Despite the inhuman conditions in which Nigerians now live daily, they have largely remained calm and unable to raise their voices against the conundrum threatening their existence. Paradoxically, people who have been driven to the brim of patience have chosen to remain resolute in their silence, they prefer to mourn each day away hoping a miracle might happen to them.

The society is depicted to be expectant. Waiting for a turnaround to the challenges that plague us. We are described to be ‘waiting so long for our laughter' but it never comes. The culprits responsible for this tragedy are ‘pol- thieves-cians' as rightly described by the poet via the application of poetic license.

Back to Sidi. I continue my reading or misreading of his poems. I am searching for that single line in “Gathering of Spirits” that would resonate and strike me as a thoughtful punctuation of our proselytism.

There is a rawness and a tangibility to this struggle, asserting itself like a shawl over the spirit and engendering a gradual fading away of the substantial, particular (in)carnation we occupy. Essentially, we become apologists in an oppression we neither deserve nor comprehend but in which we are too lost to realize the extent of our performance in the disservice.

There is a rawness and a tangibility to this struggle, asserting itself like a shawl over the spirit and engendering a gradual fading away of the substantial, particular (in)carnation we occupy. Essentially, we become apologists in an oppression we neither deserve nor comprehend but in which we are too lost to realize the extent of our performance in the disservice.