Jude Ndukwe: The Lamentations of Absurdities and Celebration of Victory over Atrocities: A Foreword to “The Funeral Fire”, By Luke Eyoh

Oyin Ogunba in his Inaugural Lecture, 36 in the series, on the topic: “Literary Art and Literary Creativity in Contemporary Africa”, delivered at the University of Ife, Nigeria, in 1978, was to reject “too much concession to learnedness, too much willful cultivation of obscurity” (p.17) in the making of African poetry, drawing inspiration and support from “a wide-ranging article entitled ‘Towards the Decolonization of African Literature’” (p.17)  written by Chinweizu, Jemie and Madubuike and published in 1978, in B.L. Leshoai: Black South African Theatre in Theatre in Africa edited by Oyin Ogunba and Abiola Irele, in which the trio complained about obscurantism in Nigerian poetry as represented by the poetry of Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark-Bekederemo and others. This rejection was further pursued, more vigorously, by the trio in their full book, still of the above title, published in 1980. As if many subsequent African/Nigerian poets were responding to the outcry, they have chosen to reach their readers through highly transparent style without however compromising opacity as part of the nature of poetry. Niyi Osundare, one of the succeeding poets to the first generation Nigerian poets, in his Songs of the Marketplace (1983), was to, using elimination and inclusion techniques, define poetry as being/ “not the esoteric/ whisper/ of an excluding tongue/not a claptrap/ for a wondering audience/ not a learned quiz/ entombed in Grecoroman lore/ … no oracle’s kernel/ for a sole philosopher’s stone”/; but as being/ “man / meaning/ to/ man” (pp.3 – 4 ). Jude Ndukwe’s: The Funeral Fire: Poems (2025), enjoys this Osundarerian definition of poetry as simple communication of meaning from man to man.

Let me acknowledge the honour done me by the budding poet, Ndukwe, our University of Uyo graduate of English in the Second Class (Honours) Upper Division, in the year 2000, in requesting me to write a foreword on this publication. I must say, as I have said in my foreword on Ebi Yeibo’s The Forbidden Tongue (2007), that my comments and analyses of poems in this volume are tentative. Other readers are at liberty to give their interpretations. After all, as B.P. Shelley, the English Romantic poet, puts it, a poem does not have one meaning but as many meanings as competent readers assign it. Having made these preliminary points, I now do the foreword.

The Funeral Fire: Poems (2025) comprises two parts with Part I containing 32 poems and Part II 13. Except for Poem Number 32:  “Go, tell them”, which tends to proclaim a transition from pain to gain, all other poems in Part I exude tragic vision, vicissitude and pain. On the contrary, poems in Part II project an optimistic vision precipitating clear thematic rhythm which compensates for the absence of structural/ spacial rhythm between the two parts.

Poem Number 1: “Let the poor breathe”, tends to have its motif from the gruesome murder of a Black man, George Floyd, in the U.S.A. in 2019. A white policeman, Derek Scott knelt on the handcuffed man’s neck, ignoring his pleas amid “I cannot breathe”, killing him. This real incident forms the basis of Ndukwe’s poem: “Let the poor breathe”. The imagery that appears here is that of the rich kneeling on the neck of the poor, that of murderous violent oppression – an absurdity characteristic of the postmodernist era and disorder. The poem’s diction, particularly from stanza 4 to the last stanza, discloses harrowing pain. Poem Number 2: “Fatal fertility”, continues the absurd violence of post-modernist dispensation which expresses itself in kidnapping, torture, beheading, amputation and “unceremonious obsequies/ for bodies bagged/ into gully-like graves/ where the hope of even the brave is sealed”. The next poem, “Scattered”, draws its motif from the book of Psalms, Chapter 68:1: “Let God arise and his enemies be scattered; let them also that hate him flee before him”. The poet uses this eschatological proclamation as a puritanical framework from which he pours curses upon and against the imaginary enemies of “the land,” in a most pungent and virulent language. He, however, leaves a window of escape for the cursed enemies – repentance to seek peace for all – while he invokes return of bliss to the land and freedom/return of captives “in one piece”.  A strictly prophetic approach!

The Nigerian Civil War broke out on 06th July, 1967 and ended on 15th January 1970, 55 years ago on January 15, 2025. The next poem: “Victory still”, alludes to the war, punning sarcastically on the word “still” which could mean “secure”, “intact”, “enduring”, “is here” etc., on the positive hand, but “ still-born”, “static”, “still out of sight”, “an illusion”, “still to come”, on the negative hand. The poet laments the debilitating reality, namely, that 55 years after the war (the reign of slaughter).

We triumph still in laughter
Even though our injuries fester (lines 3&4).

Yes! Fifty and five years after, today, /“the war rages on/ But this time of hunger and disease/ of a nation united in penury/ Fifty and five years after/ The silence of the guns/ births a sickly nation/ stuck in the mud/ of leadership deficiency…/”. The poem’s diction and logic disclose the negative play on the word “still”, the unmistaken mockery or satire on the victory in the Civil War which the poet describes as “laughter”.

“Heroes”, the next poem in Part I, continues the theme of war but this time, praises the gallant soldiers in the land who force the “haramites to scamper.” These heroic soldiers are not only gallant; they are also valiant and defiant, marching on in restless spirits. The 6th poem, “Colonial looters,” in its tragic and lamentable aspects, connects the post-colonial and pre-colonial eras of our history and indicts the Western colonizers of Africa for stealing our resources and killing our leaders and buying our people in slavery. A striking feature in this poem is the use of pun to achieve near-regular rhyme and music:

They take away our uranium
Cart away our petroleum
Loot out aluminium
But bequeathed to us pandemonium (lines 1 – 4).

This near humorous style which runs through the first five of the poem’s seven stanzas tends to weaken the subject of the poem in bathos.

“The backslidden comrade”, “Depressed elevators”, “Harvesters of blood,” “The palliathieves”, and “Voyage of treasures” respectively allude to struggles in trenches by political activists; collapsed buildings; rampaging bandits and banditry with killings and rubbishing of life and blood; politics of palliatives and those who exploit the politics, whom the poet calls in neologism or sarcasm, “palliathieves” – those who steal palliatives, and, false history of Africa propagated through Western education which the author describes as “wasted education” in his usual sarcastic pun. “Voyage of treasures” further indicts European explorers and colonisers for looting African artefacts to decorate Western museum, artefacts “with hidden labels of origin/ curated as Western antiquities/Or as prizes of brutish colonialism.”

“The grand conquerors”, Poem Number 12 in the volume, uses the notion of otherness or othering and the concepts of in-group and out-group (they vs us) to indict an in-group (them) for fraud, bloodshed, and mendacity against an out-group (us):

In the festivity of the cabal
In their celebration of victory by fraud
And their ignominious festival of blood
They feed us, the spectators
With atrocious mendacity while surreptitiously liquidating us
After that, they dance on graves of people they promised to save… (lines 1- 8).

The 41-line monostanzaic poem speaks for itself in the rest of the lines. Poems Number 13 and Number 14: “The soldier-god” and “Certified desperation”, convey the poet’s personal experience in, and comments on, public affairs in his poetic land. “Certified desperation” tends to allude to an incedent of certificate forgery in our body politics about two decades ago. Again, the poems speak for themselves, sustaining the theme of absurdity and chaos.

Six other poems: “Power”; “I am in Abuja”; “Friends of the night”; “The big brother”; “September 11”, and, “Hello, Ravine!” are united in their portrayal of grim pain and dim, tragic vision of the poet. In “Power”, “the in-group others”/ “(They) seek power/ Not to empower/ But to further disempower/ The already disempowered/”. The pun on power and repetition of the inflected forms of power enrich the poet’s idiolect. In “I am in Abuja”, “black gold”, metaphor for petroleum (crude) oil, “sweeps off the pyramids” (a metaphor for, or an allusion to, groundnut economy that was once the main source of prosperity in Northern Nigeria. Still in Abuja, dryness of the dam (collapse of the national grid?) causes unforetold darkness in the land. Phrases such as “sweeps off”, “dryness of the dam”, and “darkness unforetold” intensify the tragic vision of the poet. This same notion or vision of darkness or tragedy informs “Friends of the night” where “evil men in beast abode …/cut down victims in droves/ For ransom/ For magic money/ For vain glory/ Fathers not spared / Mothers not spared/ Daughters not spared/ Sons not spared…/”. This repetition, in part, makes the verse a dirge that it is. The bitter, sarcastic irony in marauders being friends of the night instead of the foes that they are is part of the ironic beauty of the verse. “The big brother” and “September 11” politically and historically refer to the United States of America. The poet satirises American ironic, nay, false claims to being a big brother to, and a supporter of, less powerful nations of the world. The terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001 forms the subject matter of “September 11” which is built on pun and rhyme. “Hello, Ravine!” sounds like an ode to a ravine but its diction, imagery and symbols disclose pain and tragic vision upon which the first part of the collection is based.

The next five poems: “Democracy dissidents”; “Inferno in the Delta”; “Brothers and borders”; “Ripples in the Sahel” and “The defectors”, address, respectively, in various poetic devices particularly apt diction, pun, sarcasm, irony and music, abuse of democratic processes and practices, which causes many “To escape to lands unknown/Through the seas…/”, and to drown in their numbers; environmental degradation by fire/ “ Ignited by oil merchants/ From lands afar/ Fueled by corruption/ egged on in collaboration/ With citizens near/” which has killed the waters and the aquatic life of the people and left the land desolate; rampant communal clashes and violent border conflicts which lead to blood-shed and deaths; the absurdity and pain of child marriages against the Child Rights Act that prohibits such marriages, and, unlawful defections from party to party.

“Godfathers and godsons” and “Time up” continue the political motif of abuse of democratic processes via godfatherism and godsonship as well as looting and squandering the treasury of the people’s commonwealth. For such looters and their flatterers, time is up, according to the poet. General repetition and the device of anadiplosis, with apt diction enhance the poetry of “Time up”.

The title poem: “The funeral fire”, 28th in the volume, laments in grim and picturesque diction, the destruction of the environment through deforestation – felling  and killing of wood or trees, and dragging/ logging them “in a hearse-like motorcade/ To their place of final cremation/ As fire wood for fuel/”; trees are logged from our forests and lodged into funeral fire. As a consequence, our soil has become bare, occasioning erosion and floods that sweep away people and produce unseen corpses and unmarked graves. This is a tragic piece of ecopoetry!

“The ‘politrickcians” and “The pulpit bandit” share the same dark qualities – dishonesty, fraud, falsehood or lack of integrity in public and God’s services! While the one uses the device of neologism or pun –“politrickcians” – as title, the other uses bizarre irony – bandit in the pulpit of God! “The bald greens”, the 31st poem in the collection, still projects in its ironic title and picturesque diction, vision of environmental destruction which informs the title poem. The image of bald greens is not only ironic but also absurd and tragic; yet, this is the reality experienced by the poet – a result of “man’s sin/Against the land once green” (lines 8 – 9).

The 32nd poem in the volume, last in a Part I: “Go, tell them”, serves as a transition, a modulation, from the pessimistic vision of Part I to an optimistic vision of Part II – cock crow that proclaims the break of day. Again, using the othering or group device or notions of them and us, the poet adopts the stubborn tenor and tone of Odia Ofeimun’s Go tell the Generals (2008) to send warning, to practitioners of darkness that sunrise and light have come, using powerful Biblical personas:

Go, tell them
That for every lion there’s a Samson
For every bear, there is a David…
For every Pharaoh, there’s a Moses
For every famine, there’s a Joseph… (lines 1 – 6).

He ends the verse on a note of optimism, namely, that the land (Nigeria) will rise again – a vision of hope that informs Part II of the volume.

“Easter” stands out as a beacon of hope and symbol of life, enunciating the optimistic vision and tone of the collection in its second part. This song of victory re-enacts the celebration of resurrection of the Lord, His defeat of death, and His securing eternal life in Him for those that believe. Good news! The narrative poem is decked with diction of victory and with timbre and tone of joy: “…Christ rises in glory/ Liberating His people from the power of sin/And freeing us from the fear of death/ Hallelujah/… For indeed we are victorious/ Forever and ever/”. There is no source of joy that is greater than Easter, for those who believe! The joy of Easter is sustained in the next poem, an epithalamium, an anniversary of the poet’s wedding which coincides with Valentine’s Day (a day of love) and Ash Wednesday ((first day of Lent (a period of 40 days before Easter in the Christiandom), and incidentally, title of T.S. Eliot’s long poem written in 1927 to commemorate his conversion to Anglicanism (see Google)) – holy, joyful Christian religious days! The poet’s adoration of his wife as: An angel/The brightener of darkness/The calmer of storms/The cream of flowers/The pride of beauty/The majesty of dignity and/The glory of the ash points to the rich diction and complex metaphors and symbols in the poem, with pun on “ash” in Ash Wednesday and the mortal body – the “earth” or “dust” of the poet. The epithalamium divides like amoeba and coexists with “At our 20th anniversary” which is thanksgiving to God and a vote of thanks to his wife, for “unparalleled…love”. This again yields another poem: “An ode to my Angel”, a praise song to the wife whom he calls:/My Angel/My Life/My succour in strife/Beauty of the stars/…”. Certainly, the “wedding anniversary” falsely further divides into “The night’s desire (At 2:30 a.m.)” where the poet personifies sleep and addresses her as if she were his wife. In reality, he suffers from insomnia and invites “Lady Sleep” to rock/ “Knock him into slumber” (line 2). Very paradoxical and poetic!

In the 6th poem in Part II, the poet is suddenly transported to the love of his mother through the title: “Mama”. Here, he, like the Cameroonian-Nigerian musician, Prince Nico Mabarga of Sweet Mother fame, recalls in nostalgic eulogy, the selfless maternal services and care the mother had rendered to him in his infancy and childhood. Luckily, Mama is alive and she will, by his wish, attain an age at which her passing will not draw lachrymation but will simply make the poet wish her “goodbye”. But is there an age of passing of a mother/dear one at which the son/ the daughter will not weep? Only experience can answer the question. Love is a strong emotion! Love and joy which constitute the fulcrum or foundation of the poems so far treated in this part, also inform the 7th poem: “For Dad before the Resurrection morning” – a tribute to the poet’s departed father. It is pertinent to note that sorrow is not allowed to fester here because the poet has faith in God and hope in the father’s rising in glory, the father having fought the good fight of faith while alive. Note also that in spite of the “sweet” hope of the dead rising, the eyes and the heart have to negotiate their attempts to hinder tears from flowing. Emotion of love!

Poem Number 7 gives birth to “An exit of honour” , the 8th poem in Part II, in which the poet continues with the obsequies of his late father, using apt religious imagery and heavenly diction. From his joy in the hope of his father’s resurrection, the poet takes the reader to his joy of good neighbourliness, in the 9th poem in Part II, the 41st in the volume: “For my friend, Arafat”. His neighbour’s  young boy of 2, Arafat, according to the poet, enjoys mutual love from the poet and finds cross- home liberty in his cordial relationship with the poet. The 10th poem: “An ode to my doctor” captures the cordial spirit and love in Poem Number 9, it being a song of appreciation to the family Medical Doctor who treated him of a condition that had put his life “on the line”. The picturesque diction captures health or hospital register, not leaving out “the Creator” who does not only give him the Doctor but who heals while Doctors treat. A close look at poems 1 – 10 in Part II shows that the poet moves from Divine, to nuptial, to neighbourly and to fiduciary love. In Poem Number 11: “Nature abroad”, he talks of the beauty and love of nature which he experienced when he was abroad, as he celebrates a “…beautiful night of falling snow/” and peace coming “with whistling breeze/ And the shy chirpings of nature’s sound”. The poet welcomes the snow fall which he hopes will complement African rain and take away… the burning heat that makes many lament in Africa. In Poem Number 12: “Voices on the island”, natural peace and whistling breeze are tampered with in Lagos Island where “ambiguous voices, “humorous” voices, “deafening” voices, intimidating” voices, “annoying” voices, “frustrating” voices, from the top” and “from the ground” “form a cacophony or noise in which the voice owners drown/. The noise, comprising hurried traffic, blaring of horns and general hustling and bustling in Lagos Island, which would not completely go away even at night, catches the attention of the poet. This apparent cacophonous situation does not, however, take away the natural beauty of the island much of which radiates from the hushing sea (line 31) – a source and symbol of calmness, silence, breeze, and hope.

The optimistic vision of the poet in Part II of the collection is sustained and consolidated in the last poem in the volume: “Breaking the tar”, in which the poet assumes the role of an inspirational speaker or a town crier, a bard of sorts, and addresses his audience:

For your vision
Never ever think impossibility
Let not the environment deter
Nor people encumber (Stanza 3).

He continues in the 5th stanza: “Rise beyond the comfort/ Go beyond the sky/Reach for your star/”, ending in a couplet: “Break the tar/Emerge/”, and with a single: “NOW!”

In all, Jude Ndukwe has used the genre of poetry to identify and condemn copious modernist and postmodernist absurdities and atrocities in his artistic world, which is a reflection of the real world, as shown in Part I of his book. Significantly, he does not just condemn the evil acts and leave them in frustration; he has shown the way of escape and the path to sanity in the land in Part II of the book. Faith in the finished Work on the Cross as celebrated in Easter and personal righteousness in the pursuit of legitimate vision and ventures are the recommendations of the poet as panacea for individual and national progress. National policies and their implementation must save the nationals from insecurity and save our forests from being “logged and dragged” in motorcade to their places of funeral by fire – cremation – “as firewood for fuel”. This and more are largely the foci of Ndukwe’s The Funeral Fire: Poems (2025).

While I congratulate the poet on this outing, I strongly recommend the collection to the reading public in general and to lovers of literature, in its poetic genre, in particular. This book makes his second outing in poetry writing, according to the poet; so, he is already “an exact man”, apologies to the English philosopher, Francis Bacon, whose aphorism on studies reveals that: “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man”. Perhaps, we should expect a third collection soon. Best wishes to readers.

– Prof. Luke Eyoh is of the Department of English, University of Uyo, Nigeria
lukeeyoh@yahoo.com