NIGHT OF HORROR*
Prof. Niyi Osundare
Published By: pmnews By Niyi Osundare (When a cache of mine-size dynamite lives in a neighbourhood bedroom) I The year was young Our woes were old The 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 homes And the night masticated the moon Like a hapless morsel The minaret was mum The bell tower loomed forlorn In 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 shreds The ground shook beneath our feet Solid mansions crumbled like cardboard boxes Flipped luxury cars littered the streets Like piles of scrap yard junk The 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 zone Of 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 clean Architects of multiple mandates who knew How to turn a house into a home That was once upon an epoch When leaders THOUGHT before they acted And “life more abundant” was in every way More than an empty slogan Now, the Grand Old Dream Has withered into a deadly nightmare Where the Law is dead, the wrong is right. . . . A mountain of military-type dynamite Has become a furniture item In a top-class residential haven A 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 crawling Out 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 old Now houses of horror In this era of prodigal inheritors
* In the evening hours of January 16, 2024, there was a massive explosion caused by loads of dynamite piled up in a house in a top-class Ibadan neighborhood, 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…
- NIGHT OF HORROR*
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*Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.
