cities also shows the exponential threat of globalization in dynamics of the cities and how
the dystopian condition that results becomes an inducement for exile.
To draw an illustration from “Home Song” alone, a poem in nine parts, one encounters a
constellation of issues which mill in cities of other parts of the country. It then points to
the nationalist consciousness of Ojaide, but this does not occlude his subnationalist
vision. In “Home Song I”, a poem that reflects on the city of Abuja, the capitalist
tendencies of charismatic churches in the country come under criticism. By Nigerian
standards, Christianity may not be a new phenomenon; but the recrudescence of
excessive emphasis on prosperity in most recently established sects is. And if thus
considered, the American antecedent of this new wave of sectarian tendency throws light
on the subtlety through which the idea of capitalist disposition legitimated through
processes of new forms of communication take toll on Nigerian populations in the cities.
In the poem, the streaks of paradox that dog the practice range from how “robbers of all
denominations assemble from all states/ to share the loot of faith” to the mocking of
“gospel of flagellation” by “rotund and bright bodies”. Whereas in other places,
“devotees would incur sore knees/ to exorcise hell”, and people overfill church “with
tithes from robbery” (48). With these scenarios a dog-eat-dog kind of situation has
already been created, whereby the nation’s capital is turned into a site for the
constellation of “robbers” from different states of the country. While, on the one hand, it
is an indictment of the complicity of religion in the oppression of the masses, it also
exposes, on the other hand, how the political elite and economic merchants, who are
corruptible beneficiaries of the gross mismanagement of the country, have turned the
capital city into a hideout including its religious centres. Yet the piety of other
worshippers in other places is without the ostentation and flamboyance of the so-called
Abuja worshippers. Not surprisingly then:
The horizons blank of stars and storms,
there’s fear of empty souls serenading the ogre
to their pocket advantage and praise
& we await with fevered hearts
the wails to follow the delusion of faith...” (49).