Akeem Lasisi
Legendary poet, Niyi Osundare, has composed a new poem that seems to react to an assault that a driver recently suffered in the hands of a Nigerian lawmaker.
Because the piece is a satire, however, no name is mentioned, as the reader is left to reflect in an ocean of laughter the poem invokes.
It is not the first time Osundare, who recently bagged the Golden Key of Smederevo award, would satirise key actors on the national and international scenes.
In 2015, for instance, he responded to the more-than-dramatic way in which the then Senate President, Bukola Saraki, became Nigeria’s Number 3 person, via a poem titled ‘Blues for the New Senate King’.
Below is his new piece on the slapping that recently shook the nation:
DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
The Honorebu* Who Slapped the Law
By Niyi Osundare
The Honorebu’s first question
Was preceded with a very Honorebu slap
So loud his neighbours thought
It was a thunderclap
“Who are you, wretched driver;
What madness drove you
To disturb my Honorebu leisure
In the middle of an empty day?
In my Honorably acquired mansion
Where, between booze and boast,
I churn out the bills which beget those laws that have
So wonderfully transformed our very Federal Republic
The second slap came with an imperial swagger:
“How dare you! Do you know who I am?”
Then a frightening combination of raw power and magical blustering:
“I will make you disappear, and nothing will happen”
King-size ego, consuming conceit
Vintage Lawmaker of a lawless Republic
Who “monkeys” the people and “rats” their worth
Standing so tall on the grave of assassinated dreams
So carefully curated
This poignant parable of Nigerian imuniti**
Its powerfool protagonist, its convoy of clowns
Who bluff and strut beneath their tinsel crowns
“Do you know who I am?”
The Honorebu asked his “stupid-idiot” driver
Challenging us, dear readers,
To read this poem and answer his question.
———-
*Imuniti un-arrestability. A Yoruba coinage from a conflation of “immunity” and “impunity”
**For a peculiarly Nigerian meaning of this word, I recommend a quick journey to Honorebu, Akeem Lasisi’s rip-roaring video.
