A Review of Liza C. Akunyili’s “Money & I”

This poem is witty, self-aware, and rhythmically engaging. It anthropomorphizes money into a lover (almost like a yahoo-boy lover) with whom the speaker has had a turbulent yet ultimately affectionate relationship. Through the structure of a mock-romantic narrative, the poem explores economic aspiration, self-worth, and the psychological push-pull of survival and ambition in a socio-economic context marked by instability, particularly within Nigerian society. The poem opens with a striking inversion of expectation: “Money loved me / Unaware, I thought he / Hated me.” This reversal immediately establishes irony and playfulness, displacing the typical lament about financial hardship into a story of unrecognized affection. The speaker personifies money as “he,” a choice that adds a gendered and emotional dimension, making money into a symbol of material need, and more so, an entity capable of intimacy, rejection, and reconciliation. This gives the poem its humorous yet poignant edge, as it stages a romance with a force both desired and feared.

The use of repetition (“Money loved me… Money liked me… Money still likes me”) captures the rhythm of reassurance, as the speaker’s attempt to rewrite their narrative of lack into one of belonging. The repeated affirmations reflect both hope and irony, suggesting that while the speaker now “knows” money’s affection, this recognition might be aspirational rather than factual; it represents a classic case of what is colloquially styled ‘delulu’. Yet, this tension reveals the charm of Akunyili’s poem: it satirizes how we comfort ourselves in the struggle for financial stability, converting deprivation into an illusion of companionship.

The tonal shifts are subtle but deliberate. What begins as self-deprecating humor (e.g., Stressed me out / Made me question me), gradually becomes self-assertive (He liked my idea & mind / He even sent me money)… Here, creativity, intellect, and initiative become the channels through which _money_ expresses love. The speaker implies that success is not about luck but intellectual merit; money “rewards” the mind that “hits the nails right.” In that sense, the poem is a sly commentary on the contemporary Nigerian hustle where talent, resilience, and cleverness are the new currencies of affection.

The concluding stanza seals the poem’s metaphorical conceit: Well, we both know now / To be coy is not fun / I like money too / Let’s have money juniors. The anthropomorphic metaphor culminates in a kind of union i.e., material and creative fertility embodied in “money juniors”. The phrase encapsulates both desire and ambition: not only to possess wealth but to reproduce it, to generate new forms of abundance through mutual affection. It is a witty re-envisioning of economic empowerment as a kind of romantic reciprocity.

I like the colloquial diction, accessibility of the work, and its sharp social commentary. It’s a light yet layered poem that blends humor, realism, and personification to illuminate a deeper human truth: that our relationship with money, much like love, is full of misrecognitions, reconciliations, and self-reinventions. In its compact form, it captures a distinctly Nigerian sensibility and reclaims the struggle for survival as a site of poetic play and self-affirmation.

Kudos!