Otuaro's Two Million Ransom on 'Tompolo and the Bandits'

By: Enewaridideke Ekanpou

I like dancing;
I dance everyday to outrival Veronica Tamgbowei and Embeleakpo Angbare.
Yet I  cannot dance gracefully like Tompolo.
Dancing is my food.
Dancing is my fire-extinguisher.
Dancing is the canoe on which I journey across the world beyond my  village world;
I dance to plant stories on my spectators like tattoos;
I smile when my spectators smile at me, stirred by my tattoos.

Poetry is my dance on the stage for spectators.
'Tompolo and the Bandits' is my latest dance on the stage.
Before the very eyes of my spectators my dance steps birth octopus views and responses;
For some my dance is a decomposing antelope; yet for others my dance is the honey invaded by men  who have weaponised fire for bee-expulsion.

Yet 'Tompolo and the Bandits' invaded His Excellency Kingsley Otuaro and got him kidnapped.
Otuaro's entrails stood arrested by 'Tompolo and the Bandits', waiting for ransom;
His eyes and thoughts snaked through like waters down all passable channels in a river barricaded by weir.

Of their own volition  dollars journeyed into my abomasum;
The dollars journeyed because I was summoned;
I was summoned because Otuaro had authorised the Nigerian dollars to journey straight into my abomasum.
For Otuaro I danced too 'tawuu' in 'Tompolo and the Bandits'.
'Tompolo and the Bandits' became the propeller of the journey of the dollars into my abomasum.
The Nigerian dollars journeyed  as a ransom for the kidnapped Otuaro.

Otuaro stood stirred by my dance steps in 'Tompolo and the Bandits' like a dug-out canoe commandeered by the tide.
The joy and pride mine if Otuaro were also stirred by my waiting TOMPOLO'S HAULERS AND THE HAILERS;  
Alas, TOMPOLO'S HAULERS AND HAILERS is still in the foundry, some nautical miles away from Otuaro!

Choreography? Yes, choreography!
I shall choreograph and dance everyday like the Timokoko bird seen during flood season.
I shall choreograph and dance everyday because dance routinely kidnaps Otuaro.
The full-fledged Otuaro kept  incommunicado for 200  years until ransomed with dollars worth two million naira?
I shall choreograph and dance everyday like the dutiful sun and moon in their timed outings.

I have become a pen kidnapper.
I have become a pen bandit, dance steps weaponised as a bait to entrap the likes of Otuaro in my web thrown everywhere.
God, may my web entrap only those who could be ransomed with dollars like Otuaro.

Dr. Ekanpou writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State.