🎥 We’re cooking something delicious for you on our YouTube channel. In the coming days, you will learn SSCE literature texts like you're in class 📚✍🏽
Be part of this new journey we are about to embark on.
🔔 Subscribe Now
Tears of a Nation
In Nigeria today… what thrives is decay.
Illicit whispers… reckless indulgence…
Everywhere you turn
that’s the conversation.
Gb***… styles… empty pleasures…
while STDs spread like wildfire in the night.
Idleness is eating the marrow of our youth.
Pretty faces… but rotten inside.
Handsome smiles… yet hollow souls.
Oh God… save this country.
Hardship has dressed desire in chains.
Poverty pours temptation like rain.
Our daughters roses once bright
now traded for a plate of food.
They call it hook-up…
but it is hunger’s voice, crying in shame.
They sell their bodies…
to feed young parents…
Parents who retired too early,
because jobs never came.
Governance twisted…
by men who call themselves gods.
And when you speak of their evil
you are silenced…
or punished…
severely.
We once walked proud.
When the naira stood taller than the dollar.
When our seaports worked Warri, Onne, Calabar…
not just Lagos, carrying a nation’s load.
We once had Eagle Cement, Port Cement,
shoe factories, thriving investors.
A graduate without a job? Unheard of.
But now…
dreams are buried in the dust of greed.
Eight years in power
their only plan?
To pass the throne to another thief.
They steal, they cover,
they distract us with tribalism.
Yoruba against Igbo…
Hausa against Yoruba …
Yet, what pride is there to boast of tribe,
when your pockets are empty,
your children unfed,
your wife and daughter
prey for politicians and ritualists alike.
From the khaki years... to the ballot years…
we keep dwindling.
We keep sinking.
We keep crying.
A nation blessed…
yet cursed by greed.
A people strong…
yet broken by their leaders.
May God save Nigeria.
May His mercy reign.
For our tears… are rivers unending.
— Gabrielle Amunike
About the Poet
Gabrielle Amunike is a seasoned journalist with over 15 years of experience spanning both print and electronic media. She currently serves as a news presenter and reporter with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Port Harcourt Network Centre, where she is also recognized as a documentary specialist and media consultant.
Her excellence in storytelling and commitment to impactful journalism have earned her several awards, cementing her reputation as a trusted media voice. A versatile creative, Gabrielle is also a novelist and poet with three published works, two fiction and one nonfiction.
Passionate about using media and literature as tools for social change, she continues to inform, inspire, and engage diverse audiences.
About “Tears of a Nation”
“Tears of a Nation” by Gabrielle Amunike is a lamentation of Nigeria’s present socio-political decay, moral decline, and economic hardship. Once-thriving industries, strong currency, and abundant jobs are remembered with nostalgia, but today these have been lost to greed and misrule. Leaders silence critics, enrich themselves, and stir up ethnic divisions to cover their failures, while ordinary citizens remain hungry, broken, and divided.
The poem mourns Nigeria’s moral, economic, and political decay. It calls for divine intervention and national renewal.
Receive Literary Updates through our Social Media Channels:
- WhatsApp: Literature PADI
- Telegram: Literature PADI
- YouTube: @literaturepadi
- Facebook: Literature PADI
