Friday, August 27, 2010

50 Years of Nigerian Literature

By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu




Nigeria rules the world of literature. There is no major prize in literature that has not been won by Nigerian writers. Wole Soyinka capped it all up in 1986 by winning the coveted Nobel Prize for literature. Chinua Achebe, the acclaimed Father of the African Novel, was awarded the Man Booker Prize for his lifetime achievement in fiction writing, beating a redoubtable shortlist that included Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Ian McEwan etc. Ben Okri had earlier won the Booker Prize in 1991.

Before Nigeria’s arrival at Independence in 1960, diverse literatures had thrived in the local languages. Pita Nwana, the author of Omenuko blazed the trail in the publishing of fiction in Igbo. In the Western part of Nigeria D.O. Fagunwa, author of Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole, was the trailblazer in the writing and publishing of Yoruba literature. Abubakar Imam, author of Magana Jari Ce, was the pathfinder in the North. The many Nigerian languages were well represented in literature before the almost overwhelming adoption of English by the emergent writers.

Amos Tutuola astounded the literary world with the publication of his novel The Palmwine Drinkard in 1954, some six years before Nigeria’s winning of self-rule. The book written in quaint English won the praise of the Irish poet Dylan Thomas and set Tutuola on the path of a redoubtable literary career.

Cyprian Ekwensi who had trained as a forester and a pharmacist quickly won his plaudits as an early story writer and novelist. From 1947 onwards, he published such titles as Ikolo the Wrestler and When Love Whispers which helped to launch forth the legendary Onitsha Market Literature chapbooks. Ekwensi would in the years ahead prove to be arguably Africa’s most prolific writer with the publication of books such as People of the City, Burning Grass, The Passport of Mallam Ilia, Jagua Nana, An African Night’s Entertainment, Drummer Boy, Divided We Stand, Survive the Peace etc. Ekwensi died in 2007.

In publishing Things Fall Apart in 1958 Achebe initiated a trend into looking into the history and the past to “understand where the rain started beating us”. The success of Things Fall Apart led to the initiation of the African Writers Series (AWS) that saw many African writers getting into print. Achebe’s first hero Okonkwo was a strong man who failed because he thought the white man could be confronted with force. In the sequel No Longer at Ease corruption became the undoing of the anti-hero Obi Okonkwo. The intellectual Ezeulu in Arrow of God equally fails in battling the white man with reason as opposed to Okonkwo’s brute strength. Achebe prefigures the collapse of partisan politics in his 1966 novel A Man of the People that uncannily ends with a coup and the hint of a counter coup. The advent of the military in politics recharges Achebe’s 1987 novel Anthills of the Savannah in which the telling of the story is given supreme command in the affairs of the world.

The many feats of Nigerian writing of course received the crowning glory in 1986 when Wole Soyinka won the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature. Soyinka in accepting the prize graciously said it was due honour for all the labour of his fellow writers across the African continent. Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in literature happens to be an all-rounder who is at once a playwright, poet, novelist, essayist, translator etc. His vast body of works includes the plays A Dance of the Forests, The Swamp Dwellers, The Road, Kongi’s Harvest, Madmen and Specialists, The Jero Plays, Death and the King’s Horseman; the novels The Interpreters and Season of Anomie; the poetry collections Idanre and other Poems, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Ogun Abibiman, Mandela’s Earth, Samarkand; the autobiographical titles Ake, the Years of Childhood, Ibadan: The Penkelemesi Years, You Must Set Forth at Dawn etc.

The traditional past that Achebe put on the literary front burner has been undertaken by other writers such as John Munonye in The Only Son and the sequel Obi, Elechi Amadi in The Concubine and The Great Ponds, T. Obinkaram Echewa in The Land’s Lord, Flora Nwapa in Efuru and Idu etc.

Flora Nwapa was at the vanguard of the emergence of female explorers of the lore that included distinguished writers such as Adaora Lily Ulasi, author of Many Thing Begin for Change, Many Thing You No Understand, The Man From Shagamu etc.

Buchi Emecheta, based in London, earned her lofty placing in the annals of Nigerian literature with novels like Second Class Citizen, The Joys of Motherhood, Destination Biafra etc.

After the initial flush of independence, came the disillusionment that attended the ruinous politics of the local politicians who took over from the colonial masters. Novelists such as Nkem Nwankwo, author of Danda and My Mercedes is Bigger Than Yours, turned to satire and comedy to depict the emerging world. For the poet Gabriel Okara who wrote one novel, The Voice, finding the “it” was well nigh impossible in English laced with Ijaw phrasing.

Onuora Nzekwu in Wand of Noble Wood as well as Blade Among the Boys walks the tight rope of tradition and modernity in the emergence of the Nigerian nation state. T.M. Aluko extends the divide between the modern and the traditional in his novels One Man, One Matchet; One Man, One Wife; Kinsman and Foreman; Chief the Honourable Minister; His Worshipful Majesty and Wrong Ones in the Dock. Aluko died earlier this year but not after publishing his last novel, Our Born gain President.

The emergence of Obi Egbuna on the scene somewhat made him to be seen as the enfant terrible of Nigerian literature with controversial books such as Wind Versus Polygamy, The Anthill, Emperor of the Sea, The Rape of Lysistrata, The Madness of Didi and so on. He was an unapologetic defender of the Black Power movement which made him to run into problems with the mainstream media in Britain.

A major rupture in Nigerian writing occurred with the outbreak of the Nigeria-Biafra war which affected the psyche of all the writers in a variety of ways. I.N.C. Aniebo saw action in the war and his novel The Anonymity of Sacrifice is an insightful tale on fratricidal infighting, a theme he extends in his next novel, the tradition-cum-Christian portrait The Journey Within.

Kole Omotoso had in his first novel explored the theme of black-and-white in love in The Edifice but the absurdity of war seized his consciousness in The Combat; only for him to later tackle the sweep of Nigerian history in Just Before Dawn. S.O. Mezu in Behind the Rising Sun undertakes an in-depth recreation of the Biafran debacle while Eddie Iroh engages all facets of the war in his Biafran trilogy Forty-Eight Guns for the General, Toads of War and The Siren in the Night.

Isidore Okpewho initially undertakes a study of polygamy in The Victims before winning the 1972 African Arts Prize with his second novel The Last Duty.

The situating of social reality in the appreciation of the mores of the day was given fillip by Festus Iyayi in his novels Violence, The Contract and the Commonwealth literature prize winning Civil War novel Heroes.

The 1991 Booker Prize was won by Ben Okri with his 500-page novel The Famished Road, thus confirming the great promise of the author in early novels such as Flowers and Shadows and The Landscapes Within.

The debut novels of Okey Ndibe (Arrows of Rain) and Ike Oguine (A Squatter’s Tale) were published as the last titles in the esteemed African Writers Series.

The feminine experience gets mainstream treatment in Ifeoma Okoye’s Behind the Clouds and Men Without Ears. Mabel Segun who recently emerged joint-winner alongside Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo of the Nigeria Literature Prize administered by the NLNG remains the doyen of children’s literature writing. Segun’s daughter Omowunmi is equally an award-winning novelist with The Third Dimple.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is without question the doyenne of the new writing coming out of Nigeria. Her debut novel Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Prize while her second novel based on the Biafra war, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the esteemed Orange Prize for female writing. She has since released her debut collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck.

Sefi Attah won the Wole Soyinka Prize with Everything Good Will Come. Karen King-Aribisala (Our Wife and Other Stories) and Bina Nengi-Ilagha (Condolences) are celebrated award winners in fiction. Chika Unigwe writes out of Belgium, and her The Phoenix is a spellbinding read. She followed up with a critically successful novel on the black prostitution ring in Belgium entitled On Black Sisters Street. Unoma Azuah, author of Sky-High Flames, is charting her own course in the United States in the manner of Chris Abani of Graceland fame. Helen Oyeyemi made worldwide headlines with her debut novel published by Bloomsbury The Icarus Girl.

Zaynab Alkali of The Stillborn fame is the Northern star, and she is backed to the hilt by the men as represented by Ibrahim Tahir (The Last Imam) and Abubakar Gimba (Golden Apples).

Adebayo Williams is the master of the political novel while the youthful Akin Adesokan carries the carnivalesque strategy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to fruition in his award-winning Roots in the Sky. Maik Nwosu is a winner of multiple awards with books like Invisible Chapters and Alpha Song.

The new kids on the block writing their names in gold on the fiction marble are Toni Kan (Ballad of Rage), Odili Ujubuonu (Pregnancy of the Gods and Treasure in the Winds), Jude Dibia (Walking with Shadows and Unbridled) and Kaine Agary (Yellow-Yellow). Agary won the coveted Nigeria Prize for Literature sponsored by the NLNG.

Dulue Mbachu broke bold ground with his Biafra war novel War Games while intellectual fiction in the manner of Soyinka’s The Inte4rpreters was given pride of place by Isidore Emeka Uzoatu in Vision Impossible. El-Nukoya writes the ultimate Nigerian blockbuster in his award-winning Nine Lives.

The Caine Prize for African Writing was won by Helon Habila with his short story entitled “Love Poems” and he has since published two highly rated novels Waiting for an Angel and Measuring Time. He has just come out with a new novel, Oil on Water, limning the Niger Delta tragedy. Another Nigerian based in Britain, Segun Afolabi, also won the prize and published the well-received novel Goodbye Lucille. I happen to have been nominated for the 2008 Caine Prize, but that is by the way!

As a Black Briton Nigeria’s Diran Adebayo won much praise with his debut prize-winning novel Some Kind of Black.

Biyi Bandele has straddled the podia of drama and fiction, publishing novels like The Man Who Came From The Back of Beyond and Burma Boy as well as plays such the adaptation of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

It was Soyinka’s exploits in drama that won the Nobel Prize. A distinguished contemporary of Soyinka is of course J.P. Clark, author of the plays Song of a Goat, The Masquerade, The Raft, Ozidi, The Wives Revolt, All for Oil etc. Clark is equally an accomplished poet whose collections such as A Reed in the Tide and Casualties inspired the succeeding generations of poets.

Femi Osofisan brings the man in the margins of Soyinka’s drama to the centre stage. His many plays like Morountodun, Once Upon Four Robbers, Midnight Hotel etc are the most performed in the country.

Bode Sowande has run the Odu Themes theatre group for decades and is the author of Farewell to Babylon and Other Plays, Tornados Full of Dreams etc. Tunde Fatunde is the acknowledged master of drama in pidgin with such popular titles as Oga na Thiefman and No Food, No Country.

Ahmed Yerima who manages the National Theatre as well as the National Troupe rivals Osofisan for prolific output of plays. He won the Nigeria Literature Prize for 2006 with the play Hard Ground.

Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo is another respected new age playwright with plays like Tower of Burden. Wole Oguntokun is a lawyer-dramatist reviving live theatre at Terra Kulture with his plays notably Who is Afraid of Wole Soyinka?

Tess Onwueme is a leading female playwright carrying further the torch of the pioneering Zulu Sofola.

Nigeria happens to be a land of poets where, it is said, if a pin is thrown up it will inevitably land on the head of a poet! Christopher Okigbo was the quintessential Nigerian poet until his death in the Biafra war. The poets dotting the land today must each have received a knock from Okigbo. Such is his influence with his collection Labyrinths with The Path of Thunder.

Okigbo, Clark, Soyinka and Okara were the first quartet of distinguished poets from Nigeria. Odia Ofeimun with his controversial collection The Poet Lied leads the charge of extending their legacy. Kalu Uka is as accomplished a poet as any.

Niyi Osundare remains an adored poet all over the world with outstanding collections like A Nib in the Pond, Eye of the Earth, Waiting Laughters, Moonsongs, Midlife etc. Tanure Ojaide, Chimalum Nwankwo, Funsho Aiyejina, the late Ezenwa Ohaeto, Obiora Udechukwu, Tony Afejukwu etc are poets who have added so much luster to what Nigeria has to offer the world in lyricism.

The Update Poets namely the recently deceased Esiaba Irobi, Afam Akeh, Uche Nduka, Emman Usman Shehu, Kemi-Atanda Ilori and the late Idzia Ahmad showed early promise in the poetic craft and they have in various degrees fulfilled the promise.

Olu Oguibe, Amatsorero Ede, Harry Garuba, Chiedu Ezeanah, Nike Adesuyi, Toyin Adewale-Gabriel, Nnimo Bassey, Kayode Adenirokun, Angela Agali-Nwosu etc are charting diverse courses in the poetic craft.

Ogaga Ifowodo has won three awards with his troika of collections, namely, Homeland, Madiba and The Oil Lamp. Amu Nnadi characteristically only writes in the lower case; he was an award winner with his first collection, The Fire Within. Akeem Lasisi and Kudo Eresia-Eke are exceptional performance poets.

Nduka Otiono bags the prize for eclecticism. His award-winning story collection The Night Hides With a Knife is a study in oral application. Nengi Ilagha is a prolific award-winning poet, author of Mantids and an ambitious omnibus twelve-volume tome.

Nigerian writing has justly earned its high placing on the global literary chart. As I wrote from the very beginning, Nigerian writers have on all the prizes available all over the world, be it the Nobel Prize, the Booker, the Orange Broadband, the Caine Prize, the Commonwealth, the Noma and so on. Even so, as the grand old man of Nigerian letters Chinua Achebe wrote “It’s morning yet on creation day.”

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