Wednesday, December 10, 2008

A GIFT OF TRAGEDY

Funso Ayejina's poem is a poem of deliberate deceit and destruction of the people by would-be saviors, the political class. .


And so it came to pass...

And so it came to pass

many seasons after the death of one Saviour

that a new crop of saviours, armed with party programmes

came cascading down our rivers of hope;

poised for the poisoning of our atlantic reservoir

they sought out the foxes in the family

to whom they gave their thirty pieces of silver

in local and foreign exchange

for the secrets of the passage -

way into the castle of our skins...


men we had taken for fearless warriors

as protectors of our secret recipes

suddenly turned crabs, carapace and all

shedding shame like water from duck-backs

seeing sideways beyond the good of all

to the comfort of the selves;

and with their divination bags of tricks

slung over arrogant shoulders

they crawl over our dreams

under the cover of moonless nights

sidestepping traps, destroying hope

they turn our green august of rains,

of showers with which to persuade crops

towards harvest-circles

around whose fire we would have exchanged

happy tales of toil

into an orgy of furious flames...

and so it came to pass

that our saviours gave us a gift of tragedy

for which we are too dumb-struck to find a melody.

- Funsho Ayejina


First verse: As one savior leaves, (s)he is followed by another who believe they have a solution to our problems. First, were our founding fathers, then military officers who took office with the believe that they can do better than politicians. Instead of solving our problems, they ended up destroying our means of livelihood in so many ramifications: agriculture, petroleum, tourism etc.

According to Funso, this destruction was a deliberate and purposeful action as these said saviors went after the Judas' amongst us, the foxes in our family of a nation who were ready to sell our pride and our economic, political and social protective walls or castles, so to speak, for thirty pieces of silver.

Second verse: Funso ironically calls these deceivers, our fearless warriors. Yes, indeed, because that was how the society perceived them before they turned crabs, before they became self-seeking crabs rather than purported loyal and faithful persons who wanted to serve their country and countrymen.

Our savior-crabs do not work at night, that is, where we can clearly observe how they insidiously and deliberately trampled on the dream of a whole nation of people, where we can quickly discover their mission of dashing our post-independence optimistic expectations against the rocks of greed, egotism and hunger for power. As expected, the nation revolted, our savior-crabs struck fast, turning the country into a place of bloodshed, they gave us an orgy of furious flames rather than a full and complete harvest of crops (italics mine).

Our savior-crabs left us a gift of tragedy and misfortune from which the nation did not recover for a very long time. Even a legend like King Sony Ade would have lost his voice if not his balance.

Funso Ayejina pens a poem of irony, of expectations dashed and optimism turned into pessimism. During the sixties and a little after, the nation wanted successive governments to improve their lives, to free them from the dehumanizing shackles of poverty, build good roads rather than what was delivered: a bad economy that is dependent on foreigners, unemployment, a nation with mass reserves of crude oil going abegging. Our natural resources have become poisonous, according to Funsho and I do raise a “yeah” to that.

As much as I do relish crabs, Funsho thinks crabs should not be allowed into Aso-Rock villa, as they were during the sixties. These crabs who work slowly, destroy our dreams with their bags of tricks. Since a major percentage of the country then were illiterate, their bags of tricks had the aid of supernatural powers, maybe babalawos, spiritualists, seers etc. Although slow at getting past our secure walls, the castle of our skin, so to say, they were fast in not being caught but ended up being hailed as saviors.

Funso seems to be shedding tears into the poem. How much of our young men and women were destroyed in the civil war. Those furious flames are being ignited daily: the odi fire disaster and the numerous religious conflicts in the country, Jos being a notorious example. Those furious flames are lit against our rest from our toil, which harvest we never get to reap, our crops never completing the circle to harvest time rather political trickery, violence and orgies eat up the crops of our labor.

This is the gift Funso Ayegina saw; I wish it wasn't ours.


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