A Stylistic Analysis of Selected Poems in Niyi Osundare's Random Blues

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A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED POEMS IN NIYI OSUNDARE’S

RANDOM BLUES

BY

ADEBAYO TAOFEEQ ADEKUNLE

EGL/2008/003

A LONG ESSAY SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, FACULTY OF

ARTS, OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY, ILE-IFE, OSUN STATE, NIGERIA

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF

BACHELOR OF ARTS (B. A.) DEGREE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

FEBRUARY, 2O13

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CERTIFICATION

This is to certify that this research was carried out by Adebayo Taofeeq Adekunle in the

Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.

.................................................. .....................................................

Dr I. E. Olaosun Dr Chinma Anyadike

Supervisor Ag Head of Department

………………………………………………….. ……………………………………………………

Date Date

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DEDICATION

This project is dedicated to Almighty Allah for His mercy on me and those who surround me.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All praises and adoration are due to Almighty Allah who in His infinite mercy has been guiding

me right from my day one on this earth to the present moment. His mercy on me and those who

surround me has been quite unquantifiable and what I should really do is thank the Great God

heartily. Al-hamdu li Lahi robil aalamin.

Having thanked God and placed Him first, I deem it fit to extend my appreciation to those people

whom Allah has used as instruments for my success up to this level. Dr I. E. Olaosun, my

fatherly supervisor, should make the first entry on my list of appreciation. There were times we

argued and I walked out of your office sad, later to know that you were actually trying to groom

and drill me. How apt in this regard is the Yoruba saying that it is in pain and throbbing that one

goes through the process of beautifying laceration which would eventually be a source of joy.

There were also times I smiled out of your office, happy that I have made some improvements. I

will forever remember you, my Oga, for the invaluable contribution which you have made in my

religious, social and academic lives. May Allah (subhana huwa ta-anla) make his infinite mercy

constant on you.

How much appreciation is ever sufficient for one’s parents who have looked after one right from

pregnancy to many years after? Words will never be able to appreciate you, Mr and Mrs

Adebayo, for everything that you have done in my existence. Thank you for giving birth to me,

bringing me up, instilling morality in me, and sending me to school. May the Almighty Allah

give you the opportunity to have the brightest harvest of your toil on me.

Dr Yemi Adegoju is one of those lectures on the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) campus

who have made positive impact on me and whom I will never forget wherever I go in life. Dr

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Adegoju and Dr Olaosun were the two lecturers in my undergraduate days who strongly believed

that youngsters like me could also make contribution in scholarship thereby giving us the

opportunity in class to also make our own observations of things. I will forever appreciate both

of you for those investments that you have made in me in terms of the materials and pieces of

advice you often gave me. Thank you, Dr Adegoju. Thank you, Dr Olaosun.

May this acknowledgement never end if the names of those other lecturers who have made

positive impact on me for the last four years haven not appeared yet in this business of

appreciation. The list in this regard should include: Dr Dipo Fashina, Dr Mosobalaje, Dr Akande,

Dr Faleye, Aya Faleye, Prof. Atoye, Dr Samson Dare, Dr Okanlawon, Prof Adeoti, Mr Raheem,

Mr Muhammad Ademilokun, Dr Coker, Mr Omigbule, Dr Saibu, Dr Babalola, Dr Bamigbade

and Dr Herbert Igboanusi.

I should also not forget the financial assistance of my elder brothers and sisters such as Mukaila

Adebayo, Muji Adebayo, Saheed Adebayo and Toyin Adebayo. You all have proven yourselves

the true blood of our father.

The onus is on me to acknowledge those organisations within and beyond OAU which made

positive change in my life while I was on campus. These organisations are: Muslim Student

Society of Nigeria (MSSN), OAU; Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), OAU; The

Megaphone News Agency; Federation of Iseyin Local Government Students (FILGS), OAU

(where I was the General Secretary for three years); The Nation newspaper; Daily Sun newspaper

and Association of Faculty of Arts Muslim Students (AFAMS), OAU.

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Finally, I thank all my colleagues who have made positive impact on me and on whom I have

also impacted through group discussions. The greatest part of this appreciation should go to

those whom I did not remember to mention in this long essay.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page…………………………………………………………………………………… i

Certification………………………………………………………………………………… ii

Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………… iii

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………… iv

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………….vii

List of Tables………………………………………………………………………………. xi

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….... xii

CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study……………………………………………………………… 1

1.2 Statement of Research Problem………………………………………………………. 5

1.3 Justification for the Study…………………………………………………………….. 6

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study……………………………………………………... 6

1.5 Research Methodology…………………………………………………………………7

1.6 Theoretical Framework………………………………………………………………… 7

1.7 Contribution to Knowledge……………………………………………………………8

1.8 Plan of the Study………………………………………………………………………9

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….10

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2.1 The Notion of Style…………………………………………………………………… 10

2.1.1 Style and Language: Evaluative or Descriptive?........................................ 11

2.1.2 Style and Meaning (or Content)……………………………………………. 14

2.1.2.1 Style and Meaning as One: a Monist Point of View…………….. 15

2.1.2.2 Style and Meaning as Two Separate Entities: a Dualist Point of View… 18

2.1.2.3 Meaning as a Function of style: the New Pluralist View………..20

2.1.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… 23

2.2 Stylistics and Literary Criticism of Poetry: Where the Difference Lies…………….. 23

2.3 Stages in Stylistic Analysis……………………………………………………………..26

2.4 Blues as a Genre of Poetry…………………………………………………………….. 27

2.5 African Writers and the Use of English……………………………………………… 29

2.6 An Overview of the Poems in the Publication………………………………………. 30

2.7 A Brief Survey of Socio-political Happenings in Nigeria between 2010 and 2012…. 32

2.8 Niyi Osundare…………………………………………………………………………. 38

2.9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. 39

CHAPTER THREE: GRAPHOLOGICAL AND LEXICO SEMANTIC ANALYSES

3.0 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 40

3.1 GRAPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS…………………………………………………….. 40

3.1.1 Use of Full Stop (.)………………………………………………………….. 40

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3.1.2 Morpho-graphological Deviation…………………………………………… 42

3.1.3 Phono-graphological Features………………………………………………. 46

3.2 LEXICO-SEMANTIC ANALYSIS……………………………………………………46

3.2.1 Foregrounded Use of Code Mixing…………………………………………. 47

3.2.2 Repetition of Lexical Items…………………………………………………. 49

3.2.3 Use of Complementary (Political) Lexical Items……………………………50

3.2.4 Lexica Groupings…………………………………………………………….53

3.2.4.1 The Marginalised Majority………………………………………… 53

3.2.4.2 The Pain-inflicting Minority……………………………………… 55

3.2.4.3 The Social Happenings……………………………………………. 57

3.2.4.4 Summary…………………………………………………………… 61

3.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 63

CHAPTER FOUR: SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

4.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………… 64

4.1 Classification of sentences in the poems…………………………………………….. 64

4.1.1 The Sentences According to their Communicative Functions……………. 64

4.1.1.1 Statements…………………………………………………………. 65

4.1.1.2 Commands………………………………………………………… 70

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4.1.1.3 Questions……………………………………………………………72

4.1.1.3 Exclamations……………………………………………………….73

4.1.2 The Sentences According to their Structural Patterns……………………..74

4.1.3 Summary…………………………………………………………………….. 80

4.2 The Foregrounded Use of Interjection………………………………………………..80

4.3 Use of Code Switching…………………………………………………………………82

4.4 Syntactic Parallelism…………………………………………………………………..83

4.5 Use of First Person Plural Pronouns…………………………………………………..85

4.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..86

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION

5.0 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 88

5.1 Summary………………………………………………………………………………. 88

5.2 Recommendation……………………………………………………………………… 91

5.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. 91

RFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………… 92

APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………… 97

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Yoruba Lexical Items (Used in the Poems) and their Meanings……………….47

Table 2: Lexical Items Relating to European and African Political Systems………………..50

Table 3: The Themes in the Poems and the Lexical Items Expressing them……………60

Table 4: Some of the Statements Used in the Poems and their Syntactic Properties…..65

Table 5: The Commands Used in the Poems and their Syntactic Properties……………. 70

Table 6: The Simple Sentences Used in the Poems and their Structural Lineation

Distribution……………………………………………………………………… 75

Table 7: The Lineation Division of the Simple Sentences into Subjects and Predicates… 76

Table 8: The Simplification of the Complex and Compound Sentences Used in the

Poems……………………………………………………………………………..77

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ABSTRACT

Several studies have been carried out on the old poetry of Niyi Osundare using both literary

and linguistic approaches; however, there has been a dearth of studies on his new poetry. This

study therefore examines the language use in one of his collections of new poetry, Random

Blues, with a view to extracting important pieces of information that are relevant to the national

life of Nigeria.

The data for the study are all drawn from Sunday Tribune newspaper. Only three years of

the publication are examined. Three poems are randomly selected from each of the years (2010,

2011 and 2012), making a total of nine poems; the poems are sequentially looked at. The

analysis in the study is done using M. A. K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG)

framework.

The analysis of the poems reveals that Osundare uses lexico-semantic features, such as

code mixing, inter-language blending, hyponymy, near synonyms, Yoruba lexical items, as

means of targeting the Nigerian masses in order to inform and influence them, and repetition of

lexical items to emphasise crucial pieces of information about the Nigerian society. Also, the

graphological features deployed by the poet such as morpho-graphological deviation are used to

lambast certain people in the society who have done something wrong. It is also found that the

poet employs certain syntactic features such as code switching, simplification of various

sentence types, imperative verbs, syntactic parallelism, first person plural pronouns, and

interjections to target the Nigerian masses, inform and influence them, to create a sense of

collectivism, and to achieve textual unity among the poems. By sequentially looking at the

statements used in the poems, the analysis reveals that the poems chronicle important

contemporary national issues in Nigeria which are very crucial to the history of the country.

Based on the findings, the conclusion has been reached that the primary motive of Niyi

Osundare in Random Blues is to bring about social reform by adequately painting the picture of

the contemporary Nigerian society and using various rhetorical means to influence the common

man in Nigeria to bring about the change. This study has contributed to the field of stylistics by

showing that it is possible to link stylistic features with specific happenings in the society and

that stylistics is reliable in establishing the meanings expressed in literary texts.

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CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

In this age of science, little or nothing is left for intuition or unexperimented claims. If, for

instance, one claims that life exists on the moon or that the moon can be penetrated, people do

not value calculating such claims in imagination. They want one to objectify or experiment it so

that there is no room for doubt and to do this one needs a science – astronautics. This same logic

applies to a person interpreting a text, literary or non-literary, who needs a science to objectify

their conclusions so that their findings are as reliable as possible. As one needs astronautics to

prove the fact that the moon can be penetrated so does one need stylistics (the scientific study of

instances of language use or of language variation) to validate such claims as ‘Soyinka is critical

of military government in Nigeria’, ‘Achebe re-wrote the history of Africa’, ‘Niyi Osundare

believes in poetry as a means of social development’, etc.

The phenomenon of language is a complex one; hence, the need for a sophisticated

approach to study it and this is the reason why a science has evolved to examine all its

manifestations – this science is called linguistics. What is language? Language has been

variously defined by scholars but what seems the meeting point of the definitions is that

language is a means of communication. Chomsky (1957) cited in Amuseghan (1997), for

instance, has the following definition:

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Language is a set of specific universal principles which are intrinsic

properties of the human mind and form parts of our genetic endowment.

Language can thus be defined as an arbitrary system of conventional

(spoken or written) symbols by means of which human beings as

members of a social group communicate.

Mcarthur (1996: 523) also defines language as a human form of communication which uses

structured vocal sounds and can be embodied in other media such as writing, print and physical

signs. In a similar vein, Murthy (2007:1) sees language as the medium of communication

through which we express our emotions, ideas, feelings and thought to our fellow people. This

presupposes that any medium through which there is a transaction of human meaning can be

regarded as language. This is why language is usually divided into two basic categories: verbal

language and non-verbal language. The former refers to a mode of human communication

characterized by the use of vocal signs which may be spoken or written while the latter is a mode

of human communication which employs non-oral signs such as movement of the body,

gesticulation, etc.

Language has domains. That is, language is related to many things and so if linguistics, the

science of language, would be truly scientific, there is the need for it to look into all those things

with which language has relation. Thus, we now have several branches of linguistics. We know

that there is a vital relationship between language and the human brain and to examine this

relationship has evolved the branch of psycholinguistics, just as sociolinguistics which studies

language against society. Linguists in the early nineteenth century and even till the twentieth

century made laudable efforts to establish linguistics on a purely scientific basis and so were

looking for all those areas to which language is related. For example, in 1968, Jan Svartvik, a

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professor of Linguistics, came about the term Forensic Linguistics which has now been well

developed into an established branch of linguistics and which studies language in relation to law

and crime (Wikipedia).

The same thing applies to Stylistics which is our major concern in this work. The German

linguist and philosopher, Wilhelm von Humboldt began to recognize that language should be

studied in relation to its style in various domains. This is the main reason why he titled one of the

chapters in his book, ber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss

‘functional style’(Mikov 2003:11) . Though Wilhelm’s observation at the beginning was not

purely linguistic, it was later developed into a purely scientific field by scholars, especially

members of Prague Linguistic Circle (1926), V. Mathesius, B. Havrnek, etc. It is this endeavour

and several others that gave birth to the branch of Linguistics called Stylistics.

Stylistics can simply be defined as the scientific study of the styles of a language in

various contexts such as letter writing, advertisement, literature, music, etc. By style is meant the

manner of expression i.e., the way an idea is conveyed such that ‘I am hungry’ possesses a style

different from that of ‘I need food’, though both of them roughly refer to the same idea of

hunger. Since stylistics operates on a solid scientific basis, its investigations are often reliable,

universal and experimentable. Here, we look at what style a speaker or writer employs in

conveying meaning, why such a style, and what effect it has on the overall message of a given

text, in a way that our findings are as reliable as findings in the field of physics or chemistry. For

this, stylistics is a reliable means of extracting pieces of information, ideas, etc. from a text.

It is based on the reason above that we have resolved to apply this science of style to some

of the poems in Niyi Osundare’s Random Blues, published weekly in Sunday Tribune Newspaper

in his column, Lifeline.

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The poems in the publication easily catch one’s attention perhaps because the socio-

political issues raised in them are what one can easily refer to in the society in spatiotemporal

terms or because of the humorously satirical manner, typical of African oral tradition, in which

such issues are often treated. What one quickly recognises is that the poems sequentially follow

the happenings of the contemporary Nigerian society as well as pass comments about them.

However plausible these observations might be, they remain a bunch of mere intuitive hunches

until we are able to provide concrete evidence for them. We, for this reason, heavily rely on the

science of language (linguistics) in interpreting the poems and it is believed that the

interpretation can be conveniently relied on.

Nigeria, a country that has all the reasons to be a better place than is now, has in recent

time witnessed several bizarre occurrences that cannot but attract the attention of poets like Niyi

Osundare who craftsmanly lock the memory of such occurrences in the teeth of poems. In the

last three years, there have been numerous debasing national (and perhaps continental)

embarrassments in the history of Nigeria’s democracy. In 2010, the late President Umaru Musa

Yar’adua left the country for Saudi Arabia to treat the kidney disease which bedevilled him and

which later claimed his life without delegating power to the Vice President, Dr Goodluck Ebele

Jonathan. The country remained president-less for about fifty-six days. Nigerians complained in

the newspapers and shouted on radio and television stations, and from across the world,

condemning the act as uncivilised while the whole world watched the country in pitying

amazement. Around that time a similar situation occurred in the United States but in a blatantly

diametrically opposed dimension. President Barrack Obama went on leave with his family but

did not leave the country without delegating power to the appropriate quarters.

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One other such occurrence was witnessed in the House of Representatives when the

members of the legislative arm under the leadership of Dimeji Bankole turned the lower chamber

of Nigeria’s National Assembly to a typical Lagos street setting. The representatives, having had

an argument for a while, began throwing chairs on one another while the whole building became

surprisingly pandemonic.

It is occurrences such as the ones just related that prompted Osundare to open a weekly-

inked poetic diary for the contemporary Nigerian society. These and several other Nigeria’s

national issues, which deserve critical examination and thorough investigations, are raised in

Osundare’s Random Blues. Hence, we can conveniently posit that part of Osundare’s motive for

composing the poems in the publication is national. If these occurrences are so important as to

merit poetic record, then the poems recording them must also be so important as to merit

scientific analysis. Our focus in this essay, therefore, is centred on using stylistic tools to tease

out meaning and the poet’s point of view from the selected poems such that whoever has access

to this material can see how it is possible for poets to, through their art, record happenings in the

society and pass comment about them for national development.

1.2 Statement of Research Problem

Most stylistic (and of course literary) analyses of Niyi Osundare’s poetry have concentrated on

his popular (and old) collections such as Village Voices, The Eye of the Earth, Moon Songs,

Days, Songs from the Marketplace, and Songs of the Season. However, there is a dearth of

studies on his new poetry, specifically Random Blues which is published weekly in Sunday

Tribune Newspaper and which serves in keeping issues of contemporary time in Nigeria. It is

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therefore with a view to interpreting Osundare’s new poetry from a scientific point of view that

this research has come into being.

1.3 Justification for the Study

Since there have not been much work on the contemporary poetry of the giant poet, Niyi

Osundare, particularly his Random Blues published weekly in Sunday Tribune newspaper, it

becomes necessary to attempt interpreting the poems in the publication. Also, since the offshoot

of this study is to examine how language, in the contemporary age, has been deployed by Niyi

Osundare to relate the current social situation of the Nigerian society and to, in a general sense,

use poetry to directly follow history in his new poetry, Random Blues, a collection of his new

poetry, becomes an appropriate object of this study.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to highlight the textual and social significance of Niyi Osundare’s

Random Blues. The specific objectives of the study are to:

1. identify and describe graphological and lexico-semantic features in the selected

poems;

2. identify and describe the syntactic features of the poems; and

3. determine how the weekly publication is a reflection of the Nigerian social context.

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1.5 Research Methodology

The main source of data for this research is ‘Lifeline’, a column in Sunday Tribune newspaper,

where Random Blues, a collection of contemporary poems by Niyi Osundare, was weekly

published. The method used in the long essay is such through which general statements could be

made about the publication as a whole. Since all the poems in the publication would be too

cumbersome for this study, there is the need to find representatives for them and this is the

reason why nine poems which can conveniently represent the collection as a whole were

selected. Nine poems from the whole collection are examined. These include three poems among

those poems published in 2010, three among those published in 2011 and another three among

those published in 2012. The exact number of the poems in the publication could not be

ascertained when this research was conducted because new ones were weekly added. For easy

reference, we refer to each of the nine poems as TEXT 1, TEXT 2, etc. The poems are included

in the appendix.

1.6 Theoretical Framework

The linguistic theoretical framework used for the analyses in the essay is that of M. A. K.

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar

regards the text or an instance of language use as having three major meta-functions: textual

function, ideational function, and interpersonal function. Textual function describes language as

being an input in making texts as the text is seen as whole entity comprising bits of language and

having a unity within itself; ideational function refers to the function language performs in

representing ideas; while the interpersonal function describes language as a means of meaning

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making between an addressee and an addresser. According to Trask (1993), systemicists

constantly ask the following questions:

1. What is this writer (or speaker) trying to do?

2. What linguistic devices are available to help him (or her) do it and on what basis does he or

she make his choices?

Recognising their importance in a stylistic description of texts, we are guided by these questions

in accounting for the total significance of the discourse under study.

1.7 Contribution to Knowledge

This study contributes to scholarship by further fostering a more objective insight into the

language use in Niyi Osundare’s new poetry in conveying various themes such as the themes of

corruption, the plight of the underdog, bad leadership, etc. which are crucial in the history of

Nigeria’s democracy. Most importantly, the study contributes to the body of knowledge in

stylistics by showing and stressing that it is possible to link stylistic features with specific

happenings in the society.

It is believed that the study would direct attention to this new collection of Niyi

Osundare, Random Blues, while emphasising, from a scientific point of view, its relevance in

relating the happenings of the contemporary Nigeria and providing recommendations for

national development.

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1.8 Plan of the Study

The work focuses on Niyi Osundare’s Radom Blues which is published weekly in Sunday

Tribune newspaper. The study aims at exploring the poems in the publication by examining

certain representative pieces among them. The study has five distinctive chapters. The first

chapter is the general introduction of the work; the second chapter is review of literature where

we examine and trace the state of knowledge on the topic under discussion; the third and the

fourth chapters feature the analyses of the selected poems; while the fifth chapter captures our

findings, recommendation and conclusions.

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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

In this chapter, we look at the state of knowledge in this area of research. We look at basic terms

in the field that directly or indirectly will help our understanding of the argument put forward in

the essay. Also, we review certain materials such as newspapers, online news pieces, etc. that

will help give some background spotlight to our analysis. The review has been appropriately

delineated to allow for clear progression of discussion such that the message is easily grasped.

2.1 The Notion of Style

Since stylistics is the scientific study of style, it would be deficient if a thorough examination of

the concept is found wanting in this academic endeavour. The word 'style' which originally or

etymologically emanated from the word 'stylus', which in turn means a writing implement, has in

contemporary time attracted so many conceptualisations that it becomes difficult to pin it down

to a single definition. The concept of style is the more made complex by the fact that it is

perceived by scholars on two related but distinctive paradigms. There are scholars who engage to

understand what style is in relation to language on the one hand and those who try to understand

its relationship with meaning (content) or what leech and short (2007: 21) describe as ‘sense’ on

the other hand. The two paradigmatic senses of style are so crucial to this essay that it becomes

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nothing less than a mere heap of directionless writings, should their effective explications be

found wanting.

2.1.1 Style and Language: Evaluative or Descriptive?

Many definitions have been given by scholars in literary and in linguistic fields who in defining

what it means in relation to language and literature have looked at it from one perspective to

another. To Samuel Wesley, style is 'the dress of thought' (Crystal: 2007:66). Style in this sense

refers to any linguistic form in which a meaning has been put. Jonathan Swift defines it as

'proper words in proper places' (Crystal, ibid). In the definition, we can see that style is perceived

to be appropriate linguistic form used in appropriate context, suggesting that when a linguistic

form is not used in an appropriate context, it cannot be regarded as style. According to W.B.

Yeats, style is 'high breeding in words and in argument' (Crystal, ibid). This particular definition

is in corroboration with that of Aristotle who saw style as the ornament adorning the plain use of

language. We can go on and on outlining the definitions of style by scholars and this is the

reason why style has been considered elusive by many people.

In an attempt to delimit the definitions that literary critics, linguists, and writers have given

to the concept of style into easily referable categories, scholars such as Enkvist (1964) have

recognised roughly seven different perceptions of style. These categories are:

i. Style as choice: where style is considered to be a deliberate attempt by a writer to

use language in a specific way such that any instance of language use is regarded as

carefully chosen.

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ii. Style as a set of collective characteristics: where style is believed to be the

way a group of people use language.

iii. Style as use: where every text is seen as exhibiting a style because the

language used is considered to be what the user has settled for.

iv. Style as ornament: where only texts that make use of flowery expressions

are considered as having style.

v. Style as man, in which style is conceived to be a display of the self,

meaning that the style a writer or speaker employs is a direct portrayal of the kind of

person he or she really is.

vi. Style as matter and manner: where style is conceived of as the dress of

thought. This means that meaning can be fashioned in different shapes and that these

shapes are what can be regarded as styles.

vii. Style as deviation: where style is conceived as manifesting only when the

established rules of a language are broken, thereby regarding a text which does not break

away from those rules as lacking style.

However, one needs to add that in all the conceptions of style above, the notion of style as

choice is popular. This is attested to by Wales (1990) cited in MIKOV (2003):

Clearly each author draws upon the general stock of the language in any

given period; what makes style distinctive is the choice of items, and their

distribution and patterning. A definition of style in terms of choice is very

popular, the selection of features partly determined by the demands of

genre, form, theme, etc. All utterances have a style, even when they might

seem relatively plain or unmarked: a plain style is itself a style.

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In another attempt to further categorise these definitions, Crystal (2007:66) classifies them

into two broad types: evaluative and descriptive. He defines style in the evaluative sense as 'the

features that make someone or something to stand out of an undistinguished background’ while

style in the descriptive sense is described as one which 'lacks value judgement and simply

describes the set of distinctive characteristics that identify objects, persons, periods or places.'

What can be deduced from this is that style is on the one hand perceived to be how creative an

instance of language use is such that we may differentiate a good style from a bad one; while it is

on the other hand perceived as basically the way a person has used language without necessarily

evaluating such use. We can therefore subsume each of the seven former categories under any of

the two classifications by Crystal.

Having categorised style into two, it is then convenient for us to maintain that the style that

stylistics concerns itself with is style in the descriptive sense. We extract meanings out of a text,

from a descriptive point of view so as to avoid evaluative assessments which may make our

interpretation subjective. Style, according to leech and short (2007: 10), can manifest in both

spoken and written, literary and non-literary varieties of language, but by tradition it is

particularly associated with written literary text. This means that stylistic analysis can be carried

out on non-literary and spoken instances of language; it is only that many stylistic investigations

concentrate on literary language perhaps because language in that domain obtains in complex

forms. This however does not mean that there have not been stylistic works done in the spoken

and non-literary dimensions of language.

In summary, style can be regarded as an instance of language use or variation in language

use and can thus be taken, in a broad sense, as language, agreeing with Mikov (2003) that

‘Stylistic features are basically features of language, so style is, in one sense, synonymous with

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language (i.e. we can speak equally of the language of Ode to a Nightingale).’ This now means

that when we as stylisticians descend on a literary work, our primary concern is to see how

language has been put to work by studying the patterns (or styles) of the language used as they

portray the writer’s message and reinforce his motive.

2.1.2 Style and Meaning (or Content)

The second paradigm of the conception of style is the one between it and meaning. We have seen

in 2.1 how style is conceived in relation to language, a manifestation of which it is. We shall

now, therefore, look at its relationship with meaning or content. We have in chapter one defined

language as a mode of communication. To understand the relationship among language, meaning

and style, let us employ a simple analogy: there is an item which we need to convey from one

place to another but which cannot by itself do the transportation and which therefore needs a

bearer which can transport it across to the other side. In the analogy, meaning is the item needing

transportation while language is that means of transportation that conveys meaning from one

individual to another. Our conception of style therefore is how this means of transportation for

meaning has effectively performed the task. To further expand the analogy, let us assume that

meaning is a passel which we want to convey from, say Ile-Ife to Lagos. Let us further assume

that we have got a bus as a means of transportation, which in correspondence to our analogy is

equalled to language. The style in this situation will therefore be how the passel is delivered in

Lagos. The bus for instance may pass through Ibadan to get to Lagos or go to Oshogbo before

heading for Lagos. These two choices are the styles through which the conveyance of the passel

(meaning) could be done. Hence, if language could be regarded as a mode of communication,

then style can be regarded as the variation of such mode.

15

To now focus on the primary concern of this unit, let us examine the basic conceptions of

the relationship between meaning and style. These conceptions of style in relation to meaning are

that style and meaning are the same (monism), that there is a glaring difference between meaning

and style (dualism) and that meaning is just a function of style (pluralism). We shall go through

these three conceptions and see which one would readily provide the background to our proposed

treatment of style from a descriptive point of view. (We have demonstrated in 2.1 that we shall

treat style from a descriptive point of view as against its evaluative essence so that our scientific

investigation does not get smeared with the oil of unexperimented assertions.)

2.1.2.1 Style and Meaning as One: a Monist Point of View

Monism is seen by Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, as ‘a point of view within metaphysics

which argues that the variety of existing things in the universe are reducible to one substance or

reality and therefore that the fundamental character of the universe is unity.’

The conception of style and meaning as one is a monist (also organist) view of the

relationship between style and meaning. It posits that style and meaning are inseparable,

predicating this on the assumption that there is no way the style employed in the conveyance of a

meaning would be changed that there would not be a corresponding change in the meaning

expressed. Flaubert cited in leech and short (2007:13) says, ‘It is like body and soul: form and

content to me are one. To illustrate this, let us examine the following three sentences:

i. I am hungry.

ii. I need to eat.

iii. There are thousands of lions fighting for supremacy in my stomach.

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From a monist point of view, we may make the following argument: apparently, the three

expressions have roughly the same semantic implication in that all of them are related to the idea

of hunger, but we begin to notice some differences in them when we examine the preference

each of them gives to the strands of meanings contained in them. The first expression gives the

description of a sensation which is usually experienced when the food content in the stomach has

digested and there is the need to refill it. This may suggest that the speaker or writer wants to

stop the sensation or that he or she is just saying it without any intention to do so. The second

expresses need or want or necessity. It suggests indirectly the sensation the first sentence

expresses directly and thus in a straight forward manner conveys the need to stop the felt

sensation. The third sentence primarily aims to thrill (or rhetorically influence) the reader or the

listener and implicitly suggests the sensation of hunger. It does not suggest its supposed primary

meaning in a direct way as to prompt immediate understanding. As we can see, all the three

expressions have roughly the same idea – the idea of huger. However, if we should judge them

from a functional point of view, the function performed by each of them is different from those

of others. Sentences i and ii perform a practical function (though differently) while sentence iii

performs a poetic function. However, the two functions of language identified above are not

mutually exclusive, following Leech (1987: 77):

It has also been emphasised (and Jakobson is particularly insistent on this)

that one function may be in a subordinate relation to another -such that, for

example, an utterance which is dominantly conative – like an

advertisement or a political slogan – may be secondarily poetic. Within

this framework, poetry (or literature...) is definable as that kind of text in

which poetic function is dominant over others.

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So, we can say that in sentences i and ii, the practical function of language is dominant

while it is the poetic function of language that is dominant in the third sentence. The monist

argument from this juncture is that as we move from the first expression to the second and then

to the third, there is a commensurate change in the meaning expressed. The further argument

they often make is that since a change in what is regarded as style often brings about a

proportionate change in the meaning expressed, then style and meaning must be the same.

As a result of the fact mentioned above, some monists believe that there is only one style

to conveying a meaning as a change in a style is necessarily the introduction of a new meaning.

This is particularly noted in Short and Leech (2007):

But monism has had many other manifestations: in the philosophy

of Croce, in the one-form-one-meaning postulate of

pretransformational linguistics, and not least, in some authors’ own

sense of the artistic integrity and inviolability of their work; in

Tolstoy’s words: ‘This indeed is one of the significant facts about a

true work of art – that its content in its entirety can be expressed

only by itself.

It should be added that this monist view of language, according to Short and Leech (2007:22)

derived from the tenets of a literary theory called New Criticism:

Monism, with its rejection of the form-meaning dichotomy, was a tenet of

the New Critics, who rejected the idea that a poem conveys a message,

preferring to see it as an autonomous verbal artefact. ‘A poem should not

mean but be’ was Archibald MacLeish’s extreme statement of this

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position, and the strength of monism in the 1940s and 1950s can be

gauged from Wimsatt’s pronouncement:

It is hardly necessary to adduce proof that the doctrine of

identity of style and meaning is today firmly established. The

doctrine is, I take it, one from which a modern theorist can

hardly escape, or hardly wishes to.

This view of form and content as being the same thing has, however, met several criticisms

from other scholars who believe such view to be too narrow. Osundare (2003:10), for instance,

opines:

However, the organist tend to carry their creed to a pathological extent when

they argue that form cannot be separated, even for one single argumentative

moment, from content. It should be possible to contemplate and analyse the

formal properties of a work of art without doing violence to the content.

In summary, the monist view of the relationship between style and meaning is one which

regards the two as being one and which is more convenient with poetry than prose, poetry being

a genre which readily provides the validity for their argument.

2.1.2.2 Style and Meaning as Two Separate Entities: a Dualist Point of View

Another point of view of the relationship between meaning and style is the dualist view: that

meaning and style are two different entities and that the latter could change when the former is

held constant, relying on some transformational tools of grammar such as passivisation. The

point here is that an idea is capable of being expressed in several ways and these ways are what

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we refer to as styles. This view is against the monist view that there is just a style for a meaning

as any alteration in style brings about a new meaning; and is, more than the monist view, in line

with the commonplace definition of style, agreeing with Leech and Shorts (1981:13) that ‘some

such separation is implied in the common definition of style as a “way of writing” or a “mode of

expression”. This approach may be called dualist, because it rests on an assumed dualism in

language, between form and meaning.’ Some other people refer to those who hold this view,

instead of dualists, as ornatists.

Dualism in philosophy is a theory that states that the universe is explicable only as a whole

composed of two distinct and mutually irreducible elements (Microsoft Encarta 2009). The word

etymologically denotes a state of two parts. This definition about dualism readily provides the

reason for why the view of style and meaning as separate entities is considered a dualist one.

Dualists heavily rely on the Tranformational Generative Grammar (TGG) as it provides the basis

for their theoretical framework. This is corroborated in Shorts and Leech (2007:17):

To back up the intuitive sense that there are ‘different ways of saying the

same thing’, Ohmann (in the article quoted) enlists the authority of

linguistics… He appeals to transformational grammar, which postulates

two main kinds of rules, phrase structure rules and transformational rules,

and argues that optional transformational rules are the ones which

determine style. Informally, these are rules which change the form of a

basic sentence type without changing its lexical content. Thus one rule

changes an active construction to a passive.

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The stylistic dualist would argue that it is possible to employ different linguistic styles to

express a single idea. For instance, the following sentences would mean the same to them; the

only difference they would notice is just the ways of expression – the styles:

i. Shola killed the dog

ii. The dog was killed by Shola

They would argue that the difference between the first and second sentences is grammatical

rather than lexical: it is just a rearrangement of grammatical elements rather than the insertion or

omission of a lexical item. Thus, the constant component of the two sentences is meaning while

the variable component would be style. It must be said that it, compared with the monist view, is

more convenient with prose works where language is relatively less complex than in poetry.

In sum, the dualist conception of style and content or meaning is one which holds that

meaning and style are two separate entities and that a meaning can be expressed in more than

one style.

2.1.2.3 Meaning as a Function of Style: the New Pluralist View

The pluralists, among whom M.A.K Halliday, B. Havrnek, etc. can be categorised, rather than

look at style-meaning dichotomy from a monist or dualist point of view, see meaning as a

function of style. To them, the meaning that can be squeezed out of a given text is moulded by

the linguistic style in which the text is carved. The pluralists often attempt to differentiate

between various kinds of meaning and this they do relying heavily on the styles which brought

such meanings into being. To them, language performs a number of different functions, and any

piece of language is likely to be the result of choices made on different functional levels. Hence

the pluralist is not content with the dualist’s division between ‘expression’ and ‘content’: he

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wants to distinguish various strands of meaning according to the various functions (Leech and

Shorts: 2007). This is one of various differences pluralism maintains with dualism. Similarly it

defers from monism in a respect that it does not treat style and meaning as the same thing; it only

concentrate on how the style a speaker or writer employs helps perform different kinds of

functions.

What follows from this is to investigate what the pluralists mean by functional style. By

functional style, the pluralists tend to mean that a style has a role it performs in relation to its

meaning and context. In other words, when a style is adopted, there is usually a function it

performs such that a style is capable of expelling certain possible interpretations. For instance,

the expression such as ‘Tade killed the dog’ is performing a function different from that of the

expression ‘His voice is sun in the night’.

Many scholars have identified various stylistic functions; a brief survey of those functions

may help facilitate our understanding of this long essay. I. A. Richards, in his book, Practical

Criticism published in 1929, distinguishes between four kinds of the functions of language. They

are sense, feeling, tone, and intention. Meaning as a function of language (style to be precise)

refers to the meaning which language conveys; feeling refers to the emotion which language can

be used to express; tone refers to the effect which language brings out of a listener (this may be

willingness to do something); while intention is the function language performs as clear road into

the individual mind. Jacobson (1961) cited in Leech and Short (ibid) however recognises six

different functions: referential, emotive, conative, phatic, poetic, and metalinguistic. Referential

function means that language is used to refer to things abstract and concrete; conative, in

Adegbite’s (2006) words, describes the function in which ‘the focus is on the person(s)

addressed. Most typical of this function is the use of vocatives and imperatives to call the

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attention of another or requiring them to carry out some actions’ ; phatic function describes the

fact that language is used to establish and maintain human relation; poetic functions relates to the

fact that language can be a means through which we enjoy ourselves; while metalinguistic

function of language describes the fact that language can describe itself; that is, language

functions as a means of talking about itself. A more recently developed set of language functions

than the two already mentioned is M. A. K. Halliday’s functional model. Halliday identified

three major functions of language to be ideational function, textual function, and interpersonal

function. The ideational function refers to the function of language as a bearer of ideas of

whatever kind; the textual function refers to language as an ordered network of systems having

its own structural patterning; while the interpersonal function describes language as a means of

transaction between human beings.

Though the three models identified and discussed may look overtly disparate, they have

some features in common, which we will not attempt to discuss. Among the three models,

Halliday’s seems the most widely used as well as the most effective. Leech and Short (ibid)

recognise its effectiveness and resolved to take it as the perfect example of pluralism: ‘We shall

also take Halliday’s model as our example of pluralism, because its application to language, and

in particular to grammar, has been worked out in considerable detail.’ For this reason, this study

employs Halliday’s functional model in treating its data.

Though there are other models of the functions of language (or style) such as that of B.

Havrnek, we have discussed just the three models because of time and space.

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2.1.3 Conclusion

We have gone through a number of the various conceptions of style. We have traced its

relationship with language and with meaning (or content), and have thus maintained that the

study adopts the pluralist view. We have also studied it against language and declared that in this

essay we treat it from the descriptive point of view rather than from the evaluative point of view.

2.2 Stylistics and Literary Criticism of Poetry: Where the Difference Lies

Following Enkvist (1964:6), linguistics (stylistics) and literary criticism have clashed on the

territory of style. Both of them experiment on style. That is, they study the same object but from

different perspectives.

On the one hand, to literary critics, Adekoya (2012: 380) for instance, ‘a reader should seek

to know what is communicated in a poem, how it is communicated and the value of what is

communicated.’ Let us pay attention to the three concerns of a reader of poetry outlined above

by a literary critic. First, ‘what is communicated’ refers to the meaning a poem has, ‘how it is

communicated’ implies the style which is employed, while ‘the value of what is communicated’

is meant to mean the significance of the meaning of the poem in the social context in which it

operates. Amuseghan (1997) on the other hand, asserts that ‘the purpose of stylistics is to

explicate the connection between language use and function: expressiveness and

informativeness. As it must have been clear from the simple but indirect comparison of the two

definitions above, one from stylistics and the other from literary criticism, the two approaches

have some things in common. For instance, the two approaches are bent on determining what

meaning (what is understood in the first definition as ‘what is communicated’ and in the second

as ‘informativeness’) is contained in a poem, how the meaning is communicated as well as the

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social context to which the poem is attached. They only defer when it comes to the matter of how

the ‘what’ in the poem is said – style. While the literary critic can outrightly wow a poem and

rubbish another based on how they are composed and their language use, and establish how such

style has aesthetically enhanced the meaning of the poem and contributed to its literary success

or doom – a practice which lacks scientific justification— a stylistician would only go ahead and

describe the linguistic features that signal the meaning (thematic preoccupation or the subject

matter) of the poem. Since the stylistician does not evaluate the style but only describes it, the

results the stylistician gets are usually as reliable as the results got through experiments in the

natural sciences.

The difference between the two approaches lies in the different points of view they

maintain on style. Style is seen in Wales (1991:436) as variation in language use whether literary

or non-literary and this means that in terms of style, stylisticians and literary critics are dealing

with variation in language use. Previously in this essay, style has been grouped into two

following Crystal (2007): style in the evaluative sense and style in the descriptive sense. The

former belongs to literary criticism and this is why evaluative or intuitive judgments which lack

empirical backup are often made on poetry and literature in general; whereas style is seen in a

descriptive sense by linguists (stylisticians to be specific) who in the analysis of a text’s style use

scientific method in such a way that the result got is as dependable as possible. In sum, while

literary criticism will attempt the interpretation and evaluation of a poem (or a literary work)

based on intuition, stylistics will do so based on intuition which is adequately validated through

empirical description.

Though it is not the primary purpose of this work to trace the ‘war’ between proponents of

stylistics and those of literary criticism over time, a brief reference of it may do some good.

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When linguists first began to probe into the language of literature with their scientific equipment,

the actors at the other edge of the summit of style had a kind of paranoia that the linguists were

waging a war to wipe them out of their terrain (Osundare, 2003). However, in the contemporary

time, such misleading myth is fast disappearing and linguists have since the second half of the

twentieth century begun to clamour for the accommodation of literary critic’s interests in stylistic

analysis. Till today, stylisticians are in the practice of outlining the benefits the application of

linguistic tools can give to the study of literature – the benefits being mainly objectivity and

systematicity. Prominent among those who have done this is H.G. Widdowson who in 1975

wrote Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature. Concerned with the same objective, Ayeomoni

(2003) demonstrates the role of stylistics in the study of literature. Citing Awonuga (1988),

Ayeomoni writes: ‘… one important advantage of stylistics to the study of literature is the

opportunity it provides the reader to systematise his response to the various works of literature he

has cause to study.’ In corollary to this, Freeman (1970) cited in Ayeomoni (ibid) asserts that

Linguistic style in literary criticism is a theoretical underpinning necessary to the understanding

of literature as mathematics is to physics. Ayeomoni (ibid) therefore submits, ‘We thus conclude

that stylistics is the middleman between language and literature; it is basically required to study

it.’ However, to Leech and Short (2007:13):

… the aim of literary stylistics is to be more relational in a more

interesting sense than that already mentioned: to relate the critic’s concern

of aesthetic appreciation with the linguists concern of linguistic

description. (We use the term appreciation to comprehend both critical

evaluation and interpretation although it is with interpretation that

stylistics is more directly concerned.

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In the light of the above, the analysis of the selected poems are done in a manner that we

respond to it first as a literary critic and then as a linguist. This means that we allow our

intuitions to first pop up while we make rigorous experimentable linguistic descriptions to help

scientify and objectify our conclusions. Though interpretation from a linguistic point of view is

our major concern in this essay, we shall seek to briefly, where necessary, explore some aesthetic

functions that the poems may contain. Doing this will, in the words of Shorts and Leech (ibid),

make us to be more relational in our application of stylistics to Osundare’s Random Blues.

2.3 Stages in Stylistic Analysis

Stylistic analysis in this essay involves three basic things: linguistic description, interpretation,

and the relation between form (of language) and content (in the language). The question of how

to go about the three and that of which one comes before another becomes pressing, demanding

immediate answer. Several stylistic analysts have devised ways of doing stylistic analysis. In

Leech (1969), for instance, Leech scans for stylistic features in a poem which corroborate with a

specific term under discussion. In it, analyses are done before interpretation. In Short (1996)

however, stylistic analysis takes a new dimension, Short provides the interpretation of a poem

first and then proceeds to give the stylistic features in the poem that validate the intuitive

interpretation.

Later, Leach and Short (2007) argue that there is no logical starting point to stylistic

analysis, stressing that we bring to a literary text simultaneously: our ability to respond to it as a

literary work and our ability to observe its language. This is what obtains in Widdowson’s (1975)

analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, where Widdowson does

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analysis and interpretation simultaneously and this is the method that we use for the analyses in

the essay.

2.4 Blues as a Genre of Poetry

As seen by Encarta English Dictionaries (and even many other dictionaries and encyclopaedias),

blues originally refers to a type of popular music that developed from African American folk songs

in the early 20th century, consisting mainly of slow sad songs often performed over a repeating

harmonic pattern. Blues was originally composed to reflect the society (specifically the Deep South

of the United States) of the African Americans and project a new form of its own that is very

different from the Anglo-American tradition.

According to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, the first copyrighted blues, Dallas Blues by

Hart Wand, appeared in 1912, and since then many other blues artiste have emerged. The blues form

of poetry was created or formed from this music genre some years later. This new genre of poetry

represents a great revolution in the art of poetry as the black Americans demonstrated that they were

not too daft to provide a unique mode for their own voice. Rutter (2008) succinctly captures this:

Adopting the blues to lyric poetry marks an implicit rejection of the

conventions of the Anglo-American literary establishment, and asserts that

African American folk traditions are an equally valuable source of poetic

inspiration.

The features of this new poetry genre include the fact that its themes are usually based on the

immediate happenings in the society. The Academy of American Poets captures the main features of

a blues poem thus:

A blues poem typically takes on themes such as struggle, despair, and sex.

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It often (but not necessarily) follows a form, in which a statement is made

in the first line, a variation is given in the second line, and an ironic

alternative is declared in the third line.

African-American writer Ralph Ellison said that although the blues are

often about struggle and depression, they are also full of determination to

overcome difficulty "through sheer toughness of spirit." This resilience in

the face of hardship is one of the hallmarks of the blues poem.

The following stanza from a blues poem titled ‘To the Big Light’ drawn from

http://smithsonianeducation.org demonstrates the structure of a blues poem:

Her hair's not past her ear,

And she looks like a boy.

Her hair's not past her ear,

And she looks like a boy.

The black curls don't go far,

And she's become a man's toy.

In conclusion, the poems analysed in the essay belong to the poetic genres of blues and this is

the reason why we have tried to examine what the blues poem is. In the analysis, we shall find a

number of connections between the features of the poems under study and the general features of the

blues form of poetic genre.

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2.5 African Writers and the Use of English

Most African literary writers write using the medium of English because of one reason or another.

They however do this by creating a kind of English that is some miles away from the Standard

English and which have been creatively bent to express well the African culture and particular

situations. According to Adegoju (2010):

The challenge in dropping indigenous language and going for a foreign

language in African literary writing, however, lies in attempts to

circumvent the intricate relationship that exists between language and

culture.

In circumventing the rules of the foreign language, the literary African writers, therefore,

according to Adegoju (ibid) put on the toga of a linguistic outlaw who understands the rules of the

foreign language inside out that they are able to bend if not break them for artistic purposes and

literary effects. He further explains that the creative African literary writers, in the process of

tempering with the structure of the foreign language, blend it with their indigenous African language

to reflect the ‘Africanness’ of the experience(s).

How African literary writers are able to find expression for African cultures in the English

language is not far-fetched, as languages generally, according to Akinwale and Olaosun (in print),

‘draw upon a common universal source in expressing thoughts and experiences.’ Based on this, they

posit that there is nothing like extreme diversity in human languages.

But despite this fact, the duo, commenting on their contrastive analysis of idioms in Yoruba

(an African language) and in English (a European language), agree that the two languages have

30

certain points of divergence.

One beautiful thing about the African literary writers now is that they are able to understand

those areas of divergence and are trying to find a way of mending the problem at the expense of the

sanctity of the English language. They create new expressions which the native speakers of the

language may not even be able to interpret. Some of them sometimes embrace the habit of

incorporating texts written in an African native language, which neither has a close-by translation

nor a footnote or an endnote. All what we has been said of African writers is true of Niyi Osundare,

the poet of our poems, as our analysis would soon reveal.

In order to achieve harmony in content and in form, Osundare employs a poetic genre which

has strong connection with Africa – blues. Not only this, he acclimatises it to his own Yoruba

cultural background by injecting into the poems philosophies, idioms and proverbs derived from the

Yoruba people. This method no doubt helps Osundare to achieve success in communication and

aesthetics; the people better understand the nation through his poetry since the world view of the

poems is what people already share. As the national issues evolve, Osundare keeps his voice, the

voice of the masses, in the teeth of his poems, Random Blues, while referring to those occurrences

directly. This voice therefore has the potency of re-vibrating across ages – since it is kept in poems.

2.6 An Overview of the Poems in the Publication

Osundare’s Random Blues comprises identical poems which are true examples of blues genre of

poetry, both in content and form. The poems in the publication move with happenings in the

Nigerian society. Thus, Lifeline, a column in Sunday Tribune newspaper in which the poems

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appeared weekly, is a poetic panorama on the contemporary Nigerian society, which takes into

consideration almost all aspects of life of the contemporary Nigerians ranging from politics to

friendship. One of the themes or issues treated in the publication is magnanimity and

philanthropy. This could be seen in the following lines of such poems written on the theme:

i. I am because you are

You are because I am

ii. The rich are rich

Because the poor are poor

iii. If you stay up the tree of affluence

You will never see the grass beneath

Another theme some of the poems examine is fake beauty rampant among Nigerian young

ladies. In one of the poems, the poet asks:

Are these natural baby

Or are they surgically enhanced?

Other issues of human relation in the Nigerian context which the poet examines include:

love (compassionate love) and affection, absence, travelling, bad government, corrupt

individuals in the society, hardworking, repercussion of wealth wrongly acquired, hope,

simplicity, meticulousity, morality, the relation between past and present to produce a better

future, amassing wealth at the detriment of others, use of thugs during election to cause people

harm, corrupt religious leaders, marital maltreatment of women, peace, the triumph of truth over

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falsehood, death, social unrest, poverty as caused by various factors, neo-colonisation and the

gullibility of Nigerian leaders, the television as a source of social disorder in Nigeria, election

rigging, justice half-done, wearing revealing dresses in religious houses such as church and

mosque, the changing nature of life, man’s inhumanity to man, friendship and humility, fashion

and common sense, taking caution, patience, greed among others.

However, since time and space will not permit the examination of all the poems in relation

to these thematic concerns, the poems examined in the analysis are those which centre on notable

national issues in Nigeria between 2010 and 2012. These poems serve the functions of keeping

key historic records in Nigeria such that they could tell more about the country within the time

span that they cover, and at the same time commenting on them. From them we learn of a

Nigerian president who was once sick and transported to Saudi Arabia without delegating power

to his vice, and who later died. We also get to know how uncivilised and shameless political

office holders could be in Nigeria through one of the poems in the publication which records the

brawl that happened in Nigeria’s House of Representatives in 2010 when Dimeji Bankole was

the Speaker. Several other national issues such as January 2012 Fuel Subsidy Removal, Pension

Fund Scam, Nigeria’s avoidable loss in World Cup 2010, Goodluck Jonathan as a clueless

president, etc., are recorded in the poems.

2.7 A Brief Survey of Socio-political Happenings in Nigeria between 2010 and 2012

Nigeria, a country which got her independence five decades ago, is still struggling to succeed

economically and politically. The fact that though Nigeria is significantly buoyant but is

relatively underdeveloped often surprises both Nigerians and those who are not Nigerians. The

problem Nigeria has is dominantly that of leadership. Many political analysts have identified that

33

Nigeria’s greatest problem is political. As a result of the bad leadership, corruption has almost

become the country’s motto. If governance can only be the area where Nigeria could be

expressly lauded, Nigeria would be great.

Nigeria got her independence in on October 1st, 1960 and became a republic in 1963,

having as its prime minister the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Since then several ‘national

comedies’ have become commonplace in the country– comedies, since they thrill its former

colonial rulers who at such instances often sit back and laugh, saying ‘this people cannot rule

themselves after all.’

The greatest of such ‘national comedies’ is Nigerians’ failed expectation of a great Nigeria.

In the colonial period, the money accruing from oil was mainly to serve the interest of the

imperial power which colonised the country – the British Queen; so when the independence was

got, people thought that Nigeria would become a great African country in a short period of time,

its new rulers being Nigerians themselves and since the oil wealth was no longer the Queen’s.

Historyworld.net observes: ‘And as the world's fifth largest oil producer, it has the wherewithal

to be one of the richest.’ But the expectation was, as it currently is, a mere illusion, at least in

relative terms. According to Abdullahi (2012):

This unfortunate state of affairs is as paradoxical as it is embarrassing to

Nigerians especially in view of all known indicators that Nigeria would

become a great African country within a very short time after

independence in 1960.

In the year 1966, Nigeria’s first republic fell through a coup d’état which saw Johnson

Aguiyi Ironsi become the Head of State, and this was the beginning of what would later be the

norm. The nation witnessed a series of military coup d’état until 1998 when Gen. Olusegun

34

Obasanjo, a former military Head of State became the country’s elected president. Obasanjo

spent eight years before President Umar Musa Yar’adua took over from him in 2007. The

transition was the first of its kind in Nigeria’s political history when a civilian government would

be handling over power to another civilian government.

President Yar’adua, upon resuming office, declared his assets and for the first time gave

Nigerians the impression of a just president who was ready to move the country out of the

shambles. One of the major problems he met on ground was the incessant oil pipe vandalisation

and oil company bombings by the Niger-Delta militants called Movement for the Emancipation

of the Niger Delta (MEND). Yar’adu tried his best to curb this by providing amnesty for the

militants, calling them to drop their weapons for the government to empower them financially.

This was a great achievement for which in the history of Nigeria he will be remembered.

Yar’adua came with a special set of programmes for Nigeria which he described as 7-Point

Agenda. Following nigeriaworldpages.com (2007), the 7-Point Agenda include: power and

energy, food security, wealth creation, transport sector, land reforms, security, and education.

Another thing Yar’adu did that made most Nigerians like him was when he publicly announced

that the election that got him in power was rigged. As a result, most Nigerians saw him as a

trustworthy human being. The announcement confirmed the opinion of some people that

Yar’adua did not want to be a president in the first place but that it was Obasanjo, his proclaimed

godfather that made him do it so as to fulfil the power rotation tradition of the People’s

Democratic Party (PDP), the political party which got him in power.

However, things began to go awry, when Yar’adua’s long term kidney problem began to

trouble him beyond normal. It was learnt that Yar’adua had been suffering from the disease right

before he became the president. The BBC News (2009) reported:

35

Mr Yar’adua has had chronic kidney condition for at least ten years. He

has been unable to perform a number of official duties because of

recurring health problems.

Much as this was a surprise to many Nigerians that their president was suffering from a

deadly disease, the matter really came to a head when Yar’adua was flown out of the country for

close to three months without having delegated power to the Vice President, Dr Goodluck Ebele

Jonathan. This caused a great national debate among the people of Nigeria. Some eminent

Nigerians, according to http://saharareporters.com (December, 2009) asked the president in a

press release to resign or hand over power to the Vice President. Some of their demands are as

follows:

Finally, the current condition of the president has created a dangerous

situation whereby no one is in charge of the affairs of the State contrary to

the letter and spirit of the Constitution. As responsible and concerned

individuals from every part of Nigeria, we call on President Umaru

Yar'adua to immediately choose the honourable option of either: (a)

resigning his office immediately, or (b) … request the Federal Executive

Council to pass a resolution pursuant to Section 144 (1) of the Constitution

to the effect that the President appears incapable of discharging the

functions of his office.

Later, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was sworn in as the acting president in February, 2010

following President Yar’adua’s return from Saudi Arabia where he received medical treatment.

The swearing in took place because Yar’adua was too weak to rule. Barely twelve hours after

Yar’adua’s death on Wednesday, 5th June, 2010, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan became the

36

president. Jonathan had to pick a vice president for himself and the person turned out to be

Namadi Sambo. The pair would then complete the unexpired presidential term in the oil-

producing nation of more than 140 million people until elections were due by April 2011

(News24: 6/2010).

Meanwhile, there were major occurrences in the country which showed the country as a

weakling whose political failure has permeated to other key areas of human involvement. During

that time it was, for instance, when the Super Eagle carelessly lost its stay in the 2010 World

Cup, and put Nigeria on an international pedestal of mess. According to Mailonline.com (June,

2010):

Nigeria followed hosts South Africa and Cameroon out of the competition on

Tuesday night, helped by what must rank as the most amazing miss in World Cup

history by Everton striker Aiyegbeni Yakubu in a gripping second half. It is a

moment that will live forever in football blooper compilations, and will ultimately

be all Nigeria are remembered for as yet another campaign ended in a familiar

story of missed opportunities and regrets.

Another major saddening occurrence around that time was the belittling fracas witnessed in

the Lower Chamber of the National Assembly, the House of Representatives. A fight broke out

in Nigerian parliament after eleven legislators were suspended for accusing the House of

Representatives Speaker (Dimeji Bankole) of corruption. The legislators called themselves “The

Progressives”, and demanded an investigation into allegations that Speaker Oladimeji Bankole

misappropriated 9 billion naira equivalent of an 11 billion Naira budget from 2008 to 2009.

(http://maxsiollun.wordpress.com).

37

Jonathan as the president, the country prepared for the 2011 April pole. Jonathan like many

other presidential aspirants, used many things to campaign but the most prominent among his

rhetorics was his claim that he was born without a shoe. Jonathan got back in the office through

the April pole. His success above his counterparts, say Gen. Muhamadu Buhari, many believed,

was purely religious and ethnic. However, the fact that the election that got him in power was

free and fair was nationally and internationally acknowledged. This time around, people thought

that they had voted Jonathan in power and that he would do their wish, little did they know they

would soon be proven wrong.

‘The Federal Government has today announced the removal of the contentious fuel

subsidy. This was contained in a statement issued by the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum

Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, Mr Reginald Stanley. He stated that the subsidy

removal took effect from today,’ Punch newspaper (1st January, 2012) reported. The report that

the fuel subsidy had been removed and that petroleum would then sell at an unbelievable higher

price was a shock too disrupting to a new year. People began to see that they might have made a

wrong choice. It became glaring that Jonathan was not sensitive to people’s plight when the

matter was later discussed in the House of Representatives and the latter condemned the act.

However, it was less surprising in the late part of August when the Federal Government through

the Central Bank of Nigeria declared its resolution to print 5000 naira note, a policy which the

majority of Nigerians detested but which the Federal Government was bent on executing.

In conclusion, though there are many other significant national issues (such as the

destructive activities of the Northern Boko-Haram) which should merit a space in this essay, we

have, because of the limited time and space, restricted ourselves to those which are directly

relevant to our analysis in this essay. Those are the national issues which form part of

38

Osundare’s subject matter in his Random Blues. We have looked at some of them in order that

they may facilitate our understanding of the analyses in the essay.

2.8 Niyi Osundare

Niyi Osundare was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria, into a family of professional

drummers. He had his degrees from the University of Ibadan (BA), the University of Leeds

(MA) and York University, Canada (PhD, 1979). He was the Head of the English Department

(1993–1997) at the University of Ibadan and became a professor of English at the University of

New Orleans, USA, in 1997 (Wikipedia).

Niyi Osundare is one of the best-known poets in Africa. His published collections of poetry

include Selected Poems (1992), Pages from the Book of the Sun: New and Selected Poems

(2002), Songs of the Marketplace (1983), Village Voices (1984), A Nib in the Pond (1986), The

Eye of the Earth (1986), etc. Because he has written more poems than plays and no prose, he is

widely known as poet. Osundare has won several awards some of which are Association of

Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, etc. He was also a recipient of

the prestigious Folon/ Nichols Award for ‘excellence in literary creativity combined with

significant contributions to Human Rights in Africa’ (African writing online). Niyi Osundare is a

poet of international standard representing African Culture through the use of English Language

and one who now uses poetry to keep history. He has always been a vehement champion of the

right to free speech and is a strong believer in the power of words, saying, "to utter is to alter".

Osundare is renowned for his commitment to socially relevant art and artistic activism

(Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia).

39

Many of Osundare’s poems are political and are usually such that Osundare takes side with

the masses. In his Village Voices, for instance, he creates a village setting where the poet

persona, who is invariably an African man trying to do a review of what transpires in the society,

not only lambasts the government but also castigates the individual. In the collection, we have

the voice of the masses captured in vivid terms. This kind of practice (that is, of presenting the

worldview of the oppressed and trying to poetically protest against socio-political injustice) also

materialises in his Random Blues which forms the main concern of this study, but in different

realisation. While the thematic concerns in Village Voices are mostly immediately generic

(referring to no incident in particular) and remotely specific (pointing, at secondary level, to a

particular incident), most of the poems which are political in Random Blues have immediate

referent in the society. Orality and performance are important features of his works, which have

been translated into the Italian, French, Dutch, Czech, Slovenian, and Korean languages (african

writingonline.com).

When poets compose a work of poetry, especially bothering on socio-political issues,

they do so, suggesting possible solutions, or giving clues, since poetry suggests indirectly, to

how such issues could be addressed; this sometimes may be measured from their tone and mood.

Most of the time, they act as watchdog for the society. Such is true of Niyi Osundare who

believes that poetry is a powerful instrument to change a society for better.

2.9 Conclusion

The different topics in this chapter are discussed so that they provide adequate background to the

analysis in the essay.

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CHAPTER THREE

GRAPHOLOGICAL AND LEXICO-SEMANTIC ANALYSES

3.0 Introduction

In order that a clear progression of the linguistic analysis is maintained, the analysis has been

delimited in a way that the poems are approached from different linguistic levels. The levels of

analysis in those chapter are that of graphology and lexico-semantics. The focus is to see how the

poet has employed graphological and lexical resources to drive home his purpose and to lend

artistic creativity to his voice.

3.1 GRAPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Certain aspects of graphology (which may be defined as the scientific way of studying how what

is said is represented graphically in order to assess the trait, the personality or the psychological

state of the writer) are foregrounded in the poems. The aim in this section is to examine how

Osundare has used graphological rules or broken them to pass across his message. We want to

see how his observance and non-observance of the rules have contributed to the process of

meaning making in the poems.

3.1.1 Use of Full Stop (.)

In the poems under consideration, the poet makes less use of full stop. Almost all stanzas of the

poems end without a full stop. This is understandable, however, in poetry as a means of

41

achieving enjambment, a situation in which lines run on one another and which might be

interpreted as a means of portraying an overflow of emotion. In the publication under study, we

have a situation in which the lines, the stanzas and the poems run on one another respectively.

Let us examine the last four lines of the first stanza of Text 1:

Ha ha ha, Green Eagles out

Before the first whistle

Beaten by those beaten by everyone else

Their rain never went beyond a drizzle

What is discernible from the above lines is that the lines run on one another such that one

may not pause until the end of the stanza. One may not even pause at the end of the stanza

because of the absence of a full stop. This is how most of the stanzas in the poems are composed.

To see how the poet has broken the rule of using full stop, the last two lines of some of the

poems might be looked at:

i. The ball bounces into our net,

Like a Jabulani* imp, without reproach

( Text 1)

ii. The rulers fatten on looted fortune

The people starve on miserable pittance

(Text 2)

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iii. It’s the divine duty of rulers to feast and feast

While the people learn to fast and fast.

(Text3)

iv. The insanity of their avarice

Is ravenous danger to our common need

(Text 9)

Of all the texts being examined, only Text 3 ends with a full stop as it could be seen above.

Very few poems in the whole of the publication end with a full stop. What could be said of this

low use of full stop at the end of each of the poems is that the poet is giving the reader a sense of

continuity and open-endedness. The poems are published weekly. This suggests that new ones

are continually being added. So, by not using a full stop at the end of most of the poems, the poet

might be suggesting that his muse is not yet done on the contemporary Nigerian society.

In conclusion, the absence of a full stop at the end of almost all the stanzas of the poems

and at the end of the poems themselves is a significant graphological deviation which has been

foregrounded to create in the reader the sense of a spontaneous overflow of emotion and that of

the continuity of the poems.

3.1.2 Morpho-graphological Deviation

Here, the goal is to examine how the poet has changed the morphology of certain words in the

way they have been written in order to pass across pieces of important information. In order

43

words, those words which have undergone a deviational morphological process in the hand of

the poet are analysed.

In Text 1, commenting on the failure of Nigeria’s under 23 football players, the Super

Eagles, in the 2010 World Cup and lambasting Sanni Kaita, one of the team’s player,

(condemning him as a catastrophe to the nation), the poet uses the word ‘Kaitastrophy’ to refer to

him. One with poor knowledge of the English orthography might take the word to be the right

graphical representation of the word ‘catastrophe’. The poet, however, uses the word artistically

to pass some silent but salient messages about the player.

The poet’s attitude to Sanni Kaita is clearly unfavourable. The word ‘Kaitastrophy’ is

graphologically foregrounded and is clearly significant for meaning. This instance of morpho-

graphological deviation is a good road into the poet’s state of mind on the subject matter of the

poem and the player himself. The poet blends together the word ‘Kaita’, the name of the player

and the word ‘catastrophe’ which suggests a terrible disaster. The process involved can be

explained. The first two syllables of the world ‘catastrophe’ are ellipted, remaining the last two

syllables which are joined to the word ‘Kaita’:

Kaita + (ca + ta) stro + phe = Kaitastrophe

The immediate result of the blending is ‘Kaitastrophe’ which we may interpret as Kaita as a

disaster’. But the poet’s morphological creation does not stop here as he goes further to employ

suffixation. The bound morpheme ‘-y’ which indicates a state of being is added to the word

‘Kaitastrophe’ to produce the final product ‘Kaitastrophy’ which we may interpret as ‘Kaita as a

state of having a terrible disaster’ suggesting that Sanni Kaita was a disaster happening to

Nigeria:

44

Kaitastrophe + y = Kaitastrophy

For the poet to have equated the player with a state of having a terrible disaster, the poet’s

attitude towards him and his action must be that of condemnation. One of the poet’s motives in

the poem, therefore, is to castigate the player mentioned and to utterly condemn his act such that

up and coming players may learn the lesson and avoid that kind of act as it may be a disaster to a

nation of people, like Nigeria.

Another instance of morpho-graphological deviation is found in Text 5 where the poet is

appealing to the common man in Nigeria to avoid the terrible disaster of political thugs who

usually break law and order during elections in Nigeria. The poet uses the words ‘Broda’ and

‘Sista’ as vocatives to get the attention of the common citizens. The poet deviates from two

major graphological conventions in writing the two words. First the poet breaks the English

orthographic convention of writing the words ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ which respectively stand for

the his ‘Broda’ and ‘Sista’.

The morphological process involved in the production of the two words may be regarded as

inter-language blending. By inter-language blending is meant a kind of blending in which two

words belonging to two different languages are blended to produce a word which shares the

properties of both languages. ‘Buroda’ and ‘sisita’ are both phonologically borrowed words in

Yoruba from the English language. They are respectively the Yoruba phonological imitations of

the words ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. What the poet does is blend these words together respectively.

The process involved can be explained:

bro (ther) + (buro) da = broda

sis (ter) + (sisi) ta = sista

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The immediate results of the blending are respectively ‘broda’ and ‘sista’. The poet does not stop

here but goes ahead to use capitalisation and we have the final results as ‘Broda’ and ‘Sista’.

This capitalisation however is foregrouded in that the two words are common nouns which

ordinarily should not have been capitalised. By capitalising these common nouns, the poet makes

them proper and thereby makes both of them symbolic of the masses. That is, they now refer to

particular individuals in the society. The poet also does not stop at the capitalisation as he

extends his morphological creation to emboldening. The two words are emboldened and are

thereby made foregrounded.

The functional significance of the inter-language blending is that it collapses the two

languages just as in Pidgin English, the language of the common man in Nigeria. In order to

specifically locate the common citizens and warn them against political violence, the poet

conducts a morphological marriage between English and Yoruba. These common citizens

hearing the two blended words would feel more interested in the poet’s warning than if their

English equivalent had been used (since they resemble pidgin English, the language they often

use). Thus, the inter-language blending is an important rhetorical device in the hand of the poet

used to catch the attention of the common citizens. The capitalisation also serves the function of

specifying the class of the people being addressed by making the common nouns ‘broda’ and

‘sista’ in a way generic through capitalisation. The textual significance of the emboldening is

that it makes the two words prominent; while its social value is that it places priority on the

common citizens of Nigeria. The emboldening reiterates the fact that the poet’s primary targets

are the Nigerian citizens, represented by ‘Broda’ and ‘Sista’.

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3.1.3 Phono-graphological Features

There is not much to say here but the only phono-graphological feature to be examined is

stylistically significant.

Idiophone is the literary device used to refer to a situation in which words imitate the sound

of what they describe. It is a device often used to achieve musical and rhetorical effect. An

instance of this is ‘f-a-i f-a-i f-a-i’ used in Text 2 where the poet is describing the brawl which

happened at the Nigeria’s House of Representatives under the speakership of Hon. Dimeji

Bamkole in 2010, when the legislators in the lower chamber of Nigeria’s National Assembly

turned themselves to regular street fighters and were throwing chairs on one another. Some of

them fell in the process and it is in an attempt to capture the fall of one of the important

legislators in the chamber that the poet has removed every obstacle that stands between the

sound of the fall and its graphical representation. By representing the sound of the fall directly

the poet creates a significant effect in the reader. The effect may be said to be that of amusement

combined with criticism and hatred. Since the poet has identified with the masses (as it is proven

in Chapter Four), he does everything possible to create in the general public appropriate attitude

to the kind of leadership the country has. These attitudes as we have seen the poet create them

are that of hatred and criticism combined with amusement.

3.2 LEXICO-SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

The concern in this section of the essay is to probe into the lexical choices which the poet has

made in order to achieve his motive. We want to account for the functional use of the lexical

resources which the poet has found appropriate to do his meaning negotiation.

47

3.2.1 Foregrounded Use of Code Mixing

Code mixing, which may be described as the use of lexical items of more than one language in a

discourse, is prominently used in the poems. In order to draw the attention of the people and

thereby influence their knowledge of Nigeria’s socio-political realities and to influence their

actions and attitudes towards the realities, the poet needs to appeal to the socio-linguistic reality

of the country which is the best linguistic road into the minds of the common citizens. This

linguistic reality is code mixing. The poet makes excessive use of lexical items of a Nigerian

indigenous language, Yoruba, incorporating them into the structures of English language. In the

table below is a survey of some of the lexical items from Yoruba:

Table 1: Yoruba Lexical Items (Used in the Poems) and their Meanings

S/N Lexical Items Meaning Poems and Lines

1 Ha ha ha an interjection used to express

amusement.

Text 1, line 3;

Text 2, line 27

2 Wahala predicament or problem. Text 4, lines 2 and

4

3 Haba an interjection used to express

strong criticism.

Text 4, line 27;

Text 7, line 9

4 Ojelu one who embezzles public funds;

one who eats the town (literal

meaning)

Text 5, lines 25

and 27

5 Orunlu nation wrecker; one who destroys

the town

Text 5, lines 25

and 27

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6 Apomolomolekunjaye one whose profit comes from the

pain of others

Text 5, lines 25

and 27

7 Yepa an interjection used to express

surprise at a danger

Text 7, line 3

8 Agbaga an interjection used to express

surprise at something that has

gone wrong

Text 8, line 3

9 Ani an interjection used for emphasis Text 5, line 15

The major functions of the use of code mixing in the poems are to aid people’s

understanding, to enhance the bi-culturality of the poems, and to achieve a rhetorical effect on

the native reader. By making use of these lexical items, the poet reserves some meanings to the

native readers who are the primary targets of the poems. The poet, by shutting out non-native

readers of the poems at certain levels of meaning transmission, seems suggesting that it is the

native readers first before any other kind of reader. The use of the code mixing is strategic in that

it is a means of boosting intelligibility for the Nigerian readers by coding some pieces of

information in a linguistic medium only outrightly understandable by them.

The use of the code mixing also strengthens the poet’s artistic creativity by giving the

poems some level of originality. Because of this, the poems not only mirror the socio-political

realities of the contemporary Nigeria but also reflect its sociolinguistic realities.

49

3.2.2 Repetition of Lexical Items

One of the strategies used by Niyi Osundare in the poems is repetition of lexical items. Some

lexical units are repeated within some of the poems and across a number of some other poems. In

other words, some of the repetitive lexical items are intra-textual while some others are inter-

textual. While we may not accord much textual significance to many of the intra-textual lexical

repetitions because of the fact that they are already bound by syntactic parallelism (see Chapter

Four for syntactic parallelism), the inter-textual ones are significant and should be examined.

Some of the lexical items repeated across some of the poems are given below:

i. ‘Country’ – Text 2, Text 3, and Text 4

ii. ‘King’ – Text 3, Text 4, Text 8,

iii. ‘President’ – Texts 4 and 5

iv. ‘Governor(s)’ – Texts 4 and 5

v. ‘People’ – Text 2, Text 4, Text7, and Text 8.

vi. ‘Blood’ – Texts 3 and 5

vii. ‘Senator(s)’ – Texts 4 and 5

viii. ‘Land(s)’ – Texts 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

ix. ‘Miserable’— Texts 2 and 6

It is interesting to note that in all the repetitions above, the nominal item ‘land(s)’ stands

foregrounded because it appears to have occurred in six of the nine poems that we are

examining. The implication of this is that the poet is obsessed with the ‘land’ which has been

used as a symbolic representation of the country, Nigeria. This therefore confirms our intuition

that the basic concern of the poet in this poetic panorama is Nigeria and its people.

50

These are just few of the repetitions that cut across the poems. What the poet does with the

repetitions is to instil in the people the political consciousness of the country by repeating certain

lexical items relevant to such effect. One textual function of this repetition may be said to be that

of lexical cohesion. The poems are united by the repetition in a way that the reader tends to see

them as a natural series.

3.2.3 Use of Complementary (Political) Lexical Items

What is intended here is to group into two the lexical items relating to politics used in the poems.

What is found in the poems is a situation where there are some lexical items relating to African

political system which was prominently used before the advents of slave trade and colonisation

and which is now used as an auxiliary political system in most African countries; and ones

relating to European political system which is now the prominent political system in almost all

African countries. For a clear view of the survey, the lexical items have been represented in a

table:

Table 2: Lexical Items Relating to European and African Political Systems

S/N Lexical Items

Relating to European

Political System

Poems and

Lines

Lexical Items Relating

to African Traditional

Political System

Poems and

Lines

1 country Text 2, Text 3,

and Text 4

Land Texts 3, 5, 6, 7,

8, and 9

2 President Texts 4 and 5 King(s) Text 3, Text 4,

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Text 8

3 Governor Texts 4 and 5 Rulers Texts 2 and 4

4 Senators Texts 4 and 5 Rulers Texts 2 and 4

5 Tax(-dodgers) Text 6, lines 13

and 15

6 (Right Honourable)

Speaker

Text 2 Rulers Texts 2 and 4

7 Reps (representatives) Text 4 Rulers Texts 2 and 4

8 Councillors Text 5 Rulers Texts 2 and 4

9 Central Bank Text 9

10 Pensioners Text 9

11 Identification parade/

verification parade

Text 9

12 Party Whip Text 2, lines 7

and nine

Rulers Texts 2 and 4

13 Palace Text 3, line 11

14 National debt Text 4, line 18

15 Politicians Text 4, lines 26

and 28

Rulers Texts 2 and 4

16 Security Vote Text 4, line 23

17 Voting time Text 5, line 5

18 Campaign Text 5, lines 20

and 23

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19 Bank(s) Texts 6 and 7

20 Oil wealth Text 7, lines 7

and 9

22 Royal/regal Texts 2, 3 and 4

23 Divine Text 4, line 29

24 Kingdom Text 3, lines13

and 15

Two things have been done in the table above:

i. outlining separately those lexical items relating to European political system and

those relating to African traditional political system; and

ii. setting against each other those pairs of lexical items found to be near synonyms.

The use of the lexical items in both groups possesses textual and social values. On the one

hand, it affords the poet the opportunity to blend together the Western civilisation and African

political culture in a way to create a better understanding of Nigeria’s political situation in the

people. By using the two lexical groups the poet tries to blend the foreign and the native for

better comprehension. This is a kind of analogy where the poet invokes African traditional

political system to explain the current European political system which the country operates. For

instance, by making use of the adjectives ‘royal’ and ‘princely’ (both of which have strong

connection with African traditional political system) to qualify ‘Reps’ and ‘Senators’

respectively, the poet is indirectly appealing to people’s knowledge of how kings and princes in

traditional Yoruba societies might use their hardly-challenged divine authority to marginalise the

53

common people, in order to explain vividly how political leaders marginalise the teeming folks

of the country. The poet uses the known to explain the unknown.

On the other hand, by making use of the near synonyms the writer creates for his poems

one lasting artistic and textual value. Near synonyms may be regarded as lexical items that have

been used in a discourse whose meanings are closely related. Most of the time, writers make use

of them to lend diversity to the value of the text and at the same time avoid monotony. How the

poet has made use of this linguistic structure is quite interesting as it not only creates multiple

worldviews and ostracises monotony but also presents the multi-culturality of the country being

discussed.

3.2.4 Lexical Groupings

For effective examination of the poems in question, the prominent lexical items used by the poet

have been grouped into three different categories in relation to their semantic imports. This

categorisation helps shed light on the protagonists and the antagonists in the poems and the

social situations which bind them together. Through the semantic imports of the lexical items,

the reader unconsciously determines the villain and the prey and the kind of inhumanity that

exists between them.

3.2.4.1 The Marginalised Majority

A set of participants found represented in the poems are the Nigerian people (we have already

established that the primary targets of the poems are Nigerians). Going through all the poems,

54

the reader is always conscious of a set of people who are always at the mercy of another pain-

inflicting set of people. Some of the lexical items pointing to these people are:

i. ‘People’ – Text 2, Text 4, and Text 8

ii. ‘Poor’ – Text 4

iii. ‘masses’ – Text 4

iv. ‘Broda’ – Text 5

v. ‘Sista’ – Text 5

vi. ‘Many’ – Text 6, lines 2 and 4

vii. ‘Millions’ – Text 6, line 6

viii. ‘Land’ – Texts 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9

ix. ‘World’ – Text 6, lines 12 and 24

x. ‘People of our land’ – Text 7, lines 1 and 3

xi. ‘Hungary lookers’ – Text 7, line 6

xii. ‘Numberless pensioners’ – Text 9, lines 19 and 21

xiii. ‘toiling folks’ – Text 8, lines 20 and 22

These lexical items and many others are what the reader encounters in almost all the

poems. Therefore, the reader cannot but be conscious of a group of people who are undergoing

serious suffering in the hands of an adamant group of people. These lexical items enable us to

see clearly that a large number of people are a set of participants in Osundare’s Random Blues.

Lexical items such as ‘millions’, ‘folks’, ‘numberless’ ‘many’, and ‘masses’ are pointers of the

fact that the people in this category are many and could thus be regarded as the majority. That

this set of people are undergoing suffering and torture is included in the semantic implications of

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the adjectival components in some of the lexical items above such as ‘toiling’ and ‘hungry’. Also

significant to this is the lexical item ‘poor’.

3.2.4.2 The Pain-inflicting Minority

The second set of people found in the poems is a few group of people who make life difficult for

the teeming majority. Majority of the people in this regard are political leaders. Osundare paints

a people undergoing suffering but does not stop there. He goes ahead to portray another set of

people who are inflicting the pain on them and this set of people are found as the referents of the

following lexical items:

i. ‘Right Honourable(s)’ – Text 2, lines 2 and 4

ii. ‘Right Honourable Speaker’ – Text 2, lines 25 and 27

iii. ‘King’ – Text 3, Text 4, Text 8,

iv. ‘Palace’—Tex 3, line 11

v. ‘Rulers’ – Texts 2 and 4

vi. ‘President’ – Texts 4 and 5

vii. ‘Governor(s)’ – Texts 4 and 5

viii. ‘Princely Senators’ – Text 4, lines 25 and 27

ix. ‘Royal Reps’ – Text 4, lines 25 and 27

x. ‘Predator politicians’ – Text 4, lines 26 and 28

xi. ‘Councillors’ – Text 5, line 18

xii. ‘desperate men’—Text 5, lines 20 and 22

xiii. ‘Ojelu’ – Text 5, lines 25 and 27

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xiv. ‘Orunlu’-- Text 5, lines 25 and 27

xv. ‘Apomolomolekunjaye’ – Text 5, lines 25 and 27

xvi. ‘do-or-die warriors’ – Text 5, lines 26 and 28

xvii. ‘statesmen’ – Text5, line 29

xviii. ‘corporate cats’ – Text 6, line 5

xix. ‘clever tax dodgers’ Text 6, lines 23 and 15

xx. ‘nation’s looters’ – Text 7, line 2 and 4

xxi. ‘pampered people’ -- Text 7, lines 26 and 28

xxii. ‘crooks who rule our land’ – Text 7, line 29

xxiii. ‘perfects of the foulest perfidy’ – Text 7, line 30

xxiv. ‘partners-in-scam’ – Text 2, lines 19 and 21

xxv. ‘ruse’ – Text 7, line 18

xxvi. ‘brute’ – Text 5, line 30

The lexical items above are bound by a semantic relationship called hyponymy. They all refer in

one way or the other to a super-ordinate class of people. Each of the lexical items above is a co-

hyponym for the class of the pain-inflicting minority. They are therefore foregrounded because

they are used across the poems. What this does is to constantly remind the people who maintain

the other end of the scale the fact that there are a set of people who continually make life difficult

for them.

The poet, through some of the lexical items, covers the whole of Nigeria’s political

structure. In Nigeria, there are three tiers of government, namely the local government, the state

government, and the federal government. Representing these three levels of government

respectively are the following lexical items: ‘Councillors’; ‘Governor(s)’; and ‘princely

57

senators’, ‘royal reps’, and ‘president’. What we are able to make out of this is that the poet is

deeply concerned about every level of government in Nigeria where the masses suffer

unnecessarily in the hands of an unfeeling set of people. People who occupy this space are

relatively few (we can even count them) and this is why we have termed them the minority. The

reader is able to perceive the unmerited affluence of this set of people through such lexical items

as ‘princely senators’, ‘royal reps’, ‘nation’s looter’, ‘pampered people’, ‘ruse’, ‘perfects of the

foulest perfidy’, ‘crooks who rule our land’, ‘Ojelu’, and ‘partners-in-scam’. These people’s

inhumanity to the teeming majority is expressed in those lexical items such as ‘Predator

politicians’, ‘desperate men’, ‘Orunlu’, ‘brute’, ‘Apomolomolekunjaye’, and ‘do-or-die warriors’

3.2.4.3 The Social Happenings

The poet not only mirrors the foregoing two sets of people but also provides the hint on what

transpire in the society. This third grouping to examine therefore consists of co-hyponyms for

what we have termed ‘social happenings’. The lexical items used to paint the imagery of the

happenings in the society in question are as follows:

i. ‘miserable pittance’ – Text 2, line 30

ii. ‘deadly disease’ – Text 3, lines 14 and 16

iii. ‘body without a face’ – Text, 3, line 30

iv. ‘beaten’ – Text 1, line 5

v. ‘same old road’ – Text 1, line 23

vi. ‘scams’ – Text 2, lines 19 and 21

vii. ‘brawl’ – Text 2, lines 2 and 4

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viii. ‘savage blows’ – Text 2, line 5

ix. ‘rowdy free-for-all’ – Text 2, line 6

x. ‘backroom deals’ – Text 2, line 17

xi. ‘inflated contracts’ – Text 2, line 17

xii. ‘broken arms’ – Text 2, line 23

xiii. ‘tattered clothes’ – Text 2, line 23

xiv. ‘looted fortune’ – Text 2, line 29

xv. ‘starve’ – Text 2, line 30

xvi. ‘fatten’ Text 2, line 29

xvii. ‘minimum wage’ – Text 4, lines 1 and 3

xviii. ‘maximum wahala’ – Text 4, line 2and 4

xix. ‘few pennies’ – Text 4, line 5

xx. ‘hungry rage’ – Text 4, line 6

xxi. ‘few billions’ – Text 4, line 13

xxii. ‘gubernatorial fleet’ – Text 4, lines 14 and 16

xxiii. ‘feast and feast’ – Text 4, line 29

xxiv. ‘fast and fast’ – Text 4, line 30

xxv. ‘season of rampant treason’ – Text 5, line 6

xxvi. ‘blood flowing free in the street’ – Text 5, lines 1 and 3

xxvii. ‘kill’ – Text 5 and 7

xxviii. ‘profit’ – Text 5, line 12

xxix. ‘horde of bone-crushers’ – Text 5, line 17

xxx. ‘pain’ – Text 5, lines 19 and 21

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xxxi. ‘bleed’ – Text 5, line 30

xxxii. ‘break and bleed’ Text 6, line 30

xxxiii. ‘miserable penny’ – Text 6, line 6

xxxiv. ‘greed’ -- Text 6, line 6

xxxv. ‘need’ – Text 6, lines 2 and 4

xxxvi. ‘collapses’ -- Text 6, lines 8 and 10

xxxvii. ‘oil wealth’ -- Text 7, lines 7 and 9

xxxviii. ‘squeeze’ – Text 8, lines 20 and 22

xxxix. ‘creepy cash’ – text 9, line 5

xl. ‘tremble and die’ – Text 9, lines 19 and 21

xli. ‘verification parades’ – Text 9, lines 20 and 22

xlii. ‘penniless’ – Text 9, line 23

xliii. ‘common need’ – Text 9, line 30

xliv. ‘darkness’ – Text 7, line 17

xlv. ‘empty barrels’ – Test 7, lines 20 and 22

xlvi. ‘bare air’ – Text 7, line 23

xlvii. ‘fraud’ – Text 7, lines 25 and 27

xlviii. ‘subsidy’ -- Text 7, lines 25 and 27

xlix. ‘bottomless bowl’ Text 8, lines 19 and 21

l. ‘notes of different kinds’ – Text 9, line 2 and 4

li. ‘life-exhausting charades’ – Text 9, line 24

lii. ‘graft and greed’ Text 9, lines 26 and 28

liii. ‘divine duty’ – Text 4, line 29

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liv. ‘sink’ – Text 4, lines 7 and 9

lv. ‘burst out’ – Text 4, line 6

lvi. ‘present and past’ – Text 4, lines 26 and 28

These lexical items, apart from giving details about the contemporary Nigerian society, convey

different themes of the poems such as corruption, terror, violence, frustration, agony, perpetuity,

and decay. These lexical items have been distributed into the various respective themes which

they express in the table below:

Table 3: The Themes in the Poems and the Lexical Items Expressing them

S/N Themes Lexical Items

1 Corruption ‘scams’, backroom deals’, ‘inflated contracts’, ‘looted fortune’,

‘fatten’, ‘gubernatorial fleet’, ‘feast and feast’, ‘profit’, ‘oil

wealth’, ‘creepy cash’, ‘bare air’, ‘fraud’, ‘subsidy’, ‘bottomless

bowl’, ‘notes of different kinds’, ‘graft and greed’,

2 Poverty ‘miserable pittance’, ‘deadly disease’, ‘few pennies’, ‘hungry

rage’, ‘few billions’, ‘fast and fast’, ‘miserable penny’, ‘need’,

‘penniless’, ‘common need’, ‘minimum wage’

3 Agony ‘starve’, ‘kill’, ‘pain’, ‘bleed’, ‘break and bleed’, ‘squeeze’,

‘tremble and die’, ‘sink’

4 Violence ‘brawl’, ‘savage blows’, ‘rowdy free-for-all’, ‘broken arms’,

‘tattered clothes’,

5 Frustration ‘maximum wahala’, ‘life-exhausting charades’, ‘verification

parades’, ‘burst out’

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6 Terror ‘body without a face’, ‘season of rampant treason’, ‘blood

flowing free in the street’, ‘horde of bone-crushers’, ‘darkness’,

7 Decay ‘beaten’, ‘collapses’,

8 Perpetuity ‘same old road’, ‘divine duty’, ‘present and past’

The lexical items in this group afford us the chance to probe into the thematic make-up of the

poems as well as experience the social happenings in the contemporary Nigerian society.

3.2.4.4 Summary

The lexical items in this section are categorised into three different groups based on their

semantic affiliation with one another. The semantic relationship which binds the lexical items in

each of the groups together is hyponymy. Hyponymy could be briefly described as the relation of

meaning which exists between a word which indicates a general idea and another group of words

each of which means a class of the general idea. In other words, it refers to a semantic situation

in which the meanings of a set of words are included in the meaning of a word. For instance,

‘Honda Accord’, ‘Toyota Camry’, ‘Volkswagen’ are all co-hyponyms of the word ‘car’.

In our own situation, the meanings of each of the lexical items in each group are seen as

being included in any of the three general ideas (the marginalised majority, the pain-inflicting

minority, and the social happenings). That is, we see their meanings as being included in one

general idea under which we have grouped them. The lexical items under ‘the marginalised

majority’ express different kinds of meanings about it; the ones under ‘the pain-inflicting

minority’ also express its different aspects of meaning just as the ones under ‘the social

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happenings’ are its exophoric co-hyponyms. Through the grouping, it becomes easy to probe into

who the participants in the poems are, the conflicts or the subjects of discussion as well as the

timeless themes which the poems treat.

Statistically, the lexical items whose meanings have to do with social happenings appear to

be the largest in number followed by those whose meanings have to do with the minority group

while those which have to do with the majority group are the smallest. The statistical

significance of this unequal distribution is to create the consciousness that the problem of the

society in question outweighs the capacity of its people. What is being said is that the problem

embattling the contemporary Nigerian society is overwhelming. We need not wander then why

the poet concludes:

The country’s problem has become a mountain

(Text 4, line 11)

On the other hand, the fact that the co-hyponyms found in the category in 3.2.4.2 are more

than those found in the category in 3.2.4.1 is an indicator of the dominating corruption of the

pain-inflicting minority. The poet seems to be suggesting that there is more to say about this set

of people than there is about the other set of people.

By making use of more associated lexical items to express the unmerited wealth of the

pain-inflicting minority, their continuous inhumanity to the people, and the country’s growing-

out-of-hand socio-political problems (than the lexical items referring to the masses), the poet’s

motive may be read as trying to direct people’s attention to them in order to work out lasting

solutions to them. This reading, therefore, confirms Osundare as a social engineer who has the

love of fellow humans at heart.

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3.3 Conclusion

What has been done in this chapter is probing into the poems from graphological and lexico-

semantic points of view. We have tried to see how the poet deploys graphological and lexical

resources to pass across his messages. While we do not claim to have examined all the resources

in this direction, we hold the view that the ones examined are foregrounded for the interpretation

that we have done.

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CHAPTER FOUR

SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

4.0 Introduction

The main objective of this chapter is to examine and analyse the poems from the syntactic branch

of linguistic analysis. In this chapter, we want to examine how the poet’s creative arrangement of

words contributes to our understanding of the poems. In order words, the aim is to systematise

how we understand the poems using syntactic evidence.

4.1 Classification of Sentences in the Poems

The sentences used in the poems can be classified according to their structural patterns and their

communicative functions. This classification is essential to understanding the poems in a way

that its absence in the analysis might render this linguistic exercise ineffective. Structure-wise,

the poet makes excessive use of simple sentences, complex sentences and compound sentences.

From functional point of view, there is the use of declarative sentences, imperative sentences and

interrogative sentences.

4.1.1 The Sentences According to their Communicative Functions

All of the four functional classes of sentence are found used in the poems but some of them are

more prominently used than the others. We have statements, questions, commands and

exclamations each of which shall now be thoroughly examined.

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4.1.1.1 Statements

Statements are sentences which give information. When a statement is used, the general

implication is that the speaker or a writer is willing to give out some pieces of information. A

piece of discourse that is permeated with statements may be read as more of exposition than any

other kind of meaning transaction. In the poems, the poet makes use of more statements than any

other kind of sentence and the implication of this is that the poet is doing more of exposition than

requesting or directing. According to Quirk and Greenbaum (2000: 191), ‘statements are

sentences in which the subject is always present and generally precedes the verb.

In dealing with some of the statements used in the poems, we will first examine their

syntactic properties before probing into the information which they are used to express. Nine

statements would be examined: one from each of the nine poems being analysed. The table

below represents the statements and their syntactic break-downs:

Table 4: Some of the Statements Used in the Poems and their Syntactic Properties

S/

N

Subjects Predicators Remaining Parts of

the Predicates

Poems and

Lines

1 The Green Eagles

are out /Before the very

first whistle

Text 1,

lines 1 and

2

2 Our Right Honourables are deep in a brawl Text 2, line

4

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3 He

left

without a word / About

who would take his

place

Text 3,

lines 25

and 26

4 Minimum wage (is) /Maximum wahala Text 4,

lines 1 and

2

5 Voting time Is here again Text 5, line

5

6 The fortunes which bloat

their bank accounts

/Are those from which we

break and bleed

Text 6,

lines 29

and 30

7 This fraud they couch as

‘subsidy’,

/(is a) Needless dole to a

pampered people

Text 7,

lines 7 and

8

8 Gongosu g’(un) ori ite Text 8, line

1

9 Numberless pensioners

tremble and

die

/In endless

“identification parades”

Text 9, 19

and 20

Through this table, we have been able to prove that the sentences are indeed statements given

their syntactic properties. However, what are striking and significant about them are the

functions which they have been used to perform.

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These statements are used to perform one crucial function and that is expression of

information. The pieces of information they convey are essential to our analysis and this is why

we want to examine, one by one, the statements in relation to the Nigerian society which they

chronicle. The poems selected for this analysis cover the Nigerian society between the years,

2010, 2011, and 2012. The statements above give pieces of information which are relevant to

each of the years in Nigeria. We will now look at the statements and the pieces of information

they convey.

The first statement ‘The Green Eagles are out/ Before the very first whistle’ is used by the

poet to lambast and document the untimely disqualification of Super Eagles, Nigeria’s team of

under 23 football players, in the 2010 World Cup hosted by South Africa. In the history of

international football competition, the continent of Africa has never hosted a World Cup football

competition until 2010 when South Africa became the first African country to host World Cup.

People thought that, since the World Cup was hosted by an African country, the African

countries, Nigeria among them, would strive to get the cup. It however came as a surprise to the

people and the poet when the failure of the Super Eagles (as Nigerian players are called) was

finally brought about, in the first round of the competition, by two of the players, Yakubu

Ayegbeni and Sanni Kaita.

The second statement ‘Our Right Honourables are deep in a brawl’ is used to satirise and

immortalise the unprecedented event which occurred in Nigeria’s House of Representatives in

2010 under the speakership of Dimeji Bankole when the representatives turned the legislative

chamber into a battle ground where they could easily have a free-for-all. The event is a national

embarrassment on the country and people like Osundare cannot let it go without documenting

and commenting on it.

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The third statement ‘He left without a word/ About who would take his place’ records

President Umar Musa Yar’adu’s unconstitutional absence in the country in 2010 when majority

of the people were wondering where their president could have gone. Yar’adua was reported as

having a chronic heart disease which later claimed his life. He flew out of the country without

delegating power to his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan. This is the event in the National life of

Nigeria which the poet is trying to expose the reader to by using the statement.

The first three statements just examined all point to three major national incidents in

Nigeria which occurred in the year 2010 in the same order. The year 2011 also witnessed several

national occurrences some of which we shall trace following some of the statements above which

are used in three of the poems published in 2011. In early April, 2011, the country prepared for

general elections and political aspirants in their usual manner of do-or-die employed thugs to

scare their opponents and in the process got people killed and injured. It is to respond to this and

create the awareness on and warn of these political monsters that the poet has made the

declarative sentence ‘Voting time is here again’.

The statement ‘Minimum wage (is)/ Maximum wahala’ is an informative reference to the

salary increment demand made by labour unions in Nigeria in 2011. In the 2011 general

elections, Goodluck Jonathan was elected the president. Some months into his administration,

Nigerian people, the workforce especially, began to feel uncomfortable with the nation’s

economy, especially as naira had depreciated, and began to make demand from the government

for more money. This brought about the national issue of ‘eighteen thousand Naira minimum

wage’ which rocked the country even till the following year. The Nigerian Labour Congress

(NLC) demanded from the Government that the minimum wage paid to any worker in Nigeria

should be eighteen thousand naira, claiming that things were costlier than they had been. While

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some people believed that eighteen thousand naira minimum wage was the solution to the

nation’s rising inflation in the year, many people believed that it could not solve Nigeria’s

problem and that what the government should work on was how to curb the inflation and raise

naira value. The latter set of people believed that Nigeria’s problem is its political leaders. It is

with this set of people that Niyi Osundare identifies. It is in an attempt to respond to this social

situation that the statement has come to life. The poet might be interpreted as positing that the

minimum wage demanded would only bring about a worse situation where the problem is further

compounded and that the bigger problem of corruption should be put into check.

The statement ‘The fortunes which bloat their bank accounts/ Are those from which we

break and bleed’ represents an attempt by the poet to inform the Nigerian people about the

various kinds of corruption which bedevilled the country in the year and at the same time raise

their inquisition such that they may choose to swing into action. As usual in Nigeria, the year

witnessed various kinds of theft in various governmental offices and it is an attempt to convey

this piece of information that the statement has been used.

January 1, 2012 was a killing surprise for the people of Nigeria as President Goodluck

Jonathan removed oil subsidy which brought about more than a hundred percent increment in the

price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly called petrol. This New Year surprise package

was met with strong objection from Nigerians, the first of its kind in the history of Nigerian

politics. The president claimed that the money paid as subsidy was only dishonestly enjoyed by

very few oil marketers. It was said that these people only collected the money and diverted it to

their private pockets. It is in order to mirror this significant national issue that the statement ‘This

fraud they couch as ‘subsidy’/ (is a) Needless dole to a pampered people’ has been used.

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Since the New Year surprise package, people’s attitude towards President Goodluck

Jonathan has changed drastically. Because he eventually increased fuel price and because of

many of his decisions that were anti-people, people began to doubt his capability as a president.

The poet, trying to convey this social development, makes use of the statement ‘Gongosu g’ori

ite’, a Yoruba statement which might be interpreted as ‘the fool ascends the throne’.

Finally, the statement ‘Numberless pensioners tremble and die/ In endless “identification

parades”’ is used to mirror several pension fund scams which took place in the year. The poet

conveys the information that those who have worked for the nation and were supposed to be

enjoying their after-service life are unnecessarily punished by those greedy people who

converted the money meant for them to their private accounts.

In conclusion, what we have tried to do is to see how the statements have conveyed pieces

of information that are chronologically linked together. The poet uses them to monitor the socio-

political situations in the country.

4.1.1.2 Commands

Commands may be regarded as sentences which are used to give order or to get another person

do something. What is necessary in an imperative sentence is an imperative verb. Most of the

imperative sentences in the selected poems are targeted at the Nigerian masses. We can represent

all of them in a table to test their syntactic qualification:

Table 5: The Commands Used in the Poems and their Syntactic Properties

S/N Adverbials Imperative

Verbs

Subjects Remaining Parts of the

Predicates

Poems

and Lines

1 Better Take To your heels Text 2,

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line 1

2 Run Broda Text 4,

line 7

3 So troop out and

occupy

/ All the temples of graft and

greed

Text 6,

lines 25

and 26

4 Don’t ask how many book he ever read Text 8,

line 18

The commands above are used to achieve different effects in the reader. The poet, taking on the

toga of a social director, seeks to influence the thinking, the action and the judgement of the

people about political leaders. By just examining the imperative verbs used in those commands,

we can clearly see what the poet is trying to use them for.

The imperative verb ‘take’ which exists in the idiomatic structure ‘Better take to your

heels’ functions as part of the idiom to mean ‘run away’. The poet has made use of this to direct

people from political disaster. He is trying to save the common man from the inhuman activities

of ruthless political leaders who employ thugs to massacre the people. It is in this same sense that

the imperative verb ‘run’ has been used. So, both imperative verbs are used to direct common

citizens away from the violent activities of cruel politicians so that they don’t get hurt in their

various engineered fracas.

The imperative verbs ‘troop’ and ‘occupy’ are the most powerful imperative verbs ever

used throughout the selected poems. These two verbs are calling for mass action against the

corrupt government as suggested by their metaphorical object ‘temples of graft and greed’ which

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stand for the governments at various levels where corruption is the norm. The poet, having

exposed the people to the numerous mismanagements of public properties at various levels of

government, logically attempts to swing the masses into action. The result conjunct ‘so’ is

strategic to this logical rhetoric of the poet. These two verbs may be said to have a resultant

impact on the Nigerian citizens who eventually trouped out en mass and occupied the roads to

demand the reversal of the increment in petroleum price in 2012. It is quite significant to note

that these two verbs were used in November, 2011, while the mass action occurred in January,

2012. The most interesting part of this revelation is the fact that the mass action is termed

‘OCCUPY NIGERIA’. The imperative verb ‘occupy’ used by the poet is retained.

The imperative verb ‘don’t ask’ is significant for its sarcastic and ironic undertone. The

poet has used it to achieve one important effect in the reader. The effect is to make the reader

(the masses) mock their leaders who act cluelessly and against people’s desire. One of the

motives of the poet which is to arouse the emotion of the people against the government is quite

clear from this angle.

4.1.1.3 Questions

The communicative function of questions is to elicit information. Questions have different

syntactic structures, the examination of which may be avoided in this study. Though questions

are to elicit information, how they have been used in the poems is quite different and artistic.

All the questions used in the poems are, in real sense, not calling for information but

emphasising pieces of information already expressed through statements. This kind of question is

often literarily referred to as rhetorical question. For example, in Text 3, line 25, when the poet

asks ‘Off to Saudi Kingdom?’, the poet is not particularly interested in getting any information

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from the reader. All he is using the question for is to reiterate the absence of President Umar

Musa Yar’adua in 2010. Apart from serving as a rhetorical emphasis, some of the questions also

serve as open challenge on the politicians. A perfect example of this can be found in Text 9, lines

13 and 14, where the poet openly challenges a government official who has carted to her own

house the money meant for the common citizens: ‘Is this a Currency Depot/ Or is this the Central

Bank?’

Summarily, the questions found in the poems are used for emphasis and as means of

launching open challenge.

4.1.1.4 Exclamations

Exclamations are generally marked by the use of the exclamatory mark (!). According to Quirk

and Greenbaum (ibid), exclamatory sentences ‘have an initial phrase introduced by what or how

without inversion of subject and operator. Exclamatory sentences are used to convey a state of

mind. That is, they are used such that the meaning expressed by a sentence of this kind is

attached to some emotion.

In all of the poems under study, there is no clean-cut exclamation. The only one that could

be found cannot be regarded as an exclamation because: i. it has undergone the process of

ellipsis, ii. it is subsumed under a bigger sentence. The structure is “‘what a hapless pick!’”

which occurs in “And we wondered: ’what a hapless pick!’” (Text 1, line 18).

Why the poet has not made use of a clean-cut exclamation in nine poems shows the scale of

preference of the poet in terms of communicative classes of sentences. Since one of the major

concerns of the poet in the publication is to expose the social ills of the contemporary Nigerian

society, it is understandable why he makes excessive use of statements and little or no use of

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exclamations. To attach emotion to a meaning, exclamations are not the only medium.

Exclamation mark could be used across phrases and clauses to equally express emotion.

4.1.2 The Sentences According to their Structural Patterns

The most prominent sentential structural patterns used in the poems are simple sentence,

compound sentence and complex sentence. While some of these sentences occupy a single line,

majority of them do not occupy a single line. They are in almost all the cases distributed into two

lines. In some cases the simple sentences used in the poems occupy a single line as it could be

seen in the following examples:

i. It’s a rowdy free-for-all (Text 2, line 6)

ii. The rulers fatten on looted fortune (Text 2, line 29)

iii. The people starve on miserable pittance (Text 2, line 30)

iv. The ruler toss up a few pennies (Text 4, line 5 )

v. Statesmen stride in other lands (Text 5, line 29)

However, when the simple sentences do not occupy a single line, the structural breakdown

is usually such that the Subject of the sentence; the Predicator; and the Object, Complement, or

an obligatory Adverbial (if there is any) occupy a single line while the following line would

contain the adverbial which is usually optional. Let us examine the following lines for example:

The Party Whip turned himself

Into a useful tool

(Text 2, lines 7 and 8)

The sentence can be restructured into a non-poetic ordinary sentence: ‘The Party Whip turned

himself into a useful tool’ with the following structural pattern:

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The Party Whip

turned himself /Into a useful tool

S P C(ex.) A

Other examples of this kind of creative breakdown of simple sentences are represented in this

table:

Table 6: The Simple Sentences Used in the Poems and their Structural Lineation

Distribution

S/N S P C(ex.)/

C(int.) /A

A Poems and

Lines

1 The

Governor

cannot

count

the cars /In his gubernatorial

fleet

Text 4, lines

19 and 20

2 The Green

Eagles

are Out /Before the very first

whistle

Text 1, lines

1 and 2

3 There

Is so much pain /In the campaign of

desperate men

Text 5, lines

19 and 20

4 There Is something

more liquid

than water

In this castle’s water

tank

Text 9, lines

17 and 18

5 He

Left without a

word

/About who would take

his place

Text 3, lines

25 and 26

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Apart from the above structural arrangement, the simple sentences are sometimes such

divided that the subject occupying a single line while the entire predicate is put in the following

line. Examples of this are:

Table 7: The Lineation Division of the Simple Sentences into Subjects and Predicates

S/N Subjects Predicates Poems and

Lines

1 His royal state of health

/Has put us all out of ease Text 3, lines 17

and 18

2 The deadly blow from

excess

/Has caused the world a mighty

sore

Text 6, lines 23

and 24

3 The nation’s oil wealth / Is their reckless booty Text 7, lines 7

and 8

4 Their sleaze and slush

/ Have smothered the national

health

Text 7, lines 11

and 12

5 The crooks who rule our

land

/ Are prefects of the foulest

perfidy

Text 7, lines 29

and 30

7 Those who rule this land / Are sick with graft and greed Text 9, lines 25

and 26

8 The insanity of their

avarice

/ Is ravenous danger to our

common need

Text 9, lines 29

and 30

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Regarding Osundare’s use of complex and compound sentences, the clauses are, in most

cases, distributed between two lines. In the compound sentences, the two independent clauses are

split into two and linearised (that is, arranged into two lines); while in the complex sentences, the

independent clause maintains a single line while the dependent clause occupies another line.

Examples of this can be found in Text 1, lines 11 and 12, and Text 4, lines 11 and 12

respectively:

i. Before they kicked the ball at all (dependent clause)

They had lost their vital steam (independent clause)

ii. The country’s problem has become a mountain (independent clause)

But the King cannot see it with his magnifying glasses (independent clause)

Other examples of this kind of breaking are represented in Table 8 for clarification:

Table 8: The Simplification of the Complex and Compound Sentences Used in the Poems

S/N First Clause Second Clause Sentence

Types

Poems and

Lines

1 He simply sneaked away /Before his work was done complex Text 3, lines

5 and 6

2 The Palace said nothing /Just as we thought they

would

complex Text 3, lines

11 and 12

3 Our rulers argue far into

the night

/Wondering how deep to

sink the masses

complex Text 4, lines

7 and 8

4 Governors hire them / And Senators do compound Text 5, lines

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13 and 14

5 They gloat in their glut /While the land collapses

in want

complex Text 6, lines

7 and 8

6 They belch their

bombasts from gilded

castles

/ And swamp the world

with their bloated rant

compound Text 6, lines

11 and 12

7 (Say,) we have seen

many Kings in this land

/But this one wears a

different cap

compound Text 8, lines

9 and 10

8 You only need a rapid

glance

/And you know he has a

serious handicap

compound Text 8, lines

11 and 12

9 He left without a word /About who would take his

place

complex Text 3, lines

25 and 26

10 They kill all the effort /To refine the oil we use complex Text 7, lines

13 and 14

Others such as compound complex sentence and multiple sentences found in the poems are

equally simplified into clauses and arranged in lines. Examples of the sentences in this category

are as follows:

They seize the table and undo the feast (two independent clauses)

Compound-complex

sentence

While we stare along, hungry onlookers (one dependent clause)

79

(Text 7, lines 5 and 6)

They wheel and deal in darkness (two independent clauses)

Multiple sentence

And gather their wealth by ruse (one independent clause)

(Text 7, lines 17 and 18)

One thing that the structural examination of the sentences has revealed is an attempt to

simplify thought in order to create simplicity of meaning which in turn would bring about an

immediate understanding.

It can be seen that Osundare tries all means to simplify almost all the sentences, even the

simple sentences that are in the poems are further simplified. This attempt is strategic to the

poet’s craft of implying his primary reader. We have established it in Chapter Three that the

poet’s primary audience are the Nigerian masses whom the poet is trying to inform and

influence. To be able to inform them and to achieve communicative success, the poet has

endeavoured to simplify the sentences so that by so doing the units of information in the poems

may be simplified too.

This choice of simplifying sentences made by the poet does not only contribute to the

social value of the poems; it also contributes to the textuality of the poems. It makes them simple

while they are still being highly creative. The poems can therefore be regarded as being simple

but highly creative. This can therefore lead to the conclusion that by being simple and creative,

the poems appeal to the common citizens most of whom, in fact, may not have the time for

highly compacted literature.

80

The simplification of the sentences and the foregrounded use of simple sentences

contribute to the textual success of the poems and their social values. The functional use of this

technique is therefore relevant to the poet’s motive.

4.1.3 Summary

The investigation into the poet’s functional and structural use of sentences has revealed that the

structural and functional usages are not accidents but calculative attempts to achieve some social

and textual effects.

For example, the use of declarative sentences has been to expose and follow the

happenings in the contemporary Nigerian society; the interrogative sentences are used to achieve

the rhetorical effect of emphasis; the imperative sentences are used purposely to influence

people’s decision and affect their way of seeing the government of Nigeria; while the absence of

clean-cut exclamatory sentences suggests a partial absence of complicated emotion. On the other

hand, the simplification of sentences found rampant in the poems is read as an attempt by the

poet to simplify his message, since it is meant for people with simple language.

4.2 The Foregrounded Use of Interjection

Interjection refers to a part of speech which expresses the speaker’s state of mind. It usually

occurs at sentence initial. Interjections are profusely used in the poems in that every third line of

every stanza of the poems possesses it. However, among all the items which are considered as

interjections are some which might be regarded as lexical in that independently they have the

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meanings of their own. They are taken as functioning as interjection because of the structural slot

to which they have been put. The poet uses interjections in all the poems in a way that at every

third line of each stanza the reader anticipates seeing an interjection. In Crystal (2008:249), what

is regarded as an interjection may be lexical or non-lexical. In the poems, there are pure

interjections and lexical items which have been used as interjections. ‘Ha ha ha’, ‘ani’, ‘haba’,

and ‘agbaga’ are some of the pure interjections in the poems; while ‘pity’, ‘asking’ and ‘see’ are

some of the lexical items used as interjections.

What is however stylistic in the use of the interjections is the set of functions which

they are used to perform. The interjections are particularly used to achieve mockery,

emphasis, exaggeration, and lamentation. ‘Ha ah ah’ and ‘ha ha’ are used throughout the

poems to achieve mockery; ‘yes’, ‘say’, ‘hear?’, ‘see’, ‘asking’, ‘surely’ and ‘ani’ are

used to achieve emphasis; ‘ah’, ‘haba’, ‘yepa’, and ‘agbaga’ are used to create

exaggeration; while ‘alas’, ‘oh’, ‘pity’, and ‘hah’ are used to create a sense of lamentation

in the reader. All of these interjections are to generate certain emotive responses from the

reader.

Apart from the emotive functions of these interjectory elements, they also perform

the textual function of cohesion. By making the reader anticipate an interjection at every

third line of every stanza, the poet creates the consciousness of the poems as being one

parallel artistic exercise.

In summary, the interjections are used to achieve both affective and textual

functions.

82

4.3 Use of Code Switching

Code switching is an important aspect of the language of the poems. Code witching refers

to the use of more than one code in the same conversation or a unit of discourse. It may

be inter-language or intra-language. The kind of code switching we have in the poems is

inter-language. The two languages used are English and Yoruba.

Code switching is prominently conspicuous in Text 8, where the entire lines of the

first stanza are in Yoruba while the remaining stanzas are in English:

Gongosu g’ori ite

Aye lu jara bii kobo Pabo

Agbaga! Gongosu g’ori ite

Aye lu jara bi kobo Pabo

Odoyo goloto, afenuhora

Awaye ma kuro laite

Here, the poet completely shuts out foreign readers by using a language only

understandable to those who use Yoruba. The attempt made here is to reserve extra

information to the source and thereby specify the primary or target readers of the poems

as citizens of Nigeria. For the purpose of non-native readers, we may give a rough

translation of the stanza as:

The fool ascends the throne

The world becomes a global village like Pabo kobo

Agbaga! The fool ascends the throne

The world becomes a global village like Pabo kobo

Mammoth dullard, witless moron

83

One who doesn’t die without being humiliated

In sum, the use of code switching is a means of conveying the implied reader. The

poet, by excluding others who do not share Yoruba language from certain aspects of the

discourse, seems to be suggesting that the native readers should understand the poems

more, since they are meant for them.

4.4 Syntactic Parallelism

It would be deficient if this analysis does not pay close attention to the syntactic

parallelism profusely used in the poems because they are very essential to the inter-

textual unity which the poems maintain. Just like the interjections, every stanza possesses

an instance of grammatical parallelism. Through the syntactic parallelism, the poet

creates a generic structure for his stanzas which, as a result, creates the impression that

poems are indeed a natural series.

The poet makes use of three kinds of syntactic parallelism. There is one in which all

the lexical items used in the original structure are repeated in the parallel structure. There

are parallel structures characterised by substitution and ones characterised by ellipsis. An

example of a parallel syntactic structure with same lexical items found in Text1, lines 13

and 14 and Text 1, lines 15 and 16 respectively is:

And Kaita brought us a Greek gift /By his brash and beastly kick

Yes, Kaita brought us a Greek gift /By his brash and beastly kick

Conj./Interj. S P Ci Cd A

84

Other examples of this are:

Prices went through the roof / (Text 8, line 25)

(Hah,) prices went through the roof / (Text 8, line 27)

S P A

The house shook to its very root (Text 8, lines 26)

The house shook to its very root (Text 8, line 28)

S P A

An example of a syntactic parallelism characterised by ellipsis found in the poems in Tex1, lines 1 and 2

and Tex1, lines 3 and 4 respectively is:

The Green Eagles are out /Before the very first whistle

(Ha ha ha) Green Eagles out /Before the first whistle

S P A A

In the parallel structure, the article ‘the’ is ellipted at the subject position while the entire predicator is

completely removed. Other examples of this abound in the poems.

An example of syntactic parallel structures which are characterised by substitution is:

85

The nation’s oil wealth /Is their reckless booty (Text 7, lines 7and 8)

Haba, our very oil wealth /Is their reckless booty (Text 7, lines 9 and 10)

S P C

In these structures, it can be seen that the nominal group ‘The nation’s oil wealth’ is substituted

with the nominal group ‘our very oil wealth’ at the subject position.

These syntactic parallel structures perform one important textual function which is

achievement of inter-textual cohesion. Through them the poet is able to create unity among all

the poems in the publication. The use of syntactic parallelism in the poems is a means of

unifying them. In corollary to this, the syntactic parallelism creates the sense in the reader that

most of the issues created in the poems are parallel from one poem to another.

Also, the use of different structural syntactic parallel types by the poet helps exorcise

monotony which might result from cumbersome repetition of sentences. Thus, the rotation

among parallel structures with same lexical items, parallel structures characterised by ellipsis and

parallel structures characterised by substitution is a device by the poet to expel boredom.

To sum it up, the various syntactic parallel structures used in the poems not only serves to

achieve inter-textual cohesion and send a signal of continuity but also acts to expel boredom on

the part of the reader.

4.5 Use of First Person Plural Pronouns

The poet’s special use of first person plural pronouns is of stylistic significance. First person

plural pronoun ‘we’ and the first person possessive plural determiner ‘our’ are especially

86

foregrounded to such an extent that one need not labour before getting the sense of the inclusion

of the poet in the society in question and the sense of collective ownership. Of especial

significance also is the fact that in all the poems being examined there is no use of ‘I’, ‘my’ and

‘mine’ which might suggest individuality. The implication of this is depersonalisation of the

issues presented.

While the subjective case first person plural pronoun ‘we’ (used 13 times in all the

selected poems) and its objective case equivalent ‘us’ (used 3 times in all the poems) are used to

signal the poet’s identification with the masses, the possessive first person plural determiner

‘our’ (occurring 8 times in all the poems) is used to create a sense of collective possession in the

people (the reader).

The significance of this usage is that it enables us to see the poet as identifying with the

masses to deal with an oppressive government. It also enables us to trace a sense of collective

ownership in the society presented in the poems. This however may be considered as an effective

device in the hand of the poet to be able to eat deep into the minds of the masses. Once the

masses have the sense that the poet is part of them, it becomes easy for the poet to command

them using his imperative sentences and several other rhetorical devices.

Summarily, the use of these first person plural pronouns by the poet is geared towards an

attempt by him to create the sense of being inclusive and collective ownership as a way of

influencing the masses and directing them.

4.6 Conclusion

We have tried to examine the poems from various syntactic angles and have analysed those

syntactic features that are significant to our interpretation of the poems. We have seen the poet’s

87

use of certain structures that enrich the poems’ textuality, ideational embellishment and

interpersonal significance.

88

CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION

5.0 Introduction

This chapter is the last part of this study which aims at providing general conclusion to the whole

long essay. In this chapter, the analyses done in the essay are summarised; recommendations are

provided; while conclusions are made on the whole publication, Niyi Osundare’s Random Blues.

5.1 Summary

The poems in Niyi Osundare’s Random Blues, a weekly publication in Sunday Tribune

newspaper, chronicle the socio-political happenings in the contemporary Nigerian society as well

as explore issues of human relation such as love, beauty, philanthropy, patience, and humility.

However, the ones explored here are ones which focus more on socio-political happenings in

Nigeria between the years 2010, 2011, and 2012, which have direct reference in the socio-

political and democratic history of Nigeria.

By looking at the poems through the window of functional classification of sentences, we

are able to see that Niyi Osundare is doing more of exposition than eliciting information or

making order— exposing the social and political happenings in the Nigerian society. In Text 1,

the poet satirises the Super Eagles of Nigeria for performing woefully in the 2010 World Cup

hosted by South Africa, specifically immortalising the name of one of the players who,

89

eventually, prominently brought about the doom of the team in the football competition ‘by his

brash and beastly kick’, Sanni Kaita.

Text 2 is in direct reference to the brawl which broke out in Nigeria’s House of

Representatives in 2010. The poet explores the vices which are characteristic of the legislative

chamber, accusing the law makers of fattening ‘on looted fortune’ while ‘the people starve on

miserable pittance’. Text 3 is a direct poetic record of President Musa Yar’adua’s

unconstitutional absence in the country between the years 2009 and 2010. The poet portrays the

adverse effects of the absence, prominent of which is confusion.

Text 4 documents one of the most prominent national issues in the country in the year

2011: Eighteen Thousand Naira Minimum wage, which rocked the country even till the

following year. In the poem, the poet frowns on the fact that political office holders in Nigeria do

not treat the masses well in terms of wealth distribution, the result of which induced animalistic

instinct in the citizens, for it is animal to ‘burst out in hungry rage’. Text 5 is a documentary

poetic exercise where the poet examines the maturity of Nigeria’s democracy in terms of

electioneering. By implicitly referring to the campaign period in 2011 April pole, the poet

explicitly portrays the typical campaign style of Nigerian politicians which is often characterised

by killing, commotion, assassination and social unrest. Text 6 is more a poem of action than of

historical reference in that it summarises the socio-political problems of the country, their cause

and the poet’s perceived solution. The poet is revolutionary and daring in this poem as he boldly

calls on the Nigerian citizens to take their destiny in their hands by trooping out and occupying

‘all the temples of graft and greed’. The title of the poem, ‘Occupy!’ in its own right is

phenomenally radical.

90

Oil subsidy which was a prominent talk in the early months of 2012 forms the subject

matter of Text 7, where the poet lambasts Nigeria’s corrupt politicians and their allies, the oil

marketer thieves, for collecting subsidy on oil which they diverted to their private accounts. Text

8 is a poetic historical profile of President Goodluck Jonathan’s personality and administration. It

mirrors the attitude (towards him) of the Nigerian citizens who believed that Jonathan was a

failure as a president. Many of these citizens believed that Jonathan was clueless. The year 2012

was fraught with pension fund scams and documenting this social phenomenon is Text 9 in

which the poet captures the agony of pensioners who were denied of their right by a greedy set of

people.

Through the analysis of the poems, it is seen that the primary audience or the implied

audience of the poet are the Nigerian citizens whom the poet has come out to sensitise and

influence to make certain social and radical moves so that the country could be free of its socio-

political problems of corruption, deception, commotion, etc. This is reflected in the poet’s

attempt to conduct marriage of various kinds between an African language, Yoruba and a

European international language, English, in relaying his message. Though the poet makes use of

English which makes the content of the poems accessible to non-Nigerian readers, certain basic

pieces of information are reserved to Nigerians who possess the appropriate social, historical,

and cultural knowledge to quickly grasp the messages of the poems. Some of the linguistic

devices deployed by the poet in achieving this effect are inter-language blending, code mixing,

and code switching. These linguistic devices not only imply the primary readers but also seek to

work out some rhetorical effect on them, the Nigerian citizens.

It is also seen in the analysis that the poems in the publication can be regarded as a

continuous poetic documentary in that they maintain some kind of chronology similar to that in

91

history. In addition, it is found that Osundare identifies with the masses and thereby attempts to

influence their decisions.

5.2 Recommendation

The poems analysed in this study are extremely few relative to the current total amount of the

poems in the publication. There are still many more socially and politically relevant poems in the

publication whose analysis the time and space of this current research would not permit.

Therefore, there is the need for more studies to take place on the publication to further explore

their relevance in the development of the Nigerian society. The analysis in this study only covers

three years, 2010 – 2012, out of several other years which the poems chronicle. It is hereby

recommended that other poems in the publication which cover several other national issues that

do not find a space in this essay be empirically (stylistically) examined to further expand the

scholarship in this direction.

5.3 Conclusion

Having subjected the poems to thorough linguistic analysis, we have come to the conclusion that

Niyi Osundare primarily targets the Nigerian citizens through the poems in order to sensitise

them on the socio-political realities of the country and to rhetorically influence their decisions in

matters of politics. We have also seen that the primary motive of the poet is to draw a crystaclear

image of the Nigerian society and by it influence the Nigerian masses, thereby confirming a

quotation from the poet himself that ‘to utter is to alter’.

92

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1

Niyi Osundare’s Random Blues

Randomly selected poems

Text 1

Random Blues: (Nigeria’s World Cup Blues)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 11 July 2010

The Green Eagles are out

Before the very first whistle

Ha ha ha Green Eagles out

Before the first whistle

Beaten by those beaten by everyone else

Their rain never went beyond a drizzle

Eleven stars on the field

But hardly a working team

Alas, eleven stars on the field

But hardly a working team

Before they kicked the ball at all

They had lost their vital steam

And Kaita brought us a Greek gift

By his brash and beastly kick

Yes, Kaita brought us a Greek gift

By his brash and beastly kick

Our Kaitastrophy saw red and went on his knees

2

And we wondered: ’what a hapless pick!’

Hurriedly assembled

Expeditiously unravelled

Say, hurriedly assembled

Expeditiously unravelled

It is the same old road

Sadly and sorely travelled

Act first, think later

The Fire Brigade approach

Say, act first, think later

The Fire Brigade approach

The ball bounces into our net,

Like a Jabulani* imp, without reproach

*Jabulani (meaning ‘let’s celebrate’ in siZulu) is the name of the Addidas-made ball used in the 2010 World Cup soccer competition.

Text 2

(The Right Honourable Blues)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 04 July 2010

Better take to your heels

The Right Honourables are having a brawl

Hear? Take to you heels

Our Right Honourables are deep in a brawl

3

Savage blows, wicked kicks

It’s a rowdy free-for-all

The Party Whip turned himself

Into a useful tool

See, Party Whip turned himself

Into a useful tool

He landed f-a-i f-a-i f-a-i! on a screaming back

Blood gathers apace in a glorious pool

They say the Speaker’s mouth

Is crammed with scams

Ah, say the Speaker’s mouth

Is crammed with scams

Backroom deals, inflated contracts

The country heads for hapless south

All hail the Speaker’s partners-in-scam

Oh see how they wrestle like pros!

Say, hail the Speaker’s partners-in-scam

Who wrestle like gallant pros

Broken arms and tattered clothes

Worthy signs of their pugilistic to’s and fro’s

The Right Hourable Speaker sits supreme

Ensconced in regal distance

Ha ha ha, Right Honourable sits supreme

Ensconced in regal distance

4

The rulers fatten on looted fortune

The people starve on miserable pittance

Text 3

Random Blues (Absent King Blues, Part 1)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Saturday, 06 February 2010

Does any one know

Where our King is gone

Asking, does any one know

Where our King is gone

He simply sneaked away

Before his work was done

Spirited away in the dead of night

Like a top-secret contraband good

Oh, right in the dead of night

Like some nasty contraband good

The Palace said nothing

Just as we thought they would

They say the King is sick

5

Of some strange but deadly disease

Pity the King is sick

Of some strange and deadly disease

His royal state of health

Has put us all out of ease

Off to the Saudi Kingdom?

Our guess is loud and long

Say, off to the Saudi Kingdom?

Our guess is loud and long

And when he left the land

He took our country’s peace along

He left without a word

About who would take his place

Alas, he left without a word

About who to take his place

Now the country thrashes about

Like a body without a face

Text 4

(Minimum Wage Blues)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 14 August 2011

Minimum wage

Maximum wahala*

6

Haba, minimum wage

Maximum wahala

The rulers toss up a few pennies

The poor burst out in hungry rage

Our rulers argue far into the night

Wondering how deep to sink the masses

Yes, rulers argue far into the night

Wondering how deep to sink the masses

The country’s problem has become a mountain

But the King cannot see it with his magnifying glasses

The President shells out a few billions

For the purchase of a gleaming jet

Yes, the President shells out a few billions

For the purchase of a gleaming jet

In Britain, Brussels, and booming Boston

Money-lenders shudder at our national debt

The Governor cannot count the cars

In his gubernatorial fleet

Ha ha, the Governor cannot count the cars

In the gubernatorial fleet

The bottomless drain of his “Security Vote”

Leaves the public purse with gaping scars

Princely Senators, Royal Reps

Predator-politicians, present and past

7

Haba, Princely Senators, Royal Reps

Predator-politicians, present and past

It’s the divine duty of rulers to feast and feast

While the people learn to fast and fast.

Text 5

Random Blues (Campaign Blues)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 03 April 2011

Blood flowing free in the street

Nights aglow with arson

Ah, blood flowing free in the street

Nights aglow with arson

Voting time is here again

Season of rampant treason

Run, Broda, run!

Thugs have seized the town

Say, run, Sista, run!

Thugs have seized the town

Eyes setting-sun red

They kill for profit, they kill for fun

Governors hire them

And Senators do

Ani, governors hire them

8

And Senators do

The President boasts a horde of bone-crushers

Even Councillors keep a thousand or two

There is so much pain

In the campaign of desperate men

Oh, so, so much pain

In the campaign of desperate men

No love, no service, in their plans

Only what to grab, what to gain

Ojelu, orunlu apomoolomolekunjaye*

Do-or-die warriors, eyes on the loot

Ah, ojelu, orunlu, apomoolomolekunjaye

Do-or-die warriors, with eyes on the loot

Statesmen stride in other lands

Here we bleed at the hand of the brute

*Political cannibal, nation-wrecker, one whose profit comes from the pain of others

Text 6

(Occupy!)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 27 November 2011

The rabid greed of a few

And the sprawling need of many

9

Say, the rabid greed of a few

And the sprawling need of many

Corporate cats who roll in wealth

While millions starve on a miserable penny

They gloat in their glut

While the land collapses in want

See how they gloat in their glut

While the land collapses in want

They belch their bombasts from gilded castles

And swamp the world with their bloated rant

Clever tax-dodgers

They know to cook the books

Yes, clever tax-dodgers

Who know how to cook the books

In constant cahoots with those in power

And other venal crooks

Some need a little less

Others want a little more

Say, some need a little less

Others want a little more

The deadly blow from excess

Has caused the world a mighty sore

So troop out and occupy

10

All the temples of graft and greed

Say, troop out and occupy

All the temples of graft and greed

The fortunes which bloat their bank accounts

Are those from which we break and bleed

Text 7

Random Blues(‘Oil Subsidy’ Blues)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 03 June 2012

People of our land

Plum season for the nation’s looters

Yepa, people of our land

Plum season for the nation’s looters

They seize the table and undo the feast

While we stare along, hungry onlookers

The nation’s oil wealth

Is their reckless booty

Haba, our very oil wealth

Is their reckless booty

Their sleaze and slush

Have smothered the national health

They kill all the effort

To refine the oil we use

11

Yes, they kill all the effort

To refine the oil we use

They wheel and deal in darkness

And gather their wealth by ruse

They raid the banks for millions

To import empty barrels

Yes, they raid the banks for millions

To import empty barrels

They hawk bare air as petrol

And dollar their pockets with billions

This fraud they couch as ‘subsidy’,

Needless dole to a pampered people

Yes, this fraud they say is ‘subsidy’,

Needless dole to a pampered people

The crooks who rule our land

Are prefects of the foulest perfidy

Text 8

(Gongosu Blues 1)

Written by Niyi Osundare

Sunday, 05 February 2012

Gongosu g’ori ite

Aye lu jara bii kobo Pabo

Agbaga! Gongosu g’ori ite

12

Aye lu jara bi kobo Pabo

Odoyo goloto, afenuhora

Awaye ma kuro laite

We have seen many kings in this land

This one wears a different cap

Say, we have seen many Kings in this land

But this one wears a different cap

You only need a rapid glance

And you know he has a serious handicap

Words quarrel in his mouth

His thoughts move at snail-speed

Say, words quarrel in his mouth

His thoughts move at snail-speed

They say he went to many schools

Don’t ask how many books he ever read

When the Usurers came with their bottomless bowl

And asked him to squeeze the toiling folks

Hah, the Usurers came with their bottomless bowl

And asked him to squeeze the toiling folks

He obeyed every word with a lowly bow

Smiling like one with the wit of a fowl

Prices went through the roof

The house shook to its very root

Hah, prices went through the roof

13

The house shook to its very root

When the people saw their King

In his mouth was his trembling foot!

Text 9

(The Pension Fund Scam Blues Part 1)

Written by Niyi Osundare Sunday, 10 June 2012

They found countless crates in her house

Bursting with notes of different kinds

Ha ha, found countless crates in her house

Bursting with notes of different kinds

She stuffed every hole with creepy cash

Like a mad and greedy mouse

In boxes and cases and wicker baskets

A nest of naira, a district of dollars

Say, in boxes and cases and wicker baskets

A nest of naira, a district of dollars

Stolen, wheel-barrowed to this mansion

By the queen of massive rackets

Is this a Currency Depot

Or is this the Central Bank?

Haba! Is this a Currency Depot

14

Or is it the Central Bank?

There is something more liquid than water

In this castle’s water tank

Numberless pensioners tremble and die

In endless “identification parades”

Say, numberless pensioners tremble and die

In endless “verification parades”

Many others go back home penniless

After those life-exhausting charades

Those who rule this land

Are sick with graft and greed

Surely, those who rule this land

Are sick with graft and greed

The insanity of their avarice

Is ravenous danger to our common need