Fayose Vs. The Caliphate’s MACBAN And Their Fake Constitution

By Chinweizu

280516

Sundoor999@gmail.com 

Gov. Ayodele Fayose has emerged as the Champion of the Nigerian people. He is the knight in shining armor who has ridden forth to challenge the organized crime syndicate that goes by the name MACBAN: the criminal organization that has been making human sacrifices to the Caliphate’s Cattle.

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The MACBAN crime syndicate recently boasted that

No one can stop us from grazing in the south — Fulani herdsmen

http://www.punchng.com/no-one-can-stop-us-grazing-south-fulani-herdsmen/  May 1, 2016

Three weeks later, their bluff was called when

Fayose makes history, bans cattle grazing in Ekiti

http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/203917-breaking-fayose-makes-history-bans-cattle-grazing-ekiti.html  May 23, 2016 Press Release

--------------------------------

A battle royal is about to begin. Every Nigerian has to choose a side: The Caliphate’s or Fayose’s.

Every lackey of the Caliphate can be expected to line up behind MACBAN.

But every Nigerian who is concerned about the safety of his farm, home, people or person; and who wants protection from the marauding Fulani herdsmen and Fulani Militia, now knows what to do about that menace: rally behind Faoyse and demand that the governor of your state should act like Gov. Fayose and ban all cattle movement in your state and back it by state legislation. You should hold rallies, pass resolutions, publish petitions calling on your state Gov. to do like Fayose. Let the voices of the people ring out loud and clear throughout the land. Fayose is our hero. Our national leader. The leader of our movement to resist the Caliphate and its criminal MACBAN ritual of human sacrifice!

Buhari, Fayose, Ugwuanyi, And This Bitch Of A Life

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

“If you are neutral in situations of in­justice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“The ultimate tragedy is not the op­pression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Vexed voices have, in exasperation, been asking where Reverend Father Ejike Camillus Mbaka is. They are absolutely right who expect the priest to speak up. People should ask where Bola Tinubu is, the one who covets the feat of unknotting Pandora’s Box. People should be asking where many other previously vocal Nigerians are. People should conduct an investigation on the seemingly abrupt dryness of Niyi Osundare’s inkpot, for he has put an incongruous halt to his fondness for poetizing on national ques­tions. All those experts on radio and television, all those incisive analysts on cyberspace and concourses – know you one thing! People have a right to ask what sneaked in and stole your voices. What crept in and rendered you incapable of standing up? What stealthily stymied your very humanity?

People also have another re­sponsibility, which in fact is more fundamental than pointing accus­ingly at the supposed guilty. People should be asking themselves where they stand.

People will, perhaps, temporar­ily desist from wondering whether Wole Soyinka had embarked on a journey out of the planet Earth. The Nobelist’s voice finally crashed against the wall of eviscerating in­justice: 

“Impunity evolves and be­comes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tol­erance for the serial massacres have become the nation’s identification stamp.

“I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated. The na­tion is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject ap­peasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.

“Let me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse, rigor­ous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram re­pudiate its founding clerics.”

Nigerian Economy: Has Buhari Lost Grip?

By Bola Bolawole 

The advice by Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, that President Muhammadu Buhari summon an emergency meeting on the economy appears on the surface innocuous but deep down, it is fully loaded and ominous.

*Buhari 

On a visit to the Dr. Josef Goebbels of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Soyinka called for an emergency conference on the economy to which people outside government circles will also be invited, such as consumers, producers, Labour unions, experts on the economy, University egg-heads, among others.

Note Soyinka’s exact words: “I think we really need an emergency economic conference, a rescue operation bringing as many heads as possible together to plot the way forward.” We must also note that the Nobel Laureate, being not just a man of letters but also one with an internationally-acclaimed mastery of the English Language, gingerly and delectably picks his words. He means the words that he uses; no idle or wasteful word is allowed.

So, look at the words he chose to employ in just that sentence: “I think we really need…” meaning that it was a carefully thought-out process that brought out his advice; he was not whimsical about it. He did not just wake up from the wrong side of his bed to begin to rant; the advice was his considered opinion.

Our Soyinka Has Gone Wrong Again

*Wole Soyinka and Lai Mohammed

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The first time Wole Soyin­ka misdirected himself, it had to do with his “cautious endorsement” of Muhammadu Buhari’s presi­dential candidacy. He offered a platter of reasons for the stunning faux pas, of course. But, post-election, his out of sync reading of Nigerian politics has been pa­tently exposed.

To recap, it happened that in the run-up to the presidential ballot, Professor Soyinka, long time combatant on the side of the oppressed, announced that the best thing that could happen to Nigeria was a President Buhari. His rationalization:

“It is point­lessly, and dangerously provoca­tive to present General Buhari as something that he probably was not. It is however just as purblind to insist that he has not demon­strably striven to become what he most glaringly was not, to insist that he has not been chastened by intervening experience and – most critically – by a vastly trans­formed environment – both the localized and the global.”

Aware that his about-face would set teeth on edge, Soyinka took the pains to further explain his Road-to-Damascus conver­sion. He had become a Buhari flag-waver, having “studied him from a distance, questioned those who have closely interacted with him, including his former run­ning-mate, Pastor Bakare, and dissected his key utterances past and current.” He underpinned his implausible argument with his location in Buhari of “a plausible transformation that comes close to that of another ex-military dictator, Mathieu Kerekou of the Benin Republic.” 

Junaid Mohammed’s Hate-Rhetoric

By John Otu

The interview published in the Sunday Sun newspapers of December 13, 2015, of Dr. Junaid Mohammed, convener of the Coalition of Northern Politicians, Academics, Professionals and Businessmen, rankled in its sweeping generalization about the current agitations by members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and segments of the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). As I write, before me is Alvan Ewuzie’s mature rejoinder in Daily Sun of Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015 to Junaid’s tirade. Ewuzie’s thoughtful response to Junaid would have sufficed, as it addressed the highlights of Dr. Junaid’s irreverent remarks but a few more issues arising from the notorious interview need to be elaborated upon.

*Junaid Mohammed 

From his hasty conclusions and uncouth language, Junaid betrays his ignorance of Ndigbo and Nigeria’s political history. For him, Ndigbo are a conquered people who should ‘submit themselves’ to the superior race, as it were. Any action displayed by the agitators is thus adjudged by him as typical of Ndigbo. He says rather in an inductive leap, “Showing an open nepotism in what they do is their stock-in-trade. So people then say, “Look we are not going to have these Igbo people as leaders because their nepotism is absolutely intolerable.”

Our self-appointed convener is not done. He passes a peremptory judgment on the Igbo, threatening to report them to President Buhari to withdraw whatever miserable attention he has paid to them, “So if they continue to be unreasonable in this case insisting on getting some key positions or telling Buhari how to run the government, then he needs to take the right step by confronting them…”

My immediate reaction on reading Junaid was to question his claims to lofty pedigree and education.

Biafra As Nightmare And Fantasy

By Okey Ndibe

I have been distressed beyond words by what has crystallized as an agitation for Biafra’s divorce from Nigeria. I am disturbed that this agitation has become another occasion for the Nigerian state to demonstrate its disdain for the rule of law and the rights of citizens. I’m appalled by the violence spawned by the actions of the agitators and the state’s reaction. The immediate impetus for the violent turn is the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), indeed the rabble rouser-in-chief of the neo-Biafran cause.

The government ought to release Mr. Kanu immediately, both because that’s the wisdom of the court and it’s the quickest way to defuse tension.

But Mr. Kanu’s release will not, by itself, erase the frenzied propagation of Biafra, an idea that represents a nightmare to some, and a fantasy to others. Sooner or later—sooner, one hopes, than later—Nigeria has to confront the inescapable question of what it means to be called a Nigerian.

That question (or the reluctance to engage it in any serious and sustained way) is one reason Nigeria has remained an alien and alienating idea, and susceptible to frequent acts of rejection by its ostensible citizens. Periodically, those expressions of everyday individual resentment and disaffection build into mass resistance.

It’s important to put the agitation for Biafra in the broader context of Nigerians’ longstanding disillusionment with their country. For the avoidance of doubt, this is no new phenomenon. Nigeria’s two literary giants, Wole Soyinka and the late Chinua Achebe, have wrestled with the confounding matter of Nigeria. A few years ago, Nobel laureate Soyinka asserted at a series of talks he gave at Harvard University that there was no nation yet in the space called Nigeria. Years earlier, Achebe had said to me in an interview that Nigeria had not yet been founded.

Nothing in the two writers’ claims amounted to a repudiation of Nigeria as such. No, they were making what I’d call statements of fact. The fact that Nigeria had yet to achieve a sense of national identity did not imply that such a prospect was doomed. I’d say that the two writers were warning the rest of us about what needed to be done in order to translate the abstract, ill-formed idea called Nigeria into a concrete, organic, salutary and regenerative reality.

Soyinka’s 60 Reasons (2)—An Investigative Report

By Chinweizu

07feb15

Soyinka says he has 60 reasons for not voting for Jonathan?  

 Is this one of them?

China Signs $23Billion Oil Deal With Nigeria

http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-signs-23-billion-oil-deal-with-nigeria/19390

By Trevor Johnson

Global Research, May 28, 2010

Or is this one of those off-the-radar reasons that it pays not to mention to the people?

Now, about my friend and old sparring partner WS. If you want to know what the Western powers are up to in Nija, you just watch WS. He has been their boy-in-the-hood ever since one of his lecturers at IU inspired him to set up his Pyrates as cover for a Nija network branch of British intelligence. And you think he got his Nobel for his unreadable books? But that’s another story.

Anyway what has that deal, signed in May 2010, got to do with Wole’s pro-Buhari position, or with the momentum of the Buhari campaign despite his being prima facie the Boko Haram candidate?

The report about that China deal concluded on this note:

“Western policy on Nigeria is driven by the super-profits generated from the extraction of oil and its processing. While publicly the US and its allies proclaim the need for democracy and openness, this is window dressing. Anything that impedes their drive for profits, whether from local opposition or from a rival nation, will be dealt with ruthlessly when required. The latest moves by China will have caused consternation in the boardrooms of the big oil companies, and countermeasures are all but inevitable.”

That’s the link, I tell you, to events now unfolding in the 2015 elections.

Is the pro-Buhari campaign momentum part of the countermeasures? An effort at regime change by orchestrated propaganda?

To appreciate that possibility, go watch the film “A Very British Coup” to see how such is done.

But what was the deal for? Why did it give offence and cause consternation in the boardrooms of the western oil giants—Shell, ExxonMobil and the lot?

Why Should I Read Obasanjo’s Book?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

I must congratulate myself on successfully avoiding virtually all of Gen Olusegun Obasanjo’s usually ego-massaging and attention-craving books. I have, for instance, NOT read Obasanjo’s My Command, Not My Will, Nzeogwu, and his other little-known titles.

*Olusegun Obasanjo

(pix: magazine.tcu)

But when his first wife, Mrs. Oluremi Obasanjo, published her book, Bitter-Sweet: My Life With Obasanjo, I went through a lot of stress to purchase a copy. I also wasted no time to read and review it.  Obasanjo had been talking about other people and cutting them down with self-righteous zeal, so I wanted to hear what somebody who had intimately shared a greater part of his life had to say about him.  Indeed, this is one book Obasanjo would not like to be in circulation. But   most people who have read the book would readily recommend it as a background study to anyone interested in reading Obasanjo’s books where he usually presents himself as one of the world’s most righteous human beings and competent leaders. Like one reviewer said and I agree, in societies where the law is alive and active and treats everyone equally, “the allegations against Obasanjo [in that book], if proven in a court of law, would have earned him a long stay in jail.”    

Now, Obasanjo has published another book which he called My Watch and I seriously doubt that I would want to read it. There are several wonderful books lying in my study and begging for my attention, so I would consider it a complete waste of my time to read Obasanjo’s new book, which judging from the snippets published in the media is nothing more than unappetizing potpourri of cassava-market gossip, careless hawking of vicious, libelous allegations, and further futile attempt at self-canonization. His aim, it appears, is to settle some scores with his real or imagined adversaries, undermine President Jonathan’s chances in the February 2015 elections and raise an ear-deafening controversy that would turn the book into an instant best-seller.

Ken Saro-Wiwa: Remembering An Enigma

By Dan Amor

*Ken Saro-Wiwa

Today, Monday November 10, 2014, indubitably marks the nineteenth anniversary of the tragic and shocking death of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen, in the evil hands of professional hangmen who sneaked into Port Harcourt from Sokoto in the cover of darkness. By his death, the Sani Abacha-led military junta had demonstrated, in shocking finality, to the larger world, that it was guided by the most base, most callous of instincts.

We remember him today because, for this writer, as for most disinterested Nigerians, Ken Saro-Wiwa lives alternatively as an inspirational spirit, and a haunting one at that. Now, as always, Nigerians who care still hear Ken's steps on the polluted land of his ancestors. They still see the monstrous flares from poisonous gas stacks, and still remember his symbolic pipe. Now, as always, passionate Nigerians will remember and hear the gleeful blast of the Ogoni song, the song Ken sang at his peril. Yet, only the initiated can see the Ogoni national flag flutter cautiously in the saddened clouds of a proud land. But all can hear his name in the fluttering of the Eagle's wing.

Obasanjo: A Hypocrite And His Epistle

By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

If I know Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, well, he will be beside himself now with joy. He has done what he knows how best to do – monkey business. He is a master in the game of mischief and I will not be surprised if some Nigerians hail him over his letter to President Goodluck Jonathan.

 

 *Amaechi

Soyinka’s Utterance Against Me Is “Aggravated Libel” – Maja-Pearce

Interview With Adewale Maja-Pearce

BY YEMI ADEBISI

Wole Soyinka


How would you describe your experience so far in Nigeria’s book industry?

I’m right now a consultant for Evans. Evans bought over Nelson Publishers and they want to develop together a literary series. I told them we shouldn’t leave the foreign publishers to be publishing Nigerian writers. Some of these old publishing houses publish textbooks for schools. We are ready to publish six papers every year. Instead of waiting for other series, let’s publish the first two so we would generate interest. We would begin to launch our first papers in November at the Lagos Book Fair that is run by Toyin Akinosho. We have to make things happen in Nigeria. Apart from that I have a small publishing company since 2005 called New Gong. So that is really a small fascinating publishing house we have and we don’t physically publish books. We load up a book and then they print, sell it as Print On Demand (POD). We don’t have probably any physical book in Nigeria. If you want to buy it you have to go online to purchase the book. The only problem we have in Nigeria is distribution because in small developed country like South Africa and even in America, the publisher is not involved in selling the book. The publisher goes to train that we have so, so and so copies, bla, bla, bla. So the train has bookshops all over the countries and they will distribute it. So the publisher doesn’t know how they sell the books; we don’t have that in Nigeria.

Adewale Maja-Pearce

Let’s talk about the POD you spoke about. Judging by probably what you have been able to put together, what would you advise an author that wishes to publish through such medium too?

Anybody can do it. If you simply go to our site, there is an icon in the site called ‘create space.’ When the book is ready you upload it, the cover and the inside pages. They will give you a file page so that every of your work will be filed. What you see about a week is your book on our site. We print and sell as requested. And it is a big advantage, a very big one.

There is this rumour that you have some personal grudges with Wole Soyinka over your comments in your review on one of his books. It was even gathered that you were exchanging abusive words publicly. Can you throw more light into this?

Grudge! No! I first met Soyinka shortly after he won the Nobel Prize because I used to work for a magazine in London called Index On Censorship. I was their African editor from 1983 to 1997. So, before I joined, Soyinka had already been published by them and also had written for them. He was familiar with the magazine. So when I joined, I told him, “I am the new African editor. I hope you will continue with us.” We have a means he used to send us materials; we had a good working relationship. The problem came when he published You Must Set Forth At Dawn. I was asked by the London Review of Books to review it. I didn’t like the book so I gave my reasons. So, when it came out people told me that Soyinka didn’t take it kindly with criticism. I was just working for a magazine anyway. 

Should Math Determine Who Can Read English In Nigerian Universities?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

Great expectations are usually piled on our universities as very essential intellectual factories for the production of reliable human resources for achieving our lofty dreams and aspirations as a people. That is what it should be. Every year, the universities are expected to give the country quality graduates whose formal education and other forms of grooming ought to duly equip with sound intellectual, psychological and even ethical properties to assume very important and strategic positions in both private and public institutions for the advancement of national development.  

But what appears to be seriously in doubt now is whether the National Universities Commission (NUC), could still be considered a reliable ally in this aspiration, either because it has run out of quality ideas, or it is being savagely influenced by some unwholesome sentiments within its ranks to, in fact, brazenly sabotage this grand expectation.  It is tragically surprising that we have had to sit passively and watch a handful of men and women that constitute the NUC churn out a cocktail of clearly misguided policies whose only benefit is their ability to effectively erect uncrossable mountains before otherwise brilliant students and promote devastating mediocrity in the university system, with far-reaching implications to the larger society. While several local and foreign observers are bemoaning the quality of the graduates our universities are turning out these days, the NUC is busy compounding the problem by formulating policies that can only further devalue the degrees awarded in Nigeria. 

I wish to examine one of the most offensive and pernicious of these policies, and I would like to begin with an illustration.  A young girl who chose English Studies as a course of study sat for the last Unified Tertiary  Matriculations Examinations (UTME), and passed very well. She went to her university of choice, sat for the Post-UTME tests and performed brilliantly and was offered admission by the university. But when she packed her bags and went to the university to register in order to commence her programme, she met a brick wall. Even though that university had stated in the JAMB brochure that it required a pass in Mathematics to admit students to study English, she was now told at the departmental office that only a credit in Mathematics would qualify her for an admission. Okay, she would be considered if she had a credit in a science subject.  That is what the 'almighty' NUC has decreed.  

Nobel Prize Amounts Reduced

The Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation announced in Stockholm on Monday a 20% reduction in the amounts given to Nobel Prize winners.  Consequently, the 2012 Nobel Prize winners will each go home with 8.0 million Swedish Kronor (equivalent to USD 1.1 million based on the current exchange rate instead of the SEK 10 million or $1.4 million previous winners had received). This is the first time the value of the prize has been reduced since the 63 years it has existed. 

There will also be a drastic reduction in the size and nature of the Nobel Prize annual banquet. In a statement in Stockholm on Monday June 11, 2012 after its meeting, the Nobel Foundation said it regards the measures it is taking as necessary “in order to avoid an undermining of its capital in a long-term perspective.”  
The Foundation's statement is reproduced in full below:

The Nobel Foundation 

Nobelprize.org

---------------------------------

Press Release

June 11, 2012

The Size of the Nobel Prize Is Being Reduced to Safeguard Long-Term Capital

At its meeting on June 11, 2012, the Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation set the amount of the 2012 Nobel Prizes at SEK 8.0 million per prize, at today's exchange rate equivalent to USD 1.1 million. This implies a lowering of the prize sum by 20 per cent. The Nobel Foundation regards this as a necessary measure in order to avoid an undermining of its capital in a long-term perspective.

One of the most important tasks of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the economic base of the Nobel Prize. The capital left behind by Alfred Nobel must therefore be managed in such a way that it will be possible to award the Nobel Prize in perpetuity, while guaranteeing the independence of the prize-awarding institutions.

(L-R) Queen Silvia of Sweden, Princess Madeleine
of Sweden, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Prince
 Carl Philip of Sweden and Crown Princess Victoria
of Sweden during the Nobel Foundation Prize 2008
Awards Ceremony at the Concert Hall  on December
10, 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden. ( Source: Pascal Le
Segretain/Getty Images Europe)

The decision to lower the prize sum, from SEK 10.0 to 8.0 million, is related to the assessment that the Board of Directors makes today of the potential for achieving a good inflation-adjusted return on the Nobel Foundation's capital during the next several years. Another part of the picture is that during the past decade, the average return on the Foundation's capital has fallen short of the overall sum of all Nobel Prizes and operating expenses. The costs of the Nobel Foundation's central administration and the Nobel festivities are therefore being reviewed.

"The Nobel Foundation is responsible for ensuring that the prize sum can be maintained at a high level in the long term. We have made the assessment that it is important to implement necessary measures in good time," says Lars Heikensten, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation.


Professor Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize Winner 

The various organisations in the Nobel sphere also jointly manage large assets connected to the Nobel Prize as a trademark. This includes not only the Nobel Foundation and the prize-awarding institutions, but also the organisations that disseminate information about the Nobel Prize and the achievements of the Laureates, such as Nobel Media and the Nobel Museum in Stockholm and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

Since the Nobel Foundation's capital must be used primarily to pay for the work of the Nobel committees and the prize sum itself, these information activities are essentially externally financed, for example via grants from central or local government authorities, corporate sponsors, private donors, foundations or philanthropic entities.




Nadine Gordmer, Another Nobel Prize Winner
The same is true of the investment in a Nobel Prize Center on the Blasieholmen peninsula in central Stockholm which was announced earlier. The equity of the Nobel Foundation will not be used either for the building or for the operation of a future Center.

"The Nobel Prize Center will become an important base in our long-term efforts to preserve the stature of the Nobel Prize and disseminate the message of the Nobel Prize to a global audience," says Lars Heikensten, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation.



           

Niyi Osundare At 60

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Niyi Osundare

 Recently, Professor Niyi Osundare, poet, scholar, essayist, humanist and patriot turned 60. Unfortunately, the Nigerian environment was most unreasonably saturated with a lot of animal noise and needless tension as a result of the unwholesome and primitive politics that appears to have found fertile ground in these parts, and so an event of such magnitude was grossly under-marked and underreported. 

Sadly, instead of Osundare and his sterling contributions to literature, society and the academia dominating the public space on such a time, exasperating din from mere empty containers, who have done nothing but bleed Nigeria pale since they inflicted themselves on the nation as politicians and resilient leeches, grabbed the front pages. 

 

Niyi Osundare

In a way, that would seem an apt reward for Osundare himself who has over the years used his poetry, essays and public speeches to vigorously combat the ills these people nurture and represent in his consistent struggle to see Nigeria emerge as a strong, decent and well-governed nation, which everyone one of us would be very proud to call our own. 

Osundare’s commitment to his fatherland has remained exceptional. Even in the most hazardous of all times, he had refused to abandon the country, preferring instead to stay put at Ibadan, for his students and Nigeria. His various interventions, usually crafted in very strong but unique and exceptionally beautiful language, has jolted dictators, emboldened the populace and generally contributed rare insights and motivations to the struggle for a better nation.    

The literary community, however, defied the depressing mood of the time, and stood up to honour one of its extraordinary giants on his sixtieth birthday. Readings and lectures were organized at several literary spots to mark the event.

Although I got the invitation to attend the special reading in Osundare’s honour on Saturday March 10, at The Jazzhole, Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, I could not make it. The Association of Nigerians Authors (ANA) also met at the National Theatre that same evening for its monthly reading, which it dedicated to the great poet. There were other equally exciting gatherings of the tribe at other venues in Ibadan and Lagos and Ikere Ekiti, where the leading poet was, was most deservedly, wrapped with shinning encomiums and celebrated with enchanting chants.  

It is now widely accepted that Osundare is Africa’s finest poet. His way with words is distinct and rare. It is impossible to read Osundare’s poetry and not be awed by his great insights, and overwhelmed by the great talent he betrays, and the exceptionally overpowering way he deploys words to great effects. His ability to create very vivid and lasting imageries in the mind of the reader, the rhythms he realizes so effortlessly, and the deep, fresh meanings his poems yield each time one reads them, are what, in my view, makes his work stand out all the time. 

Osundare’s 1988 collection, Moonsongs (Ibadan: Spectrum Books), remains my favourite of all his works I have read, and each time I want to thoroughly enjoy myself, admire exceptional talent and immerse myself in the overwhelming power and exhilarating aura of well loaded words, I always go to Moonsongs. And like the poet sang to the moon in the book, I would implore his poetry to “mother me in the surging valley of [her] knowing bosom”. 

Perhaps, it is only the moon that can “heal the scars of wounded winds” as the cricket, perhaps, overwhelmed by the immaculate brightness of the full new moon seeks to “slit night’s silence with the scalpel of its throat.”

It is impossible to read Moonsongs, and not see yourself under the immaculate brilliance of a moonlit night. It is so pleasantly real. 

Though a great and loud admirer of Osundare, I have neither met him nor made any attempts to do so, but as I read Moonsongs once again, to mark his birthday, I longed for a full bright moon to “spread” across the sad Lagos “sky like a generous mat”, to illumine my environment, and sack the gloom and darkness that has become an inevitable feature of existing in a badly run country like Nigeria, so I could compose and sing my own “moonsongs” to celebrate this great bard. For which day would be most appropriate to do this than on a moonlit night, when the smile of the moon “ripens the forests”, and men and women are bathed with its golden glory.  

Niyi Osundare

 

Spread the sky like a generous mat
Tell dozing rivers to stir their tongues
Unhinge the hills
Unwind the winds

The moon and I will sing tonight.(Moonsongs, p.1) 

I derive immense pleasure from devouring any essay, poetry or interview by Osundare, or anything written on him or his work. I make it a habit to update my collection of materials on him. His words carry almost that same sagely weight, insight and originality that one hears only in the likes of Chinua Achebe. 

 It is always painful to remember that we would have lost Osundare to Hurricane Katrina which wreaked havoc in some parts of the United States in 2005. When the toxic water took over their apartment, Osundare and his wife fled to the attic and were there in the intense heat, without any drinking water, food, electricity, or any means of communication for 26 hours. Later they were rescued by a neigbour who had come around with a boat, perhaps, to pick some things from his own house. 

“That was our escape”, Osundare told the Voice of America (VOA) in October 2005. “It was purely accidental. If our neighbour hadn’t come, we would have been part of the statistics by now.”  

At the time this disaster occurred, Osundare was a professor of English at the University of New Orleans. And when he wrote the following words in the dedication page of Moonsongs,  it was doubtful if he ever thought it would one day celebrate his own triumph over death in New Orleans: 

For
all who stood for
 life
when twilight
 thundered in
with a cavalry of howling axes and death suddenly sprang
from the armpit of waking stars
But Earth said No
to their crimson plot…
Noon yet, then,
at our forge of busy bellows
We shall break many
 Moons
on the elbow of the river
deep, ever so deep,
like the rainbow of a thousand dreams.

We are grateful to God that Osundare survived Hurricane Katrina. Although he had lost to the floods most of the things he valued so much: his books, manuscripts, computer files and more, I agree with the person who said that what he has is greater than what he lost, for the brain from where the contents of those lost manuscripts emanated remains fertile and active. 

This is wishing the great poet, scholar and crusader many happy returns of the day.

——————————————————

First published in SCRUPLES,  my Wednesday column in the Independent (www.independentngonline.com ) on March 28, 2007.

scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

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