Taking Nigeria seriously: Odia Ofeimun at 70!

So it was that we, poets, journalists and writers who take ourselves more seriously than the rest of the country takes us, gathered in the serenity of an auditorium at the University of Lagos, to take Nigeria seriously in academic and scholarly discussions, because Odia Ofeimun who takes Nigeria seriously crept into the pantheon of septuagenarians! It was a feast of the word by men of the word who managed to pull resources together in celebration of the rambunctious and cerebral poet whose legacy is already written in verse and prose in a heap of books mountainous enough to make a communal library! Were we deluded into thinking that we could make a difference in a country that has been beaten and defeated by acidic rain spilling from the heaven of incompetence, rapacity, greed and intense myopia?
     
From across the country, across the Atlantic came men and women with different connections to Odia, filled with testimonies of commitment, tenacity, material poverty, intellectual wealth and political sagacity. Testimony of an academic, Professor Biodun Jeyifo, who flew in from America despite doctor’s no-fly orders to give a keynote speech, which helped us, enthusiastic celebrants give history to the man Odia! This poet who loves to take Nigeria seriously, had once ventured into politics with the dream of Chief Obafemi Awolowo to turn Edo State into a model. He was stopped at the train station and sent back to the heap of books somewhere in Oregun. Did he come back with tail between legs subdued and dispirited after the climate of exclusion became clear to him? No. He had prepared himself for the journey with arms of knowledge, of history, knowing that even siblings do not share fish with the same equanimity with which they eat eba or pounded yam or amala!
     
The poet as iconoclast, bubbling with ideas had served as private secretary to a sage whom the Nigerian people once rejected for a primary school teacher. So, he had sipped waters of wisdom from the fountains at Ikenne to ready him for encounters life-changing, if need be. The political terrain in physical terms is shark-infested and strangers cannot break in if cash is not flowing in billions. That is the story. That is the tragedy. That is the narrative that holds the nation Odia wants to take seriously! It is a hard sell, this story. Take a nation seriously that is locked in the pockets of tenth century herders in a twenty-first century world? Herders who perceive power only from possessing it, not for its transformative powers!