Title: A Good Mourning

Author: Ogaga Ifowodo

Publisher: Paresia

Year: 2016

pagination: 78

Reviewer: Henry Akubuiro

Courtesy demands we exchange the ritual of “good morning” to those we come in contact with at the break of dawn. But nobody bids “good mourning”. Mourning reminds us of gnashing of teeth, wailings, inconsolable faces and truncated vistas. There may be nothing good about it. But one thing this title does is to set curiosity apace on the enormity of miscarried justice and the paradox of existence.

Ifowodo’s A Good Mourning is a volume of twenty-six poems in three parts dedicated to a number of fallen heroes who sacrificed their lives to fight military dictatorship in Nigeria. Some of them include Chima Ubani, Festus Iyayi, Gani Fawehinmi, Beko Ransome Kuti, Alao Aka-Bashorun and Bamidele Aturu.

A Good Mourning is a poet’s interrogation of recent history, especially as it affects socio-political convulsions in the world. The lessons of war, tragedy of ambition, peril of survival, and variegated hues of nature are thrown into the mix. The poet takes us to troubled spots round the world, leaving us in sombre mood over the death of innocence.

Despite the pervading gloom, the poet keeps the reader spellbound all through with lustrous gnomic verses. The lyricism of the poems is next to Mozart’s symphony. The verses sing, and the songs make you awestruck. It careers to the heavens with fizz and disarming limpidity.

The resilience of the African spirit echoes in the first poem “History Lesson”. Presented as a schoolboy’s recollection in a class, the poet trips memory lane on how Ethiopia resisted the invasion of Italy when Mussolini sought to extend its empire to Africa. The coming-of-age theme flows over to the next poem “Perfect Vision” as the poet returns to classroom gimmicks.

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This collection takes us to locales in the West, and it gives an inkling into the experiential basis of some of the poems, Ogaga having straddled cultures as a rights activist fleeing from persecution from military dictatorship and as a scholar pursuing his first love of writing in Germany.   “Ten Hours”, set in Germany, captures hospital blues and the thin line between life and death for an African migrant. Likewise, “Wintered Out” advances the journey motif, emphasising on the fury of fire disaster in a German wood where: “A cold fire has burnt the forest black/And sere branches stretch/Alms-seeking arms into the ashed void…” (p 21).

One of the most remarkable poems in this collection is “Sixty Lines by the Lagoon”, dedicated to the Lagos poet, Odia Ofeimun. Ofeimun is presented by the speaker in the poem as a bookish character miffed by the misrule and the anguish of the masses.

Thus:

Going home with bargain books under your arm you search for words to avenge those damned by hope and you mumble aloud: but we  were not born to eternal weeping –to burn

the wick of dignity in the fire of our rage! (p23).

In the “Frightened Tree” and “To Name a Tree”, Ogaga laments the deaths of former Nigerian Attorney-General, Bola Ige, and the writer-activist, Festus Iyayi, whose lives were cut short in harrowing circumstances. For Bola Ige, “death strolled into your bedroom like a bosom friend” and he fell to the bullets of paid hoodlums, while Festus Iyayi’s exertions to right societal wrongs, exemplified in his proletariat spirit, is valorised un-end.

Ogaga disparages mindless killings in “The Heavenly Gate” which leave a trail of tears, orphans, bereaved and blood offering; yet this happen “under God’s watchful eyes of God”.  The transient nature of life is revisited in the titular poem “A Good Mourning”. Late MKO Abiola was Nigeria’s richest man during his lifetime with a harem of wives, but when he ran and won Nigeria’s presidential election in 1993, everything turned for the worse as the election wasn’t only annulled but he lost his life in prison.

The twelve cantos of the poem synchronise with the watershed in his life, June 12. The trajectory of his political journey makes you think, had he kept to boardrooms, would he have died.? But his philanthropy wormed him into the hearts of many, and on June 12, it was a good morning as “Homes emptied into the streets/to break a spell, cut/ the soldiers strings that played/ for eight years the maddening/ music of their nightmares” (p38).

Sadly, his victory did not go down well with the powers that be. The voice in the poem recollects that MKO’s inability to trade his victory led to extreme repercussions: “… still chained to the rock,/they slew his wife! Mocked/ daily by their guns, their uniforms” (p.39). Yet the dictator continues bragging that the masses won’t do him anything: “None was armed among them./ I annulled their will and turned my back to the world” (p.41). The poem captures the angry reactions of Nigerians afterwards, leading to the false star general to flee to “the gilded prison he built for himself”. Sadly, everything ended in tragedy for all the actors in the June 12 struggle.

Poems such as “Where is the Earth’s Most Infamous Plot?”, “Freedom”, “From Goma to Gwoza”, “A Rwandan Testimony”, “Algiers 2000”, and “Book Burning in Darfur” awake our revulsion for man’s bestiality. Above all, Ogaga’s A Good Mourning saddles us with the task of challenging moral high ground of the league of oppressors domiciled in nooks and crannies of the world. You must read this book.