CHUKS OLUIGBO
Six years ago when
Nigeria marked the golden jubilee of its political independence, a handful of
budding and established writers in Owerri, the Imo State capital, under the
aegis of Mbari Literary Society decided to stage a mini poetry contest around
the theme of Nigeria at 50. The literary output was overwhelming and,
expectedly, all the works turned in were lamentations.
Nnenna Ihebom, social
commentator, newspaper columnist and multiple award-winning author of Patriots
and Sinners, submitted “Memories”, a poem that laments how “The feel of
newfound freedom” that ushered in “the birth of a baby state”, “The thunderous
shouts of joy / That greeted morning light / The proclamation hoisted / At the
peak of a towering dream” have given way to “tombs of virile dreams” and urges
that “cannons hold their peace / Let drummers stop the noise / Let the healing
job be done / Then the morn of joy may dawn”.
Chidozie Chukwubuike,
playwright, teacher and author of The Poet Wept and Other Poems, who
recently completed his tenure as chairman of the Association of Nigerian
Authors (ANA), Imo State chapter, wrote “Golden Jubileeation”, in which the
poet-persona, addressing a hypothetical character called “Country man”,
unleashes a barrage of rhetorical questions, such as when “the ‘G’ of our
greatness vaporised / And the `I' of ancestral intelligence vanished / Leaving
behind the ant in Giant / The …ant of Africa”. Distraught that after “Fifty
years of toil without a hill / The ant remains in the hole / Wallowing in self
pity”, the persona asks: “What shall we sing / For this ant at fifty?”
Ikenna D. Ebuenyi’s “At
Two Scores and Ten” decries how “A quasi union / Was foisted / On a people of
diverse thoughts / Forced to speak alike / The cacophony of / This marriage
cries / Like Babel to high heavens”.
Henry Chidubem wrote
“Blooms in Seasons of Adversity”, and Yours Truly submitted “Cursed Shadow of a
Blessed Woman”. And there were a couple of other submissions that I can’t
readily recall their titles.
That evening, as we all
gathered at a small hall within the precincts of Imo State Council for Arts and
Culture (a.k.a Mbari Cultural Centre) in Owerri to listen to all the poets
render their lines, it was like a commemoration of the sad chapters of
Nigeria’s history.
In the end, the amiable
Uche Peter Umez, award-winning author of Dark through the Delta and
other books, who came in handy as the judge of the day, picked “Cursed Shadow
of a Blessed Woman” as the winning poem. Below is the full text of the
poem:
“Years back I saw through
a crack in the wall / the cursed shadow of a blessed woman / struggling
frantically, sweating profusely / through a chequered life; / headless,
blinded, fettered, crippled / by years on end of violent rape / by depraved
minds, foreign and local; / incapacitated by decades of forced marriages, / of
extorted passionless kisses, of host-parasite unions, / of perjured oaths, of
solemn vows / broken between the vestry and the altar, / and, o! –
“I looked again this
morning and there it was still – / an adult country crawling clumsily / on its
underbelly like an overfed python, / and I wondered aloud: / how much longer
shall we linger / in this wilderness? / And who will answer the riddle / of these vile
enchanters? / Who? O who?”
Today, at the dawn of
Nigeria’s 56th independence anniversary, as I reflect on those
poems of 2010, I realise how much worse things have become ever since and how
deeper down the cesspool we have sunk. It reminds me of Sisyphus.
In Greek mythology,
Sisyphus, the son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete, was the founder and
first king of Ephyra (Corinth). He was avaricious and deceitful; the craftiest
of men. Sisyphus seduced his niece, took his brother's throne, and committed
numerous offences against the gods, such as betraying Zeus’ secrets.
When Zeus ordered
Thanatos (Death personified) to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus, Sisyphus outwitted
Thanatos and chained him instead. As a punishment from the gods for his
trickery, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a particular huge rock up a steep
hill, only to watch it roll back down, forcing him to begin again, and to
repeat this throughout eternity. In other words, he was bound to an eternity of
frustration.
This, sadly, is the
Nigerian story. Fifty-six years after independence, Nigeria is still at the
foot of the same steep hill where it began in 1960, still struggling in vain to
roll up the same rock, still trying to solve the innumerable bottlenecks that
have held it down almost since the dawn of creation – leadership deficit,
tribalism/ethnicism, widespread corruption, social injustice and inequality,
indiscipline, etc.
Over the decades, it has
been all motion without movement. Rather than improve, things have gone
from bad to worse as each problem continues to reproduce its kind and assume
wider dimensions.
Today, as I write,
things keep getting worse. As the economy continues to totter on the edge of a
cataclysmic chasm and more and more Nigerians cross the red line into the
region of abject poverty, the lamentation in the land has reached sobering
proportions. The saddest part is that there are no signs that things are going
to get better tomorrow.
So, I ask again, “How
much longer shall we linger in this wilderness? And who will answer the riddle
of these vile enchanters? Who? O who?
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