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30               Maduike & Asigbo 

SOCIAL AWARENESS AND DISILLUSIONMENT IN JOE USHIE’S HILLSONGS 

AND AREIGN OF LOCUST 

 

Ndidiamaka Ndukauba Maduike 

Department of English Language and Literature, 

School of Languages, 

Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education 

maktoneps@yahoo.com 

& 

Prof. Alex Asigbo 

Department of Theatre and Film Studies 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 

 

 

Abstract 

This paper examines the social awareness created by the poet personae in Hill Songs and 

Reign of Locust. The collections condemn the ills in society such as failure of leadership, 

bribery and corruption. Through the use of imagery and some satirical devices, the reader is 

reawakened into looking deeper at some of the negative issues taken for granted which 

hinder the progress of a given society. This study examines the influence of poetry in 

satirizing vices visible in societies using a sociological approach. 

Keywords: Poetry, Social awareness, Corruption, Disillusionment, Sociological Approach 

 

Introduction  

In the poem “Pendulum”, the poet looks at a democratic state without democrats whereby 

the electorates which was used by the image ‘sheep' are courted by the leopard and the hyena’ 

an imagery for the ruling class, makes frivolous promises that can never be fulfilled. This is 

what is obtainable in the society we find ourselves. During campaign, the ruling class makes 

promises, promising heaven on earth for the poor masses but when they ascend into power, 

they pushed down the ladder from which they have climbed to the top. 

 

The next poem, “First October”, is a significant date in the history of Nigeria getting their 

independence. This freedom is seen to be in the hands of the strong. However, before 

independence, Nigerians believed that they can rule themselves without any prejudice and 

anchor without knowing that the corruption they are fighting against is within the ruling 

class. They saw the colonial masters as the perpetrators of evil through indirect rule system, 

when they finally got their independence with the hope that their freedom is at hand, it was 

then done on them that “we are the killers of ourselves” which is what is happening in the 

post-colonial era of recess, tyranny, social disorder and disillusionment. The peasants work 

to bring up the country’s glory with their blood and are paid back by death. They die only 

for the rich to ride in pleasant and flamboyant cars. The poor, lonely and lofty are sent to 

war while the rich travel and tour different continents of the world seeking where to dump 

whatever they have looted from the society in foreign banks. Moreover, with the look of 

things happening in the society, the poor masses are in search of food to live while the 

president, senators, governors and high placed individuals tour different countries with 

stolen money. According to the poet, it is their day of boom. While on the side of the poor 

masses, it is their day of doom, their day of birth (rejoicing) and the masses day of death 

(pain and anguish) respectively. 

 “The African Mosquito” by Joe Ushie is divided into eight stanzas that concern the Niger 

Delta area where the oil explorers drill oil from their land, leaving every night with wells of 



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31               Maduike & Asigbo 

their oil without minding the underdeveloped state of these areas, thus: 

Every night you drill on my land  

You pike in my peasant’s earth 

And you leave with wells of my peasants blood 

Indifferent to the wails and weals you plant 

 

Every night you sound your horn 

In the hollow of my ear  

Demanding a graft 

Well or weary, pay I must (Ushie, 12) 

 

The poet persona continues to lament on the way the oil explorers came at night disturbing 

the sleep of the citizens. Even at their expense, they must pay, the oil companies have to 

drill the oil with or without their consent but most times without their consent thereby 

showing the rate of dictatorship we have in our country. These oil companies came initially 

in a friendly and subtle manner but evil is locked in their minds. The poet calls them ‘African 

Mosquito’, ‘African tyrant of the dark’, though they oppress them now, there is that 

optimistic believe in the poet’s faith that his sun will beam again. 

 

In yet another poem, “The Lion” which is a poem of lamentation on the freedom of the 

masses, their green grass turn yellow due to lack of maintenance or the right nutrients. As 

the adage goes that where two elephants fight, the grasses suffer. The lion is an image 

representing the ruling class of the colonial masters that have trampled upon the innocent 

masses, making their lives miserable and sickly: 

... Your eyeballs are glowing coal  

Staring at the green grass  

Yellowed by your imperial breath. 

Hunters-surrounded at dawn, 

Dusk meets you unsurrendering (Ushie, 17) 

 

The poet analyses how a warrior’s dread has been used for food in a coward’s (cripple) 

pot thereby making mockery of the warrior. Those warriors that fought for the war are 

used to build the nation while those that have nothing about the war have taken the 

glory. In an optimistic mood, it is only time that will tell. 

“Encounter” is concerned with law enforcement agencies in the society and how bribery 

and corruption have eaten up the society in which we live in: 

In fright, I breathed deep  

Into my left pocket 

And then breathed out 

 

And he left 

Taking the law from my hands 

 Into his right pocket (Ushie, 19) 

“The Spiv’s Recipe” also deals on corruption. It looks at how to build up your status with 

the training into falsehood and theft in order to rule the people. If you are honest, you cannot 

be a politician because there are sweet coated words that you need to master before 

addressing the public for you to win. The poet writes thus: 

Remove the still small voice 

Construct a scheme 

Drop in a flame a drop of thought 



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32               Maduike & Asigbo 

Add a measure of double – talk 

Blend with a dose of bravado 

Garnish with a radiant garment 

Spice it all with thieftaincy titles 

Season with Mercedes Benz 

 

And you have arrived! 

Serve hot in public office 

Sound sweet to every ear 

Ah, we are ready for export! (Ushie, 20) 

  

Moreover, in the poem “Hill Song”, Ushie uses the modal “must” four times. It recurs 

in the last four stanzas of the poem, one of such instances can be seen in: 

If I must sing 

Let my song not be on 

Those gourmands whose 

Gourd has dried up 

The springs of my blood. (Ushie, 9) 

 

For Ushie, poetry is a potent form of rebuke and purification. He therefore, draws a 

distinction between those who use poetry to support the excesses of government and those 

who use poetry to reflect and refract the ills in society. Unlike other poets, the poet rejects 

supporting visionless ruler, and he will not be blind to their excesses. The poet sees hope 

only when his fellow poets, whom he regards as embodying the conscience of the society 

squarely face their task of reprimanding bad governance in order to confront the screaming 

metaphor of pain experienced by Nigerians. The recurrence of “must” in the poem, 

supported by the “if’ conditional adverbial clause brings to light the poet’s collectivist 

orientation. The strategic position given to the adverbial in the subjective shows the link 

between cause and effect: that the poet’s creation cannot be severed from the on-goings of 

his society. Invariably, the poet activates the deontic modal system and makes a clarion call 

(a duty, it expresses the poet’s attitude to the degree of obligation that he attaches to the 

performance of the required action) to Nigerians to rise to the occasion of rescuing the dying 

nation from corruption, sycophancy, hypocrisy and bad leadership. The call, which has an 

obligatory undertone, urges the masses to rise against the gourmands whose gourd/ has dried 

up/ the springs of my bloom. 

In the poem “The hills will rise again”, “will” appears four times. As used here, will in the 

first instance can be equated with “must”. It carries the tone of certainty and surety as in: 

The hills will rise again  

The hills will march again  

The hills will howl again (Ushie, 50)  

 

Besides its assertive undertone, “will” reveals a humanist, who has a strong conviction 

as well as fate in mankind. This is also evident in Ogbonnaya’s ‘...and Pigs shall be 

House Cleaners’ where the modal of certainty and surety (will) occurs four times. 

Unlike Ushie, who deploys “will” to assure the masses of better days ahead, Ogbonnaya 

uses his to predict doom for Nigerians. Most probably, the poet is of the view that since 

the masses have failed to revolt against the morally decadent rulers, pigs, a metaphor 

that describes the filth of Nigeria politics will certainly hold sway. Ogbonnaya seems 

to believe that social change could come if the marginalized resists the domineering 

group. Moreover, Ushie’s use of “shall” in: 



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33               Maduike & Asigbo 

If I must sing today 

Let my song be on  

These hills of my birth 

These silent hills whose  

Sun shall rise again. (Ushie, 50) 

 

performs similar pragmatic function with “will”. It carries the illocutionary force of 

assurance and possibility. The poet assures his people of good things to come. It appears the 

poet believes that in spite of the odds one encounters in one's daily endeavour, one can get 

better.  

Shall your fall to the hunter’s sling  

Shut the mouth of the forest forever? 

 

But “shall” in the above lines works up a different meaning entirely of which Ushie invokes 

epistemically, as it depicts uncertainty, bewilderment and alienation. There is a general 

reluctance to interpret events and actions. This poem that captures the political tension that 

enveloped the Nigerian nation owing to the annulment of June 1993 presidential election, 

and the subsequent imprisonment of MKO Abiola and the assassination of his wife, 

KudiratAbiola, seems too atrophied a situation for the poet to explicate. It explains a person 

lost in the socio-political quagmire of his country. It describes a citizen, who is unsure of 

what will happen next, owing to the political disturbance in his country. Moreover, the 

consistent repetition of “will” critically echoes the poet’s consistent effort to make things 

better and also fulfils the pragmatic function of establishing an implicit comparison and 

builds a contrast between two apparently conflicting decisions. Furthermore, the use of “will” 

does not refer to a type of modal auxiliary verb; rather it refers to the “Will” of the people. 

The deontic modal employed here functions to reveal the people’s desire to lead a 

meaningful life, just as the way other people do. Apparently, Ushie’sHill Songs is 

sandwiched between the eclipse of military rule and the emergence of democratic rule. This 

is seen in “Pendulum”: 

Sandwiched between 

the blood -sucking boots 

and the sugar -tongued chameleons 

we know not where to go (Ushie, 14) 

 

The blood-sucking boots metaphorically refers to the military and the Sugar-tongued 

chameleon a linguistic innovation with associative as well as evaluative connotations that 

describes the antics of the political class. He uses a narrative procedure that illustrates his 

humility, warmth and compassion for fellow Nigerians, to depict a period that uncalculated 

socio-political and socio-economic policies and programmes threatened the unity of the 

Nigerian nation. 

 

The poet describes an era where “boots” (a metaphor for military tyranny) menacingly 

“crushed” Nigerians. In a similar way, (BeteBesong, 13) in Weka stresses: 

The power of the writer is not always strong enough to change the political 

and social situation of his time but his art can become a fighting literature. 

He can write works that are artistically profound and politically correct: he 

can write works of indictment and works that show how his world is and 

could be. (13-18) 

 

In Ushie’s poem, he directs his contempt at the military forces, their collaborators and agents 



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34               Maduike & Asigbo 

of destruction. The poet does this by implying the agent less passive those gods. This has 

an impersonal and indefinite characteristic, as the poet does not specify who had threatened 

Nigerians to death (dust). The agent -the military forces is recoverable by exophoric 

reference from the historical context of military dictatorship in Nigeria, which lasted for 

over thirty years. So the poet hinges hope on the emerging democracy. Ironically, the 

politicians like their military counterpart are failing. The recurrent strategizing of “will” 

creates an argumentative texture, which is achieved by associative moves and the situation 

of the Nigerian people is reinforced by means of reflecting the struggle of the entire nation 

as can be seen in: 

From north to south 

and east to west 

the hills will rise again 

each waving a tree as spear 

each hurling rocks like sling 

each tracing the streak of stench. (Ushie, 50) 

 

The poet activates his ideological position by activating linguistic items such as the -ing 

verbs in waving, hurling and tracing, showing a society that is progressing from passivity 

to the tendentious questioning of the rulers' excesses. The poet’s extensive and recurrent 

allusion to the metaphor of “hill” and intonation derived from the use of “will” succeeds in 

creating a discourse that is effusive and emotional.  

 

A Reign of Locusts by Joe Ushie is divided into four uneven parts containing fifty-two poems 

as a whole. Unlike his previous books, which stridently make their name and boldly 

confirmed Ushie’s growing reputation based on his eco poetry and nature-dominated 

concerns, the present collection seeks to explore and explain the recent happenings in 

Nigerian polity through ceaseless allusions and references to such happenings using the 

overriding metaphor of the locust. But this is not to suggest that the usual obsessive 

metaphor of a place of origin, of attachment to geography, of the symbolism of the earth, or 

of the imagery of the homeland is absent in A Reign of Locusts. Most of the time these 

metaphors and references to Nigerian political scene are powerfully substituted with that of 

vulture, hyena, hawk, tiger, lion, fox, or dragon in order to capture the precise, pervasive 

image (and indeed the reality) of injustice, extra judicial murder, corruption and all other 

vices associated with the long reign of military dictatorship in Nigeria, and to some extent 

with the present crop of “civilian dictators”. In the light of this, then, the first part of the 

collection, “Toward Canaan” is the most successful. And the first poem in that section, the 

political “beauty” titled “The African Bermuda” represents all these concerns in a miniature 

way. For it does seek to compare, even contrast, the real Bermuda Triangle with an 

imaginary, yet real Nigerian/African Bermuda. The similarity between the two Bermudas is 

that whatever crosses them banishes without a trace. Yet while the real Bermuda (in the 

Caribbean) is a geographic/natural phenomenon, that of Nigeria is man made because it 

came into existence through the evil conspiracies, (what Ushie calls “triangle”) of the soldier, 

the politician and the technocrat. 

 

The next poem, “Night, still” uses the quasi-surreal imagery of night and time (with capital 

N) to sustain the exploration of Nigeria's recent political happenings. Here, the poet looks 

at the ruling class as Dogs, Crocodiles that feast on human (hewrnan), Ushie’s fresh 

neologisms coining come through with such words as “Hewrnan” (human), he like Jonathan 

Swift’s “Modest Proposal” call these ruling class the vultures feasting on their child’s 

carrion, seeking “Softstitutes” (substitutes), which means the substitutes are weak in opinion 



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35               Maduike & Asigbo 

and decision making of their society. They must be subtle and humble to any call. The hyena, 

hawk, tiger, lion, fox and dragon are afraid of their prisoners’ freedom which will amount 

to their emptiness of their praises. See also the term “Compagriots” (Compatriots), who are 

there to take from the masses rather than working for the nation. The nation does not care 

about the masses, though the masses complain bitterly with wounds on their body and pains 

in their heart. This is a nation where the blind leads the sighted and the bondsman celebrates 

his bond - age. The ruling class do not care about the decomposing streets meant for the low 

lives and poor masses while they (politicians and technocrats) ply the highways leaving the 

streets to decompose. Despite the gloom occasioned by the unnatural night of “eight-long 

tyrants”, the poet sees hope only when his fellow poets, whom he regards as embodying the 

conscience of the society, squarely face their task of “growing a flower of phrases” with 

their “swords of words” in order to confront the screaming “metaphors of pain”. 

 

The next poem, the historical/allusive “Musa’s Legacy” traces the root causes of the 

phenomenon of “African dictatorship” precisely in the supposedly dictatorial reign of 

Mansa Musa, the king of the former Empire of Mali (in the present Republic of Mali in 

West Africa). While the title poem's inclination is to foreground the plethora of troubles and 

turmoil, there is still no respite even when we turn to the proverbial prayer as the last resort, 

for, as the poet says: 

Our spade filled with curses  

We laid to rest last dusk … 

Darkens the infant rays  

Of our rising sun. 

 

Now is a rain of locusts 

 In a chewing race, 

An endless eclipse for the wingless  

Blister your knees  

At your Faith’s prayer ground  

Or they munch down our fences  

These locusts. (Ushie, 13) 

 

 

The poem “Ladder” portrays the stairs at which the ruling class used to climb. The masses 

are the ladder the ruling class use to climb on top but when they climb to the utmost top, 

they forgot the ladder that helped them to the top. They look down on these masses even 

when everything is going wrong, “erosion breaks away a universe of the toiling ants below” 

(human labourers): 

You look down, oblivious as 

 Into a previous incarnation, 

At the dis-laddered clamberers  

Whose bare backs of skeleton bore  

The ladder of your ascent 

 

You leisure, still, even  

If the erosion breaks away  

A universe of the toiling ants below, 

If the floods steal away the earth. 

If the eskers raid off the clan, 

If epidemics swallow the homesteads, 



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36               Maduike & Asigbo 

If the blades of famine mince the race. (Ushie, 18) 

 

That is not their business of the day but they should remember as the poet states that it is the 

same earth that habours the rich and the poor man: 

But the entrails of the earthworm  

Bear the dung-mix of tallest trees  

And shortest ones, says silent ant. (Ushie, 18) 

 

“A Reign of Locust” typifies the devastating state of destruction of those that believe that 

they are meant to rule the society but they end up being “a rain of locust”: Now is a rain of 

locust/ In a chewing race/ An endless eclipse for the wingless. 

 

The powerless masses are nothing in their hands destroying their houses and fences as what 

is happening in most states of the federation where houses are demolished in the bid of 

reconstructing roads. Though we need to sacrifice a little today to enjoy more tomorrow but 

not when jealousy and greed become the order of the day and overrides the government. 

 

In another poem in this section titled “The termitarium” which talks about the workers that 

build empires, palace, shields the majesty but get nothing in return for their labour. Their 

tale (stories) stains the ears and their labourers song saddens the termites, hills, winds, seas 

and as much saddens itself. The poor citizens (labourers) labour for democracy which is 

supposed to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people but what did 

these democrats, politicians and technocrats do - Nothing, while the electorates (the 

labourers) fight for the good of the society, forming groups like ABN (Association for a 

Better Nigeria) to bring in “termitarium” (democracy) from the hands of the military regime, 

the bourgeoisies on the other hand, gain a lot from the military rule through the MAMSER 

(Mass Mobilization for Social and Economic Reconstruction) programme of General 

Ibrahim Babangida’s military regime. Notwithstanding that these labourerslabour to build 

empires, sow seed, the military regime are the ones reaping the fruits. The labourers will 

hunt the game while the military government eats the meal. It is like “Monkey dey work, 

Baboo dey chop”.  

 

Calling the politicians dragon by the poet is not a mistake as he had earlier on stated in his 

poem “Night Still”. “Homage to the Dragon” envisages the hurt and torture the poor masses 

passed through in the hands of their dictator: 

Now that you feign for us  

A benign state of your boot prints 

Of your boots’ scars on our brows; 

Now that your bands grope again 

 For the dagger of our yester- death; 

For the dagger of our second death; 

Now I must scream Spokesman for the wordless.(Ushie, 25) 

 

The poet continues to lament on the torture and pain they were undergoing in the hands of 

the dictators’ reign with their rivers of blood in the school child’s every sleight of hand.  

 

Moreover, their smiles are more deadly than the pandemic new death. “fixed like love at 

life’s keyhole’” “And our pillory in every foreign land”. Meanwhile, Dele Giwa is linked to 

this dragon without the slightest idea nor thought that he will fall in their hands, bringing 

the battered soldiers, anguished civilians, famished farmers, starving traders, castrated 



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37               Maduike & Asigbo 

politicians and others of their kind into prison (ant’s chambers). The poet’s use of oxymoron 

depicts the frustration and depression that engulf the entire society. In this, the poet creates 

awareness to the society of what will befall them if they should continue to support the 

dictators. Though they pretend to be innocent of their crimes, their names will never be 

remembered for good. 

And though you seek to rhyme  

Your steps with the lambs  

Your name will hang upside down 

On tongues of tomorrow. (Ushie, 23) 

 

The poem “Homo Sappers” is haters of human beings, it is a society devoid of love where 

human hate fellow human instead of living in harmony with one another, and bestiality 

becomes the order of the day. The poet uses rhetorical questions in this poem to converge 

and drive home his meaning. He calls for Hewmanity (humanity) fending for the good of 

the society analyzing that bestiality is inhuman while unbestiality is human. 

 

“The Exchange” bemoans the less privileged in the society, the pains they have to go 

through in their lives. The torture from the bonesmith’s hands to mend the shattered leg 

bone, collapsed shoulder joint and twisted ankle rings a bell of pain in the mind of the 

wounded. The groaning and cries of the wounded are even heard and felt by nature itself. 

There is the old and young, fair and dark complexioned, tall and short, male and female 

waiting in line for mending hands of the bonesmith. While they await their turn, their purse 

get lean making the bonesmith’s purse to fatten up, while the scrapyard doctor’s purse swell 

in foreign land far away in Europe, the bone mechanic’s patients swell, all these caused by 

one accident or the other. 

 

The same tenor and terse words mark another of the short poems, which takes its title from 

a cannibal called Clifford Orji (who was arrested for cannibalism in Lagos in 1999). The 

poem is not a celebration of what Orji did or indeed of cannibalism. It is, rather, an 

indictment of all those who are at the forefront of condemning vices like that of Orji while 

being guilty of even more heinous crimes. Another poem in this section, which is similar in 

tone and style with the previous one, is the aptly titled “The Uniform”. It captures the 

tragedy of Nigeria with brevity as it is with absolute certainty about who the real culprits 

are: they are the devils in whatever kind of uniform, whether bluish or darkish; and they 

seem to be united by one aim, despite the different colours of their uniform. For all have:  

The cowed pregnant palms 

Delivering into wolfish trays 

Cobwebbing the land’s path.(Ushie, 37) 

 

The poems in Section Two, “Back to the Hill and Vales, are no more than transmutations - 

linguistic and lyrical adaptation/adoption -of popular songs by singers from the Obudu 

region of Cross River State, such as the late Umali Alikpong, (popularly known as Angbeb-

ishang, of Bebuagbong, Obudu), AtsuAkpegah of Okambi, Obudu, and other poems (at least 

going by their titles) are derived from oral literature of the region. Section Three, “Voices 

and Moods of the Silent Wild and Other Deep Matters...” contain the inevitable rain song, 

“Rain Season”, the nature-dominated “Particle” which highlights the human domestication 

of nature. There is also the semi-concrete/graphological poem, “Tongues”, and the 

beautifully wrought “Sleep” which lyrically foregrounds not only the inevitability of sleep, 

but its varied, disparate manifestations in our lives; a superb, but brief treatise on the Congo 

music of the same name; and the romantic “Season of Flower”. Section Three, “Returns” 



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38               Maduike & Asigbo 

contains mostly tributes poems. 

 

In the end, A Reign of Locusts establishes further the place of Joe Ushie in the new Nigerian 

poetry. With varied voices and style the book shows that even when there is a central theme 

with which a poet like Ushie is usually identified, that theme could be realized without an 

explicit recourse to it. Like in his previous collections, Joe Ushie has demonstrated that a 

concern for the degradation of the environment is closely linked with the assumption that 

poets, like all other creative artists, are physically, culturally and metaphorically rooted in 

specific geographies, and that they strive towards the well-being of those physical and 

cultural geographies. In this remarkable collection, Ushie has shown that when it comes to 

what (Bodunde, 202) calls “the appropriation of the physical environment” -as both subject 

and object, Ushie is a master in portraying the decay in the people’s lives. 

 

Conclusion 

The poet examined in this paper is unapologetic about his dealings with the political class 

and the situation of their society. Therefore, these situations and the political class need to 

be addressed with no measure of indirectness. These are easy poems to read, the poet 

presents historical facts about the eleven years of democracy in our country, which have 

been used by the political class to widen the gap between the ruled and the rulers and 

between the rich and the poor. Evidently, in terms of thematic exploration, there is no clear-

cut dichotomy among the three generations of Nigerian poets, but with the new Nigerian 

poet, there is a crystal difference in stylistic rendition and an artistic presentation that 

resonates with the socio-political complications and difficult situations of their time. This 

paper stresses the need for more studies on the awareness that the poet tries to create as well 

as the dislocation and disillusionment faced by the ruled. This is achieved through the use 

of language and imagery used in Nigerian poetry given the fact that language remains an 

indispensable instrument which individuals depend upon for the expression of their 

thoughts. The fact is that every writer engages themselves in the act of furthering the cause 

of the society through their creative utilization of the resource of language. Ifejirika notesas 

Ezenwa - Ohaeto rightly declares that it is the duty of the poet to enlighten the society 

without fear or favour through their writings. Meanwhile, Okon states that Ushie in the same 

vogue motivates poets from all nations to rise and save the ruled and poor masses from the 

hands of their dictators. 

 

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https://www.ajolinfo/index.php/laligens/article/view/108040
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