INTRODUCTION
In this unit we shall examine the concept of social reality in Nigerian literatures. Social realities include those prevalent behavioral and social
factors that reveal to a large extent the social make-up of the Nigerian people. One of these strong social realities is religion. Religion is a key factor in the definition of Africa’s social development. Other social realities include politics, rites of passage like birth, death, marriage, community relations and cohesion. Most Nigerian literatures focus on these issues and more in order to expose certain facts about Nigeria to her social structure and existence. We shall use Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine (Novel), Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures (Poetry) and Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again (Drama) in treating the social realities in Nigerian literatures.
3.1 General Overview
Religion and politics are two social factors that affect the social structure of any society. They are both linked and are tied to the proper management of the spiritual and spiritual well- being of individuals in a community. Religion is the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life. In the beginning of history, it was the forces of nature which were first so reflected and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personification among the various peoples. At a still further stage of evolution, all natural and social attributes of the numerous gods are transferred to one Almighty God, who is but a reflection of the abstract man. Within a purely African philosophical context man is a political animal embellished in religious thought system. If we assume that the religion of any population have become co-coordinated to individuals and the various levels of grouping that include them as a result of a process of selection or politics based on perceived relevance to particular goals at particular levels of structural reference, we can expect to find meaning in the existence of the people as some implication of relevance in the particular social context where it has become fixed. So politics and religion are interlinked in the development of every nation and African states are part of these developmental frameworks that shape the social realities of the people and development.
Most Nigerian literatures have elements of religion and politics in them. The reasons are not far-fetched. African states before the advent of colonialism had strong religious and political structures that were strong and made the inversion of colonialism difficult at the early stage. There was resistance because there was a structure on ground. Africans have strong religious and political structures that worked for the people.
Chinua Achebe tried to a very large extent to reveal these structures in Things Fall Apart as a reaction to the insinuations by the Europeans that Africans did not have culture, religion or political structure before colonialism. And in his subsequent novels, he gradually exposed how colonialism destroyed these structures in Africa. We shall use Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine, a novel set in pre-colonial times, to examine the true structure of religion in Nigeria before colonialism while we use Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures (Poetry) and Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again in examining the political structure of Nigeria after colonialism. Thus, a comparative presentation of Nigerian religion before colonialism and Nigerian politics after colonialism would be thoroughly exemplified for proper understanding of Nigeria’s historical experiences and the writers’ burden of transmitting these social values for her posterity.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Discus religion and politics as basic social realities in Nigerian’s development as applied in Nigerian literature
3.2 Religion as Social Reality: Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine
Elechi Amadi is a Nigerian educator, novelist and dramatist, writing in English. Amadi has interpreted in such novels as The Concubine (1966), The Great Ponds (1969), and The Slave (1978) the life and values of the traditional village society. His stories often deal with people who try to change their course of life but fail in it. Amadi's early novels, like Chinua Achebe's, are set in his traditional African world, but they deal with timeless societies which are not poisoned by the effects of colonialism, rationalism, or modern change. Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in 1966, six years after Nigerian independence.
The story was set in the area near Port Harcourt. It starts out as a depiction of village life, its conflicts, ancient customs, and gods, but then it proceeds into mythological level. Ihuoma is the most desirable woman in Omigwe village and the tragic heroine, whose well-fed look does a great credit to her husband. He dies, but she has won the heart of the hunter Ekwueme. They deny their love so that Ekwueme can marry another woman, to whom he has been betrothed since birth. At the end Amadi reveals that Ihuoma is actually the wife of the Sea-King, the ruling spirit of the sea, but she had assumed the human form.
The first half of the book pays particular attention to the religious institutions of Omokachi village and demonstrates by aid of apposite narrative incidents the central place these institutions occupy in the daily life of the Omokachi villagers. The opening action focuses on the fight between Emenike and Madume over a piece of land. This conflict sets the realistic tone, and maintains it over the new elements that result from and amplify the dispute. Having defined a realistic frame of reference at the social level, Amadi then injects the religious element into it:
Madume was relieved when he heard that Emenike was back home. It was true he was in very bad shape himself, but the possibility of killing a man filled him with fear. The cost of the rites of purification was prohibitive and even after that he would still be a branded man (3)
Here is revealed in a nutshell the religious basis of Omokachi’s social organization: it is not the possibility of a court trial that fills Madume with fear but the looming threat of divine chastisement. A man who kills his kinsman has wronged the gods primarily and must seek absolution in purification sacrifices commensurate with his crime.
Emenike’s illness after the fight with Madume provides the occasion for ritual intervention, in the course of which the religious fabric is given sharper scrutiny and exposition. Anyika, the central religious personage comes into view, and so too do the attributes of his office: “Anyika the medicine man was sent for… to the villagers he was just a medicine man and a mediator between them and the spirit world” (5–6). This presentation is then substantiated by the practical exercise of his office, in which he is seen pouring libation and hanging amulets on doors to keep away evil spirits. The exposition is progressive and judicious. The reader is being introduced to the main corners of the stage, and concurrently to the principal actors. Anyika’s libation shows man, the gods and the ancestors communing in a spirit of sacred and secular harmony. The gods are not far; they are near. Invisible physically, they fill man and object with their spiritual presence, and partake of human action in ways that are essentially concrete. Amadioha is king of the skies; Ojukwu is the fair, and the other gods have dominion over the Night, the Earth, and the Rivers, elements through which man comes into permanent experience of the divine presence and influence.
The ritual act performed by Anyika is part of a complex structure of religious observation defined by rules and ordinances. When Ihuoma proposes a sacrifice to Amadioha on her sick husband’s behalf, the god’s priest Nwokekoro answers: “My daughter, that will be on Eke, the usual day for sacrifices” (9). Details of this kind demonstrate a religious order with a solid internal logic and organization. The priests too are men chosen for their integrity:
The next caller was Nwokekoro, the priest of Amadioha the god of thunder and of the skies. He was a short fat man, old but well preserved and had an easy-going disposition. He never seemed to be bothered about anything. He had no wife and no compound of his own.
His small house was in his junior brother’s compound. He was getting too old for active farming, so his yams were few and he owned very little property. He was friendly with everyone and was highly respected. His office as high priest of the most powerful god lent him great dignity (8)
The gods are brought down from their remove and presented at work among the villagers. Mini Wekwu, for instance, curbs evil both within and between the adjoining villages, thereby promoting good neighbourliness. The gods of Omokachi are deployed in a hierarchic order that points ultimately to the superstructure of Omokachi’s religious belief, culminating as it does in Chineke, “the creator of spirits and men” (59).
The review of the village pantheon ends with Amadioha, Omokachi’s principal deity, first among “God’s associates” (The Concubine, 75). Ruler over the skies and purveyor of rain and sunshine, Amadioha is the most feared and the most venerated of all the gods, a deity whose name no man can invoke when guilty. He holds his worshippers in chaste fear through which they acknowledge the god’s supreme authority and their own inferior humanity. But the villagers’ relationship with Amadioha, as indeed with all the other deities of the local pantheon, is one of concrete communion. Worship at his shrine therefore takes on the nature of a close personal dialogue between god and man, through which complaints are resolved, wishes met, and during which the god reveals himself to men so that they can better testify to his existence:
After the main rites Nwokekoro built a fire from a glowing orepe brand which one old man had brought along. The cocks were killed according to ancient rites and boiled with the yams. Before any part of the meal was touched, the priest cut off one wing of the chicken and threw it casually to the right side of the temple. The old men were
evidently used to this and did not watch his movement … in a matter of seconds a huge grey serpent crawled out from behind the shrine and began to swallow its share of the feast. It showed no fear and the old men bowed their heads in reverence. The god having been fed, the men fell on the remains of the feast (17–18)
This worship scene closes the first half of the novel’s action, but no mention has as yet been made of the sea-king, the principal actor in the collective drama of the village. The reader has been made familiar with the sea-king’s other divine peers, their powers, and method of retribution: perjury exposes its perpetrator to Amadioha’s thunderbolt; anti-social behaviour to Ojukwu’s smallpox; and witchcraft to extermination by Mini Wekwu.
This religious activity comes against the background of Emenike’s illness, and more especially against that of his marriage with Ihuoma. Emenike dies unexpectedly shortly hereafter, and veers the dialectical significance of structuring unto its main course. A solid religious foundation has already been laid, so that when the sea-king finally appears, he is accepted for the same reasons that the other deities were accepted; that is to say as a living force within the specific socio- religious context of Omokachi.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Assess the implication of religion in determining marriage, conflict and death as applied in Amadi’s The Concubine
3.3 Social Issues in Nigerian Poetry: Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures
Of the new generation of African poets and their poetry, there are only a few that one would read and return to. Nigeria's Tanure Ojaide belongs to those few. What makes Ojaide's poetry appealing is not only its technical qualities but its cultural integrity. Ojaide is not the type of poet one remembers only by one good work; he is prolific, and his writings are consistently rich and deeply rooted in the Delta region of Nigeria. He has published more than five books of poetry, including Children of Iroko and Other Poems, Labyrinths of the Delta, The Eagle's Vision, The Endless Song, and The Fate of Vultures and Other Poems. If there is a persistent and unifying theme in most of his works, it is a single- minded detestation of tyrants combined with an obsessive commitment to social justice. His poems resemble what Soyinka, citing the poet Ted Jones, calls "shot- gun" poems - they are meant to be detonated immediately on the complacent bottoms of enemies. "Shot-gun" poems are aimed at a target - in Ojaide's case "Africa's or Nigeria's malevolent dictators" - and they have a reason. This consuming theme of rebellion against tyranny and injustice, recurrent in much of his poetry, he has made inimitably his own. In The fate of vultures, where we get images stacked with insular density, representing the poet's powerful plea for accountability for public money from politicians who have gone hopelessly out of control, indeed beyond ministration:
O Aridon, bring back my wealth
From rogue-vaults;
blaze an ash-trail to the hands
that buried mountains in their bowels,
lifted crates of cash into their closets.
(The Fate of Vultures and Other Poems 11)
He equates the corrupt, self-gratifying breed of Nigerian politicians with "vultures," a biological symbol that is both ominous and sinister. But it is a contextually relevant symbol, implying both the disappearance of "life" and the appearance of political "carcass." In a sense, the withering away of classical public service, where the pursuit of the public good is perceived not only as individually wise but selfishly remunerative, has given birth to the stench of that sinister force - private greed. Ojaide is ready to call a "spade a spade," or more aptly, "a vulture a vulture," for he sees little virtue in obfuscating the ignoble scavenger-role of politicians in Nigeria's contemporary body-politic. For when those charged with duties for guarding public patrimony abrogate their responsibilities, then society is forced to take notice. In the above poem, Ojaide demonstrates, like Camus, that good poetic artistry must be inserted in the dramas of history, not as mere picture-postcard documentation but as a mirror of those corrigible frailties of the human condition in the hope of alerting the "movers and shakers" of the Nigerian polity to do something about it.
In Ojaide's works, political concerns abound, but they are handled with the reasoned devotion and care of a seasoned craftsman. The poet obviously demonstrates that he cannot afford the luxury of "art for art's sake," or pretty musings created to serve the genteel lifestyles of a moribund African parasitic class. He uses politics to invigorate his art but is careful not to let his artistry suffer from political bad breath. Ojaide is as much suspicious of politicians in those elevated seats of power as he is of people who feast on resources they did not work for. He believes that "freedom" for Africans carries with it a price which implies hard work, discipline, and commitment to moving society towards desirable social goals. So he sings:
You can tell
when one believes freedom is a windfall
and fans himself with flamboyance.
The chief and his council, a flock of flukes
gambolling in the veins of fortune.
Range chickens, they consume and scatter.... (Vultures 11)
Empty flamboyance, to him, is a sign of lack of sincerity to self and to others. When powerful politicians steal public funds and waste, they violate the public's sacred trust. So, as poet, he is ready to skillfully use poetic license to satirize the corruption under Nigerian presidents like Shehu Shagari. In a clever play of poetic pun, he contrasts ordinary Nigerians' deprivation of essential things like food - "garri" - and the billions of nairas which went into the building of Abuja with all the attendant corruption in the allocation of contracts. As he puts it:
Shamgari, Shankari, shun garri
staple of the people
and toast champagne;
Alexius, architect of wind-razed mansions,
a mountain of capital
Abuja has had its dreams!
(Vultures 11-12)
Why is it that former head of state Shagari and his cohorts shunned the basic needs of Nigerians - Ojaide's "garri" (such as access to decent food, clean water, shelter, etc.) and wasted the country's oil money on lavish imports (of champagne, Mercedes Benzes, etc.) and on grand, unproductive public schemes nationwide (which Soyinka has humorously ridiculed as "Quadruple A": Ajaokuta steel mill, Abuja, Aluminium, and the Army)
The poet, being an honest skeptic, thinks that political and economic grandstanding has been pursued, in many cases, at the expense of the basic development of Nigerians. The pun with words such as "mountain of capital" - Abuja as a monumental "capital city" being by a mountain and a place where monumental public money was spent shows the poet's shrewd ability to convey multiple meanings through the ambiguity of images. "Alexius" refers perhaps to Alex Ekwueme, then Vice President, who, as an architect, was one of the major contractors who built Abuja.
But what is Abuja really? Could it be the "elephant dreams" of a nation with excess petro-dollars (or petro-nairas) gone sour? Or could it be a centrist concession - a megalopolis designed to assuage the bitter memories of a much villified (but perhaps redeeming) civil war? Abuja is perhaps both - an elusive quest for the "true African soul" of Nigeria. We should concede that Nigeria is a domain of contrasts: black Africa's giant tormented by unresolved puzzles. Large and wealth- endowed, it has a dynamic and resourceful population. However, it suffers from some of the worst symptoms of the "big country syndrome." National cohesion is at best aspirational, and the country strives continuously to transcend the self-limiting, feet-shooting defeatism of ethnicity. An ethos of "cheat or risk being out-cheated" has crystallized since independence, which has made public trust and public good words only in the lexicon of idealists. Lagos - that quintessential mirror of what is wrong with Nigeria - i.e., squalor and individual disparities in wealth and social status, ethnic disharmony disguised into religious and sectarian tensions, degenerate opportunism reinforced by a self- seeking social ethics, and a rowdy but humorous and open attitude to self- criticism - all these made it necessary, if nothing else, for Nigeria to opt for fresh lease on progressive nationhood. A new capital perhaps serves as a first step. Surely, Abuja - despite all the waste which went into her construction - could serve that real need for unity of a potentially great nation.
In Ojaide's poems, "Where everybody is king," we are confronted with a theme which has larger significance for contemporary Africa. The setting of the poem is Agbarha, and the poet employs the lyrical qualities of traditional Urhobo poetry (the ethnic group from which he hails) to shed light on some self-defeating attitudes characteristic of some contemporary Africans:
Come to Agbarha
where everybody is king
and nobody bows to the other.
Who cares to acknowledge age, since
power doesn't come from wisdom?
And who brags about youth
when there's no concession to vitality?
You just carry your head high.
And do you ask why
where nobody accepts insults
doesn't grow beyond its petty walls? (Vultures 58)
The humor of the poem is in its sarcasm. The Urhobo town of "Agbarha" could be any place in Africa - it is a symbolic place of "larger Africa" written small. The poet, in some sense, laments contemporary African attitudes which show no respect for traditional African authorities and institutions. Foolish pride becomes very self-destructive if it does not make concession to the wisdom of elderly experience and the vitality of youth. The poet is even more pointed in his public indictment of the indolence of some of his people when he states:
When you come to Agbarha
mind you, the town of only kings,
there are no blacksmiths, no hunters;
you will not find anybody
doing menial jobs that will
soil the great name of a king - nobody
ever climbs the oil-palm
nor taps the rubber tree.
Everybody is as bloated
as a wind-filled bag. (Vultures 58)
In short, foolish pride - Ojaide's "wind-filled bag" - is no substitute for humility to one's manual trade and hard work. This could, of course, be said for many places in Africa where the culture of consumption has outstripped that of production, resulting in a grave economic and social crisis in the continent. Ojaide sees that some parts of contemporary Africa are "basket cases" precisely because the pre-colonial attitudes of hard work, fending for oneself, and engaging in food production and artisan activities have increasingly been unfortunately displaced by a dangerous craving for consumerism and flamboyance. The role of the state and some external "do-gooders" have not, many times, helped
either, by their adverse policies and actions, which have served to tax heavily rural producers to appease politically more vocal urban consumers.
The imagery, the terseness of the message, the humor - all point to Ojaide's view that even dignity has to be earned. What the above poems demonstrate, as indeed most of Ojaide's poetry, is that his artistry is largely informed by a deep and unabashed interest in the events and direction of his society. In this sense, the poet is not ashamed to evoke images from within his own local universe. Corrupt politicians and their religious co-conspirators take carnivorous traits - "hyenas" or "vultures" - or the poet retrieves murderous tyrants such as "Ogiso" from his Urhobo past and transposes their roles to fit modern tyrants. All these are the socio-political realities in Nigeria (Africa)
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
Comment on the political realities of Nigerian society as portrayed in Ojaide’s poetry.
3.4 Nigerian Drama and Social Realities: Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again
Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again is a satire, because Rotimi, critical of the ills in the Nigerian society, is out to condemn them through the vehicle of laughter and mockery. It is a comic or mild satire because the events characterized the actions of some of the characters in the play which make us laugh. Individuals, institutions and the society as a whole are ridiculed. However, the major object or subject of attack and derision in the play is Lejoka-Brown (the hero). In making fun of his hero, Rotimi is indirectly mocking the Nigerian society as a whole. The playwright lampoons his hero’s idea about politics.
In the discussion between Lejoka-Brown and Okonkwo, the former has this to say why he takes to politics: “Are you there…? Politics is the thing, no in Nigeria mate, you want to be famous? Politics. You want to chop life? No, no… you want to chop a big slice of the national cake? Na politics” (Our Husband, 4). Lejoka-Brown’s motive in joining politics is not dictated by his sense of patriotism and service but he sees politics as a means to an end. He is certainly myopic, ideologically barren and too ridiculous to be a leader of the nation. In exposing Lejoka-Brown’s motive, Rotimi is subtly indicting the decadent Nigerian political activists. By making jest of Lejoka-Brown, Rotimi is indirectly attacking our greedy, selfish and pleasure seeking leaders in Nigerian society. Hear Lejoka-Brown: “It is a war, politics is war. Ooo I am not taking no chance this time I took things slow and easy and what happened? I lost a bye election to a small crab”. (Our Husband, p. 7)Certainly, Lejoka-Brown’s statement evokes laughter in us. Yet, it goes to show how crude and ruthless he is. If Lejoka-Brown is taken as a symbolic representation of Nigerian leaders, one can then say that the playwright is criticizing Nigerian leader’s use of brute force to achieve political ambitions. Lejoka-Brown’s surprise and attack campaign strategy elicits the playwright’s mockery. Although, Lejoka vigorously explained to his party members the nature of his military strategy, he only succeeded in dramatizing his hollow mentality. He says: “Gentlemen, our election campaign plan must follow a platform of military strategy known as surprise and attack…” (Our Husband, p. 50) From Lejoka’s campaign plan, he exposes the fact that he is incredibly ridiculous. Rotimi portrays him as a man who fails to understand the difference between a politician and a soldier.
Polygamy – a system of marriage in Nigeria did not escape Rotimi’s ridicule. The playwright dramatizes the incessant quarrels and arguments between Sikira and her co-wife Liza, live a dog and cat’s life, constantly fighting one another. Sikira and Liza’s relationship is that of fear and mutual suspicion. Sikira fears that Liza might overshadow her. Secondly, Sikira thinks that Liza being more educated than herself would make the latter more domineering and overbearing than herself. In order to forestall such a situation, Sikira picks quarrel with Liza at the least provocation. Lejoka-Brown’s household is in reality a fictional representation of what actually happens in most polygamous families. In directing his satire at such a home, Rotimi is indirectly cautioning prospective polygamists of the consequences of such a marriage.
4.0 CONCLUSION
Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine presents pure Nigerian religious realities before colonial times. We see a society that is enmeshed in religious beliefs about everything around them. Everything within the Nigerian society has religious attachment which determines the way the people react to their environment and to their social cohesion. Nigerian religious rites of passage are a social factor that brings the people together in all their beliefs and practices. This novel exemplifies this social reality. Tanure Ojaide’s collection of poetry, The Fate of Vultures, examines the state of governance in Nigeria as it affects the Nigeria society. This collection demonstrates the back and forth of Nigeria’s history, and locates the solution to the imperatives within the Nigerian society. Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again takes a critical look at the Nigerian family and the distancing effects of politics, the issues of polygamy, the deceits of the political class and the social trauma of political make believe. In these works, we see the social factors that have been the bane and stronghold of the people’s social being.
5.0 SUMMARY
The three works studied here in the three genres reveal various aspects of Nigerian social milieu. We see religion, politics, and marriage, among other issues as social realities in Nigerian society. All aspects of traditional religious beliefs are revealed in The Concubine by Elechi Amadi. We see a people with defined religious beliefs in God, gods and other elemental forces. There are patterned modes of worship. There are natural phenomena which have meaning in the religious lives of the people. In Tanure Ojaide’s collection of poetry, The Fate of Vultures, and Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again we see pictures of the inevitable traumas of the people where politics and other decadences try to outsmart the people’s social standing. Here, the social realities are rehashed as the people’s ways of lives are exposed. These works have shown to a large extent, how the Nigerian writers have recorded the social realities of the Nigerian people from different dimensions.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
Answer the following questions:
1. What are the basic reasons for reflecting social realities in Nigerian literature?
2. Explain religion as a social force in Amadi’s The Concubine.
3. Appreciate Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again as revealing political/marital realities in Nigeria.
4. Assess the treatment of social realities in Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures.
5. Discuss the effectiveness of Nigerian writers in reflecting the Nigerian society in their works.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Akhuemokhan, Sophia. (2017). The Revolutionary Character in the African Novel, revised ed. Benin: Uniben Press.
Amadi, Elechi (1966). The Concubine. London: Heinemann.
Ojaide, Tanure (1990). The Fate of Vultures and Other Poems. Lagos: Malthouse.
Rotimi, Ola (1982). Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. Ibadan:
Longman.
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