Examine the irony in the roles played by ‘the corrupt masters of the economy and the political elite in’ ‘Ambassadors of Poverty’.

• The corrupt masters and the political elites behave in ways contrary to the people’s expectation. They loot the National Treasury thereby, sentencing the masses to abject poverty.
• They are unpatriotic as they lodge their loot in foreign banks, thereby making the foreign country richer, at the detriment of their own country’s economy.

• If they are true ambassadors, they will fix the economy; rather, they become money launderers and ‘determined merchants of loot’.

• A few candidates attempted this question. Rather than bring out the irony in the poem, they narrated the incidents. Many of them added issues of poverty and corruption that are rife in the Nigerian society, that were not in the poem.

  Candidates’ performance was poor.