Not My Business

Niyi Osundare
 The Poet
• Niyi Osundare, who was born in Nigeria
in 1947 and is currently a professor of
English literature at the university of New
Orleans, is considered the greatest living
Nigerian poet. Most of his books are
published in Nigeria.
• This poem comes from a collection called
‘Songs of the Seasons’. He describes
Nigeria as a country where every
significant event is celebrated in ‘song,
drum and dance’.
• The Nigerian government has a
reputation for harsh and unjust
‘The Yoruba believe that a Word is extremely useful but also
extremely risky,’ Osundare continues. ‘You have to think before
you speak. The moment you utter a Word is like breaking an
egg. You can’t put the pieces of an egg back together again.’ It is
a sentiment the Nigerian government under the dictatorship of
general Abacha wholeheartedly agreed with. In the Abacha
years, writing poetry was considered a dangerous activity, as
Osundare found out himself. ‘With the kind of poetry I write, I
can never be the dictator’s friend. So I got a knock on the door
at two in the morning a couple of times.’ Osundare has written
on the execution, in 1995, of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the
unlawful imprisonment of journalists. Subsequently he was
visited by security agents and asked to elucidate his phrases. ‘By
that time I realized that the Nigerian security apparatus had
become quite ‘sophisticated’, quite ‘literate’ indeed! A couple of
my students at the university of Ibadan had become informers;
a few even came to my class wired. And when I was reading
abroad, someone trailed me from city to city. At home, my
letters were frequently being intercepted.
‘I survived all those dictators by hiding behind my words. I used
animal images, the hyena representing the dictator, for instance,
and the antelope the people.’ Now, according to Osundare, the
situation is better: ‘We have a democracy, but it is still an infant
democracy. The problem is that we don’t have a modern
democratic culture; it was killed by the military, and before that by
colonialism. Our new democracy is taking a long time to grow. But
we have to nurture it. There is no alternative to freedom.’

There is also no choice for the African poet or writer but to be

political, Osundare emphasizes. ‘You cannot keep quiet about the
situation in the kind of countries we find ourselves in, in Africa.
When you wake up and there is no running water, when you have a
massive power outage for days and nights, no food on the table, no
hospital for the sick, no peace of mind; when the image of the ruler
you see everywhere is that of a dictator with a gun in his hand;
and, on the international level, when you live in a world in which
your continent is consigned to the margin, a world in which the
colour of your skin is a constant disadvantage, everywhere you go
– then there is no other way than to write about this, in an attempt
to change the situation for the better.
‘In the West, art has become entertainment, mostly.
In Africa people see art as a weapon in the battle for
liberation. The writer in modern Africa is treated
like the priest and warrior in traditional society.
And the African audience is a talkback audience,
very active and responsive.’ From 1985 to 1990
Osundare wrote a weekly poetry column called
‘Songs of the Season’ for the Sunday Tribune, a
Nigerian newspaper. ‘The responses I got from
readers were tremendous. I was amazed: some
people wrote poems back, some wrote me letters or
approached me in the street. The experience
confirmed my idea that literature has a role to play
in society.’
 Now read the poem
• In each of the first three stanzas the first four
lines tell a story.
• In pairs: summarise in your books what has
happened to Akanni, Danladi and Chinwe
• Using only the first four lines of each of the first
three stanzas, find words and phrases that
give us clues to the poet’s attitude to these
events.
• Are they purely factual descriptions?
• Now look again at the refrain/ chorus in these
stanzas. What attitude is being expressed
here?
• Is it the same as in the first four lines of each
stanza?
 Now look at the final stanza
• What happens here?
• Does the poem suggest that the
speaker in some way deserves what
happens to him?
Akanni, Danladi and Chinwe
• Take a closer look at what happens to
these three.
• Comment on:
– Beat him soft like clay
– Stuffed him
– Booted
– Dragged
– No query
– Stainless record
 Read the following poem
First They Came For The Jews
‘First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists

And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me –

And there was no one left
To speak out for me.’
Pastor Niemoller, 1938
 About Niemoller’s Poem
• This was written by a First They Came For The Jews
German Christian ‘First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out –
pastor at the time the Because I was not a Jew.
Nazis were rounding
up Jews and sending Then they came for the communists
them to death camps. And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a communist.
• Could you see any
similarities? Then they came for the trade
unionists
• Is there a link between And I did not speak out –
the narrative sections Because I was not a trade unionist.
of the poem and the
refrain? Then they came for me –
And there was no one left
• Write two paragraphs To speak out for me.’
explaining these Pastor Niemoller, 1938
points.
 Conclusion
• This is a political poem
• But it is also about individuals and what
happens to them.
• It takes as its subject matter the question of
how we behave when we see evil or wicked
things being done.
• Compare these to ‘Nothing’s Changed’
(protest against injustice) or ‘Vultures’
(good and evil) from Cluster 1 OR with
peoms about people from Cluster 2.