PANEGYRIC: "FOR PROFESSOR NIYI OSUNDARE" BY EZEKIEL FAJENYO

( accompanied with talking drum and bata in 

symphonic combination)

Poet,

time again to dance 

to some blues but only through stretched streets of endless,bandaged dance steps whose idioms you know too well.

Our early birds are starved of fresh grains

to command stillness

of our village voices

on farmlands now forced off tender moments by bold bandits who,like colonial overlords,

seized our inheritance. 

They shot poisoned arrows at treasured

eye of our earth

to breed famished hopes in our saltless sleep;

they maintain iron grip 

on testicles of our words whose songful 

egg must be crushed

to assert their unrivalled dominance of our rickety dreams.

Our cities are gravely peopled by raging flood 

of horns- headed harbingers of waste,wild traps,death.

Our cherished,story- lined laughters now have sore openings,

waiting for chance return of tender moments.

Our songs of the season are jeremiads

with hollow,rat- bitten boots with skeletal posters of daily obituaries

reminding all of broken promises at history's dawn.

The daring dialogue with our uncrowned clime is monitored by 

dark- silked lovers of endless sentences 

in robed chambers

for a hundred years behind bars,

waiting for strange laughters at questioning ideologues.

Our market places are crowded,claimed chambers

of commerce for rare packages from 

stolen treasuries,

where unpaid loans spread wings and speak language of frying meat from tired pots

at village fire places!

Yet we must sing your song,

writer as righter

of a million wrongs!

EZEKIEL FAJENYO 

- Nigeria 

12 March,2026.

The poem is a tribute to Professor Niyi Osundare, portraying him as a courageous poet whose words confront social injustice and national decay. Through vivid images of banditry, corruption, poverty, and broken promises, the poet laments the suffering and instability affecting society. Despite these challenges, the poem celebrates Osundare’s voice as a powerful force that speaks truth and seeks to correct the wrongs of the nation.