The Biafra War in Nigerian

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knowing the star on ascent can never be spent? why all the .... Destination Biafra does not quite convince us the way A Wreath for .... On bridges of my hands.
The Biafra War in Literature

Nigerian

Dieter Riemenschneider Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, West Germany

Pol N. Ndu’s poem &dquo;Song for Seer&dquo;’ is not only one of his most beautiful and moving poems but also one of the many elegies written on Christopher Okigbo’ the Ibo poet who died in military action on the side of Biafra in August 1967. It stand out among them because it expresses sentiments and attitudes characterizing much of post-war Nigerian writing in such a condensed and poetically striking way that it deserves to be quoted in full:

Song for Seer &dquo;The smell of blood already floats in the lavender-mist of the afternoon...&dquo;

Okigbo: &dquo;Come Thunder&dquo; Minutes trickle thinly through, age: where mortals with immortals share the stage. Who else could be the but you:

Seated

at

dying immortal,

the limits of heaven’s gate;

You, who heard and gave tongue the growls of the thunder;

listened and brought home the songs of the water-woman; saw and sanctified the manhood of the ram, before Idoto....

You, who sat and sang into the coldness of sacrificial nights drinking the jam-dum dance of pallid

worshippers

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56

pinned at forked roads awaiting the millenium after the ultimatum of the day of doom. Come back to this seed of seeing and

void,

knowing,

razor-tongued weaver-bird, heard but not quite understood; to this shackled citadel polished with tongs where you fought thunder and fought flame lost your frame and gave a name to

fly high, higher, highest whence

and

you hired your blame

from where you still may see this bleak void, this spinning cat’s eye, this fateful, faithless Titan. But

why all the haste to the climax knowing the star on ascent can never be spent? why all the lament and weird laughter beside the and such brevity at moon-play knowing its deadness without your voice?

grave of the

brave,

Come among mortals, immortal man; move around your flicker

’he-goat-on-heat’ however bitter.’3

As the title of the poem suggests, Okigbo is called a seer, a prophet predicting a course of events in Nigeria which ultimately would lead to war. This is especially true of his poems published posthumously under the title &dquo;Path of Thunder&dquo; and written in 1965 and 1966.4Yet this poet was not the only writer deeply concerned about the fate of his country, opposing its political leaders and prophesying war. As Izevbaye notes in his essay, &dquo;Politics in Nigerian Poetry&dquo;: &dquo;During those dark days before the coup the one obvious path of poetry was prophecy&dquo;’and he reminds us of poems by Achebe and Soyinka. It is Okigbo the seer, but also the poet and the man, who has induced many Nigerian writers6 to identify his poetic work and personal fate with the historic experience of a whole generation of Nigerians. As literary critics it is our task to ask what meaning - or meanings - this experience assumes when it is creatively transformed through the means of language and literary form. I suggest that the concluding lines of &dquo;Song of Seer&dquo; contain an essential answer to this question. Underlying the invocation to &dquo;come

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57

among mortals&dquo; and to &dquo;move around [his] flicker&dquo; so that people will understand the bitter truth of man’s moral vulnerability is the conception of Okigbo as a moralist who insisted on his responsibility to tell the truth. Similarly, Ndu makes us understand that Okigbo’s &dquo;Poems Prophesying War&dquo; must not be seen solely within the context of the Nigerian situation but should also be regarded as an expression of man’s eternal predicament to choose between good and evil. As Okigbo says in &dquo;Hurrah for Thunder&dquo;, a poem written two days after the first military coup in Nigeria: Alas! the elephant has fallen, Hurrah for thunder But already the hunters are talking about pumpkins: If they share the meat let them remember thunder.’7

Here the poet expresses his fear of the continuance of political shortsightedness, egoism, and greed for power but also the disillusioning truth about human weakness in general. Ravenscroft’s assumption ‘ ‘that the extinguishing of the most inventive poetic talent, Okigbo’s, has for the writers taken on a poignant symbolism for the loss of African possibilities&dquo;&dquo;is essentially pertinent for the reason that it takes note of an African romantic attitude of the mind constructing for itself an idea of the continent in utopian terms. There were certainly writers who believed in this idea and now were shocked by the experience of Africans fighting against and killing each other. But at the same time most of them, I feel, defined their experience not just in terms of Africa but in terms of the human race. It is evil which is to be exposed and destroyed as Munonye makes two of his characters say in his novel A Wreath for the Maidens:9 ’Wouldn’t it be right then to say that Imperator is, essentially, neither white black?’ ’Essentially I would agree. He is just an international type of infidel.’

nor

’The local or national exploiter, the international exploiter, be he white or black, red or indigo, is our villain. And conversely, there are excellent men here and there, black or white.’ (p. 187) It is in this sense that Ravenscroft’s words are true, &dquo;that the writers saw 1966-1970 as the acrid experience of eating the fruit of the tree of

very bitter

°

knowledge&dquo;. 10 While Munonye shares this view with other writers such as Soyinka, Ekwensi, Omotoso, Aniebo, Okpewho, Iroh or Emecheta his book on the Biafra war differs from most of theirs in at least two points. While many of the novels and autobiographical accounts are confined to the

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58 war period (e.g. Mezu’s Behind the Rising Sun, Amadi’s Sunset in Biafra, Aniebo’s The Anonymity of Sacrifice, Okpewho’s The Last Duty, Iroh’s Toads of War and Forty-eight Guns for the General)11 Munonye’s A Wreath for the Maidens is designed on an epic scale. The first-person narrator Roland Medo starts his story by relating political events on the eve of independence and the tone of his narration is set early when he ironically and, at times, satirically describes the appearance, the attitudes, and the opinions of the future leaders of the

country: I have always been strongly of the view that our country’s principal contribution to political thought is in the field of party names.... There were at this time, P.I.P., N.P.P., P.N.D.L., N.I.P.... R.D.C., C.D.R.... (p. 39) The novel also contains strong elements of the Bildungsroman fusing the process of Medo’s emotional and intellectual growth with the depiction of political and intellectual circles, the process of moral decay during the war and the suffering of the people. What emerges is a strong plea for moral responsibility, addressed to all citizens, low or high, poor or rich, and a belief in the future of man. As Medo says: The root cause of this present struggle is greed and injustice. And much as it has been said that injustice and wrong will always remain the lot of man, it is equally true that man will ever continue to struggle for justice and fair play, not minding what it costs.

(p. 219) Buchi Emecheta in her novel Destination Biafra 122 attempts something similar. Temporally and locally removed from the events of the 1960s (Emecheta left Nigeria at the beginning of the 1960s) her story also covers the historical development in Nigeria from the eve of independence to the collapse of the state of Biafra. Like Munonye she is concerned with a fundamental question, i.e. what the term freedom really meant for Nigeria and her citizens. Extending the meaning of the term beyond its political aspect Emecheta asks for its human dimension : the freedom of African woman and of man in general. However, Destination Biafra does not quite convince us the way A Wreath for the Maidens does because Emecheta fails to fuse the two levels on which the story is based, the historical and the individual. The first part of the book emphasizing the political events from 1959 to 1967 appears contrived, its characters remain lifeless or are caricatures, the interaction of character and event hardly ever excites the readers’ curiosity and the language is artificial. The second part of the novel, however, saves the book from failing altogether. It shows Emecheta’s ability to portray credible female characters and though Debbie Ogedembge’s plan of bringing about a rapprochement between the

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59

warring parties is far-fetched as a motive of her actions, her experiences and reactions, the solidarity of women affected by the atrocities committed convince us of Debbie’s view that freedom has not yet been achieved and that its realization demands the decolonization of the mind. As she herself has to admit at the end of her futile attempts at realizing the idea of Biafra, i.e. total liberation from colonialism: ’I see now that Abosi [i.e. Ojukwu, D. R.] and his like are still colonized. They need to be decolonized. I am not like him, a black white man; I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stay and mourn with her in shame...’ (p. 258)

The second point where A Wreath for the Maidens differs from most other works on the war is in its concern with the destruction of innocent youth who are sacrificed for causes they do not know of and are not responsible for. This theme is picked up by a few other authors, e.g. Aniebo in his novel The Anonymity of Sacrifice, where the senseless dying of two men of different social backgrounds is made to serve as a paradigm for the senseless killing of thousands of Nigerians, many of them too young and inexperienced to know the issue at stake. A second example is provided by Andrew Ekwuru in Songs of Steel, 13 a novel portraying the fate of an Ibo village family whose members have suffered from the atrocities in the North and are being drawn into the events of the civil war. Told from the point of view of a simple village woman who is hardly aware of the political dimension of the war, Ekwuru succeeds in describing the moral disintegration of average people whose sole hope is to survive and who turn to violence and become moral degraded in their attempt to prevent their annihilation. This will maim them for life as the narrator points out at the end of his story:

position she could see the brightening stars for the sun had long set. ’It is now really over,’ she heard people say as they passed her window. Abigail knew that although the fighting was over, the conflict still remained. And that, in fact, was the trouble. (p. 160)

From her

As with the few examples shown here writers on the whole hardly blamed one side or the other for the events of the 1960s though they agree on their criticism of the Nigerian political leadership. Thus the writing on the war must be seen in its relationship to the earlier period of the protest novel. It is the belief in life, in the indestructability of moral principles which characterizes the civil war literature as much as it characterized writing exposing colonialism and neo-colonialism in the 1950s and early 1960s.

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60

exceptional example of this continuity in Nigerian literature is Soyinka’s The Man Died,’the writer’s prison notes of two years of detention by the military government. The uniqueness of the book does not lie in its partial character, its lack of political concreteness, or its garrulity for which it has been attacked repeatedly’but in Soyinka succeeding in his attempt to re-educate &dquo;the minds of Nigerians by relating things which they thought they knew about and shaping their ways of looking at so-called public leaders and figures&dquo;’ 6 - as Soyinka put it. Taken literally The Man Died is not a book on Biafra but like in several other works of the same author published after the war (Madmen and Specialists, Season of Anomy, and A Shuttle in the Crypt)&dquo; the Nigerian civil war is used as a metaphor which extends its meaning to any place in the world where &dquo;the unfettered principle of life&dquo;’is endangered and where the evil forces have to be fought against by man. To give an autobiographical account of the experience of solitary detention requires mental and psychological efforts on the part of the writer which he may be incapable of mustering. If Soyinka succeeds in proving to be &dquo;the one undeniable genius of African letters&dquo;’9 - as a critic proclaimed, exaggerating the total effect of The Man Died - it is in presenting us with a horrifying picture of a man pushed closer and closer to the brink of mental destruction. Especially the chapters An

’Kaduna 68’ and ’Kaduna 69’ do not substantiate Irele’s criticism of passages which suggest ‘ ‘spitefulness and a personal interest on the part of the author that detract from the force of his public attitude&dquo;. 20 On the contrary, what counts are those passages which describe the writer’s nightmares, his hallucinations, the experience of fasting, of tenaciously clinging to the meaning of words and things:

My My

shadow is shadow is

but not my essence. Repeat. but not my essence. Now cast of renewed assault:

trapped trapped

a new spell in case Old moons Set your crescent eyes On bridges of my hands Comb out Manes of sea-wind on my tide-swept sands. My liver is mended. I await the vultures for there are not eagles here. (p. 187)

in reorganizing his mental and intellectual what is left of them - again and again in order not to powers break is testimony of his faith in life which transcends the merely personal. Though he has been criticized for his venomous attacks against a

Soyinka’s strength or

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61

number of Nigerian officials Soyinka does not fail to distinguish between the torturers and power-hungry, their puppets and those in whom he can detect human life. The Man Died does not condemn one side or the other but those individuals who act against the principle of life. However, as he says in his concluding lines, the offenders will, ultimately not ‘ ‘escape the fate of the defeated. At the hands of all who are allied and committed to the unfettered principle of life&dquo; (p. 286). *

If,

*

*

said, Okigbo the seer and moralist has become a symbol for many Nigerian writers whose own works reflect these attitudes he also symbolizes the true poet for them. as

I

There is a passage in Ndu’s poem which intimates why Okigbo the poet continues to play such an important role in the literature on the war, and this aspect touches the fundamental question of the relationship between politics and literature. Ndu qualifies the poet as &dquo;seed of seeing and knowing, razor-tongued weaver-bird, heard but not quite understood&dquo;. The last line, &dquo;heard but not quite understood&dquo;, suggests a double meaning stemming from the double function of Okigbo as a seer and a poet. These words do not only refer to people’s moral insensitivity and disbelief in the writer’s warnings but also to his poetic diction which often results in hermetic poems. However, once we discover the meaning of recurring metaphors, images, and symbols such as &dquo;thunder&dquo;, &dquo;elephant&dquo;, &dquo;eagles&dquo;, or of motives, we become aware of structural patterns and Okigbo’s profound concern with man; the writer, indeed, fulfils the function of the true poet who ‘ ‘has to retain his artistic vision while funtioning as the conscience of the nation&dquo;.&dquo; Literary form, then, must be of importance to the writer if he wants to satisfy the double demand made on him as an artist and a socially committed human being. Biafra war literature does not lack in experimentation but also uses traditional ways of rendering historical events. On the one hand many writers, especially of the novel, chose documentary - or near-documentary - writing: Mezu’s Behind the Rising Sun, Amadi’s Sunset in Biafra, Soyinka’s The Man Died, Iroh’s Forty-eight Guns for the General, Toads of War and The Siren in the Night,22 or Ekwensi’s Survive the Peace23 count among this group. On the other hand a few authors have chosen the parable, e.g. Omotoso in The Combat,24 or they use parabolic, allegorical, and/or symbolical elements, as does Soyinka in Madmen and Specialists and Season of Anomy, or Okpewho in The Last Duty. 25

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62

How far do all the works succeed in transforming historical reality into artistic truth? Most documentary novels relate events of the civil war with only a few of them also including the immediate post-war period. Except for Amadi’s autobiographical account fictitious characters centre the stage and their authors try to convey through them the totality of the effects the war had on the Nigerian people. More often than not the depiction of events, incidents, and people’s actions and reactions outweighs the portrayal of individuals, their mental and emotional affectedness by their experiences. Forty-eight Guns for the General and The Siren in the Night almost completely lack this dimension and substitute it by a series of events quickly following each other in which characters are

only described from the outside. Their motivations, feelings, and opinions are few and of a generalized nature so that they appear as types rather than individual human beings. Colonel Rudolf, the leader of the white mercenaries, the &dquo;forty-eight guns&dquo; fighting for Biafra, is, perhaps justly so, shown as a man driven on by just two desires: to survive and earn money, and to achieve a major victory against the Federal Army. Colonel Chuma, his Biafran counterpart, after having been imprisoned because he had failed to defend ‘ ‘the capital city&dquo;, informs the enemy about Rudolf’s plans and seems to be set only on his adversary’s destruction. It was perhaps Iroh’ss intention to show the senselessness of the war by focusing his attention on the personal and therefore petty rivalries of two leading officers. Still, the often sensational character of the story stands in the way of really achieving this effect. Much the same is true of The Siren in the Night, a story of personal rivalry. Both the main characters, Kolawole, the major in charge of the State Security and Intelligence Directorate, and Ben Odo Udaja, formerly a colonel with the Biafran army who defected before the end of the war and is now in charge of the rehabilitation programme in the East, never come to life; their motivations do not carry credibility, and the value of the story lies in its fast action and the precision of detail. Mezu, too, does not, in the end, succeed in engaging the reader’s sympathy and affection for his characters in Behind the Rising Sun. Too often he tells us what they feel, think, and suffer instead of showing it. Here is a typical passage chosen at random: He felt some regret when he thought of her, a deep regret that things were not different. He had looked forward with emotion and love to meeting her again, but that was now a thing of the past. On second thoughts, Onuoha tried to understand. The circumstances were difficult. The times were trying on loyalties and emotions. (p. 173)

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63 As these few lines

illustrate, Mezu’s style fails to give life and incharacter, and they remain banal and unconvincing.

dividuality James Odugo, the main character in Ekwensi’s novel Survive the Peace, is given almost tragic quality when, in spite of his honest efforts to survive the war not only physically but also as a responsible human being, he is being murdered by road gangsters. But the overall picture which emerges is that of a rather superficial person whose concern is mainly with himself. Besides, Ekwensi does not avoid flavouring his story with purple patches, sexual and sentimental passages which detract from the seriousness of the events presented, the loss of life and property, the disruption of family ties and friendships, starvation and to a

chaos at the end of the war in Biafra. Factual and documentary presentation also predominates in Amadi’ss Sunset in Biafra. For once we encounter a book in which the author does not hide his aversion of his political enemies, the ‘ ‘Biafrans&dquo; . The one-sidedness resulting from taking sides openly affects the objectivity and meaning of this autobiographical account, especially of its first part. Arguing, for example, about the reasons which led to secession and civil war Amadi clearly plays down the events in the North while atrocities committed in the East are given prominence. His narrative approach at the beginning is analytical, though there are many generalizations and simplifications. The latter part of the account focuses on Amadi’s personal fate after his arrest by Biafran troops. Yet even when he recounts his fears and the tribulations he has to undergo one hardly ever experiences the fears, the compassion, the suffering Soyinka’s The Man Died evokes. Amadi is too much concerned with the personal aspect of his story to be able to transcend it and lend deeper meaning to it. With a few exceptions, then, most prose writers who have chosen to tell their stories in a realistic manner do not, in the end, succeed in transforming reality into artistic truth. It may be that these works were written without the necessary personal and temporal distance to recent events. Besides, this form of the novel may be less pliable for the writer’s purpose of conveying something like a total meaning of the war in terms of the personal afflictions of their characters. A more parabolic or symbolic presentation of actual events is, perhaps, a more adequate narrative technique. A few works do, indeed, demonstrate the validity of this assumption. In Soyinka’s play Madmen and Specialist, in Omotoso’s novel The Combat, and, to some extent, in Okpewho’s The Last Duty the war is only incidental to the dramatic action, and characters are not made to interact as individuals but as analogies or symbols. This enables the near

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64

novelist and the dramatist to convey an insight into fundamentals without however reducing a fictitious dramatic story to a mere presentation of ideas. As the story of The Combat progresses its analogical character unfolds step by step. In the beginning the quarrel between two friends appears to be over a moral issue only - one of them has accidentally killed a young boy, is unwilling to admit his deed, and is now challenged by his friend to a single combat. Then it turns out that both had claimed the boy as their legitimate son while the court appealed to had been unable to present a ruling. The two friends, of course, represent Nigeria and Biafra, their son the young state of Nigeria and his mother the Nigerian nation. Events and individual actions are representational and do not aim at individual characterization. Without taking sides Omotoso points out that shortsightedness, righteousness, and the lack of mutual understanding form the roots of the quarrel. Once adopted as their guidelines people will increasingly become the victims of their own actions. Omotoso ironically exposes man’s weaknesses, employs satire and the grotesque to underline his failure to come to terms with each other. Okpewho’s novel is formally not as well structured as The Combat though it shares with the latter a somewhat naive parabolic way of presenting historical events. The author appears to be unable to decide whether to tell a realistic story or a parable. Employing a number of stock characters - the greedy businessman, the upright and brave victim, the weak and dependent woman, the oppressed and frustrated sergeant, the verbose and shallow military officer - Okpewho confronts us with their woes told in quick succession and representing the course of events after the secession of Biafra. Though all these characters do claim individual features the author fails to either develop them into credible individuals or to reduce them to parabolic elements of a non-realistic story. The Last Duty eventually fails because Okpewho loses his grip on the story. More harrowing than the concluding scene in The Combat where the corpse of the boy is made to preside at a party but forces all the guests to flee from the scene because of the stench it creates is Soyinka’s play Madmen and Specialists. Violence, the decay of human values, and the loss of the respect for life permeates the action. The mood of despondency which had obviously seized the author after his experience in detention causes him to look at life and men from a totally disillusioned point of view. As it appears to him life can only be conceived of as either madness or specialization, unintelligible chaos or total fragmentation of reality. The Mendicants in the play represent madness, Dr. Bero, self-termed specialist, their opposite. Caught in be-

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65 tween are the Old Man, Bero’s father, and Sis Bero, his sister, and the Earth Mothers. Attempting to regain a meaning to their existence they eventually fail because the specialists prove too ruthless. The dramatic tension derives from the interaction between the Old Man and Dr. Bero who claims to &dquo;control lives&dquo; but has as yet failed to control his father’s actions and thinking. The Old Man has taught the Mendicants to think in terms of his philosophy of As annoying Bero who, in the end, shoots his father. The meaning of the final scene of the play suggests two interpretations. The Old Man’s action of trying to operate upon one of the Mendicants to ‘ ‘taste&dquo; with his scalpel ‘ ‘what makes a heretic tick&dquo;, can be seen as the ultimate provocation of Bero to admit his human nature by also trying to find out what truth is. Bero’s refusal then is proof of his fear of the truth. If, however, the Old Man’s words are to be taken seriously his action suggests that it was indeed possible - in spite of the age of specialization - to learn how to think. Bero killing him then means that the Old Man’s efforts have been in vain. Whatever the total meaning of the play’s ending may be the Old Man’s death underlines Soyinka’s disbelief in man’s strength to overcome madness and specialization; even the language has been corroded by the decay of human values, as the playwright does not tire to point out: ‘ ‘the dog in dogma, tick of a heretic, the tick in politics, the mock of democracy, the mar of marxism, a tic of the fanatic, the boo in buddhism ...&dquo; (p. 76). Madmen and Specialists is, at one and the same time, the most gloomy and despondent literary recreation of the late 1960s in Nigeria as it is one of the most complex and artistically convincing literary comments on the time. *

*

*

Ndu’s poem there is a third aspect of role for the Okigbo’s symbolic Nigerian writer: the poet as a soldier. &dquo;Come back to this void,&dquo; Ndu says, To

return

yet

once more to

this shackled citadel polished with tongs where you fought thunder and fought flame lost your frame and gave a name to

to

fly high, higher, highest whence

and

you hired your blame.

Okigbo’s decision to replace the pen by the gun and even be prepared to die for a cause he felt justified is given an ambiguous meaning by Ndu which rests with the last words quoted, &dquo;hired your blame&dquo;. The poet is being blamed for his decision and the fate which overtook him. But he is also shown as blaming all those around him

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66

who forced him to preserve what he thought was his integrity by choosing the gun as a more powerful weapon to defend justice and freedom. Ndu points at a debate which has recurred again and again and will, doubtlessly, continue as long as the poet, the artist, cannot and will not relinquish his right to be a human being. In the literature on the civil war at least two authors have attempted to deal with this theme, Ali Mazrui in The Trial of Christopher Okigbo,26 and Wole Soyinka in his most recent novel, Season of Anomy. While the former in a nonrealistic story narrating the post-mortem trial of Okigbo by an all African court does not acquit the poet from having betrayed the cause of art,27 Soyinka’ss utopian-realistic novel &dquo;discusses&dquo; the poet’s predicament. Ofeyi, poet of sorts as the public relations man of the Cartel, the powerful political structure commanding the lives of Nigerian people, realizes that he perverted his talent by serving an injust and inhuman system. Though he does not take up arms he accepts the Dentist’s view that violence can only be destroyed by counter violence. It appears that Ofeyi and the Dentist represent legitimate and complementing views of how to overcome &dquo;the Cartel’s superstructure of robbery, indignities and murder, ending the phase of slavery&dquo; (p. 27). As so often Soyinka refrains from promoting a particular ideology and leaves it to his readers to draw their own conclusions from the action of the novel. If we look at Ofeyi in line with other intellectual characters in Soyinka’s writing we must, however, admit that he represents a decisive and important step in the writer’s development in as far as Ofeyi turns into active man who is not any longer content to reflect on and intellectualize political events. This is as far as Soyinka is obviously going to let the artist become actively involved; Okigbo the soldier remains a symbol outside this writer’s concerns. What Season of Anomy, on the other hand, achieves and represents within the context of Nigerian war literature is the depiction of an as yet utopian but basically realizable world symbolized by Aiy~r6, a world which brings back to life and back to African people ideas of communal living which can be transformed into a meaningful social and human structure where man will realize himself and help others in achieving this end. Soyinka, then, in his literary presentation of recent Nigerian history comes perhaps closest to what Okigbo symbolizes to the Nigerian writer: he combines the roles of seer in the sense that he does not only warn but communicates his vision of a new society. As an artist he remains committed to his art as Madmen and Specialists or Season of Anomy prove; as promoting the ideal of active man he shows his commitment to his countrymen. The literature of the Biafra war symbolizes a unique thematical

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67

development in modern African writing but it continues the tradition established in the 1950s of professing the right of man to live in freedom and to fight injustice. Formally it shows signs of experimentation - though not always successful and convincing - while a few literary recreations of the experience of the war point towards a future development of Nigerian literature.

NOTES The most comprehensive though not exhaustive bibliography on Nigerian war literature is: Chidi Amuta, &dquo;A Selected Checklist of Primary and Critical Sources on Nigerian Civil War Literature&dquo;, RAL 13, 1, 1982, pp. 68-72. 1 Pol N. Ndu, Songs for Seers, New York, 1974, pp. 34-5. 2 J. P. Clark, "Death of a Weaverbird", Casualties, London, 1970, p. 32; Wole Soyinka, "For Christopher Okigbo", A Shuttle in the Crypt, London: Rex Collings. 1972, p. 89; Obiera Udechukwu, "Lament of the Silenced Flute", Kevin Echeruo, "Lament of an Artist", in: Chukwuma Azuonye (ed.), Nsukka Harvest, Poetry from Nsukka 1966-72, Nsukka, 1972, pp. 5-6, 33; Odia Ofeimun, "For Christopher Okigbo", in: Wole Soyinka (ed.), Poems of Black Africa, London: Heinemann, 1975, pp. 321-2; Modupe Oduyoye, "African Drums", Ime Ikiddeh, "To Christopher Okigbo: Rest", Chiddy Wilson-Amutah, "Exit (for Christopher Okigbo)", in: Cyprian Ekwensi (ed.), Festac Anthology of Nigerian New Writing, Lagos, 1977, pp. 225-7, 228. 3 Ndu, op. cit., pp. 34-5. 4 Christopher Okigbo, Labyrinths with Path of Thunder, London: Heinemann, 1971, pp. 63-72. 5 D. S. Izevbaye, "Politics in Nigerian Poetry", Presence Africaine, 78 (1971),

p. 154. 6

At least the

following two books are dedicated to Okigbo: Ndu, op. cit., and Kole

Omotoso, The Combat, London: Heinemann, 1972. 7 8

Christopher Okigbo,

op. cit., p. 67. Arthur Ravenscroft, "The Nigerian Civil War in Nigerian Literature", H. MaesJelinek (ed.), Commonwealth Literature and the Modern World, Brussels: Didier,

1975, p. 105. 9 John Munonye, A Wreath for the Maidens, London: Heinemann, 1973. 10 11

12

13 14

15 16

Ravenscroft, ibid. J. O. Mezu, Behind the Rising Sun, London: Heinemann, 1972; Elechi Amadi, Sunset in Biafra, London: Heinemann, 1973; I. N. C. Aniebo, The Anonymity of Sacrifice, London: Heinemann, 1974; Isidore Okpewho, The Last Duty, London: Longmans, 1976; Eddie Iroh, Forty-eight Guns for the General, London: Heinemann; 1976, and Toads of War, London: Heinemann, 1976. Buchi Emecheta, Destination Biafra, London: Allison & Busby, 1982. Andrew Ekwuru, Songs of Steel, London: Rex Collings, 1979. Wole Soyinka, The Man Died, London: Rex Collings, 1972. John Agetua, When the Man Died, Benin City, 1975, pp. 6, 19-23. Agetua, op. cit, p. 34.

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68 17

Wole Soyinka, Madmen and Specialists, London: Methuen, 1971, Season of Anomy, London: Rex Collings, 1973; A Shuttle in the Crypt, London: Rex Collings, 1972.

18

The Man

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p. 286.

19 John F. Povey, "The Nigerian War: The Writer’s Eye", Journal of African Studies, I, 3 (1974), p. 359. 20 21 22

Irele, "The Season of a Mind", The Benin Review, I, 1 (1974), p. 116. Izevbaye, op. cit., p. 151. Eddie Iroh, Toads of War, op. cit., and The Siren in the Night, London: Abiola

Heinemann, 1982. Cyprian Ekwensi, Survive the Peace, London: Heinemann, 1976. 24 Kole Omotoso, The Combat, op. cit. 23

25 26

Isidore Okpewho, The Last Ali Mazrui, The Trial of

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Ime

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