Remembering Nigeria’s literary greats

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.”

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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 Nigeria 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 labour of our heroes past has not been in vain.