Ajala ta n nàá o…? By Temilade Aloko
A Poetic Reflection on the Yelewata Tragedy.
She looked away.
Her eyes — once full of fire and faith — now glassed over with grief.
The air was heavy in the ward, but not as heavy as her heart.
Before her, officials stood in starched agbadas and bullet proof coats.
A parade of promises.
A gallery of guilty silence.
They had come to “see things for themselves.”
But she had seen it all before.
She sat beside her wounded grandchild.
The child of a child who once had dreams —
Now bandaged, broken, breathless.
Victim not of nature, but of man’s endless madness.
And then she whispered, though no one heard,
“Ajala t’án nàá o… Ṣé bí eyin naa ni?”
(You ask who struck me? Wasn’t it you?)
This was no act of fate.
It was the harvest of neglect,
The fruit of a seed planted by politics and watered by apathy.
They came with cameras and concern stitched on their sleeves,
But she knew —
They were architects of the pain they came to mourn.
Another proverb crossed her lips,
“O n ṣemi, o n gbà mí — kí ni a fẹ ṣe sí ẹ naa?”
(You hurt me and cry for me — what then should we do to you?)
She did not cry.
She could not.
Her tears had long dried on the soil of Yelewata,
Where bodies — almost 200 — lay still,
Whispering a question only justice can answer.
This story isn’t just about her.
It’s about all the mothers and fathers,
The children whose laughter was silenced in the dark.
It’s about leaders who forgot that power is for people, not pride.
Let this picture be a mirror,
A reminder that sympathy without sincerity is a second wound.
And until the cries of the innocent shake the halls of power —
Ajala would still be asked:
Ta n naa o?
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