By Sunny Awhefeada
Homeland holds significance in many ways. It embodies the physical, psychological and spiritual essence of man. Homeland could be a birthplace or an adopted place of origin. Both ways, a homeland has an endearing and enduring impact on people. It has a pull that is difficult to ignore or avoid. Before modernity and globalization came with displacement and tendency to see everywhere as home, the idea of the homeland carried with it a romantic allure that it became a motif in poetry and music.
The enduring impact of the homeland magic and mystic finds eternal resonance in Evi Edna Ogholi’s “No Place like Home”. Her scribal brothers, Gabriel Okara, Tanure Ojaide, Ibiwari Ikoriko, Joe Ushie, Ogaga Ifowodo, Ebi Yeibo, Obari Gomba, Peter Omoko and Stephen Kekeghe, in their poetry romanticized an idyllic homeland that was lost to capitalist rapacity embodied in oil multinationals and insensitive successive governments under the firm grip of comprador bourgeoisie. People had gone to war to defend their homeland. No matter how far people sojourned in the distant past they always made attempt to return to their homeland.
