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    The Watchnight Songs
    The Watchnight Songs
    The Watchnight Songs
    Ebook259 pages1 hour

    The Watchnight Songs

    By Silas Olaoyin Abayomi

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    About this ebook

    The book is a compendium or a collection of over eighty poems, which address our physical make-up, socio-cultural attitudes about life, African political landscape and its historical past poetically.
    The first section of the book begins with a simple reflection on human body as it compares favorably and fittingly with the larger human society.

    The second part explains the sociology and philosophy of life, thats the societys definition of, and expectation of life from individual; more so, the concept of vanity of life.

    The belief every culture and every human society hold so dearly, seen differently.

    The third part focuses on the failure and corrupt nature of man and the monumental impact of this weakness on the created social institutions within the framework and dynamics of political engineering.

    Part four of this book literarily highlights on slavery, one of the worst evils in the history of mankind; more important, it explains how the obnoxious trade impacted negatively the territory where practiced; the socio-cultural and political effects of the criminal act, several centuries thereafter.

    The final part of the book provides a broad spectrum on Africa continent from the very ancient to pre-Christian times through countless eras or periods of rising World Powers, which Africa and her children witnessed either as a participant or as a victim to the modern times.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781491864555
    The Watchnight Songs
    Author

    Silas Olaoyin Abayomi

    Silas Olaoyin Abayomi was a former Assistant Professor of Communication, at the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, Nigeria. For about a decade, Ola-Abayomi (as fondly called) taught Integrated Marketing Communication, International Communication, and African Communication Systems. Upon re-locating to United States, this author changed his research focus/interest from Mass Communication to Linguistics, Anthropology and Cultural Studies. Recently, he launched a website:http://www.yorupedia.com-an online Encyclopedia or resource center, which provides detailed information on Yoruba people of Western Nigeria and those in diaspora. The site is to assist or help individuals, scholars, and those undertaking advanced studies in Yoruba culture, language, and history. Besides, the author has written several poetry, short stories and has over three hundred epigrams. The Watchnight Songs is the author’s desire to preserve and to consolidate his poems into a single book for lovers of literary work.

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      Book preview

      The Watchnight Songs - Silas Olaoyin Abayomi

      2014 Silas Olaoyin Abayomi. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 08/01/2014

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-6414-2 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-6455-5 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2014904025

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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      CONTENTS

      Section 1: Human Anatomy & Physiology and our Earthly Home

      Chapter 1   My Heart

      Chapter 2   The Human Body-A Symbolic City

      Section 2: The Sociology and Philosophy of Human Life

      Chapter 3   A True Home-What should it be?

      Chapter 4   The Six Questions of Life

      Chapter 5   Life of Uncertainty

      Chapter 6   Vanity of Life

      Section 3: Nigeria-The Hundred Year Journey-Where We Are Today

      Chapter 7   The Inconvenient Marriage: North and South merger—where we are today

      Chapter 8   Our Undesirable and Dishonorable Public Servants

      Section 4: The Three-and-Half-Century-Old-Trade: Slavery and Aftereffects in Africa

      Chapter 9   How we lost our Land and Possessions

      Chapter 10   Violence in the Land, Let Peace Reign in Africa

      Section 5: Africa-the Jewel, land of Extraordinary Wonders

      Chapter 11   The Odyssey-The Journey, Travails, and the Wealth in the Land-Africa

      Acknowledgments

      No author or authors as the case may be can lay claim to all credit of a book.

      Although, a book project starts with single idea, concept, and thought of an individual or individuals in some cases, but getting a complete book into the hands of readers always transcend the original idea.

      Within the book production chain are professionals that are neither seen nor heard, but are valued when the book is on the table or in bookshelf to be read. These ones, the content management group-the word processors, artists, copy designers, editors, photographers, library and archives support staff-all at the background-I say thank you.

      Specifically, I want to thank these individuals, institutions, bodies, and colleges that granted me permissions to use their materials for this book: Dr. Ali Dinar, Professor Jim Jones, Professor James A. Pritchett, Dr. John Metzler, Dr. Aaron T. Wolf, Lynette De Silva, Dr. Peter Howard, Harshit Davis, and Alexander Ganse. African Studies Centers of: University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University; Africa World Heritagesite, Codewit World News, World History at WHKMLA, anatomyandphysiology.com, Ancient History Encyclopedia, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, and the Yale University Press.

      More so, thanks to Creative Commons materials and their owners and those in Public Domain for easy access and use.

      Thanks to Yorupedia Committee members for reading the manuscript time and time again; more important, provided wonderful advice.

      I thank my family-wife-Nneka and children, for their support and understanding throughout the time I was engrossed with the project. Your patience went a long way, as it gave me time to accomplish the project.

      Those not mentioned by names, I did not overlook your help, advice, and contribution; forever you are treasured.

      Finally, thanks to the Almighty God for His love and wisdom granted me to undertake a seemingly common and usual assignment in a unique, uncommon, especially, in extraordinary way.

      Silas Moyanpoola Olaoyin Abayomi

      April 2014.

      Introduction

      Watchnight Songs is a five part book, a compendium or a collection of more than hundred poems; part one centers on man’s physical make up within the context of his earthly home—the cosmos, part two focuses on the socio-cultural concept of life as expressed by people of different culture.

      Part three examines human moral deficiency, a recurring decimal among people of all backgrounds, the bane or rather a major reason for failure of all created human institutions—outcome that has been very catastrophic-materially and otherwise. Part four relates what happened on African continent during slavery and aftereffect; the final section provides readers with Africa wonderful historical past and its treasures—we barely know or talk about, other than negative narratives we are always fed with by western writers and scholars, more so, from their transnational and multinational media empire on or about Africa.

      The Book Synopsis:

      The first section of the book begins with a simple reflection on human body, structure, and function, more important, this section compares the human body favorably and fittingly to a larger human society-a city.

      The second part explains the sociology and philosophy of life, that’s society’s definition of success and expectation from individual within the precinct of inter human relation; furthermore, this section highlights the concept of vanity of life, the belief every culture, every human society hold so dearly, but seen differently.

      Part Three poetically addresses the aberration-the abnormality within the geo-political confine or landmass: the Niger-Area, now known as Nigeria. A land or a home to over four hundred different nationalities governed separately as:

      •  Northern Protectorate, and

      •  Southern Protectorate and the Colony of Lagos between 1884 and 1914.

      By 1914, British Colonial administration created a union, unsolicited merger between Northern and Southern Protectorates; negligently, but criminally, British overlooked nationalities’ cultural, social, and political differences. This omission, decades after still haunt Nigeria to this day.

      The unsuspecting may hail the step taken by British as forthright and sincere, however, a critical analysis of this plan suggests otherwise; rather, it was a thought-out plan of political expediency, economic benefit and the survival of British run Nigeria Government without depending on home government for financial assistance.

      Events thereafter confirmed the motive, Harold Smith, one of British agents in Africa at the time said:

      Our agenda was to completely exploit Africa, Nigeria was my duty post. When we assessed Nigeria, this is what we found in the southern region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well established history, complex, but focused life style, great hope and aspirations . . . the east is good in business and technology, the west is good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a pity we planned our agenda to give power at all cost to the northerner . . . . Our mission was accomplished by destroying opposition at all fronts. The west led in fight for independence, and was punished for asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria!

      Source: Harold Smith was British Colonial officer, Department of Labor (1955-1959) Lagos, Nigeria; later, Press Officer or Secretary (1959-1960) to Sir James Robertson, Nigeria Governor-General.

      With the creation of about fifty-two unrelated political and geographical entities on the continent of Africa and the surrounding islands, British and other colonial masters accomplished their aims, as they succeeded having entire Africa in their hands for exploitation and exploration for several decades.

      From its armory, British government deployed political deceit, economic rapacity, social dislocation, and military subjugation at all cost to deny southern region (west and east) to rule, even when it had human, material, and economic advantage

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