flow to the sea.
So let us be a nation that remembers this truth.
That our blood is one colour, our hope is one prayer, our future is one destiny.
Let us tear down the walls in our minds,
And see the brother, the sister, the human, in the eyes of the "other."
The illusion is broken when we choose to see.
The forest grows when we remember we are all roots of the same tree.
The river flows when we accept we are all one water.
We are Nigeria. And we are one.
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