The walls of Jesuit Memorial consoles us,
And keeps us; though outside these gates
Nigeria trembles beneath the weight of deceit –
A nation caught in the chokehold of despair,
Where every breath costs a fortune.
The dollar to naira dances beyond reach,
the price of fuel drains the marrow of the land,
and costly diesel burns through dreams once golden.
Politicians sit on thrones of lies,
Counting their gains as the people starve,
Their pockets filled with the blood of the soil.
Their voices ring with hollow promises, with manifestos never fulfilled,
While food prices rise like prayers unanswered,
And the streets hum with the quiet rage of a nation lost.
And we, the people, stand in the ruins, left to gather our strength,
To carve out a future that is ours.
Yet in this chaos, my mother stands – a pillar.
A single mother in a world designed to break her,
but yet she remains unbroken, a lioness beneath the sun,
With such blinding beauty, beauty carved from the stone of hardship.
She weaves hope through the cracks of life,
and taught me that power, is not in waiting for it to be given,
but in the forging of it from moments of fire.
“In the silence between heartbeats,” she said,
“You find the strength to shape your world,
Not by waiting for the moment,
But by becoming it.”
And I believe her, in the quiet of my soul,
That even in a country fractured by greed and suffering,
We are the ones who will rise.
As I walk through the hallowed halls of JMC, head held high,
I am not just a student, but a rock in the foundation of change,
part of a generation forged by fire,
in a forsaken land, searching for its lost heartbeat.
We may be broken, but we will never be defeated.
For in every heartbeat, there is silence,
and in that silence, we find strength.
Jesse Chukwuka OKEKE
Class of 2025.