Orok Otu Duke

Sentinels (Farewell Bakassi: Selected Poems and Articles Orok Otu Duke

Sentinels (Farewell Bakassi: Selected Poems and Articles), denotes and connotes knowledge, powered by fervent passions, a lodestone of ideas, ideals and values. It is a confectionary of treasured experiences, going down memory lanes; replete with bitter -sweet recollections; of retrievable and irretrievable losses; delightful, regrettable and treasurable. It is an enriching historical, mythological, mythical analogy - a collection of time-tested tributes, deserving of recall. Sentinels is a chain of past, present and future, powered by fervent research; a passionate narrative. It is an inspirational, coordinated labour of love. I do recommend it highly for all who cherish the power of ideas, values and ideals. Far more than three quarters of Sentinels are made of such very passion-inflamed poems. A few of such emblematic collections can be sampled, here, as foretastes to numerous enticing, appetizing captions. Among these are: "Farewell Bakassi", "The Homestead (To our lost Bakassi)", "The Scars we see (For our Bakassi People)"; all bemoan the Nigeria's reckless loss of the Bakassi Peninsula to the Republic of Cameroons, vis-à-vis the plight of beloved Nigerians, so marooned in a strange Republic, and the human pains and tribulations thereof! In similar veins, and perhaps much more so, Sentinels is a collection of a variety of ice-creamy stuffs or tastes that the lickers would relish long, after every lick, bite, in bits and pieces, all very emblematic of Duke's intimate, vicarious attachments to his families, his beloved state, country and political party, the PDP; some are tributes to his admirers and admirees, friends and iconic personalities and others are patriotic lamentations of traumatic events, avoidable and unavoidable.