Five Poems for Fatherland: A Poetic Inquiry into Nigeria's Destiny
On Easter Sunday, the columnist Tony Afejuku, describing himself as a gleaner-glimpser-glitterer, opens a reflective piece by acknowledging the omniscience of his moods. These moods, he notes, travel extensively in a determined quest to unlock the mystery of Nigeria—your country, my country, our country. He poses poignant questions that resonate deeply: Why is Nigeria not the nation of our dreams? Why has it failed to meet our aspirations over time? Why have our heads of state and presidents fallen short of our ideals?
Echoes of Past Yearnings
Afejuku recalls an earlier essay titled We must keep marching on, published on March 15, 2024, during Ramadan. In that piece, he expressed a longing for a new dawn filled with brightness. He pointedly asked whether President Bola Tinubu and his genuine philosophers could illuminate this bright morning lantern for Nigerians. The questions persist this Easter season: Can the President surprise citizens with joy? Can he end the inglorious present and rebirth a Nigerian life designed for patriotic pleasure?
The glitterer's moods are enchanted by numerous elements, roaming back to poems he wrote decades ago. He now presents five of these poems, which remain as alive today as they were in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Retrieved from various anthologies and journals, including Chinua Achebe's Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, these works were published in Afejuku's 1996 collection, A Garden of Moods. They span his early, middle, and late youthful years, characterized by a Shelleyan restlessness.
The Poet's Mind: A Garden of Moods and Abominations
The first poem, The Poet's Mind, depicts the poet's consciousness as a garden of moods where every plant flowers and ripens, free of weeds. It is also a space of memories and ideas, yet one where abominations are hatched—such as a cock hatching eggs or a hen crowing, symbols of unnatural acts. The poet's mind roams everywhere in search of vision, mankind's rarest gift, which shapes our world and well-being.
The Gargoyle: A Symbol of Corruption
In The Gargoyle, written in May 1989, Afejuku uses imagery of impure liquid gushing instead of water, representing the mass liquidation of peace, justice, honor, morale, goodness, and happiness. The poem describes a land plagued by suffering, perjury, and unheroic heroism, where the oppressed, true sons of nature, will eventually be vindicated with their own gargoyle.
How Dark the Clouds Are: A Critique of Power
This poem laments a change that sets the sun, with men wicked, mad, and drunk with power sinking into ruins of tyrannical fame. Initially, they carried people with progressive dreams but became hollow figures hoisted with honors. The country stinks of squalid poverty, where mothers and children eat accursed meals while a few rinse their mouths in sumptuous wealth. Vultures and maggots feast on the dead, and green berets ventilate citizens with bullets to suppress protests, naming places like Benin, Lagos, Ibadan, and Okigwe as homes of corpses.
Land Song: A Defiant Ownership
Land Song asserts ownership of the land, swamps, palms, and mangroves, with a vow to die defending them. Despite judges with swelled pockets and courts wringing the neck of justice, the people claim the soil. Shark brothers may soften official palms, but the raped land will be chastened and restored, and they will live for it.
Evening Prayer: A Plea for Renewal
The final poem, Evening Prayer, describes leeches sucking and draining the land, with anyone who talks made a gaol-bird. It calls on God to send kites from the blues at sunset, so new Nigerians may arise pure, fresh, strong, and guiltless in the morning. They are inspired to cleanse the land, roar the lion's roar, and emit missiles to sink mis-rulers, oppressors, and gluttons—carrions to be dumped in worm-holes for maggots, flies, and vultures. The poem ends with a resolve to chasten the land and wipe away sins with firm purpose.
Afejuku's consciousness addresses his abominable garden and ours, asserting that then and now are not different. He concludes by providing his contact number: 08055213059.
