Performance poet, Chukwumerije, takes ‘unity’ concert to Jos
Nigerian performance poet, Dikeogu Chukwumerije, has been staging poetry shows across the country, using the platform to preach peace and unity for Nigeria.
The poet has been to many Nigerian cities: Enugu, Lagos, Maiduguri, Yola, Benin, Abuja, among others.
The show is billed to hold on April 28, 2018 at Mees Palace Rayfield, Jos, by 5pm and will be a live performance poetry show with N1000 tickets available on the show’s website www.simplypoetry.com.ng.
According to Chukwumerije, “These are exciting times for poetry in Nigeria as the art form plays an active role in Nigeria’s peace and reconciliation journey” he said.
The Made In Nigeria Show is poetry for stage production that tells the 102-year story of Nigeria’s journey from amalgamation to date using poetry, song, dance and drama.
One of the earliest poetry performances of Dike,son of former Nigerian outspoken senator, Uche Chukwumerije, is a tribute to legendary writer of Things Fall Apart, late Prof. Chinua Achebe.
Dikeogu Chukwumerije
Among his new poems is titled: WHAT IS A NATION?
A nation is not its roads and its bridges, for if it were then its mother would be concrete and its father would be steel. But, no, it exists first in the minds of dreamers and, even after it has fallen, lives on in the minds dreamers. So, tell me, what is a nation?
Is it a song we all remember, and can sing shoulder to shoulder, when the legs of our national team are tiring and their hearts need bolstering? Is it an experience we have all shared, like the dormitories in an NYSC camp and the scramble at the door to collect deployment letters? Is it that hope which does not discriminate – which does not say I will be found only in the heart of the northerner or the southerner – that our children will not suffer like us, that they will not have to wait 5 years after graduating before finding jobs befitting of their education? Tell me, what is a nation?
It is an idea that a people can be bound together by something deeper than blood and higher than ancestors. That village can join hand with village, and town can lock step with town, and state can stand up with state, and region can march forward with region. Why? Because they have come to see that the encroaching desert that swallows up the tribe from which their daughters are never to marry will one day come and swallow theirs as well.
You see? And so it is that even when we have not been held in the same womb, that we will nevertheless be buried in the same graves is sufficient reason to say, ‘We are the same.’
This is a nation.