Genre: Poetry (a collection)

Author: Deji Ajibade

Publisher: The Roaring Lion Newcastle LTD

Reviewer: Afer Ventus

Year of Publication: 2022

Book: Seventy-Seven (77) pages

WAR, TERRORISM AND HOPE IN DEJI AJIBADE’S SOMETIMES I WISH IT COULD ALWAYS BE DAY

‘How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?’

Howard Zinn

Looking at the above quote of Howard Zinn, an American historian and more importantly, a World War II veteran, it is only appropriate to say that terrorism is war. And in the midst of this war, Deji Ajibade brings to us, hope, in his beautiful collection of poems.

‘Even in war, there is hierarchy’ is a good poem to bringing out the destruction caused by war. The poet draws a contrast prior the invention of bombs and after. Before…he claims that man was equal until not, when bombs broke the line. And even when the desolates are about to become refugees; ‘at the border, skin colors/were grouped into hierarchies/Whites first, Blacks maybe…’. By extension, racism is connoted to being a tool of destruction. And the ellipses used in the last line is ironical because the reader is supposed to understand the removed word or phrase but it leaves one in uncertainty. Whether the coloureds are left as second or last cannot be told. Further into the poem, the poet says that all human blood on earth is red so why the difference (by implication) in colour to the dehumanization of blacks?

The sad tone above takes a rather rebellious one in the poem, ‘Like 2020’. Rather than wondering how racism is being executed, the personas insist that they will ‘speak and speak ‘till equality is brought/to the forefront.’

In ‘Awakening’, terrorism is still seen under the umbrella term of anarchy where anything is done with impunity and in turn, it breeds corruption, perdition and shadowing the freedom of the people in the poem. Also, in ‘The Baptism’, Ajibade creates a visual image of horror:

Another bomb baptizes a sea of bodies, transforming their smiles to cries rising as incense to the god of terrorism.

One could say that the cries of the people were only known by the terrorists which is what we now face in Nigeria and the poet hereby preaches to the government to look into terrorism in the country. Finally, ‘Explosion’ recurs the holy massacre of terrorists at a Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria, on 5th June, 2022. That act was conducted even in a sacred place with no regard for religion and more will continue to happen if diplomacy is not consulted.

In all of these horrors, Ajibade brings hope to the people that there is light at the end of the tunnel as ‘hope will not die’. He believes that though the ground may be hard, the country hostile, hope should continue to burn in us.

Therefore, in this poet’s collection (Sometimes I Wish it Could Always be Day), he says that terrorism and war are turning the country to rubbles but as beings, we should continue to fight for hope: ‘though our hearts break now,/the sun shall rise from the east/bearing healings in its rays.