Waney inspiration

EVERY day and every now and then things happen and happen in your land my land our land, your country my country our country. As they happen and happen they germinate our imagination. I mean my imagination. And when I say my imagination I mean my sacred imagination which ought to inspire my sacred inspiration any time I behold my nib and pen or any time my nib and pen behold me – yours very truly and yours very sincerely.

Let me not detain you more than necessary or unworthily so. Thoughts and thoughts of some of our land’s and country’s learned men and women of letters who want us to be in our actions great in the worship of eternal truth and morality entered me. Professor Akachi Ezeigbo, one of our very distinguished matriarchs of literary arts and creativity whose books are spreading from secondary school to secondary school in her Eastern Nigeria home region and base entered my mind and imagination.

Since last week or so, her different books are making, are doing, the rounds, fruitful rounds, in the gatherings and extra- gatherings of our young ones and youths whose quality of life she wants to improve as a mother whose motherly love she serves them.

I equally gave thought to Professor Olu Obafemi, eminent Professor, scholar, playwright and poet in the creative mold of Professor ( Mrs.) Akachi Ezeigbo. Professor Olu Obafemi on Friday, January 26, 2024 ( last Friday that is) was among 79 personalities that Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State conferred with the State’s honour. His veneration gladdened ( and still gladdens) my creative heart and mind. On his behalf I openly tell our fellow farers this: Rejoice! The two big writers and personages of letters and of humanistic studies I have just mentioned consecrate their inspired creations to a lofty mission.

They, among other literary gems and supergems of our space, belong to the class of moral priests and activist- creators. Ah! How I lack the inspiration to devote this and other subsequent columns to their dedication to literature and writing which we should employ every now and then to regulate our society in the endeavour to give practical realisation to the patriotic belief that Nigeria must be the Nigeria of Nigerians – infants, teens, youths, adults, elders and the aged and very aged.

Other writers and very worthy thoughtful thinkers such as Professor Ademola Da Sylva entered my mind. I am richly aware that day by day Professor Da Sylva who recently retired from University of Ibadan and who is currently composing his divinely inspired literary autobiography respects patriotically everything his conscience, and has upon his lips the truth of rich and valuable experience implanted by the Divine Being in his heart.

It is Nigerians such as this enthusiastic patriot who, among others of his spirit and kind, we should adore and give the invitation to come and preside over the affairs of Nigeria that for the past two decades at least has not been breathing, existing or living with a common belief and common aim.

I am familiar almost on daily basis with his eloquent thoughts on the Nigerian condition. His pictures and dreams of your country my country our country, are a perfume of paradise which ‘ the soul retains in issuing from the hands of its Creator.’ His poetry and essays as well in varying respects tend to the emancipation of our being and as each individual of Nigeria.

I laboured many a time with doing a harmonious writing in this column on Professor Da Sylva’s patriotic banner which deserves to be erected here ( and elsewhere). When will the inspiration visit me? In fact, it is waning and becoming waney and very waney: my inspiration. Can Professors Da Sylva, Akachi Ezeigbo and Olu Obafemi bail me out?

How many storms and storms are not visiting and threatening Nigeria? And for how long will the ceaseless storms continue to torment and devastate us? Will the prettily pretty ones never come to our rescue? Or are we paying for our karma? If so, when shall our karma end?

The recent Ibadan explosion of explosions, the ceaseless criminal attacks upon attacks in Abuja, the federal capital, and abductions upon abductions and kidnappings upon kidnappings of our compatriots there ( and elsewhere outside there), the dastardly killings of three Ekiti monarchs, presumed spiritual and traditional protectors of their subjects, people and citizens, three or four days ago, the diurnal fall and fall of our naira, that is no more our strong, heavy, powerful and almighty currency in comparison to the U. S. dollar and British pound sterling, for stance, all point to our glory- loss land where we cannot have a picture or a glance of angels and arch- angels of victory.

Are we becoming a doomed people who have no patriotic saints and martyrs to look up to? Where are our new angels of martyrdom and angels of victory who as brothers who should recreate in us a- new glances of heaven and glances of earth as we desire inspiration from those we should desire inspiration?

I want to write and write about us from everywhere here to everywhere there. But something is breaking me even though I don’t want to be broken. My rapidly rapid and powerfully powerful intuition and inspiration are failing me. But it won’t be a thing or a matter of history, to be forgotten. I am hopeful and will ever be hopeful and remain hopeful.

The Divine Spirit and our people’s suffering, our fatherland and humanity shall sustain me in my holy thought and belief, belief in the peregrine falcons of Jehu or duck hawks of nation- less nations wandering nigh.

Then my inspiration will not be waney and very waney as it is now. Then the Divine through the Supreme Spiritual Masters of Merit ( SSMM) shall inspire and bless me with a rousing oratory, a rousing call, to the Nigerian people to do their duty meaningfully and harmoniously for this fatherland that is your fatherland my fatherland our fatherland. Then the chiming bells shall chime comradely - echoing harmoniously the past of the future and the future of our present.