A central theme in the poem NOT MY BUSINESS is:

Answer Details

Niyi Osundare's Not My Business is structured around a speaker who watches as people around him are taken away by an oppressive force - Akanni is beaten, Danladi is abducted, Chinwe is dismissed from work - and each time the speaker responds with the same refrain: "What business of mine is it / So long they don't take the yam / From my savouring mouth?" The speaker chooses to remain silent and uninvolved as long as his own comfort (symbolised by the yam) is not threatened.

This deliberate indifference to the suffering of others is political complacency - the passive acceptance of injustice because it does not yet affect oneself. The poem's devastating final stanza, where the oppressors come for the speaker himself, demonstrates the consequence of this complacency: silence in the face of tyranny eventually consumes even the silent.

The poem is not about courage (the speaker shows none until it is too late), greed (the yam is a symbol of basic security, not excess), or success. Its central theme is political complacency - the moral failure of refusing to stand against injustice until it arrives at one's own door.