There is little biographical information available on Ntiru but critic Rosette Francis called him "one of the young writers" in 1971. Critics generally agree that the underlying impetus of Ntiru's work is to show the "tensions and conflicts" embedded in the "cultural confusion" (Yeshufu) that juxtaposes Ministers of Parliament having "triple" chins with paupers who "lean on a leafless tree" (Ntiru) in order to dramatize "the futility, corruption, injustice, poverty, moral decay" (Yeshufu) in the confused culture of man. This poem certainly is illustrative of these elements of tension and conflict, juxtaposition of power corrupted with the injustice of abject poverty, the cultural confusion that pits the pauper, framed in shining headlights and snapshots, against the beautiful.