This week, we have a book of essays. It is a collection of forty-one essays written over a 5-year period between 2006 and 2011 by Professor Matthew Umukoro. The book is titled The State Of The Nation and it was published in 2012 by Gold Press Ltd.
The darts in Professor Umukoro’s The State Of The Nation
The author Professor Matthew Umukoro is a scholar and literary artist. His literary works include a poetry volume Dross of Gold, a historical play Nana Olomu and a stage adaptation of Chinua Achebe’s work No Longer at Ease called Obi and Clara.
Most of the essays in this volume were published in The Guardian and The Sun newspapers. And according to the author’s preface, “all of them are critical commentaries on different aspects of our national life and have been arranged in a chronological sequence to give the volume a sense of history.”
The articles were written during the twilight years of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, the Yar’ Adua-Jonathan administration and the Goodluck Jonathan years.
The essays in this work cover a wide range of themes. There are commentaries on the socio-political landscape of the country. There are essays that have to do with the author’s personal experience too.
Over 196 pages, the perceptive reader will notice the author’s delightful deployment of his literary powers to convey his messages. The author is indeed meticulous in his choice of words.
In this work, The State Of The Nation, Professor Umukoro gleefully delves into areas where most people would never dare.
For instance, in this article, Lawlessness in the House of Lawmakers (Pp17-21), the author recalls the events of September 20, 2007, in which members of the House of Representatives abandoned their job of law-making and engaged in what the author calls, “a medley of wild punches and fisticuffs, wrestling, karate, judo, and kung fu reminiscent of motor park touts.”
The author therefore wondered why the Nigerian sporting community has not looked to the National Assembly to recruit sportsmen who would represent the nation at the Olympics.
This is because he thought that the skills exhibited by these representatives were akin to those that scouts were always looking for.
He concludes by stating that “ever since we replaced external colonial oppression with internal political repression in 1960, our customised brand of democracy has turned out to be a truly demonic and crazy political experiment which has progressively gone from bad to worse, aggravated by protracted militocracy.”
In another article, titled The Era of Gubernatorial Criminals (Pp22-26), the author continued to wield his whip on the backs of the Nigerian political class. In this article, the author underscored the pleasant aberrations in the political space by playing with the paradox of what he called gubernatorial criminal.
This book was originally published under the title Bibliocide and Other Essays as a collection of satirical pieces.
The State Of The Nation, was written in witty, animated and satirical style with a large dose of humour.
The book is indeed the handiwork of an acclaimed master stylist, Professor Matthew Umukoro, and a supreme model for both the young and the old.
