CHUKS OLUIGBO
This
is Our Chance by James Ene Henshaw was the first ever book of literature
by a Nigerian that I encountered as a schoolboy. It was one of the recommended
texts in my Junior Secondary School. I don’t know what obtains now, but at that
time Literature was properly separated from English Language – in my school at
least – and the guy who was brought in to take us, a young man named Evuleocha,
made the subject very interesting.
Subsequently, we would read such
other recommended works as Eze Goes to
School by Onuora Nzekwu and Michael Crowther, One Week, One Trouble by Anezi Okoro, Without A Silver Spoon by Eddie Iroh, The Bottled Leopard by Chukwuemeka Ike, Wedlock of the Gods and The
Wizard of Law by Nigeria’s first female playwright, Zulu Sofola, The Incorruptible Judge by D. Olu
Olagoke, An African Night’s Entertainment
and The Rainmaker and Other Stories
by Cyprian Ekwensi, Unoma at College
by Teresa Meniru, among others.
There is an unforgettable quote I
took away from Henshaw’s This is Our
Chance, by a character named Bambulu who likes to speak big, big grammar:
“This is the child of my brain, the product of my endeavour, and the
materialisation of my inventive genius. It is an anti-snake-bite vaccine.
Western science has not succeeded in producing anything so potent. But I,
Bambulu, have, without laboratories, without any help, produced this medicine
from the herbs of this village.”
In the
realm of poetry, West African Verse,
an anthology of poems selected and annotated by Donatus I. Nwoga, brought us
into contact with some earliest Nigerian poets, such as Dennis Chukude
Osadebay, but it was in A Selection of
African Poetry edited by K. E. Senanu and T. Vincent that one really
discovered great minds like Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Gabriel Okara and the host of them.
The
interest had developed. And when, in JSS 3, I was appointed assistant school
librarian, I descended on the other titles and with gusto began to devour as
many as the little time I squeezed out of other school activities permitted.
That was when I discovered The Pacesetters Series. Crossfire by Kalu Okpi, Evbu
My Love by Helen Ovbiagele, Bloodbath
at Lobster Close by Dickson Ighavini, Desert
Storm by Hope Dube, Director by
Agbo Areo, Something to Hide by
Rosina Umelo, The Betrayer by Sam A.
Adewoye, The Black Temple by Mohamed
T. Garba, and The Extortionist by
Chuma Nwokolo are a few of the titles I still recall. It was then that I also
read Twilight and the Tortoise by
Kunle Akinsemoyin, and many other titles that I do not readily recall their
authors.
In
the Senior Secondary School, I discovered African Writers Series, especially
the works of Chinua Achebe, John Munonye and Elechi Amadi. Then I came in
contact with Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and
the Jewel and The Jero Plays (The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis) and other works
such as Zainab Alkali’s The Stillborn.
But
it was in the university – in the introductory courses on fiction, poetry, and
drama and theatre, as well as in the follow-up courses like African Poetry,
African Fiction, African Drama, Studies in Poetry, Studies in Fiction, Studies
in Drama, Modern Comedy: Moliere to Soyinka, among others – that the floodgates
were thrown open and I beheld Nigerian literary giants in their majesty. There
were Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-wine
Drinkard; Wole Soyinka’s Madmen and
Specialists, Death and the King’s
Horseman, Kongi’s Harvest, The Strong Breed, The Interpreters, etc; JP Clark’s Song of A Goat; Efuru and
Iduu by Flora Nwapa, Nigeria’s first
female novelist; Second Class Citizen
and The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi
Emecheta; Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the
People, Anthills of the Savannah,
and the collection of poems Beware, Soul
Brother by Chinua Achebe; The Voice
by Gabriel Okara; Ola Rotimi’s The Gods
Are Not to Blame; Zulu Sofola’s Old
Wines Are Tasty; John Munonye’s The
Only Son, Obi, The Oil Man of Obange, A Wreath for the Maidens, and A Dancer of Fortunes, and so many
others. And the poems of Okigbo, Soyinka, Okara, Clark, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi
Osundare, Ossie Enekwe, Pol Ndu, Nnamdi Olebara, Mamman Vatsa, etc.
There
were also other early authors whose works were not on the curriculum at the
time. They included T. M. Aluko (One Man,
One Wife, Chief the Honourable
Minister, Wrong Ones in the Dock,
One Man, One Machete, etc), Onuora
Nzekwu (Wand of Noble Wood and Blade Among the Boys), INC Aniebo (Anonymity of Sacrifice, The Journey Within, Of Wives, Talismans and the Dead, and Rearguard Actions), Chukwuemeka Ike (Toads for Supper and Naked
Gods), and, of course, Ken Saro Wiwa. The list is by no means exhaustive.
The
works of these great minds were a bottomless fountain from which I and those of
my generation and later generations who cared drank freely, and they helped to
shape our minds for the better. But as I write this, one question lingers on my
mind: what happened to these literary greats of yonder days? Apart from a few
that we know their whereabouts, the rest might as well have gone into oblivion
– unsung, uncelebrated, unremembered. Apart from the Wole Soyinka Centre, an
annual poetry prize and an investigative journalism prize in honour of Soyinka,
I doubt if there is much else. Cyprian Ekwensi has an arts and culture centre
in Garki, Abuja named after him. Achebe, Tutuola, Aluko, Munonye, Enekwe,
Nwapa, Henshaw and others who have joined their ancestors, what about them?
These heroes and heroines of literature may have brought more fame and good
image to this country than all the politicians we’ve had since independence put
together. Unfortunately, they do not have the powers and the
wherewithal to name streets and national monuments after themselves.
It
was heartening to discover, recently, that there is a foundation set up in
honour of James Ene Henshaw, who died in 2007.
Henshaw also wrote Enough Is Enough, Children of the Goddess, Jewels of the Shrine, A Man of Character, among others. In its
mission statement, which I found online, the foundation says it is “a
charitable organisation set up to maintain and promote the literary legacy of
James Ene Henshaw, a pioneer and one of the foremost playwrights to have emerged
from the African continent”. Part of what it has elected to do in order to keep
Henshaw’s legacy alive include to promote the understanding of African culture
through literature and drama, encourage inter-cultural dialogue and literary
debate, promote emerging African writers, and initiate, and support projects
where young people can engage in creative activities.
That’s the way to go. If the
government cannot honour these giants, it behoves us, as beneficiaries of their
creative ingenuity, to begin to do something, however little, to immortalise
them. It’s only then we can beat our chest and say, truly, the labours of our
heroes past shall never be in vain.
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