Thoughts of Peace and Revolt in Ebi Yeibi’s The Fourth Masquerade

By Ekanpou Enewaridideke

Ebi Yeibo, a lecturer at the Department of English and Literary Studies, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State, an indigene of Ayakoromo in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State and Ayamasa town in Bayelsa State, the author of Maiden Lines (1997), A  song for Tomorrow (2003), The Forbiden  Tongue (2007) and Shadows of the Setting Sun (2012), is a young man who inhales and exhales poetry anytime he is on the stern of any canoe on River Forcados paddling away – a man who seeks nothing from Literature but only poetry as he has poetically hollowed out five dug-out canoes just enumerated.

In his current collection of poems entitled The Fourth Masquerade, which is made up of 48 poems, Ebi Yeibo has amazingly deployed his age-long fluid canoe-carving skill and capability to hollow out canoes envisioned to awaken the Nigerian Federal Government and the multi-national oil companies to a looming Armageddon destined to become the ‘Revelation’  of Nigeria as a country. The ‘The fourth masquerade’ is the first canoe skillfully hollowed out by the carver Ebi Yeibo in this collection of poems.

The fourth masquerade, traditionally the last masquerade in a processional dance of masquerades, is always amazingly electrifying in its dance. The fourth masquerade, seen during the Ayakoromo Olorogun masquerade festival, runs after or pursues people frantically, though playfully, to strike. The origin of Olorogun is traced to Aye, a fisherman in whose net the fish is caught in Aghoro river and subsequently carved into a beautiful head-piece. The fourth masquerade is a masquerade that entertains and pursues runners to strike. The fourth masquerade often seeks runners to strike on Ologorun day during the season of masquerade festival in Ayakoromo. Characteristically the poet uses his pen to chart the way forward by saying that his lines are designed to awaken people to their responsibilities as:

‘These lines are the owl

Hooting ominous messages

In choking pain

In pubescent twilight’

Reminding man

Of the burden of being –

To wake his blood and dust

In the scowling mist.

Reminding man

The loaded canoe

Sails near the shoreline

Raw palm fruit causes cough’

The poet seems poised to attack and bomb those who ignore their responsibilities by eating raw palm fruit. The loaded canoe symbolizes a boat loaded with weapons. However, as a wise man, the poet imagistically disguises his intention by communicating in ambiguous language because to him:

‘The wise utters little

Sinking into the smokescreen

The unreachable depths

Of their homely skins …’

Clearly, bombs await those who ignore the didactic lines of this poet.

QUESTIONS HANG IN THE WIND

Life on earth, with all its burdens and challenges, is a place where man constantly seeks answers to impediments/problems. Though the poet satirically reveals that a change of family relationship could be the solution to life’s problems when indeed life’s problems originate from blood; only sincere attempts/hearts can remove man’s burdens and entanglements because:

‘And each step of penitence

Or rectitude or doxology

Springing from shallow depths

Only yield more questions

More complications,

More complications sweat,

Like an entangled gold fish

strangling in vain for freedom’

Only sincere approaches can guarantee disentanglement from man’s daily burdens and hanging questions.

THE BURDEN OF BLOOD

This poem echoes exploitation and mismanagement of resources to the disadvantage of Niger Deltans who are the owners of the resources. The people privileged to manage resources exploit the owners in succession. Developmentally exploited and besieged by the government, the poet adopts a militant strategy to get rid of the endless burden of exploitation and oppression when he declares angrily:

‘O give this burden a rightful name

Uproot its noxious suckers

With matching matchers and mattocks;

The Okra tree, however, tall,

Must bow to the whims

Of its indubitable owner

Along the corridors of the wind’

To the poet, develop the Niger Deltans or risk revolution.

THEY NEED NEW NAMES

(For El Rufai, nPDP & APC):

A portrait of the tragedy that comes upon PDP occasioned by the defection of its members to APC. The poet is skeptical about the change heralded by the defection; he holds the position that poetry should be consciously engaged to avoid any descent to the abyss:

‘We must paddle this heaving catch

Past swollen waves of the sea

Past hounds and bulldogs

Prying eyes of devious saints

And their double-decked munificence’

In soft homely songs of the soul’.

Skeptically fearful of the heralded change, he calls on all to play roles to avoid a repeat of the past.

THEY NEED NEW NAMES I1

(For EL Rufai, nPDP & APC)

A portrait of total disgust for the new party formed out of PDP. The elements in APC have nothing to offer beyond sugar-coated preachment of functionless ideologies and sanctimonious derogation of PDP leaders. To the poet, the APC would disappear as soon as it has been used to achieve their notorious aim of self-enrichment. The red palm fruit would be discarded after it had been pecked to the shell. The poet sees nothing in the ability of APC to bring about progress as they are the same corruption-tainted elements out to hoodwink the masses.

‘The bottom of this new name

Is in the enchanting melodies

Of the sunbird gleefully pecking

At red palm fruit

As if glued to the feast

In the forest of Amatebe’

Beyond the portrait of APC as fake elements of the supposed change, the poet shines his critical light on their corrupt nature when he says:

‘So why do the new saviours

Point to the rainbow

In the not-too-distant sky

Forgetting yesterday, when they

Pocketed the communal pouch

Blinking none of the six senses

Without sweat or contrition

Surpassing the penchant of their forebears

In the acrobatic mould

Of a monkey diving at banana?’

APC is composed of elements that suck a nation dry without conscience.

RAGE IN THE DESERT:

(For Boko Haram)

Terrorists kill people mindlessly and sadistically anchored on the belief that such actions would quicken their passage to paradise. The terrorists are not appalled by their atrocities since they believe, though erroneously, that they are glorious acts in the sight of God. Beyond the sadism displayed by terrorists, the poet sees it as a product of power schemers. The scourge of the terrorists planted by  power-schemers  has not been degraded by Aso Rock as all their counter-efforts have done nothing to eradicate the carnage unleashed by the terrorists; so the ‘moon’ ominously continues her mating dance. To the poet, it is the wrong road cleared to power-seeking that perpetuates the carnage resulting from the terrorist thrusts. Terrorism would not have come at all but for the dirty route of power-seekers who see it as a route to power. The poet’s voice sounds clear on this position when he says:

‘O the detached logic

Of power schemers

Who see human breath

As a mere off-and-on switch

Like the cement code

Of coven kings

Takes over the cringing earth

Replacing tingling crops

With tripping tombstones’

To the poet, power-schemers are creators and profiteers of the carnage caused by terrorists in Nigeria.

WE HAWK HORRID MEMORIES

(For Boko Haram)

This is an impassioned call to put an end to all the stories of morbid achievements by the terrorists in their misguided rage; a call to an end to all stories of atrocities, miseries and tragedies of the victims of the terrorists. Let the focus centre on investigative moves geared towards eradicating the monster of this carnage. The poet calls for innovative strategies  that would totally end the monster because half-hearted strategies would breed more monsters. No more glorification of the activities of Boko Haram just as there should be end to mourning of the atrocities, or stories of sympathies from statesmen and stupid active  sages. The preoccupation should be on this:

‘Let us probe the masked moon

That deceived the straying cockerel

Into the depths of night;

Disarm her grinning antics

Or fall into the trap –

Except we smash the head

The wriggle of the wounded cobra

Is a steady sauce for suspicion.’

The poet calls for a radical solution to the scourge of terrorism so the ‘mocked Moon’ chastening the straying cockerel could be unravelled and light released to the joy of humanity.

FACING THE FLAMES

(For Boko Haram and Sponsors)

There is destruction and carnage in the country caused by the terrorist activities of Boko Haram, and these atrocities are orchestrated by vindictive ideologically misguided human beings. The poet calls for a merciless crushing of these destructive elements by ‘incensed green men’. Upon the atrocities unleashed on humanity, a corresponding karma will come upon the perpetrators. Specifically, the poet identifies someone who loses the vote of the people in the general election as the mastermind and sponsor of the Boko Haram. The so-called loser vents his anger vindictively on the masses by sponsorship of Boko Haram. The tag of vindictive sponsorship of the Boko Haram is reinforced by these lines.

‘Seize the wind

With bombs and bullets

Bellowed the surly voice

In the background

Rejected in the general count

Like in the guard count

Like a spurned suitor

Igniting furnaces of mass murder-

Whetstone of another war

On the back of a sullen loss.’

Beyond identifying the mastermind of the natural blaze, the poet believes that the priest of Odele can extinguish the blazing fire. Odele is a famous god in Ayakoromo in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State that accepts live dogs as sacrificial appeasement whenever it is offended, or whenever petitions for action over particular matters are made to it. Confident in the power of Odele, the poet calls on the priest to wipe out the scourge of Boko Haram.

‘Let the priest of Odele

Sanctify the surly horizon

Save this burning place

Of yet another black plot’

Embittered by the terrorist activities of Boko Haram, the poet is not bothered that the intervention of the priest of Odele would cause further atrocities of deaths provided the terrorists are degraded.

‘To mate the menacing clouds

In the ripest season

Leaving behind

Howling offspring of carnage.’

 

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