The forests have learned our children's names,
And whisper them low to the moonlit
sky,
Each stolen dawn feeds their crimson
flames,
While mothers teach wounded stars to cry.
The wind drags grief through
the fields of Baga,
Where ashes still bloom on a
blood-soaked plain,
The earth wears scars like a
shattered calabash,
And harvests sorrow instead of
grain.
Chibok still waits by a rusted
gate,
Where silence kneels in a tattered
gown,
The years march past, but they
hesitate,
Afraid to tell who has not come
down.
Dapchi still sings through a
broken choir,
Its echoes trapped in a cage of
pain,
While Leah remains like an
altar fire,
Refusing to bow to the storm
and chain.
Kankara dreams of abandoned
books,
Whose pages flutter like
wounded doves,
The classrooms stare with
hollow looks,
Bereft of the laughter a nation
loves.
Jangebe weeps through the
harmattan dust,
As footprints vanish where
children ran,
The sky hangs low with betrayed
trust,
Like a torn-out map in a
trembling hand.
Kuriga counts every absent
chair,
As daylight drowns in a sea of
fears,
The blackboard gathers a coat
of despair,
And writes its lessons in
parents' tears.
Oriire woke to a predator's
song,
When darkness feasted on tender
light,
The roads stood mute as the
night grew long,
And swallowed innocence whole
from sight.
Some captives returned in
coffins of pain,
Though ransoms were paid with
desperate hands,
Their names became echoes lost
in the rain,
While grief built kingdoms
across the lands.
Some daughters returned with
shattered wings,
Their laughter buried beneath
the shame,
The night had stolen too many things,
And left deep wounds without a
name.
Some fathers were slaughtered
after release,
Some mothers were silenced
beside the way,
The merchants of terror denied
them peace,
And traded in death as a daily
pay.
Some soldiers fell where the
ambush lay,
Their uniforms stained by a
crimson flood,
Some vigilantes were swept
away,
Defending their homes with
their final blood.
The highways wear funeral robes
of dust,
The farmlands blossom with
graves instead,
Even the rivers have learned
distrust,
For too many dreams have
floated dead.
Fifty attacks in a single
week,
Fifty fresh wounds on the
nation's face,
Yet power grows eloquent when
the weak
Are left to perish without a
trace.
The forests breed merchants of
human pain,
Who traffic in terror and
ransom gold,
They water their kingdoms with
grief and gain,
While villages shiver in fear
and cold.
What began as bullets soon
became trade,
A marketplace fed by despair
and dread,
Where human lives are appraised
and weighed,
And hope is auctioned to ransom
the dead.
The brokers gather where
shadows meet,
Some dressed in turbans, some
draped in ties,
They profit while victims
retreat,
And feast where a wounded
nation cries.
The jackals wear robes of
respectability,
And speak of virtue by day and
night,
Yet somewhere beneath their
civility,
The scent of betrayal escapes
their sight.
The vultures circling are
dressed as kings,
With polished smiles and
immaculate speech,
They campaign on hope with
borrowed wings,
Then govern beyond the people's
reach.
They build their castles from
public tears,
And mortar the walls with
neglected cries,
While citizens stagger through
haunted years,
Beneath a republic of alibis.
A farmer now plants beneath
armed skies,
Unsure if his crop or life will
fall,
The soil drinks blood where the
seedling lies,
And death keeps watch at the
harvest call.
The mothers have mastered the
art of prayer,
Their voices worn thin by the
weight of grief,
Each dawn they search for their
children there,
Like sailors pursuing a
vanished reef.
Owo remembers the Sunday
bell,
That rang through worship and
ended in flame,
Kaduna still hears the iron
yell,
Of a train attack history
cannot tame.
Plateau still gathers her
shattered bones,
While Benue buries another
dream,
The nation is stitched with
mourning tones,
And rivers of anguish that
never redeem.
Yet louder than gunfire, louder
than fear,
The cry of the captives still
rends the air,
A chorus the powerful refuse to
hear,
Though its wounds stain every
public square.
Bring back our children from
forest and cave,
From camps where nightmares
patrol the night,
For no nation deserves to be
brave,
While abandoning innocence to
its plight.
Bring back our children from
shadow and chain,
From pathways where hope was
brutally torn,
For every child rescued from
terror's reign
Returns to the world as a
new-born dawn.
And when history gathers these
broken years,
To judge what was lost and who
looked away,
It shall weigh not speeches,
nor titles, nor cheers,
But the children we failed to
bring home one day.
Until then, the forests will
carry their names,
And scatter them wide through
the smoke-filled air,
Until then, the mountain
remains in flames,
And the world must know there
is fire there.
Prince Adeola Goloba 2026
Thursday 18th June 2026
2:52am
Ejigbo, Lagos Nigeria.
REFLECTION:
The Forest of
Stolen Dawns is yet again a poetic response to the persistent insecurity,
terrorism, banditry, mass abductions, and violence that have scarred Nigeria
over the past decade. This poem draws inspiration from real events, including
the Chibok, Dapchi, Kankara, Jangebe, Kuriga, and Oriire kidnappings, as well
as countless attacks on communities, schools, places of worship, security
personnel, and innocent citizens whose stories rarely make international
headlines.
The title itself
is symbolic. A forest traditionally evokes mystery, danger, and concealment,
while dawn represents hope, innocence, renewal, and the promise of a new day.
By describing these dawns as "stolen," the poem mourns the theft of
childhoods, dreams, futures, and lives by forces of terror and indifference.
This poem employs
extended metaphors, personification, symbolism, and recurring natural imagery,
forests, rivers, mountains, flames, vultures, dust, and dawns to transform
statistics and news headlines into a human story of grief, resilience, and
collective responsibility. The forest becomes both a physical and psychological
landscape where fear thrives, while the mountain on fire symbolizes a nation
confronting a crisis too grave to ignore.
My goal is not
merely an indictment of armed groups who perpetrate violence. But also a
reflection on systemic failures, political indifference, corruption,
profiteering, and the normalization of suffering. I employed this poem to
interrogate the conditions that allow insecurity to flourish in our country,
and asks difficult questions about leadership, accountability, and citizenship.
Above all, this
poem is dedicated to all the victims, the children who never returned home, the
families who continue to wait, the survivors carrying invisible wounds, the
farmers displaced from their ancestral lands, the security personnel who paid
the ultimate sacrifice, and every citizen whose life has been altered by
violence.
I pray their
stories never be forgotten 🙏
©Prince Adeola Goloba2026
