In the second part of the poem, the “theatre of the absurd” that had characterized the
nation since independence, climaxed in the material time of 1997.^63 The nation was
continually plagued by the same political undoing, the syndrome of which shows that
“several times the rule of succession/ has been broken by strong hands/ and none of the
princes of the patriarch/ can claim right of succession without a war” (50). In particular,
“Home Song III”, reflects on the crisis that General Abacha’s regime bred. His case
compares with that of “The complete gentleman [who] transforms into an ogre/ before
our very eyes” (51).^64 The ruthlessness with which he handled Niger Delta agitation for
resource control and ecological protection was perhaps best seen in the state murder of
Ogoni activists including Ken Saro-Wiwa. But beyond the Niger Delta, his iron hand
held tight on the nation and provided easy access to Euro-American multinational oil
corporations for milking the oil resources of the nation. It should not then come as a
surprise that in the northern city of Kuru, the reflection becomes vicarious, measuring the
extent of state damage of confidence in nationhood: “Epidemics have broken out all over
the land/& misery like convulsive miasma spills into every home now half-blind and
hard of hearing, my people/ stare at themselves grave patients/ without herbs or healers in
sight” (59). Although the sixth part of the poem is a revitalized hope for the people as
“We’ll not all die from the tyranny of ogres/ in the rain-flushed season of our troubles”,
the incongeniality of city dwelling already overwhelms most people caught in its vortex.
“City in my Heart” for instance, provides the contrast that the northern city of Jos
conjures when the oil city of Warri is mentioned. Thus, the celebration of the ecological
sanity of Jos becomes for the Niger Delta poet, a lamentation of a subnational texture
over the dirt and pollution that have turned Warri as well as other Niger Delta cities into
an eyesore. The environmental neglect which is one of the many ways of “killing the
goose” (Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas (2003:56) has also aggravated the whimsical
state campaign of exclusion and unemployment that runs hand in hand with the
multinational corporations’ collusion to “diminish the humanity of every person and
63
This year was the peak of military dictatorship under General Abacha; the despot died in the following
year, paving the way for the restoration of democratic rule. 64
The initial impression of many Nigerians of the dictator was that of a mild-mannered and compassionate
ruler; but he soon turned out to be perhaps the worst ruler the nation has known.