Eulogy To God

Title: Ode To GOD
Author: Lekan Ojenike
Publisher: Bestworth Books, Lagos
Pages: 141
Year: 2010
Reviewer: Blessed Mudiaga Adjekpagbon

Lekan Ojenike has, in his latest work, Ode to GOD, shown great reverence to the highest Being worthy of praise and worship. He is an award winning poet and a senior editorial member of the Christ-Herald Literature Ministry, and author of an earlier poetry collection titled, In Still Moments. Ojenike who has also authored a play, The Foolish Wise, that lampoons mankind for their foolishness and stultifies what many people call wisdom, uses Ode to GOD to give desirable praises to the Creator of the Universe in the 141-page book. The joy of reading the book lies mostly in its simplicity of language and subtle and humorous reference to immediate past and current events in Nigeria, especially the inordinate crave for political power that make African leaders want to hang on to power even when it is obvious that their times are up.

The book is a ‘poetic contemplation of different aspects of God’. Though most of the qualities of God Ojenike contemplates on in offering praises and worship to God are well known and prevail from time immemorial, the styles the poet in Ojenike employs in his praise and worship are unique. For example, symbols and imageries are localized to enable readers to identify with the metaphors and other figures of speech employed. Therefore, reading the book, it is very glaring that many characteristics of God have been ascribed to man. However, the poet tries successfully to retrieve those traits back to the owner, God, the almighty. For examples, proving that God owns every thing on earth, Ojenike questions the title of the monarch of Oyo whose title is Alaafin, translated the owner of the palace. He asks, ‘Who owns the palace/ Who owns the man therein resides/ For a while…a fleeting while?’ It stands to reason that if the palace truly belongs to the monarch of Oyo, why are his predecessors not alive to lay claim to the place and the throne?

The 32 poems in the book include: The Creator; The Omniscient God; The Omnipresent God; the Omnipotent God; The incomparable God; The Sovereign God; The perfect God; The Holy God; God, the Consuming Fire; The Only- Wise God; The Unsearchable God, and so on.

The poet goes dramatic and employs dialogue style to engage hold his readers spell-bound, using just two characters, a Poet and a Poetess. To establish the incontrovertible omniscience of God, in the poem titled the Omniscient God, hear him: ‘Poet: “Who can conceal his evil thoughts/From You who see man inside-out/And discern the thoughts of his heart?”’. ‘Poetess: “No one—no not one!”;’ In the same poem he continues: ‘God the Sanitary Inspector/Who inspects every nook/And cranny of the brain/And in the twinkling of an eye/Discovers the correct contents/Of every heart and mind/Yours is the divine knowledge/That is far beyond the grasp of man.’

Still dancing poetically in praise of God, Ojenike offers thus in the poem titled, The Sovereign God: ‘God, You need not a third term…/You have the reins, and You/Do reign from age to age/For with dung-beetle/No one competes for dung.’ This is a humorous reminder of the intrigues, and their attendant futility, that played out recently in Nigeria and Niger Republic.

Just like many people have been meditating on their indebtedness to God in terms of how and what they could do to praise, pay or thank God enough for all He has been doing for them, Ojenike in Rhapsody of Praise says, ‘I have sat down/Long lost in thoughts/Of what to give/You…God…my All/…I owe You praises/Yes, I owe You worship/Each day I stretch my mind/To wrap Your wrought wondrous works/ In this world where man sojourns…’

One most noticeable feature of the book is the musical cadence of words occasioned by the copious use of alliteration in the poems that qualifies some of the poems potential hymns. For example: ‘To wrap Your wrought wondrous works/ In this world where man sojourns…’ Lekan Ojenike beautifully uses the poetic devices and figures of speech that are obviously at his disposal to make the book an interesting read. He does not only use the free verse as lazy poets do but there is interplay of blank verse and structured stanzas, with verses sprinkles of couplet rhymes here and there. His metaphors and imageries are such that do not undermine the almightiness of God, but such that celebrate many wondrous things done or being done by God, thereby awaken memories of God’s goodness and kindness in the mind of the reader.

Another commendable feature of the book is its use of similes and metaphors to describe the indescribable God whom nobody has ever seen without the author falling into heresy or blasphemy.

Ode To GOD, no doubt, is not a book one reads in a hurry. It is a book one should read meditatively to get the poet’s message and enjoy the spiritual uplift that results from meditating on the person of God.

Lekan Ojenike has made a statement with Ode To GOD that he knows God intimately, and that he has the mastery of the English and Yoruba idiolects which he employs audaciously to create linguistic and poetic beauty that bears on praise and worship of God, the subject of the book, Ode To GOD.