The Pioneer Nigerian Poets

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 1.0 Introduction

Poetry is a genre of literature which is also written in English and vernacular. It is a mode of expression in forms of praise, songs, dirges and other forms of rhythmic expression. It is important to note here that poems are not presented because of beauty alone but like other literary artists, poets express their feelings, their concerns on issues and also use it to satirize and criticize institutions or social ills. In the last unit we discussed the emergence of the Nigerian novel and the thematic pre-occupation of early Nigerian novelists. In this unit we will learn more about the early Nigerian poets and their preoccupations. We will concentrate on the writers like we did in the last unit and will not go into an indepth analysis of their works. The most outstanding poets are Dennis Osadebey, Christopher Okigbo, Gabriel Okara, John Pepper Clark and Wole Soyinka.

3.1 Poems in Nigerian Languages

Like we did in the last unit, we will concentrate on poets who wrote in Nigerian languages and also those who wrote in English language.

3.1.1 The Hausa Poets

Some Islamic scholars wrote poems in both Arabic and Hausa, some of those who wrote in Hausa and their poems include Wali Danmasani whose poem “Wakir Yakin Badar” presents a description of the Islamic war of Badar. Another poet of this period were Mallam Muhammadu Na Birnin Gwari and Mallam Shi’itu Dan Abdurra’ufo who composed five poems each. These poets wrote in the late 18th Century.

Usman Dan Fodio was reputed to have composed about four hundred and eighty (480) poems out of which twenty five (25) were in Hausa. One remarkable feature of the literary composition of this period is that in the absence of a printing press, the poems were written by these poets on plain sheets of paper from where they were recited by the students after they had copied them. Also, blind beggars memorized the poems and recited them to willing audiences on streets, market places and in front of mosques after the prayers, poetry composition was popular and preceded compositions in other literary

genres: Amino Kano was another prominent poet in Hausa and he wrote from 1920 – 1950.

3.1.2 The Yoruba Poets

We saw in the preceding units that the Christian missionaries were instrumental to the development of the Yoruba orthography which made writing in Yoruba possible. The Yoruba poets started with the recording of the oral poetry of their people. However, a missionary, Henry Townsend’s “Yoruba Hymns” (1848) is said to be the first attempt of writing a poems in Yoruba. Moses Lijadu helped to popularize the oral poets who could not record their poems in form of writing because of their level of illiteracy. He collated and documented some of them. Many of these early poems were presented in the form of the traditional orinarungbe, a poetic form that is associated with the oro cult in Egba land. Josiah Sowande (Sobo Ariobodu) was a very popular poet in this group as about ten (10) volumes of his poems were published between 1902 and 1936.

Some poets of this period who were Christians, adapted the traditional poems to suit their Christian perspectives. Others wrote protest poems in which they criticized some aspects of Christianity which they felt, threatened the Yoruba traditional institutions. The most popular poet in this group was Denrele Obasa. These earlier poets, influenced modern Yoruba poets who are writing both in Yoruba and English.

3.2 Dennis Osadebey

Dennis Osadebey from Delta State, studied law in Britain and was called to the English bar. He is one of the pioneers of independence and was a former premier of Western Region. He was a politician and a poet. He was one of the earliest poets in Africa. Being a politician involved in the nationalist struggle for Independence, his poems have political undertones as they also serve as tools for the movement of national liberations.

While he was in England, he suffered racial discrimination from the whites who saw him as unintelligent, so treated him with contempt. His popular poem ‘Young Africa’s Plea presents according to him “the urge in the heart of the African to be free” (Roscoe 15). This poem presents an appeal that Africa’s custom should not be preserved as curious for the western world. This reveals the poet’s nostalgic attachment to a heritage he believes to be vanishing. Hence, his plea for “untrammeled growth” and a request to those who doubt his talent to show their own nobility in their actions towards others.

This poem seeks respect for African customs and tradition. It is written in the concept of African personality which is a nationalistic ideology of the Anglo-phone West Africans while the Franco-phone countries talk of negritude. This ideology propounded by some

English speaking scholars of West Africa argues that African tradition is noble and not primitive. The African is an honourable, respectable man and not a savage. The African is well brought up, has dignity, has history and has culture. So in another poem “Arise Africa”, Osadebey calls on his brothers:

Ye noble sons of Africa, rise and shine,

Show forth your courage and your strength;

Lift up your banners, raise your great

And let your trumpets peal at length ensign,

To tell the world your day is come at last …

This poem typifies the perspective of Osadebey’s poetry as a tool for nationalistic movement and the struggle for independence.

3.3. Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo

Christopher Okigbo was born in Ojoto, Anambra State, in 1932 and died in 1967. He was a Nigerian Poet who died for the independence of Biafra. He is acknowledged today as one of the outstanding postcolonial poet in the country. Within his short lifetime, he established himself as a central figure in the development of modern poetry in Africa and as one of the most important African poets in English. He saw poetry as a profession and was dedicated to this profession. Okigbo excelled more in sports than in academics during his youth. He attended Government College, Umuahia, in the late 1940s, then went on to study Western classics at the University of Ibadan, where he received his B.A. degree in 1956. After graduation from the university Okigbo held various jobs in business and government. He taught secondary school from 1958 to 1960, and then worked in the library at the University of Nsukka, from 1960 to 1962 before becoming a representative for Cambridge University Press in West Africa.

The two collections of verse that appeared during Okigbo’s lifetime established him as an innovative and controversial poet, although his poetry also appeared in the important West African cultural magazines Black Orpheus and Transition. The two collections— Heavensgate (1962) and Limits (1964)—reveal a personal, introspective poetry informed

by a familiarity with Western myths and filled with rich, startling images. In one of his poems, he sees Idoto as a goddess like the Muse who inspires him. He returns to the goddess for poetic inspirations and his nakedness shows his total surrender. Water is also a source of inspiration but the Christian religion and education separates him from the goddess. The poem is in the African personality mode. He intermingles Christianity and traditional images and feels that he needs to go back to his traditional religion. As a writer he wears a mask which separates the artist in him and his true person. Some critics refer to him as an obscure poet, his poetry is demanding and allusive. It draws freely from the Roman Catholic religion of his family in Ojoto. Okigbo maintained that his poetry should be viewed as an organic whole as it expressed his coming of age as a poet.

Okigbo moved to the city of Enugu on the eve of the Nigerian civil war (1967- 1970), he set up a publishing house, Citadel Press with Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. When war broke out Okigbo joined the Biafran forces, who sought to secede from Nigeria and was commissioned as a major. In August 1967 he was killed in action at Ekwegbe, near Nsukka. His last poems, published posthumously with much of his earlier work in Labyrinths; with Path of Thunder (1971), shows a new focus on the impending civil disturbance in his country.

An outstanding personality, Christopher Okigbo tells everyone not to be confined by their cultural, political, artistic, creative and humane limits. Chinua Achebe refers to him as “the finest Nigerian poet of his generation as his work becomes better and more in the world, he will be recognized as one of the most remarkable anywhere in our time”. (Achebe ix).

Christopher Okigbo’s poetic career was short lived. His first publication was in 1962 and the last one in 1966. Within this very short period he composed and published poems the poems though presented as separate entities, they are linked as they chronicle the historical events in the country from the colonial period to the civil war.

In the poems, he presents his peoples cultural and historical experiences. Romanus Egudu, opine that Okigbo’s poetry is distinct. It is characterized by an “artistic excellence

that is firmly rooted in his own indigenous cultural tradition” (60). “Heavensgate” (1962) and “Limits” (1964) present the estrangement which the people suffered as a result of their contact with the Europeans. However, Abdul Yesufu views these collections from the ritualistic perspectives. He observes that they are “ …essentially ceremonial poems that celebrate, in turns, the fragmentation and restoration of a psyche and the cultural matrixes within which it operates” These poems are replete with “ritual utterances, symbols and movements” which present a picture of “ …a great preparation for and an engagement in a life journey undertaken in order to recover the fragments of a person, of his people and of his culture” (236) The dilemma of some people who could not reconcile their alliance to the traditional religion and Christianity is therefore highlighted.

He presented the Christian foreign missionaries as birds of prey that swooped on the traditional gods and destroyed them. He presents his return to his cultural roots in an attempt to fuse his dismembered identity together. He sees himself as a a prodigal son who returns to seek fogginess and reunification with his family and community. In the traditional society, such return is steeped is a ritual that is expected to cleanse him and set him free from the taints of the foreign culture. He therefore announces:

BEFORE YOU, Mother Idoto,

naked I stand;

before your watery presence,

a prodigal”( 3)

In “Silences” (1963 – 1965) he presents the politics of the post independent Nigeria that was characterized with rigging, confusion and purposelessness which led to the disillusionment of the people. His poem “The Path of Thunder” depicts the military coup of 1966 in Nigeria which he applauded and foretells the civil war and consequence of the coup. His prophesy became a reality as the crisis after the coup culminated in the civil war of 1967 in Nigeria. Unfortunately, he was killed in that coup.

3.4 Gabriel Okara

The Nigerian poet and novelist Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara was born in Bomoundi in Bayelsa State,Nigeria, in April 1921. He has written many poems, the most famous of which is "Piano and Drums". He may be described as highly original poet and uninfluenced by other poets. He has been extremely successful in capturing the moods, sights and sounds of Africa. His poems show great sensitivity, perceptive judgments and a tremendous energy. He also shows a concern for what happens when the ancient culture of Africa is faced with modern Western culture, as in his poem "Once Upon a Time".

Okara belongs more to the pioneer fictionalist Amos Tutuola than the so-called modern novelists. His novel The Voice has bees acclaimed to be one of the most memorable works of fiction by African writers because of the uniqueness of the language used in the novel. We are concerned here with Okara as a poet. The poems present issues that border on colonization, post independence disillusionment, the events of the civil war and the reconstruction and rehabilitation that followed the civil war. Like some of his contemporaries such as Cyprain Ekwensi and T. M. Aluko, he went through secondary school preparing for a profession and like them, he eventually turned to writing. He was first published in the late 1950s, so belongs to the first generation of Nigerian writers.

3.4 J. P. Clark

J. P. Clark is one of the early poets in Nigeria. He studied English and worked as an Information Officer, Journalist and retired as a Lecturer. He is also a playwright as you will see in Module III. He is Ijaw by tribe so imageries from the creek and the riverine areas of Nigeria abound in his poems. He studied English and pay attention to forms and techniques in his works. He expresses personal emotions, ideas and observations in his poetry. His poetry is not anchored on politics. He is a very conscious poet who says many things in a few words. His style is therefore compact.

Clark relies a lot on images in the presentation of his ideas. His most popular poems are “Abiku” and “Night Rain”. In the two poems, he makes elaborate use of visual imagery. He presents human imagery of poverty and human suffering. His poems are sensuous, they affect our senses and by cumulative effect of imagery he is able to relay his message.

His other poetry collections include Poems (1961), A Reed in the Tide (1965) Casualties: Poems 1966 – 1968 (1970). A Decade of Tongues (1981) State of the Union (1981) Mandela and Other Poems (1988). There is a mark of originality in his poems and some of the themes he treats are poverty, the beauty of the landscape, colonialism, the inhumanity of the race corruption and so on.

4.0 Conclusion

In this unit we presented some early Nigerian poets who wrote in local languages and in English. Like the novelists, the poets are influenced by their oral tradition and the historical development in the country. We have not tried to analyze any particular poem since we are concerned mainly with the subject matters of the poems.

5.0 Summary

In this unit you have learnt more about early Nigerian poets and the focus of their works. You learnt also that these poets exerted tremendous influence on the contemporary poets.

6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment

List the major historical developments in the country that influenced the early Nigerian

poets?

7.0 References/Further Studies

Achebe, Chinua and Dubem Okafor (1978) Don’t Let Him Die: An Anthology of

Memorial Poems for Christopher Okigbo 1932–67. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers.

Anyika, Francis (1987). Nsukka Journal of the Humanities Nos 516 June/December

1989. Nsukka: Faculty of Arts UNN.

Echeruo, Micheal J. C. (1992) “Gabriel Okara: A Poet and His Seasons” in

World Literature Today. http://www. Westafricareview.com/vol2.1.echeruo.html

Egudu Romanus “Christopher Okigbo” in Yemi Ogunbiyi (ed) Perspectives on Nigerian

Literature 1700 to the Present Volume Two. Ikeja: Guardian Books.

Nwoga, Donatus I (2000 ed) West African Verse. Lagos: Longman.

Ogunbiyi, Yemi (ed) (1988) Perspectives on Nigerian Literature 1700 to the Present

Volume One and Two. Ikeja: Guardian Books.

Okigbo, Christopher(1971). Labyrinths.London:Heinemann.

Roscoe, Adrian (1981). Mother is Gold,A Study of West African Literature. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Wren, Robert N. (1984) J. P. Clark. Houston: G. K. Hall & Company.

Yesufu, Abdul R. (2001) “Ritual and the Quest for Selfhood in Okigbo’s Labyrinths and Braithwaites’s Masks” in Jozsef, Pal and Szili Jozsef ed. Neohelicon:ACTA

COMPARATIONIS LITERARUM UNIVERSARUM XXVIII/I. Dorderecht: Kluwer

Academic.