NIGHT OF HORROR*
(When a cache of mine-size dynamite lives in a neighbourhood bedroom)
I
The year was young Our woes were oldThe day plodded to a dusty twilight Unfazed by the harmattan hassle
Then came the wails of a lampless night When supper lost its way to penniless homesAnd the night masticated the moon Like a hapless morsel
The minaret was mum The bell tower loomed forlornIn its tongueless height The wind wound a whisper
Round the restless lips of absent horns Pigeons coed ceaselessly in their busy holes……And suddenly, so suddenly, A blast, a big, battering blast
And the evening’s blissful quiet Was shattered into a thousand bewildering shredsThe ground shook beneath our feet Solid mansions crumbled like cardboard boxes
Flipped luxury cars littered the streets Like piles of scrap yard junkThe road now is a running tale Of broken glass and mangled metal
II
It all happened in the famous part Of a famous city; proud, gentle zoneOf the top cream, tempered by law and learning; Mapped out and built once upon a very long time
When place-builders doubled as people-builders And Statesmen were wise and just and cleanArchitects of multiple mandates who knew How to turn a house into a home
That was once upon an epoch When leaders THOUGHT before they actedAnd “life more abundant” was in every way More than an empty slogan
Now, the Grand Old Dream Has withered into a deadly nightmareWhere the Law is dead, the wrong is right. . . . A mountain of military-type dynamite
Has become a furniture item In a top-class residential havenA corrupt “carry-go” security conspiracy imperils Our being even in our safest enclaves
A big battering blast has shaken us to our very roots Behold venerable old men and women crawlingOut of their rubbled homes, their heads double-grey From the ashes of their blighted bowers
Here they are in wreck and ruin: Glorious legacies of Master-Builders of oldNow houses of horror In this era of prodigal inheritors
* In the evening hours of 16 January, there was a massive explosion caused by loads of dynamite piled up in a house in a top-class Ibadan neighbourhood, resulting in human casualty and the destruction of many respectable houses. The vibration from the blast was felt 20 miles away. The most devastating peacetime blast in this part of Nigeria. Are you still wondering how deadly dynamite became a welcome domestic furniture item in a country of multiple laws and zero compliance. Ask the demon called Corruption and watch it come up with a thousand answers….
Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.