Title – Eclipse of Justice
Author - Ogechi Ezeji
Page - 195
Year of Publication – 2017
Reviewer – Ifesinachi Johnpaul
Nwadike
It
is gradually picking a trendy blaze for individuals to court one of the genres
of literature as a conduit for the appraisal or otherwise of his or her
profession, especially when such individual is not “schooled” in the area of
literature but creatively delves into the field and scurry home an artistic
point. One of such contemporary Nigerian writer/professional is Dami Ajayi,
whose publication of Clinical Blues (2014)
heralded the arousal of the creative orgasm of medical practitioners, as well
as other professionals, in the business of literature and poetry in particular.
Hence, one is not taken aback at all to have a poetry collection from a legal
practitioner, who, as a matter of fact bagged both B.A. and M.A degrees in the
Literature department.
Eclipse
of Justice, in its metaphorical sense, is a handy down-dressing of judicial
excesses and Ogechi Ezeji’s debut poetic offering to the literary world from
the legal corridor of judicial mansion, perhaps, the remnant neat corner. It is
a collection of 113 poems of various but almost related thematic preoccupation,
culminating as it were, into 195 pages. Ogechi’s judicial standpoint may have
informed her coherent and organic ordering of the poems, given the very fact of
her copious division of the poems into uniform sections of relative subject
matters. The sections total a number of six, the largest being the first
section and simply but unfortunately referred to as The Eclipse.
The Eclipse is layered with sixty
poems, which is at best, a demythologization of the legal mystic; a
deconstruction of the ‘isms’ and schisms of the bar and demystification and
tongue – lashing of “judicial masquerades” who glory in the despoliation of the
noble profession. Like the blind goddess, wielding cudgels and swinging on the
pendulum of justice, Ogechi Ezeji dons the garb of a sanitizer, armed with
poetic whips in both hands, runs into the courtroom to sack the pigs who
desecrate the revered place. Perhaps, Ogechi is replicating what Christ did in
the temple when its keepers and clergy nearly turned it into a market place. It
is said that until a man doses himself with alcohol, he may not be able to
gather the drunken rage required to speak in protest to a higher and oppressive
authority. But Christ is a God and he had whips, Ogechi is no Christ or any God
in the immortal sense, so her potent weapon is words versed in haunting poetic
lines. Obviously disenchanted with most courts around, the poet speaker in the
very first poem sets out “In Search of a Court of Justice”, branding herself a
“searcher”. Hear her voice:
I go from the roaring Niger River to the sandy sands of the sahara
From the
mangroves of Oloibiri to the confluence city of Lokoja
From the rocky
rocks of Abeokuta to the calling chad basin. (3)
And, as expected of the doomed
places she was mentioning, she was destined to find none, hence, she lament
thus:
I see a court of frontloading and back loading
A
court of substantive and procedural abracadabna
A
court of appellate and cross-appellate lack of jurisdiction.(4)
In what sounds more like an
inconsolable tone, the persona laments further:
I see a court of judicial juggling
A court of learned
loggerheads
A court of legal
lope-sidedness (4)
But of course, such “judicial
juggling” is not novel to those of us in this part of the world. The unnecessary
rigmarole and seeming scripted tussle among legal practitioners, is one of the
major contributing factors of delay in justice delivery, thereby clogging the
passage of the badly needed justice. This is outside the very many external
influences and political incursions. But recognizing the fact that all and
sundry have a role to play, both the wig-wearers and the justice-seekers, the
persona concludes, almost in an admonitory tone:
Perhaps the justice I seek is me.
Perhaps the justice I seek is
you.
Perhaps the justice I seek is
us. (4)
In,
“I Weep for you, Blind Goddess with Scales”, the persona in the poem laments
the misapplication of justice on behalf of the “Blind Goddess” by the “priests”
of the “temple”, who, after receiving bribe, “put stones on the side of the
guilty/And feathers on the side of the innocent/knowing that you strike only at
the tilt of your scale”. (13) That’s why the poet persona is “wary of the man
who carries portfolio full of books in the day”, but later turns to wear the
“wooly garb of dishonor at night”. (8). As if one is not suffering enough in
the hands of the “Absentee Judge” (17) who “fiddle with the destinies of the
those who worship in” its “temple” by always being absent from court, one also
have to contend with the soul-less “Legal Aid” (14) who all but milk a justice
seeker dry in fruitless bid to fast-track his case:
But you have to come with a very tiny token
For payment of filling fees
Remember there is a lot to be
filed....
All the processes and affidavits,
Joinders and rejoinders
Amendments and further
amendments
Will cost but a tiny
token....(14)
In situations where a justice –
seeker is so poor and cannot afford this exorbitant “tiny token”, he may have
to:
... write an application better to
The Honourable Chef Judge
Telling him, you are the
commonest among the commons....
Go home and spend some
patient months, perhaps, year. (15)
Such disheartening expositions
and true occurrences is in sharp contrast with the appellation of the court as
“the last hope of the common man”.
Section
one could be best described as Ogechi’s chronicling of the ills and rots in the
Nigerian judiciary system. She bewails, sometimes with biting sarcasm, the
ruthless rubbishing of an establishment every home aspires to lay claim to one
of its numerous practitioners because of its enticing nobility. Poems like,
“Another market season is Here”, “A Thousand Attack-Dog at my Service”, “Legal
Tussle”, “Conflicting Laws: Judgments at War”, “I am Remote Control” etc, are
handy correctional verses that x-ray these ills.
Section
Two, titled, On Humanity, Human Rights
and Humanitarian Issues, heralds the true manifestation of the poet-artist
in Ogechi. It is intricately interweaved with poignant lines and disturbing
human welfare questions, tearing consistently at the fabrics of our collective
consciences; the spoilers of the universe. The subject matters of Refugees;
street beggars; Paedophiles and all other forms of child abuse; the issues of Feminism
and Motherism; Gay Rights; Colonialism and its devastating sibling – Neo-colonialism;
Insurgency; Ghetto living; etc all take centre stage in this heart-rending yet
controversial section, worthy of a separate medallion as a result of its
humanistic appeal. Through humanistic lenses, Ogechi probes the human
consciousness and how often we care about those “Fleeing for Life for World
Refugees”, “Our Siblings in Special Clothing”, the “Owner of Tomorrow”, etc.
These are, in Frantz Fanon’s terms, “The Wretched of the Earth” who should be
catered for in lieu of abusing them or insulting the innocence of the little
girl-child among them, as in the poem, “Just a word of Advice”, where the
persona cautions a chronic paedophile to refrain from “eating a sour premature
Lime”. (93)
“Commissioner’s
conversation with a Shanty Dweller” is a piece that stares hard into our faces.
Though, on the surface, it speaks of a misunderstanding between an Honourable
Commissioner and a Shanty Dweller, but on a deeper level, the poem is a
figurative comparison of the alarming wide gap between the haves and the have-nots.
The poem is a dramatic monologue, highly reminiscent of Niyi Osundare’s “Olowo
debates Talaka” contained in Songs of the season. Both poems share,
perhaps, coincidental similarities, especially the condescending tones of both
bourgeoisie, as well as the defiant tone of both proletariats. Such poems may
earn Ogechi a notable seat in the school of Marxists, but she may need another
buttock to sit in the feminists’ school, for such poems as “Her Housekeeping Machine”,
“His Good Wife”, “Make Her your Beloved”, etc, quickly recommend her to the
feminists. The persona’s tone in “His Good Wife”, says it all:
See her on every street
On her way to work
On her way to the church
On her way to the market
Everywhere.
Loaded with experience and
burden
The burden of things unsaid
Docility and passivity, her
overweighing ornaments.
And one would not think that
she is his equal half... (92)
The
Third section of the collection, highlights the unnerving situation of the
declining rate of law education in Nigeria, and here, Ogechi succeeds in taking
us to the classroom to educate us and to whom it may concern that to combat the
rapid decline, raising modern faculty bocks for law studies across the country
is not just enough. She calls for ideological reorganization because according
to her, it “Polluted from Source”:
Our
water and wine of justice get polluted from source
Let there be no whining from
brothers in
This water – fetching and
wine – tapping venture
Has life not always
been a garbage-in, garbage-out venture? (12)
Section
Four is labeled, pidgin peppersoup, and here, Ogechi tests her artistic prowess
with versatility and language variety, code-switching, as it were, from Queen’s
English to Pidgin English – a variety of lower English language, popularized in
Nigerian literature by the likes of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ezenwa-Ohaeto. Poems in
this section are immersed in the allegorical ocean, perhaps, the medium of
pidgin armed the poet with various allegorical experimentation lenses, for,
whereas the poet was found talking direct in other sections, especially section
one, this section saw Ogechi using abstract images to make allusions to her
intended subject matters, and the result is even more effective and poetic. For
instance, one finds her using peppersoup, as in the first poem in this section,
as a purgative. Only a reader with keen eyes will discover that she was
actually referring to the words in her poems as possessing purgative power as
the pepper to prune mankind of the rot that burdens him:
I bi pepper soup.
De Uziza way dem take cook me
go purge
nyama nyama comot from your
body
Sotay your body go dey kampe
I bi peppersoup.
(138)
However, some
of the words in the pidgin poems appropriate proper English spellings, thereby
compelling the reader to make out the intended pidgin syllable themselves. For
instance, she uses “they” instead of “de” in second line of poem 91; we see the
proper “sit down” instead of “siddon” in the first line of stanza four in poem
89, “walka” instead of “waka” in the last line of the same stanza of the same
poem, etc. Now that’s a notable flaw on the poet’s part, may be because she was
not pakolized in the Niger
Delta sense.
Section
Five is a celebration of our Heroes, and, permit me to add, Sheroes, who our
slippery memories won’t let us remember, hence, we are thankful to the poet for
at least, remembering these worthy national icons and celebrating their
contributions to national development. One remarkable quality in this section
is that the persona maintains a high spirit and never descends to mourning any
of the late heroes, rather a celebration tone swallows up the wailing voices
that may have erupted by her creative use of evocative words. Ogechi celebrates
“A Pigeon Amongst Peacocks”, which she dedicates to “The unknown Incorruptible Judge”.
The persona moves across the globe to pick worthy heroes, viz Nelson Mandela,
Malala Yousfazai, Justice Muktar Alooma, Gani Fawehinmi, Chukwudifu Oputa,
Flora Nwapa, Oronto Douglas, Dimgba Igwe, Festus Iyayi, Dr. Stella Adadevoh –
who died saving Nigerians from Ebola virus etc. However, most striking of these
poems is the poem for Niyi Osundare’s seventieth birthday commemoration. The
poet painted a carnivalesque picture where all the nation’s minstrels gathered
to celebrate, unarguably, the best griot of the second generation Nigerian
poets.
The
last section, titled “Looking into Tomorrow’s Eyes” reads true to its title. It
signals the climax of Ogechi’s artistic oeuvre. She attains the expected coming
of age towards the tail end of the collection, as it is custom for most poets
to save their best pieces for the last. It is arguable that “Looking into
Tomorrow’s Eyes,” the longest of all her poems, is her most philosophical and
artistically mature work, encompassing, as it were, all the troubling
discourses that trouble Africa and the world at large, to make a serious
comment on the existence of mankind. The last poem which she called “Afterlines:
Until the Juice of this Life Goes Round”, is at best, a socialist oriented
commentary which could elicit a Marxist argument on the need for even
distribution of commonwealth. Hear her:
And somebody asks:
Can the juice of this life
Really go round?
And I answer:
Let the sharers share it
fairly
Without looking into the
juice jar. (195)
Generally
speaking, every work of art, like every other human creation has its flaws as
well as its landmarks, but am definitely not going to end this piece on its
flaws, our existence is not that tragic, so I will do the unconventional and
begin with the flaws.
Eclipse
of Justice, especially in most poems in section one begin rather slowly,
only to gain momentum and the needed intensity in later lines. They appear
rushed and hardly possess the poetic completeness of later poems. It was as if
the ideas or inspirations for the poems in section one came as an afterthought,
making their beginning lines less creative, however, almost all the poems
possess a good conclusion, hence, Ogechi is usually at her poetic best at the
last lines. The entire work is almost over flogged with unnecessary
punctuations, making it difficult for easy digest in the reader’s hungry mind.
The very many and irrelevant fullstops and commas come too sudden like a man
with ejaculation deficit, thereby, chaining the lines in the corridor of
rigidity. Poems should be as free as possible, like a bird, maybe. For
instance, the frictions posed by the punctuations nearly soiled the free flow
of the dialogue between the Honourable Commissioner and the Shanty Dweller in
poem 65. Again, poetry thrives by word economy, but one will easily notice that
Ogechi explains too much, rather than let her readers participate in the
process of creating with her. That
notwithstanding, Ogechi seems to be extremely gifted in the art of titling a
work so fantastically, especially from the second section. Her collection makes
an almost complete use of figures of speech, notable among which are: metaphor,
simile, personification, rhetorical question, onomatopoeia, allegory, assonance,
alliteration, hyperbole, etc. Her unrivaled use of onomatopoeia makes some of
the poems read like music and create a sharp mental picture in the reader’s
mind. She equally possess a strong descriptive power as seen in poem 74 etc,
spiced with a good sense of humour that robs an ointment of a jester on her
forehead, for instance in poems 70, 33, 29, 27, 73, etc.
The
prophet in her, manifests in poems 51, 113, 50, etc. However, of more
importance is Ogechi rootedness in her Igbo cultural heritage. Her art is not
just hanging loosely and lazily in the creative firmament of Anglicization, but
deeply rooted in her magnificent understanding of Igbo culture and life’s
philosophies, which see to her appropriation of Igbo idioms and phrases and
ethos in her audacious attempt to drive home her point through the creative
high way of bilingual complementarity.
Beautifully
published, engaging, insightful, futuristic and humorous, Ogechi’s Eclipse
of Justice is a bold statement made into the arrant face of an
existence caught up in the macabre dance of anomaly. We are yet to see the best
of this poet.
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