Do you know who I am?, By Niyi Osundare

“Do you know who I am?”/The Honorebu asked his “stupid-idiot” driver /Challenging us, dear readers,/To read this poem and answer his question.

   DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?   

The Honorebu* Who Slapped the Law

The Honorebu’s first question

     Was preceded with a very Honorebu slap

So loud his neighbours thought

     It was a thunderclap

“Who are you, wretched driver;

     What madness drove you

To disturb my Honorebu leisure

     In the middle of an empty day?

In my Honorably acquired mansion

     Where, between booze and boast,

I churn out the bills which beget those laws

     That have turned Nigeria into a Paradise”

The second slap came with an imperial swagger:

     “How dare you! Do you know who I am?”                                                          

Then a frightening combination of raw power and magic blustering:

     “I will make you disappear, and nothing will happen”

King-size ego, consuming conceit

     Vintage Lawmaker of a lawless Republic

Who “monkeys” the people and “rats” their worth

     Standing so tall on the grave of assassinated dreams

So carefully curated 

     This poignant parable of Nigerian imuniti**

Its powerfool protagonist, its convoy of clowns

     Who bluff and strut beneath their tinsel crowns

“Do you know who I am?”

     The Honorebu asked his “stupid-idiot” driver

Challenging us, dear readers,

     To read this poem and answer his question.

 ———- 

*Imuniti un-arrestability. A Yoruba coinage from a conflation of “immunity” and “impunity”

**For a peculiarly Nigerian meaning of this word, I recommend a quick journey to Honorebu, Akeem Lasisi’s rip-roaring video.

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.