Save Our Future

Description. The prevalence of child violence is alarmingly on the rise in Nigeria, every day our ears are plagued with news of horrible events threatening the survival of children, from child labor to molestation and even child marriage. On the 14th of April 2014, (276) girls were kidnapped from Chibok Secondary School, Borno State Nigeria and even more deleterious events happened after then. Events like this have shaped my perspective of things about the needs of Nigerian children in less privileged communities for structures and policies that would protect them and preserve the actualization of their potential. This oral presentation will showcase a selection of five poignant pieces from my anthology, “Save Our Future”, a child-centered poetry collection aimed at fighting the menace of child abuse and building capacity in the younger generation. This poetry collection is a creative piece that is orchestrated and designed in the persona and voices of the disposed children in northern Nigeria. The thematic preoccupation in this work includes- domestic violence, neglect, verbal abuse, forceful fusion, fear, pain, silence, hopelessness, and so on. This collection of eighty poems spans three categories, Tales of Pain, Clarion Call, and Letter to the Future, each category explores the beauty and liberty of free verse as it explores different subject matter on the menace of child hawking, child molestation, physical abuse, verbal abuse, and domestic violence. In this collection, I robed myself with the pain of some abused children; to boundlessly convey their story, grief, and bitterness through poetry, and performative writing. The poetic technique in the poems features a variety of sound, imagery, and figurative devices. The use of metaphor, simile, repetition, and personification pose as notable tools employed in the verifications of the collection. Significance This work among others is a scholarly and urgent artistic intervention towards the eradication of child violence in Nigeria. Thus, in giving voice to the voiceless and mirroring their pain, this work employs the use of oral poetry to project the pain of abused children and also to bring succor to them. This collection is designed to give life to words through soulful expression of pain, a clarion call for change, and consequently serve as a source of inspiration to children.