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Lagos of the Poets
By Odia Ofeimun
Hornsbill House (Lagos)
403pp

The 112 poems in
this large compendium boast a variety of people who share a single
passion: Lagos. These poets make up a mix of binaries: young and old,
seasoned and inexperienced, Nigerians and foreigners, and they all have
something to say about this cosmopolitan city by the sea, a former
capital of Nigeria, the smallest state in the country, but one of the
most populous.

The city repels and
attracts, depending on the visitor or resident. Many have sworn never
to stay within its gripping hold, and they wonder, shaking their heads
in disbelief, on how the residents cope. They hear it is a land of
evil, for you cannot trust anyone. They say pick-pockets roam
everywhere, stationed especially at bus stops, ready to strike. These
self-appointed critics quake at the moving mass of people, always doing
things in a hurry, rushing to eat, struggling to board a moving
commercial bus, panting to spew out the insults and abuses for the
Johnny Just Come, who are slow and sluggish and would not move out of
the their way quickly enough. Lagos!

To residents in
other states, this city that never sleeps is overflowing with the
biblical milk and honey for those who can dare, who can pocket their
shyness, self consciousness, shame and embarrassment, and carry out any
business – sell pure water, wash dirt and caked mud off the feet of
buyers and traders at the popular Mile 12 market, carry old and young,
children or adult, on their backs across the swiftly-moving brown
waters that has overflowed the city, fry crusty golden bean cakes,
buns, and puff-puff at the ever busy bus stops, anything at all that
demands quick thinking, courage, nimble feet, and an attitude of
service. To these, Lagos is gold. And to those that find the whole
process too demanding, there are other ways to skin a cow.

This Lagos

Many of the poems
in this anthology revolve around popular places in Lagos: Victoria
Island (80, 81), Allen Avenue (pp. 6, 112, 209), Oshodi (pp. 25, 46,
70), Marina, Ikoyi (pp. 2, 94), Ajegunle (pp.3), Maroko (pp.78, 149,
243, 247, 249, 294, 327,), Okokomaiko (pp. 265), Ojuelegba (pp. 263),
Idumota (pp.261), Obalende CMS (pp. 259), Lagos Island (pp. 69), Tinubu
Square (pp. 75), Mile 12 Market (pp. 224), amongst others. Many of the
poems also have ‘Lagos’ as titles; The longest poem in the collection
is Femi Fatoba’s ‘Eko’, consisting of 18 pages (pp.154).

In these poems,
varying issues, questions, queries, observations, judgements are raised
and splashed on the pages. The poets exhibit emotions ranging from
sadness, disgust, love, passion, excitement, humour, awe, fascination
at a city that has continued to be regarded as pivotal to the
development of the country as a whole.

Many pieces display
a fascination with the old Oshodi, that sprawling, overcrowded, rowdy,
and confused arena, where people push and shove, and contest with
vehicles for limited space; a place that glorifies pick-pockets, area
boys, cheats, deceitful traders, and all sorts. It was a place where
orderliness resided in fear under beds and in cupboards, afraid to
challenge the man’s inhumanity to man. Wumi Raji’s poem, ‘On Seeing a
Dead Body at Oshodi’ (pp. 25) captures the absurdity of it all:

Women hawking their wares

Children munching their bread…

Nobody cares.

The poet bemoans
the insensitive attitude of people to a corpse, a body that had once
breathed and moved about, like them. People choose life above death,
they harden their conscience against feeling, for any pain, sigh, or
sadness for the corpse will drag them down, sapping them of the energy
they need to face the challenges of living.

Ogaga Ifowodo also
sees death and dying in Oshodi, by juxtaposing the surrounding frenzy
with the stillness in the corpse of a twelve-year-old girl (“A mere
girl of twelve!”). Unlike the people in Raji’s poem, Ifowodo’s ‘She Lay
Dying at Oshodi’ portrays bystanders who display “impotent words of
sorrow, where love, lacking muscle, weeps in little graves” (line 47).
Here, the people’s emotions are “impotent” and “lacking muscle” because
these cannot bring life back into the dead girl.

Allen Avenue

Uche Nduka’s ‘Allen
Avenue’ (pp. 6–10) paints a picture of one of the commercialised parts
of Lagos, boasting an array of industries, eateries, and nightclubs.
The poet paints a picture of confusion, carnality, and disorderliness
and his effort to make sense of it all. He makes use of words like
“booze”, “smoke”, “rock”, and “girls” to depict the well-known social
life of the area.

Continuing in the
negativity generally ascribed to the city, Lola Shoneyin’s ‘No Springs
in this City’ searches in vain for elements of light, freshness, and
joy:

There are no springs in this city

The buds burn before they bloom

The birds are hoarse

(line 11 – 13).

In Ben Okri’s three-part poem, ‘Darkening City; Lagos’, he screams out in horror,

City of tainted mirrors!

City of chaotic desires!

(lines 1 – 2)

Austyn Njoku’s
‘Lagos Island’ (pp. 69) crashes the “honking”, “screaming”, “groaning”,
“moaning”, and “shrilled tones” of the town into the reader’s
consciousness.

But Gabriel Okara’s
‘One Night at Victoria Beach’ (pp. 57) soothes the agony of the reader
by raising imageries of calm, coolness, freedom, and beauty usually
associated with beaches.

J.P. Clark
Bekederemo, in his poem, ‘Maroko’, reminds the reader of what happened
in history, when the then military governor of Lagos State, Raji
Rasaki, in July 1990, ordered gun-wielding soldiers with bulldozers to
demolish a whole community of people in Maroko. He hailed this military
administrator for performing the feat:

Man of action defying all laws

Has done in seven days clear

What God and war did not in many a year

In ‘Victoria
Island’ (pp. 80) and ‘Victoria Island Revisited (pp.81), J.P.Clark
Bekederemo lambasts the rich for appropriating ‘the common good’ to
themselves and loved ones:

In the interest of the public

They took over land……

They say the sea is raging at the Bar

Beach of Lagos…..

Next they will be drawing upon

The public purse to salvage the hulk

Glorifying the city

However, some of
the poems glorified the beauty of Lagos, and praised its vibrancy,
colours, and industriousness. The late soldier-poet, Mamman J. Vatsa,
in his poem, ‘Reach for the Stars’ (pp. 89), pines to go back to Lagos,
away from the dullness of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory:

Take me back to Lagos

Where everyone is a boss

Keep your new Capital City

It’s too much of a pity

I’m rushing back to my Lagos

Where everyone is a boss

His poem refers to
the entrepreneurial spirit of residents of Lagos, and the financial
independent of many in the informal sector.

Contrary to
Shoneyin’s ‘No Spring in this City’, Niyi Osundare presented a town
within the state that everyone aspires to live in: Ikoyi. In the poem,
titled as such, Osundare romanticises the moon (“a laundered lawn”),
the doors “romp on lazy hinges”, while the ceiling “is a sky weighted
down by chandeliers of pampered stars.”

Other poems talk about social issues like area boys, house girls, slums, commercial vehicles, market women and men, and others.

And while Nigerians
hope that the elections of this year will go well, so that we would not
have “to vote with stones”, like Uzor Maxim Uzoatu asked the electorate
to do in his poem, ‘We Shall Vote with Stones’, when the results of the
June 1993 presidential elections were annulled, Lagosians remain
vigilant as another round of elections hold this year; the electorate
get ready to apprehend anyone or group who/which plans “to diddle
massive Lagos votes.”

The compendium makes a bold effort in documenting for posterity the
history, issues, peoples, politics, and culture of a thriving city that
has refused to be confined to a narrow minded label.