Title: Ife Testament
Author: Olusegun Adekoya
Publisher: Bookmind, Ibadan
year: 2020
Pagination: 198
REVIEWER: Henry Akubuiro
The title of Segun Adekoya’s Ife Testament was inspired by Derek Walcott’s Arkansas Testament, a book engaging with racism in the U.S, but race isn’t at the heart of Adekoya’s poetic project here. Nigeria constitutes his primary audience, and the book’s themes revolve around national oddities and, by extension, universal concerns. Some poems in the collection are, however, fragments of dreams.
Adekoya teaches oral literature in the university, and the influence of orature is evident in Ife Testament, especially the Yoruba poetic tradition that plays on words. Ife Testament is a collection written with salient prosody. Sound devices, such as assonance, consonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etcetera, resonate in this collection, strewn with blank verses.
Ife Testament is the testament of a poet interrogating love, life, religion, death, politics, nature, greed, exploitation, depravity, economy and their effects on humanity. The satirical poems are often trailed with gloomy punctuations, but the poet uses these to rouse our grieving hearts to remedy man’s soiled reputations.
Love, in this collection, is not only about showing affection in a raped world. It could also be deceptive love. This deception echoes in the second poem in the “Love Triangle” where a director digs a ditch for his cussed deputy and plans to play Job’s comforter, and the deputy spreads a love net for his lecherous majesty, hoping to move into his palace while he mopes in a mess. Love can also be soothing when the world is grappling with problems and the mind is in despair. In “Love Cave”, we encounter a lover pleading with his partner to fill the missing link in his desire: “I wait at the golden gate of your bough/Open the locket of your hole and let me in/Please, sweetie, release the honey of heaven;/Make me drunk and I’ll pass away in peace” (p. 26).
A Haiku poem in the collection shows the beauty of nature on display. Two dove feathers drop on peacock Valentine’s Day and life springs from dead wings. Again, golden daffodils sprout on gay May Day, and Red Rose licks wine lips.
In “Development Plan”, the poet turns his attention to Nigeria’s counterproductive development plans in which he reviews how far the country has fared on the execution of its development plans, leaving a damning verdict on the arrowheads. The poem tells us that “The bus of Nigeria gets stuck in mud” and “It’s gift of development gives free forbidden feed.”
The speaker narrates that the First National Development Plan zoomed far high skyward, veered and crashed into a war zone. Crude oil came and corrupted the polity. The second national policy also hit the rocks, while the third didn’t fare better. The poet continues to pillory the widespread failure of successive national plans and how the citizens have paid dearly for politicians’ stupidities.
The poet creates disturbing images to drive home the point, such as: “King cobra came, sapped and swallowed the poor/Hacked best brains and sacked hollow healing hands”. The poet laments that palsied hands tremble to hold sands of time in the land where players in the bandstand “grandstand and ground all instruments in their care.” The bard, in addition, blames the blurred vision of the driver and his deputy for weakening the wonky will to amend the failures. On an optimistic note, the poet hopes that there is redemption on the way, as the bus of Nigeria will arrive in style and “rid guts of ruts and guile”.
The poet is concerned with religion, too. In “Dear Jesus”, an address to God’s elect, he revisits the saviour’s might and the miracles wrought by Christ: “You walked narrow nooks and crannies/ spreading the balmy word of wonder”. The poet turns around to chastise today’s preachers, who have become the opposite of what Jesus stood for. The poem laments that our churches are now business centres where treachery alters star altars. He is unhappy with “a callous butcher masquerading as a pastor”.
The implications of England’s exit from the European Union resonates in “Brexit”, while slavery and Uncle Sam’s many sins reverberate in “American Carnage”. The poet hasn’t forgotten the ordeals of the Chibok girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. This is addressed on page 152 in the poem “Chibok Girl”. It’s a poem that leaves you lachrymal.
When the poet screams vociferously “happy new year” in many stanzas of the poem “2020”, you are left gasping how the poet works many dissonant, national parables into fleeting exultations, paradoxically. Adekoya reminds you of the density of Soyinka’s idioms, though they may appear opaque sometimes.