THE UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE I UNIVERSITE DE YAOUNDE I

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of a Postgraduate Teacher’s Diploma (DIPES II) in English

By

EDWIN TEM NJI (BA, ENGLISH)

University of Buea

Supervisor

DIVINE CHE NEBA (PhD) Lecturer

June, 2011

ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE

DEPARTEMENT

D’ANGLAIS

HIGHER TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF

ENGLISH

Obscurantism and the Mythic Dimension of

Christopher Okigbo’s and Bate Besong’s

Selected Poetry

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ABSTRACT

This work, entitled “Obscurantism and the Mythic Dimension of Christopher Okigbo’s

and Bate Besong’s selected Poetry”, props into the question of obscurity and myth in the

poetry of both authors. The argument raised is that, though writing some four decades apart,

Okigbo and Besong domesticated a poetic tradition comparable to the Western canon as

exemplified in the poetry of W.B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Gerald Manley Hopkins and Ezra Pound.

By employing deliberately elliptical syntax, complex word play and allusions steeped in

Greek, Egyptian, Christian and Hindu myths, both poets have often been considered obscure.

Some allusions in their poetry are anchored in myths that often have supernatural bearings,

which may confirm the poets’ personal obsession with the occult. Using New Historicism, the

work investigates aspects of the poets’ lives and times, the socio-political and cultural aspects

of their countries which invariably helped in shaping their creative impulse. Okigbo’s concern

for the political evolution of Nigeria was so strong that the impact was not only felt in his

militant poetry, but he actually died fighting for Biafra. Besong later died in a car crash, after

spending a career in which he constantly brought to public attention the Anglophone

Cameroon question of marginality. In sum, the study posits that, as against the attacks levied

on both poets, African poetry ought and should be fed by a plurality of creative sentiments.

With respect to the poets’ political views, the work opines that nothing could be more sublime

than for a writer, to play the role of the genuine intellectual, by taking a direct political stance

for collective good. Considering the didactic nature of their poetry, this work equally shows

how some of their poems are teachable to sixth form students.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation has been realized thanks to the varied and invaluable assistance that

I received from several sources, and which I now take the pleasure to acknowledge. Firstly, I

would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Divine Che Neba, for his insightful comments. He was

always willing to give an extra hand. I am equally grateful to all the lecturers of the

Department of English, particularly Dr Charles Teke, for his inspirational comments.

Secondly, my gratitude equally goes to Zumboshi Eric Nsuh, who offered me free

access to his library. I am also profoundly grateful to my parents for their sense of sacrifice;

Moses Nji and Vivian Nji, I am proud that you could come this far!

Thirdly, I am thankful to Fidelis Cheo and his wife, Sylvia Cheo for their enormous

financial assistance. Similarly, I appreciate the financial help that I received from Elvis

Tangwa, Roland Ngwoh Bong, Dieudonné Ndzelen, Oliver Kpwe Fuh, Abinwi Numfor

Muwanki, Doris Nwa Chu, Mrs Esther Biame, Lucas Saam, Simon Nji, Protus Nji and

Betrand Nji. For Yolande Djatsa, who burnt her midnight oil typing this dissertation, I say

thank you.

Finally, for peer criticism and suggestions, I am indebted to Yves Asaah Akum, Roger

Kunowoh, Didymus Douanla Tsangue and Lynda Ekonde Ephosi.

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DEDICATION

In

Memory

of

Bate Besong

who, lately,

Danced and joined his ancestors.

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CERTIFICATION

I hereby certify that this research work, “Obscurantism and the Mythic Dimension of

Christopher Okigbo’s and Bate Besong’s selected Poetry”, submitted in partial fulfilment of

the requirements for the award of a Postgraduate Teacher’s Diploma (DIPES II), at the Higher

Teacher Training College Yaoundé, was carried out by Edwin Tem Nji.

Supervisor

Divine Che Neba (PhD)

Lecturer, Department of English

E N S, Yaoundé.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... ii

DEDICATION .......................................................................................................................... iii

CERTIFICATION ..................................................................................................................... iv

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL SPACE AND THE PROFUNDITY OF AN OBSCURE

MIND ....................................................................................................................................... 17

CHAPTER TWO: THE MYTHIC DIMENSION OF OKIGBO’S AND BESONG’S

POETRY .................................................................................................................................. 40

CHAPTER THREE: AUTHORIAL IDEOLOGY ................................................................... 62

CHAPTER FOUR: THE POETRY OF BATE BESONG AND CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO:

ITS TEACHEABILITY TO SIXTH FORM STUDENTS ...................................................... 80

CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 100

WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................................... 104

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1

INTRODUCTION

Modern African poetry has been fed, in the course of its development, by many

conflicting claims and views. These views are as varied as the poets scattered around the

geographical span of Africa. The conflicting claims held by some poets and critics have

created some of the controversies in this domain of studies. One of such controversies is the

question of obscurantism. By obscurantism, one is probing into the question of meaning, the

varied artistic influences that have inspired various poets around the continent such as the idea

of using a deliberately difficult style of writing. The question of being deliberately pedantic

has pushed some scholars like D.I Nwoga, into contemplating whether some of those

“difficult” poets could rather be referred to as modern poets in Africa rather than modern

African poets. This is a consequence of the vast western influences that punctuate their poetry

as well as the deliberately cultivated complexity in word play.

Some of the two poets, among many, who have often received the label of obscurantism,

are Christopher Okigbo, a Nigerian poet of the 1960s and Bate Besong, a Cameroonian poet

of the 1990s and 2000s. Besong and Okigbo are poets from two distinct nationalities writing

decades apart. Okigbo captured the plight of the young Nigerian nation in the 1960s after

battling colonialism in his early writing. At independence, the Nigerian nation was greeted by

coups and counter coups, which caused the nation to degenerate into a civil war. Similarly,

moulded within the rigours of Nigerian University life, Besong came back to Cameroon to tell

the world the story of his homeland from the point of view of the Anglophone Community,

which he constantly referred to as a hostage minority. Besong and Okigbo are compared, here,

not only for their unusually similar lives, but equally for the profoundly turgid nature of their

verse.

In stating the problem that this work investigates, one may say that, Bate Besong’s

death, coming some forty years after the death of Christopher Okigbo, one of the most

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controversial Nigerian poets in living memory, ushered in fresh debates on the essence of

poetry fashioned in a way as to obscure meaning. Okigbo and others like Soyinka and Clark,

often considered the reading of poetry as the exclusive preserve of the initiate. In political life,

Okigbo died fighting for Biafra while Besong became so obsessed with the Anglophone

minority question that every piece of his writing showed traces of it. The lives, works and

deaths of both poets, their unusual tenacity , as well as the profound nature of their imagery,

helped fashion the mythic dimension and obscure nature of their art. Their poetry equally

manifested a touch with the occult, at times too terse for the ordinary reader.

This work, further attempts answers to the following thesis questions. In the midst of

cloudy poetic lines, does the community miss the overall social quest of both poets? Also,

must the poets articulate their ideas in a way as to be understood by all or must seclude

themselves into a class of poet-prophets with limited audiences? With the Okigbo generation

waning and the Niyi Osundare School ushered in, for which Bate Besong is part, one would

have thought that, he, Besong, would opt for a broader audience. Yet he seems historically

situated within the Osundare School that saw poetry as the hawker’s ditty, yet psychologically

entrenched within the Okigbo generation that prided in non communication to the amateur

reader. In this controversy, one is also tempted to ask how the poet should sing his song. What

should be the nature of this song? Should he delve into alien myths? How can their ideologies

be properly comprehended in the midst of these difficulties and how relevant are these poets

to our time especially our secondary and high school students?

To fully grasp the arguments raised, two key words used in this research topic need

to be defined. The words are “Obscurantism” and “Mythology”. The Revised Encyclopaedia

Britannica defines Obscurantism as “the practice of deliberately preventing somebody from

understanding or discovering the meaning of something”. The Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary Terms on the other hand, defines obscurantism, as “that which is hard to

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understand, not clear, not well understood or difficult to see” (105). It further adds that by

obscurantism, one refers to the art of keeping ideas blurry so as to hide truth. In discussing the

poetry of Okigbo and Besong, one joins, but does not limit the notion of obscurantism, to the

above definition, corroborating D.I. Nwoga’s view, in “Modern African Poetry, The

Domestication of a Tradition” that, “as a result of their addiction to archaisms, the poetry of

the Ibadan/Nssuka poets tends to be craggy, lumpy; full of obstructions and unnecessarily

difficult; simple ideas are often deliberately clothed in esoteric idiom” (42). This research

considers obscurantism as the use of words, metaphors and allusions in a way that makes

understanding difficult. The work shall bring to light some of the sources of obscurity and

myth in the poetry of Besong and Okigbo.

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Terms defines myth as “an ancient story

usually containing religious or magical ideas which may explain natural or historical events”

(109). By “mythic”, an adjective derived from myth, one is referring to that which often

combines magical elements with religious ideas, be they African, Christian or Hindu

religions. Thomas Bullfinch in Bullfinch’s Mythology posits that “mythology is the handmaid

of Literature and Literature is the best ally of virtue and promoter of happiness…without

knowledge of mythology, much of the elegant literature of our language cannot be understood

and appreciated (3). The “mythic” in this work is concerned with the varied religious elements

tinged with magical and even occultist undertones that are evident in the poetry of Okigbo and

Besong.

Before we proceed, it is necessary to have a brief portrait of both authors. Christopher

Okigbo is often considered as one of the finest among the founding fathers of modern African

Poetry. He was born in Ojoto, Nigeria in 1932. He graduated from the University of Ibadan

and worked as a teacher and Librarian before beginning a literary career. He had profound

interest in the social and political evolution of Nigeria, and this was in line with his view that

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a poet cannot examine his own identity in isolation. Okigbo was very obsessed with the quest

for social justice in Nigeria and the ideals of nationhood expressed not only in the very

charged lines of his verse but equally in his personal commitment to the Biafran secession. In

July 1967, at the outbreak of the civil war in Nigeria, he enlisted in the Biafran army and was

killed in action in August 1967. The grief for the poet soldier and genius, at 33, was

enormous. Sunday Anozie observed that, nothing could be more tragic to the world of African

poetry in English than the death of Christopher Okigbo.The person who, perhaps, captured

that grief at best was Chinua Achebe in a collection of poems he edited in Okigbo’s honour

entitled Don’t Let Him Die.Okigbo’s output was enormous and was realised within a very

short period of time despite his relative youth.

Many are those who consider Bate Besong as the artistic clone of Christopher

Okigbo. He was not only contaminated by the Okigbean disease of very controversial poetic

sentiments, but was indeed, like Okigbo, too impatient with humanity as Linus Asong

observed in a discussion of Besong’s writing on CRTV in March 2009. Besong was born on

May 8th, 1954 at Ikot Ansa, Calabar, Nigeria of Cameroonian parents. He was educated at St

Bedes College Ashing Kom, before moving to Hope Waddell Institute in Calabar;

Universities of Calabar, Ibadan where he took MA and PhD degrees respectively. He was

moulded along the turbulent Nigerian political landscape, acting once as ghost writer to the

executed Poet Soldier, General Maman Vatsa. Back in Cameroon, his artistic fame soared.

The hard economic climate he weathered, fortified him, while the fate of the less fortunate

which he shared, turned him into a philosopher and a student of the human condition.

Disgrace: autobiographical Narcissus was launched the night before his death. The grief for

him was equally enormous. In a collection of poems published in his honour; Their

Champagne Party Will End, Babila Mutia observed in the foreword that, “for a long time to

come, Bate Besong will remain the annoying gadfly that the experiment call Cameroon will

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always try to brush off its shoulder, but who, persistently will always wait around the corner

compelling the nation to confront its excessive social shit and political garbage” (9). This

critical appraisal of the life of one of the most controversial Anglophone Cameroon artists in

recent times is a testimony of the enormous challenges the poet was ordained to confront, but

which invariably, like all human endeavours, came with a huge prize; the persecution,

humiliation and subsequently, death.

This research has been motivated by the nag for controversy manifested in the lives

and works of both poets. The desire to prop into controversy is always of great academic

fascination. The works of Okigbo and Besong have throughout been shrouded in controversy

and have therefore been variously attacked and praised by some of the leading scholars of our

time. However, much seems not to have been done to place these two poets side by side each

other in order to unravel the sources of their images, their almost similarly troubled lives and

deaths as well as the occultist touch of their works. This study is therefore borne out of the

desire to forge an alliance between two artists of two distinct epochs, with a similarly

profound ideology as well as the mode of poetic expression; so committed to their call to the

point of death yet heavily attacked on grounds of their deliberate controversy.

As far as the aim and scope of this study is concerned, one shall examine Labyrinth

with Path of Thunder and Disgrace: autobiographical Narcissus, paying attention to why the

poets, Besong and Okigbo, opted for a style of writing that many considered evasive and

foreign. The work does not only prop into the recondite nature of their verse, but equally

demonstrates how these poets championed the nationalist struggles in their respective

countries, Nigeria and Cameroon. The study limits itself to the two works cited above, but

references will be made to some substantial literature written not only by both artists but by

other writers and scholars. Disgrace… was launched some hours to the poet’s death while

Path of Thunder, was published post humus alongside the earlier collection, Labyrinth. More

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than just sheer coincidence, the demise of both artists at very telling moments heightened the

debate on their works. This study therefore brings some of the similarities and differences

between the two poets into focus.

A study of this nature requires that keen attention be paid to the surrounding social and

political climate that gave birth to the works under study as well as aspects of the authors’

lives and time. Given the fluid nature of literary criticism, often that, no literary theory can lay

exclusive claim in espousing the intricate artistic fabric of a work, the ideal is often to settle

for a theory that can best penetrate and lay bare the multiple layers of a given piece of

literature. The theory used in this work is New Historicism. New Historicism starts by

“challenging the long held belief that a text is an autonomous work of art that contains in

itself all the elements necessary to arrive at a supposedly correct interpretation” (130), says

Charles Bressler in Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. The above

statement is rather, the hallmark of New Criticism otherwise referred to as Formalism. This

school of thought, Formalism, with founding fathers and adherents like T.S. Eliot, I.A.

Richards, Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, emphasises the independence of a work

of art, stressing that it must be analysed independent of extraneous material. To the

Formalists, “a good critic examines a poem’s structure by scrutinizing its poetic elements and

rooting out and showing its inner tensions…bad critics are those who insist upon imposing

extrinsic information upon a text to discover its meaning”(38).

New Historicism on the other hand, is a theory whose development is traceable to

Stephen Greenblatt, who, aptly coined the term in his introduction to the collection of

Renaissance Essays in 1982, as a point of departure from the Old Historicists and in terms of

application very much different from the formalists. With their theoretical hindsight based on

some of the ideas of Michel Foucault; historian, archaeologist and philosopher, followers of

New Historicism such as Catherine Gallagher, Jonathan Dallimore, Jerome McGann and

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Frank Lentricchia, insist that “societal concerns of the author, of the historical times evident

in the work, and other cultural elements exhibited in the text must be known before we can

derive a valid interpretation” (132). A work of art therefore, the New Historicists argue, is

often a battleground for conflicting ideas among the author, society, customs, institutions and

societal practices. With this understanding, this work shall examine, with some salient

questions in mind, how the cultural environment of Okigbo and Besong invariably create

resonances in their poetry. Has Okigbo then, been a slave to his Igbo customs and traditions

or has his been a radical remaking of myths to suit the cultural climate of his time? On a

similar note, this work ponders, with a New Historicist bent of mind, whether Besong’s fluid

cultural borrowing, is a reflection of the author’s and his society’s quest for socio cultural and

political freedom.

Of great importance, also, is how the New Historicists actually view history. New

Historicism rejects the mimetic view of history, which is, simply looking at a work of art as a

simple reflection of the history of its time. Rather, history and literature are viewed as forms

of discourse. A work of art, New Historicism argues, is like any other form of social discourse

that interacts with its culture to produce meaning. The critics admit that history is necessarily

biased, a point held by Michel Foucault, who argues that, history is not linear, neither is it

teleological. Thus, unlike the Old Historicists, a work must question its own history and not

just parody it. This argument is very important to this study in that one shall examine why

some of Besong’s poems are necessarily at war with Cameroon history in the poet’s quest to

clear his society of bad political indoctrination. This is much in resonance with Okigbo’s

writing, who, as it were, almost rewrote the history of Nigeria by opting for the independence

of Biafra.

It should be observed here that, New Historicism does not dismiss a detailed analysis of

the intricate artistic elements of a work. By examining aspects of the author’s life and time,

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the social rules and dictates found in a work and the historical environment that shapes it,

New Historicism is in a way strongly advocating a study of a work’s artistic merit in relation

to its relevance to society. That is why employing New Historicism and Formalism may

amount to repetition and theoretical inconsistency.

Having presented the theory used in this work, it is necessary to review some of the

literature so far written on the two poets. The attention that Okigbo and Besong’s works have

received from scholars, media personalities and students has been enormous. There is thus a

number of scholarly articles in journals, reviews in news papers and dissertations based

variously on the works of Okigbo and Besong. In his own words, writing an appraisal of the

kind of attention his work has received, Besong argued in “Bate Besong on Bate Besong” that

My work is aggressively revolutionary, using imagistic patterns of a

symbolic imprimatur, dramatising topical political issues and thereby

seeking to expose the corruption, oppression and incompetence of a

post colonial prependal neo-colonial structure. I am an inveterate

experimenter with language. I will always deal with the internal

conflict between forces of good and evil in settings borrowed from

history and myth. (2/4)

Besong’s statement is a summation of the kind of treatment his work has received and is

equally an appraisal of his creative philosophy which helps to shade some light on the cloudy

nature of his art.

In almost every scholarly endeavour, where his work is at the centre of attention, the

notion of obscurity, at times evasiveness and unnecessary grandiloquence always slips in. In

his article “Bate Besong, is his Poetry Too Difficult for Cameroonian?” Shadrach

Ambanasom writes:

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Bate Besong is the most paradoxical Anglophone Cameroon writer

today in the sense that his work attracts and repels readers the same

time. While his themes entice readers, his style alienates them, an

erudite iconoclast with an exceptional range of vocabulary power.

(92)

Ambanasom, a scholar on Besong, acknowledges the poet’s cumbersome and jazzy style, his

ideas are often littered around the bookish corridor of words, yet very compelling and warm

in the way he has chosen to give voice to those on the margin risking their lives on daily basis

to give meaning to their existence.Ambanasom’s article , however, does not touch on the last

book Besong published, that is Disgrace…, neither does he place Besong side by side with

Okigbo, exposing the sources of their imagery. This study intends to fill this gap.

In his book entitled Bate Besong or The Symbol of Anglophone Hope, George Ngwane

unravels some of the mystery behind Besong’s verse, joining the numerous voices that

consider him obscure. He intimates that

Bate Besong’s vehicle of communication has been regarded as sheer

obscurantism. He has been accused of writing for the intelligentsia

and not for the common man that he professes to defend…he has

been contaminated by the Hopkins’ disease involving a combination

of atrocious punctuations and blurred images .This is also seen in

Christopher Okigbo’s Path of Thunder and Wole Soyinka’s Idanre.

(21)

One can notice from the above observation that, Ngwane places Besong with such big names

as Soyinka and Okigbo, the founding fathers of modern African Poetry. These early poets

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were obsessed with what was prevalent in European poetry in the early part of the 19th

century so much so that they took up artists such as W .B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot as

their points of reference. Therefore, the writing of Okigbo, suggests the huge influence of

Yeats, Pound and Eliot. Consequently, after taking degrees from Nigerian Universities,

Besong in turn came under the influence of Soyinka and Okigbo, all students on Yeats and

Pound, and subsequently saw them as models despite the storm of attacks that African poetry

was not yet ripe to use Yeats and Pound as models with great profit. Besong would later argue

that he adopted the writing styles of these early poets as strength so that he would not

degenerate into a writer of pot boilers. Ngwane goes a bit further to cite some of the sources

of Besong’s obscurity, in order to give focus to the amateur reader. He posits:

You must be current with historical events, abreast of socio political

trends His symbols are deeply rooted in social changes. His images

range from distant civilizations, his metaphors are local, his tone at

times is sexual and myths are traditional like the Emanya Nkpe. (21)

From this observation, one notices that the load on the reader is as much as that of the creative

artist himself, so that any amateur reader is doomed to frustration each time he or she picks up

Besong’s poetry.Ngwane’s study is however not based on Besong and Okigbo in comparative

terms, neither is his analysis on Disgrace…, which is what this study does.

When Besong launched Disgrace in 2007, he died the following day. The reviews of

his works were enormous. Azore Opio of The Post Newspaper captioned a compelling title in

his honour, “Farewell, Master of Obscurantism” in which he concluded that, “Bate Besong

lived out his life as a great warrior, he confirmed this by his triumphs and suffering, in verse,”

(6/12). Still, in his memory, a collection of poems entitled Their Champagne Will End was

published in his honour. In the foreword, Babila Mutia exclaimed that Besong was

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“frightfully prophetic in the last poem in Disgrace in which he wrote that… ‘the night is

over’” (9), suggesting a prophecy of his own impending demise.

Sammy Beban Chumbow, in the same vein, equally espouses the idea that “some say

Bate Besong’s style is difficult to access. So it has been said of Wole Soyinka and other world

class Nobel Prize writers. So what good thing ever comes easily in life?” (Disgrace, xi).

Chumbow had clearly placed Besong on the same pedestal with leading world artists like

Soyinka and in the case of this study, Okigbo. It is this argument that this work intends to

continue, that Besong was the Cameroonian equivalent of Christopher Okigbo.

Talking about Okigbo, the following paragraphs attest to the huge impact that his

poetry created at the dawn of modern African Poetry. He gained the reputation of a master

craftsman, one who more than any of his contemporaries, captured the struggle of the young

Nigerian nation in the hands of colonial agents, up to post independence Nigeria, with its

coups and counter coups and the resultant civil war. Yet his style of writing remained a night

mare. D.S. Isevbaye, in “Okigbo’s Portrait of the Artist as a Sunbird: A reading of

Heavensgate”, notes:

This view of the poems as an impenetrable territory has been

encouraged by reports of Okigbo’s early view of poetry as a type

of cult from which the uninitiated is excluded…and by cautious

critical explications in which the critic and the reader are

unmasked as intruders. (1)

While it is true that Izevbaye’s article acknowledges that Okigbo’s poetry is unnecessarily

turgid; for he even quotes Okigbo to have bragged that “ I don’t write my poetry for non

poets” (4), he does not ex-ray the sources of Okigbo’s inspiration. He attempts rather a

systematic analysis of the creative journey of the poet, from the poet prodigal on exile right

through to the return to the Idoto shrine.

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According to Isevbaye, the publication of Labyrinth with Path of Thunder in 1971,

accompanied by the author’s word of introduction, helped to “clear some of the paths to his

poetic experience and has probably helped to arrest the growing tendency to regard the

experience as something unavailable to the reader”(7). Isevbaye does not cite some of the

sources that make Okigbo’s poetry obscure; he equally does not include the Path of Thunder

section in his study. This study seeks to extend into that direction.

Similarly, Romanus Egudu’s “The Defence of Culture in the Poetry of Christopher

Okigbo”, breaks down Okigbo’s poetic philosophy into stages, namely: “The Suppression of

Indigenous Religion”, “Anti Catholicism”, “Religious Revival” and “Literary Struggle”. In

each of these stages, he succinctly captures Okigbo’s poetic concern, his distaste for Western

religion and his ability to switch from Christian to Pagan myths, at the “Literary Struggle”

stage, Egudu submits:

His Poetry is generally difficult and sometimes obscure. He, Okigbo

Said that, my Limits was influenced by everything and

everybody…it is Surprising how many lines of the Limits I am no

sure are mine and yet do not know whose lines they were. (24)

According to Egudu, Okigbo would not have found a better way to express the African and

Nigerian predicament than by resorting to the vague form of poetic expression. He puts it that:

“It is the irresistible pressure of experience under which the poet was being crushed that has

ultimately melted the frozen waters of his soul and released the stream of his songs” (26).

Okigbo had profound love for controversy and at times creative haughtiness to the

point of constantly bragging that his intellect towered above that of ordinary men and women.

Yet, this may be true in some degree as seen in the complexity of almost all of his poetry, so

that each time scholars attacked his works; it was followed by a rebuff from the poet so strong

as to let him reject a poetry prize at a conference in Senegal in 1966.

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Donatus I. Nwoga.is also an Okigbo scholar. Nwoga undertakes a study of the

emergence and growth of Modern African Poetry. In his article, “Modern African Poetry: The

Domestication of a Tradition,” Nwoga starts by arguing that “…by Modern African Poetry, I

am referring to the work which is being written in the language derived from the colonial

experience (33). One of the founding fathers of Modern African Poetry; he acknowledges, is

Christopher Okigbo. Conscious of the wave of attacks poured on the latter by the Chinweizui

School of scholars, Nwoga posits that “…one acknowledges that the attempt to decree one

type of African Poetry is premature and inelastic and would do great harm to the growth of

the activity (44). This means that, African poetry should be fertilised by a plurality of views

and divergence in creative impulse. Consequently, rather than have all poets follow the same

cannon of language “simplicity”, African poetry should rather grow out of the synthesis of

diverse creative climates. It is on this grounds that he submits that

….of all the major poets, however, it would appear that Christopher

Okigbo has been the most influential on the other poets. In spite of

the difficulties of his poetry, he has fired many imaginations…at

least 30 poems by 20 poets have been written in his memory. His

echoes and images have been parodied and copied; his lyric

cadences have been reproduced. (47)

Here, Nwoga essentially examines the conflicting claims held by various scholars on what

should authentically be considered the true mark of African poetry. His study thus embraces

works by other African poets like Gabriel Okara and Wole Soyinka. This is different from this

study in that, one is rather examining how the questions of obscurantism and myth have been

received by two poets writing decades apart, Okigbo and Besong.

In yet another of his articles, “Obscurity and Commitment in Modern African

Poetry”, Nwoga argues about the role of the poet in his community. He intimates that

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The challenge is two fold, that the poet through his art, contributes

to the total of the national, nay human, cultural and therefore

spiritual growth and that his use of language should not be such

that his contribution is unavailable to his community. (28)

Nwoga is very careful in his analysis, he acknowledges the profound role of the poet to his

community and conscious of this load, the poet should write in a way as to be understood by a

cross section of the people.Nwoga does not pour invectives on poets who decide to withdraw

into the world of literary solitude, neither does he praise them; he challenges them to strike a

fair balance between art for art sake and art for commitment. Tackling the problem of

obscurity on Okigbo’s verse, he writes, “there is no doubt that part of Okigbo’s early poetry

overdo the obscurity; the abstract language, private imagery, super sophisticated word

ordering lead to a lack of communication one feels sympathy for those who quarrel with

it”(26). The above scholar does not just “quarrel” with Okigbo’s verse, he offers explanation

to some of the sources of obscurity and concludes that, “…obscurity of itself is not a virtue, it

is a game played on the reader by a smart seeker of fame” (37).

Whether or not Okigbo was a smart seeker of fame is beside the point, for his

obsession with the Nigerian experience became too much of a burden that he would not

perhaps have found a better outlet to vent his crusading spirit rather than withdraw into the

controversial aura of the poet dictator. Nwoga does not study the Path of Thunder collection,

poems influenced by the impending war for Biafran independence. This study shall be in line

with Nwoga’s scholarly bent but shall go a step further by including Path of Thunder in

comparison with Besong’s Disgrace. The two poets under study were unique in many

respects and shared so much creative sentiments so that at their deaths, collections of poems

were published in their honour: Don’t Let Him Die in the case of Okigbo and Their

Champagne Party will End in the case of Besong. This study thus brings the controversial

15

artists into focus. This gives a clear cut difference between this work and the aforementioned

critics.

This work operates on the premise that Okigbo’s and Besong’s obscurantist mode of

poetic expression and the mythic bent of their art help dredge up fully the burdens of their

respective world views. In the beauty of their obscure verse lies the revolutionary power of

their ideas so strong as to compel the poets to risk death for what they stood for.Okigbo and

Besong are inspired by different socio political and economic experiences, yet they share

almost the same poetic sentiments and are therefore very peculiar poets.

As far as the structure is concerned, this dissertation has four chapters including a

General Introduction and a General Conclusion. The introduction situates the poets in

historical and social context, reviews the literature so far written on them and then establishes

the main focus of the work. Chapter One is entitled, “Historical Space: A Profundity of an

Obscure Mind”. It examines the question of why the poets opted for an unconventional

approach in writing; that is, why they opted for the obscurantist mode of expression. Chapter

Two is entitled, “The Mythic Dimension of Besong’s and Okigbo’s Poetry”. The chapter

examines the poets’ ability to fuse Western, Hindu, Pagan and Christian myths, so strong as to

suggest a touch with the occult, leaving their poetry often too difficult for the amateur reader.

Chapter Three is the “Authorial Ideology”. Apart from helping to reveal some of the hidden

sources of the obscure nature of the poets, it brings to the limelight the various political

ideologies the writers stood for. Chapter Four is entitled, “The Poetry of Okigbo and Besong:

Its Teacheability to Sixth Form Students”. The chapter examines some of the challenges in

teaching the poetry of Okigbo and Besong to high school learners, and the various means that

could be employed to ease the activity. The General Conclusion summarises the major

arguments raised in the work, brings out findings and recommendations, and suggests a

possible area for future research.

16

17

CHAPTER ONE

HISTORICAL SPACE AND THE PROFUNDITY OF AN OBSCURE MIND

Having introduced both poets, as writers operating within two nationalities and epochs, this

chapter properly situates them within distinct historical contexts. This is crucial to the

understanding of the cultural, political and economic consciousness that both poets

championed. This chapter equally examines how their poetry is a cultural and political

statement on the fractured history and distorted contours of their peoples’ lives. The chapter

will also bring to limelight the poets’ genius and artistic prowess, often exemplified in the

term obscurantism. One shall probe into some of the sources and references that the poets

make, and which tend to render their writing often too difficult for the amateur reader.

To be sure, a poet is neither a historian nor a chronicler. A poet, like any great writer

of genius, is one with a great insight into human nature, one who has created an image for

himself to see or feel for others what they may sometimes not be able to see and feel. The

poet therefore, claims the position of a prophet. It is a position that Okigbo claims when he

puts it in Labyrinths that

Screen your bedchamber thoughts

With sun glasses

Who could jump your eyes?

Your mind window,

And I said

The prophet, only the poet

And he said: Logistics

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(Which is what poetry is). (8-9)

From the above assertion, one can realise that the secret behind a poet’s divination lies in his

sensitivity to register accurately the fragmented and grotesque masquerade of human life.

Seen in this light, and as clearly observed by some of the leading writers of our time, a poet

cannot be separated from the historical realities of his time. Nigeria and Cameroon history,

like that of Africa at large, has provided the material inspiration for Christopher Okigbo and

Bate Besong.

Talking about Nigeria, much of her literature bears the stamp, to a great extent, of

its colonial history, independence struggle as well as post independence, with the turbulent

political wave that ensued. Colonised by the British, Nigeria was subsequently divided into

three regions for administrative purposes; these were the East, West and Northern regions.

She subsequently got independence, after much struggle against the British, in 1960. The

history of Nigeria and Africa as a whole, particularly of cultural imperialism, has been

documented by some of Nigeria’s finest writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J.P.

Clark and Christopher Okigbo. After independence, the euphoria was short-lived because the

art of government as practiced by the neo colonial elite was clannish, myopic and tragically

misguided. What better way of capturing this than by using the Rain and House metaphor as

Achebe succinctly does in A Man of the People? He states:

The trouble with our new nation was that non of us had

been indoors to be able to say, to hell with it. We had all

been in the rain until yesterday. Then a handful of us, the

smart and lucky and hardly ever the best, had scrambled

for the one shelter our former rulers left and taken over

it and barricaded themselves in. (37)

19

The image in the above declaration is of a band of marauding neo colonial politicians,

synonymous with a gang of fascist leaders, who have held the entire nation ransom, hijacking

its wealth, constantly reminding the people, who are in the rain, to stay calm and not bring

down the polity with hasty arguments and revolutionary sentiments. The hegemony reigns just

for a while. A coup sweeps over the ship of state and chief Nanga, that all encompassing

political gangster in A Man of the People, is arrested trying to escape disguised like a

fisherman. Achebe’s A Man of the People is highly praised for its prophetic ending, given that

the book was not just an assessment of post independence Nigeria, but equally , a prophesy of

the July 1966 coup which subsequently degenerated into a civil war.

Talking about the Nigerian civil war, which constitutes a great source of inspiration for

Okigbo’s Path of Thunder, one would realise that the turbulence of the war quickly spread as

a result of the balkanised nature of the country. When Muslim army units staged a coup in

1966, Yakobu Gowon, a Christian, who enjoyed wide support, was appointed to head a

Federal Military Government (FMG). While the FMG tried convening a Constituent

Assembly to ensure a smooth return to civilian rule, the violence increased and Igbos in the

North were massacred. They began moving back home in what was termed a mass exodus.

The Eastern Region answered back by massacring Northerners, thus a counter exodus of

Northerners began. Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu, a Governor of the Eastern Region, came

under severe pressure from eastern leaders to declare greater autonomy for the East

consequent on the ferocious attacks on Igbos.Various attempts were made to pacify the Igbos,

and sometime in May 26, 1966, Gowon made plans to abolish the regions and re-divide the

country into twelve states. Ojokwu answered the Federal decree “with the declaration of the

Independent State of Biafra named after the Bight of Biafra” (4/10).

When the Federal Government failed to restore order in the wake of heightened

Biafran propaganda, war erupted and dragged on until 1969, when Ojokwu surrendered and

20

called for a ceasefire. In 1970, Biafran resistance collapsed and Ojokwu fled to Ivory Coast

while the Eastern Region submitted to the federal government in Lagos.

The brief picture above, of the Nigerian civil war does not suggest that all of

Okigbo’s poetry is based on this politically charged period, though much of it is on it, but for

a poet to become too obsessed with the idea of shaping the political life of his country, to the

extent of dying at the war front is not something to be dismissed lightly.Ali Mazrui observes

this when he brings Okigbo for trial, in the literary sense of the word, in The Trial of

Christopher Okigbo. Here, the dead poet is tried on two counts, first, for compromising the

national integrity of Nigeria, second, for putting politics first and poetry last. His poetry,

Okigbo’s, will be studied as that which was largely informed by his nationalistic militancy

with an overriding genius, developed not just because of his classical education and wide

scholarship, but equally because of his genius and profound mind.

As far as Cameroon’s political history is concerned, emphasise here will be on the

English speaking section, the former Southern Cameroons, which can by no means be

separated from Bate Besong’s creative itinerary. In the introduction to the Emanya Npke

Collected Poems, the second part of Disgrace, Besong quotes Vaclav Havel to have quipped,

“Whoever fears to look his own past in the face must necessarily fear what is to come. Lies

cannot save us from lies” (42).The bicultural state of Cameroon, made up of French and

English speaking Cameroonians is a consequence of its colonial past following the dual

tutelage of the allied powers, Britain and France, exercised during the trusteeship years. The

English speaking section owes some historical ties to the Eastern region of Nigeria. Victor

Julius Ngoh puts it in Cameroon: From a Federal to a Unitary State, 1961-1972 that, “for

administrative convenience, the British ruled British Cameroon as a part of Nigeria”(1).

Political evolution subsequently culminated in the gaining of independence for British

Cameroon, on the 1st of October, 1961 as opposed to the French section that had earlier

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gained independence on the 1st of January, 1960. What ensued subsequently was an

amalgamation of the two distinct parts and a declaration of the unitary state; hence the name

moved from the Federal Republic to the United Republic of Cameroon.Presisendent Paul Biya

would later change the name to the Republic of Cameroon.

Much of the literature of the English speaking section , often tagged the literature of the

hunchback, bears testimony to the long drawn out question of marginality, and in some

quarters, of a secessionist agenda, synonymous with the Biafran experience. The question that

often puzzles some is who the Anglophone Cameroonian really is: is it anyone that speaks

English, or one whose roots are traceable to the former Southern Cameroons?

Geroge Nyamdi, in a political pamphlet, Whether Winning…Whether Losing, observes that:

Francophone and Anglophone as qualifiers are not linguistic. They

have to do with roots….an Anglophone is not any Cameroonian

who speaks English but that Cameroonian Whose roots are planted

in, or traceable to that part of Cameroon West of the

Mongo…British Southern Cameroons. (4)

Bate Besong’s revolutionary itinerary, bears the scars of the history he often considers

distorted, the consequence of which is a cultural holocaust unleashed by the French on the

English speaking section. It is not strange then, when, in his study of the poetry of Simon Mol

and Kangsen Feka Wakai entitled, “Introducing Simon Mol and Kangsen Feka Wakai”,

Besong observes:

Anglophone Cameroon Poetry, just as its dramaturgy and prose

fiction counterparts, is a product of two distinct socio aesthetic

forces: the received traditionalists aesthetics and the aesthetics over

determined by the nuances of reunification. (1/10)

22

Much as Okigbo and Besong’s works cannot be fossilised within the Biafran and Anglophone

Cameroon experiences, much of their psychological burdens were borne out of their peoples’

experiences, a question linked up to the whole notion of national consciousness. Thus, while it

is true that African history, culture and politics have given voice to Okigbo and Besong, the

Biafran and Anglophone Cameroon situation has given them focus.

Granted that history creates much of the foundation for the poet, one will however note

that, poetry, by its very nature, is a genre in which ideas are often clothed in profoundly turgid

images and at times, syntactic infelicities. Thus the reader is often challenged to an

intellectually charged climate to balance meaning with aesthetics, here lies the question of

obscurity as against simplicity. Poets are indeed the rarest of gifted men, says John Lord in

The Beacons Light of History. He adds:

Poets are the great artists of language. They even create language,

they are the ornaments of Literature… they are the sages whose

sayings are treasured up and quoted from age to age because of

the inspiration given to them, an insight into the mysteries of the

soul and the secrets of life…very few are born in a generation.

(12)

John Lord’s description, of “true” poets and their poetry, is at the very heart of controversy,

and this is very much a function of the western literary cannon; for he so succinctly quotes the

ancients: Homer, Virgil and Dante, who, as a result of their unusually gifted mode of

expression, helped in raising their countries from the torpor of their times. Could these

“ornaments of language” mean something different to the African, whose literary experience

is borne of a very charged context? Or will language ornamentation be taken to such degree as

to hide rather than highlight the main thrust of our poets? This is the charge that has been

brought, most often than not, against Okigbo and Besong.

23

The African Literary and poetic experience is borne out of the colonial experience

itself. Some of the founding fathers of Modern African poetry, from Nigeria and other home

grown universities in Africa, studied classics, and so their poetry, often blended traditional

African folkloric elements with distant allusions from western concepts. So strong was this

ideological debate that African poetry has often been classified into what some call

“generations” depending not only on ideological preoccupation, but on the aesthetic

sensibilities of the poets. Thus, Soyinka and Okigbo are often classed in the same generation,

for in their poetry; one finds great influences of Hopkins, Pound and Eliot. Whereas some

minds argued that African poetry, thanks to the kind of writing propounded by the Okigbo

school, could now rub shoulders with western classics, others, notably, Eldred Jones, quoted

in D.I. Nwoga’s article “Obscurity and Commitment in Modern African Poetry”, agued,

Not that I think anyone can stipulate how African Poetry can

be written, but conscious that, we are writing, primarily I

hope, for an African audience, should African poets not be a

little choosy about the models they adopt in English writing?

African poetry is not yet ready to use a person like Pound as

a model with great profit. (37)

Eldred Jones’ view is an antithesis to the Okigbo School of poetry, given that, to Jones,

African poets ought, and should be the immediate flag bearers of their people’s woes, and this

should be done in a way as not to divorce the creative self from the tragedy of the African

experience. Niyi Osundare would later advance this argument, voicing his concern against the

Okigbo type of poetry which he felt, greatly put many off the reading of poetry. Propounding

his definition of poetry, and what many consider typical of third generation poetry, Osundare

writes in Songs of the Market Place:

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“Poetry Is”

Not the esoteric whisper

Of an excluding tongue

Not a clap trap

For a wondering audience

Not a learned quiz

Entombed in Greco roman lore

Poetry Is

The hawker’s ditty

Poetry Is

What the soft wind

Musics to the dancing leaf

Poetry is

Man

Meaning

To

Man.

This is the manifesto of what some scholars think, should be typical of third generation poets.

To them, poetry should cease to be the sole preserve of the highly educated, in other words, it

should not just be the business of the “talented tenth”, to borrow from Marcus Garvey. While

Okigbo is a poet of the second generation, with the trademark of an obscure and an allusive

writer, Bate Besong, historically speaking, is a poet of the third generation. One would then

25

think that he would adhere to the Osundare conception, yet his creative sentiments are deeply

rooted in the Okigbean epoch, so that he has often been accused of being infected by the

“Hopkins’s disease”. In Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus, he offers his own definition

of poetry. According to him

“Poetry Is”

Epicurean manners of the masses

Poetry is

Hear my prayer.

Poetry is

Soyinka not Hitler

Peace now not Hiroshima

Nyerere not Marshall Amin

Poetry is

Not the gulag

Poetry is Jua

Voice of Anglophone Universe. (108)

Besong’s case is a juxtaposition of the forces of good and evil, personified by symbols like

“Nyerere”, “Marshal Amin”, “Gulag”, “Jua”, and the “Anglophone Universe”. He does not

offer a clear cut definition, but argues instead that a poet must choose to give voice to

consecrated sentiments such as truth, honesty and steadfastness, or crash into the ephemeral

business of hero worship at the expense of truth. The masses must be at the nerve centre of the

poet’s business, but the language the poet must use, in order to meet directly the “epicurean

26

manner” of the masses is where he has often attracted controversy, causing many to label him

an escapist and obscurantist writer.

If one examines Okigbo’s poetry, from Heavensgate to Path of Thunder, one will

notice that it is one long epic representing the various stages in the poet’s poetic

consciousness, as well as the cultural and historical evolution of Nigeria. In Heavensgate,

notably in “The Passage”, Okigbo starts a journey, symbolic of the cultural estrangement and

the subsequent nag to be readmitted into the “idoto” priesthood, which represents indigenous

culture. He writes in “The Passage”, the first poem in Heavensgate that, “before you mother

/idoto/naked I stand/before your watery presence/a prodigal” (3). This is the departure point in

his creative journey. It marks the beginning of a tortuous journey in the poet prodigal’s long

search of a mythical past epitomised by the great “mother idoto”. Okigbo writes in the

introductory word that “…the long and tortuous passage to the shrine of the long juju of the

Aro, Igbos may perhaps best be described as a labyrinth” (xiv).

The prodigal, having been cut off from his roots, must now submit, as a penitent

figure, to the ordeal of waiting in front of the idoto shrine. This psychological journey takes

him through the “Initiation” stage where he is inflicted with “scar of the crucifix/over the

breast/by red blade inflicted”(06).This is a fortification process, wherefrom, the persona

journeys through the mystical worlds of “Haragin”, and “Kepkanly” before forging a link

with the sea goddess at the “Watermaid”. By making such references to his childhood heroes,

“Kepkanly” and “Haragin”, the poet is in a way showcasing his obscure mind, challenging the

reader to investigate the personalities whose mystical force he weaves into a poetic locus that

tends to obscure the logical flow of the pilgrimage he is recounting. Okigbo’s journey of

initiation and subsequent return to traditional forms of worship is clearly symbolised by the

“Newcomer”. Here, the poet considers himself to have gone through the initiation ritual and is

27

now a new comer. At “The time for Worship”, the poet mixes Christian speech with that of

pagan occult practice. This is a source of Okigbo’s obscurantism. He remarks:

Softly sing the bells of exile

The angelus

Softly sings my guardian angel

Anna of the panel oblongs

Protect me from them fucking angels;

My sand house and bones. (17)

Here, Okigbo considers himself fresh enough to seek union with mother idoto. Yet, this is not

entirely complete. The scholar who has scored high in bringing to light the complexities in

Okigbo’s verse, is D.S Isevbaye.In his article, “Okigbo’s Portrait of the Artist as a Sunbird: A

Reading of Heavensgate”, Isevbaye admits that the poetry of Okigbo remains genuinely

difficult. In the course of espousing the aspects that make Okigbo’s poetry obscure, Isevbaye

quotes the varied Greek and ancient Roman references that are found in his poetry and

observes quite strongly that the poet lures his readers into “the world of religion, poetry and

sex” (7).This confirms largely, the argument of obscurantism, often advanced by scholars and

students on Okigbo.

On a similar note, in “The Defence of Culture in Okigbo’s Poetry”, Romanus Egudu,

clearly shows that Okigbo’s anger, exemplified in the solemn but radical undertones of

“Limits” and “Distances”, is directed at the cultural imperialists who orchestrated the death of

indigenous customs. In “Limits VII”, he quotes Okigbo,

…for he ate the lion

And was within the corpse

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and to the cross came pilgrims

past the village orchard where

Flanagan

preached the Pope’s message

to where the drowning nuns suspired. (24)

These are symbols of cultural and religious imperialism; the pilgrims, “Flanagan”, descended

on the totems of the people’s worship and destroyed it. In expressing this religious carnage

and its totality of effect on the people, Egudu observes that Okigbo prided in the obscure;

often controversial in anything he said or wrote. He once observed, as Egudu remarks that,

“my Limits was influenced by everything and by everybody…it is surprising how many lines

of the Limits I am not sure are mine and yet do not know whose lines they were (23).

This quotation underscores the poet’s personal claim to have been a man of super human

wit, traversing ancient cultures like the Egyptian civilisation, meandering through the

Mesopotamian biblical times, before abandoning the reader at the doorsteps of modern

Christian values. This is a manifestation of the notion of obscurantism; this is so because the

poet places on the reader a severe strain, often challenging him/her to be armed with the same

breath of experience like the poet, to be able to decode his message. Egudu finally concludes

that, “It is the irresistible pressure of experience under which the poet was being crushed that

has ultimately melted the frozen waters of his soul and released the stream of his Songs” (28).

The pedantic journey towards cultural revival is concluded in the poems in Distances. Here,

the poet asserts that “I was the sole witness to my/homecoming” (27). In other words, he has

gone through the rite of passage and initiation and is now at the threshold of idoto, the

ultimate homecoming which he celebrates in the following words:

29

I have fed out of the drum

I have drunk out of the cymbal

I have entered your bridal

Chamber; and lo

I am the sole witness to my homecoming. (60)

This is the final point of reversion, a reversion that could in some degree be synonymous with

Achebe’s confirmation in “Colonialist Criticism”, in which, in the face of cynical attacks

against African culture, he argues that, the point will be for everyone to bring his/her harvest

to the rich world cultural market so that the world could choose. In the course of trying to

rework his cultural past, Okigbo has done so in a way that some argue, still indebts him to

the western tradition; yet he has largely demonstrated versatile scholarship, verifiable in the

distant allusions and his ability to blend topical issues with a fluid and charming language.

Having dealt extensively with cultural issues, subsequent political life in Nigeria

compelled the poet to deal squarely with the issues of the time. It is very much in line with

some of the arguments often raised by Bate Besong. For with the latter, one meets a poet

obsessed with the idea of social justice, corruption soaked within the challenges of a bi-

cultural nation. It is at this level, that one may say Besong rubs shoulders, so conveniently

with Christopher Okigbo both at the level of national consciousness, aesthetic sensibility and

obscurantism. In the poems in Silences, such as “Lament of the Silent Sisters” and “Lament of

the Drums”, Okigbo turns his back on the cultural and political imperialists and deals squarely

with the new elite whom he argued had pinioned the state like game to be hunted and eaten. In

“Lament of the Silent Sisters II,” Okigbo sounds a very pathetic note of wanton neglect. He

remarks:

30

Crier: they struck him in the ear they struck him in the eye

They picked his bones for scavenging:

Chorus: and there will be a continual going to the well;

Until they smash their calabashes. (40)

The above lines are a symbol of the Nigerian oil wells whose proceeds provocatively found

their way into the hands of a few. It is equally argued that “Lament of the Silent Sisters” was

influenced by the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first President of the Congo. In

“Lament of the Drums”, Okigbo becomes much more radical, contemplating the thunder

motif as a symbol of the inevitable cataclysm that awaits the nation and its looters. He

expresses his frustration and militancy in the following words:

LION HEARTED Cedar Forest, gonads for our thunder

Even if you are far away, we invoke you

Liquid messengers of blood

Like urgent telegrams. (45)

But the direction to take in order to get out of the political impasse is where the problem lies,

for the “robbers will strip us of our tendons” (47). The robbers in this case are the politicians

who have violently raped the young nation, leaving the poet to wail in the following words

“The wailing is for the field of men/ For the barren wedded ones/For perishing children (50).

The cry for the beloved nation is the same theme taken up by Bate Besong.The poems in

Disgrace are divided into two sections, the Emanya Npke poems and the autobiographical

narcissus poems. In one of the poems in Emanya Nkpe, “Just Above Cameroon”, dedicated to

the fine Cameroonian novelist, Mongo Beti Eza Boto, Besong lays bare some of the

contradictions of the Cameroonian nation. He posits:

31

For I, too have exhumed the cadaverous past

Long

Worn its glorified ostrich mask

And poured

The rubble

Of its narcissistic muse. (44)

In struggling to lay bare the “cadaverous past”, Besong admits the web of controversy that he

has so far ensnared himself in. He submits:

On my masquerader head

Have built:

Poetries canaans

In obscurities which led

To the labyrinth of my own inertia

(all that gone with the wind now). (45)

Besong knows the kind of load that he has so far borne on his “masquerader head”, and often

so, like his muse Okigbo, has borne this load in “obscurities”. Now this: he claims all that is

gone with the wind, yet this is not entirely true. Ambanasom observes in “Bate Besong: Is his

Poetry too Difficult for Cameroonians”? “…he has not done any imaginative writing of

significance outside the modernist mode” (97). Here, Ambanasom underscores the challenges

readers of Besong’s poetry often face.

Whether taken individually or collectively, most of Besong’s poems in Disgrace are

a sweeping kaleidoscope of the Cameroonian and African political experience, ethnic politics

32

and hero worship at the sacrifice of truth and justice. Espousing the idea of raucous greed at

the detriment of social equality, Besong insists in “Their Champagne Party will End” that

Indeed they have sworn fealty to their Masonic lodges

And to each to bankrupt our national coffers

The curse on the heads of the corrupt banditti

But surely, their champagne party will end. (90)

The champagne party is the metaphor for national greed and wanton corruption sanctioned

within national circles. His poetry cannot be wholly understood and appreciated without

recourse to the former southern Cameroons. In “Requiem for the Sycophantic Omenologist

remembering Sangho P.M. Kale, Nndek S.A.George”, the poet pays tribute to the unsung

heroes of Anglophone Cameroon and ends, in his characteristic manner, with a call for order

through a radical stance. He maintains that

Now is the time Compatriots

To pull off his iron mask

At once

And expose His Excellency

The wooden tiger

For

Their centenary has fallen

Its branches are on fire, for

Its trunks will soon be in hell

The members will soon be on fire. (97)

33

The last four lines of this poem are very much synonymous to Okigbo’s “Elegy for Slit

Drum”, in which he, like Besong here, defiantly presents a smouldering inferno waiting to

consume a corrupt lot and cleanse the society of the filth of humanity. In probing into the

question of Anglophone marginality; George Nyamndi, admits in his article “Seeing the thing

Clearly: Monga’s Poetic Vision of South Africa” that, “apartheid is indeed everywhere…this

is so when in a country bona fide citizens are classed into settlers and children of the

soil”(103).Though Nyamndi’s article is on apartheid South Africa, he argues that this system

is indeed synonymous to the Cameroonian saga, especially that, some citizens are considered

“subversives”, who must not pose any questions about the state of the union, a union forged at

Foumban on very clear terms. Talking about this union, of French and English Cameroon,

Besong observes in an article “Welcome, Governor Eyeya Zanga”, that

The foundation on which the Cameroonian federation was built in

1961, was a power arrangement contoured to deal with a

sociologically complex polity as presented in our multi ethnic

linguistic and cultural diversities. It was a type of national integration

that recognised the two separate but equal parts and the central

government in Amadou Ahidjo’s Yaoundé as mutually coordinate and

not as subordinate one to another. (1/6)

Here, Besong’s tentacles are on the national equation, a thing he died so aggressively

defending. However, his poetry cannot be completely fossilised within the door steps of

Anglophone Cameroon life. In poems like “After an Impeachment”, “For Capitaine Thomas

Sankara”, “April 1984”, the poet is concerned with the African democratic experience notably

in Burkina Faso and Nigeria in which he mourns the fate of Thomas Sankara, often thought to

have been killed with French conspiracy. In the course of laying bare all these contradictions,

seen in the Cameroonian experience, Besong’s style of writing has very much resembled that

34

of Okigbo. He writes, often with complex syllogisms, idioms borne of his own coinage, so

strong on the reader that the temptation more often, is to consider him obscure.

In examining some of the aspects that credit the poet as an oracle or shaman, one

would notice that, at the concluding phases of their lives, Okigbo, like Besong, became very

impatient with humanity, thinning down the strong artistic fibre of their poetry in preference

to direct political statements. In Path of Thunder, one finds a poet who has come to terms with

his own mortality and therefore increasingly vibrant. Path of Thunder contains poems like

“Thunder can Break”, “Elegy for the Wind”, “Come Thunder”, “Elegy for Alto”. Whether

taken individually or collectively, the poems prophesy war. The thunder motif is a symbol of

the violent coup of 1966 that struck like thunder, and subsequently caused the country to

degenerate into a civil war. In “Thunder can break”, Okigbo celebrates the coup in the

following words:

This day belongs to the miracle of thunder;

Iron has carried the forum

With token gestures: Thunder has spoken,

Left no signatures. (63)

Constantly impatient with the trend of the political machinery, he prepares to stake his own

life. He submits that, “thunder can break, earth, bind me fast/obduracy, the disease of

/elephant (63). The elephant in this case is a symbol of the politicians whom he considers as

obdurate, a reflection of the Tafawa Balewa years in office, in which, instead of ministering to

the people, the politicians behaved as though the art of government was some form of circus

show. In “Hurrah for Thunder”, the impatience with the political system is intense and his

involvement more than ever before in making direct political statements about the

uncertainties of the future is more erudite. He quips:

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Today for tomorrow, today becomes yesterday

How many million promises can fill a basket…?

If I don’t learn to shut my mouth, I’ll soon go to hell

I, Okigbo, town crier, together with my iron bell. (67)

The countless number of promises is much reminiscent of the art of government practiced by

the neo colonial elite, a thing Achebe condemns in Anthills of the Savannah; a novel in which

he creates a modern Christopher Okigbo personified in Chris Oriko, who struggles to revive

the embattled lives of the citizens of Kangan, much against the will of His Excellency Sam.

No where in Okigbo’s poetry is he more prophetic than in “Elegy for Alto”. He mourns

POLITICIANS are back in giant steps…

THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter…

O mother earth, unbind me; let this be

My last testament; let this be

The ram’s hidden wish to the sword’s

Secret prayer to the scabbard. (71)

True to his words, Okigbo complemented his poetry with blood, like a ram taken for slaughter

for the sake of nationhood. It is unfortunate, that, six weeks into the war, the poet was killed.

Path of Thunder therefore, is by its very nature and time of composition, different

from the early poetry of Okigbo, given that in dealing with the tensions of the time, he no

longer sought refuge in aesthetics that were too enigmatic and obscure. His images are picked

from the troubled scenes of animal jungle power, the thunder motif and subsequently the

blood letting, all in a bid to deliver the burden of national consciousness for a poet who had

barely turned 33.

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Besong’s fate, especially the last days of his existence is much a similitude to

Okigbo’s experience. Disgrace is essentially, an attack on what he calls zombie

administrators, an attack on backsliding by fellow University Professors, a thing that derided

the very essence of a University as a place of learning and scholarship, free from political

bickering. Some of the poems in Part I are “The Foolishness of Trusting in Tribal Gods”,

“Post Mortem Intellectual”, “The Playwright and the Campus Giants”, and “Elegy for Two

Students Assassinated on Campus”. It would be recalled that the 2005 nation wide University

strike actions led to the formation of the Governor Abouem a Tchoyi commission. While at

the University of Buea, Besong was one of those chosen to pacify students. Yet, this let to

witch hunting and his subsequent persecution as a lecturer sell out. Thus a poem like “Elegy

for Two Students Assassinated on Campus” was defiantly written in honour of the students

fell by bullets amidst the carnage of the student up rising. He insists:

Without doubt, academics

Have now obtained a well

Deserved recognition

As ogres

And mutants of terror

Politbureau matriarchs will not always have the last laugh. (188)

It is this open discontent with the University hierarchy, expressed in the provocative tributes

he wrote for “student martyrs” that earned him hate and suspicion. Yet he did not waiver,

convinced in his view that, a University exist for the benefit of its academia, and not the other

way round. Therefore, in “The Mouths of Liars will be Shut”, Besong is in open combat with

an administration that sustains itself through hearsay and betrayal. He adopts an aura of

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speech much like the biblical Jeremiah, and curses a woman for bringing untold victimisation

to a poet who struggled to work in an institution with a non sectarian mind. He asserts:

You are doomed,

And you have brought this upon yourself

What you have done to others will be done to your children and

Grand children to the third and fourth

Generation. (10)

This is much like Soyinka, who, in “Malediction”, curses a woman in the strongest terms

possible, her crime: celebrating at the murder of her fellow countrymen! The idiom used in

both Besong and Soyinka’s satirical pieces, is mournful yet apocalyptic to whoever glories at

the sight of human suffering and degradation.

Besong rages on, condemning what he considers as occult worship in the University

milieu as in “The Foolishness of Trusting in Tribal Gods”, showing what the University

Professor worth the salt should be, as in “The Professor”. The question looms: could Bate

Besong, the poet prophet, have visualised that in the confrontational battle to right the wrongs

of a system that he too, as it were, was doomed to fall amidst the carnage? His trade mark

style of obscurantism was greatly watered down in the 16 autobiographical poems as he

himself observes in the explanatory notes at the end of Disgrace:

…was the poet going to hide behind aesthetics that were enigmatic

and indirect? Answer: one turns to populist poetry to reach a

broader audience…one no longer sought refuge behind camouflage

writing. Absolutely right. (118)

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In the desire to reach a broader audience, he was not destined to the see the next day after the

book launch. He himself fleetingly prophesied in the last poem, “The Night is Over”:

O, After so much crush of stamens

In the brain

I have passed this way, gathering

In, the angst

But O! Alas

The night has sunk level with the earth, gradually, it lowers out of sight

Dawn

The nightly round of our esoteria is over. (45)

The night was indeed over! The poet was crushed at dawn in a car crash. In the foreword to

Their Champagne Party Will End, a collection of poems published in Besong’s honour,

Babila Mutia writes: “Bate Besong was chillingly prophetic in the last poem in the collection

‘The Night is Over’; he died in sparks…just like the poem prophesied” (7).

Here lies one of the major similarities between Besong and Okigbo especially in

terms of their literary careers and painful exits from the world stage, dripping with blood,

each having fleetingly prophesied his death. Their poetry was mired in the obscurantist mode;

the complex words, the unusual coinages borne of their genius and wide scholarship, the

ability to combine the ancient and the modern, the absurd and the logical, the Christian and

the pagan, the local and the cosmic, the ordinary and the metaphysical all put together to

make their poetry difficult and obscure. Yet at the close of their lives, more than tasty for a

broader audience, considering the hot political climate of the time, both poets highly toned

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down their mode of expression, with the view to redressing through the poetic medium, the

folly that their societies had sunk into.

This chapter has presented the creative evolution of both Besong and Okigbo, all of

them products of societies caught in disturbing transitions: the civil war, the struggle for

Biafran secession, the Anglophone Cameroon dilemma, the University of Buea insurrections

all put together to produce very radical poets who sought to give voice to consecrated

sentiments against a background of collective pain. However, they got caught in the web of an

ostrich mentality, proud to dare amateur readers of poetry, and so considered by some as

escapist and obscure poets. Some of the sources of this obscurity have been explained in this

chapter. The next chapter props into the mythological perspective of their poetry, suggesting

that apart from borrowing from the surrealist tradition, both poets displayed a touch with the

occult, making their poetry difficult for the ordinary reader.

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CHAPTER TWO

THE MYTHIC DIMENSION OF OKIGBO’S AND BESONG’S POETRY

Scholarship on the poetry of Okigbo and Besong has often demonstrated the presence of a

vast intellectual culture that dominates their works. A product of many years of national

discontent and a student of the classics, Okigbo’s writing shows a huge influence of various

mythic traditions such as African, Christian and classical myths. This is very much so, for a

poet fashioned within the ranks of the modernist tradition much like T.S. Eliot, Gerald

Manley Hopkins and Ezra Pound. With the modernist mythological abstractions in vogue

then; verifiable in the occult presence of Yeats’ and Eliot’s poetry – Okigbo’s mentors, and

with the huge impact of the surrealist movement, Okigbo’s poetry displays a mix of the

subconscious in surrealist terms: “seeking order through disorder or reality through illusion”

(4/10). To this understanding, namely that the surrealists believed in the mystical mix of

poetry, art and the occult, joining Socrates in his view that poets had to be out of their minds

to be truly divinely inspired, one finds that Okigbo often mythically combines the role of the

poet and the oracle, to become a prophet and diviner, indicating his own brevity of existence

and the impending cataclysm for a nation. Therefore, in the study of Okigbo’s poetry in this

chapter, one shall demonstrate that like T.S Eliot, he showed a spiritual quest, taking his

reader into the realm of spiritual myths and into his spiritual self, combining this with

Christian ritual language, a thing that earned him this fascinating critical appraisal by Chinua

Achebe: “For while other poets wrote good poems, Okigbo conjured up for us an amazing,

haunting poetic firmament of a wild and violent beauty” (4/6).

On a similar note, Bate Besong emerged from Nigerian universities as a product of a

culturally vibrant environment. He came under the influence of Wole Soyinka and took up the

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poetry of Okigbo as a point of reference. That is perhaps why Kikefomo Mbulai observes in

“Satire and Historicity in the Poetry of Bate Besong” that, Bate Besong was a “fervent

admirer of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka whose influence can be seen in poems like “For

W.S” and “After Mandela’s Earth”, Besong was to equally fall under the spell of Ogun, the

promethean hero in Yoruba Pantheon, one of whose attributes is the shielding of orphans

(141). Talking of Wole Soyinka’s mythological power, the impact of which has largely

fertilised Besong’s poetry, Joel Adedeji in “Aesthetics of Soyinka’s Theatre”, argues:

Yoruba folklore feeds Soyinka’s spiritual needs and artistic vision.

In nearly all of Soyinka’s major plays…the presence or appearance

of three important Yoruba gods can be apprehended or discerned in

their explicit imagistic representations as human beings or in

their implicit symbols as surrogates. These three gods are Obatala,

Ogun and Esu. (107)

This observation explains Soyinka’s eloquent exploration of myths, especially in the Yoruba

cosmology, which he ordains as mythical and magical forces to guide his creative spirit.

Emerging as a non-conformist modernist poet of almost the same measure like Yeats

and Eliot, and like Soyinka above, Besong was later to adopt and experiment with various

myths and gods such as Obasinjom, Mfam, Ogun and the Emanya Nkpe at times mixing this

with the language of ancient Hebrew prophets, with an established frame of mind that he was

fighting not only an ivory tower oligarchy but an established cult of “free masons” (Disgrace

2007).This chapter also examines the various sources of mythological influences in the poetry

of Besong and Okigbo, notably traditional and Christian myths, showing how these mix and

condense to create a language and an experience far too tortuous for the reader. In these

mythical references lie some of the power of their obscurity and equally a haunting display of

their power of prophecy.

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Talking about myths, one of the scholars of modernism, who has done work on how

myths have formed strong grounds in modern poetry, is John Nkemngong Nkengasong. In his

book W.B Yeats and T. S Eliot: Myths and poetics of modernism, Nkengasong writes:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and Thomas Stearns Eliot (1885-

1965) are two giants of the twentieth century whose quest for ideal

reality culminated in poetry which could be considered as highly

complex and allusive…They make allusions to a great variety of

primitive, occidental and oriental myths and symbols using abrupt

contrasts and counter suggestions. (10)

This is the centre piece of the philosophy that largely informs modernist poetry of the type

Yeats, Eliot, Pound and Hopkins wrote and which Okigbo and Besong subsequently took as a

model. Of Yeats, Nkengasong further remarks: “He also saw the need to make his vision more

profound so he got involved in occult studies and magic” (19). There is much evidence to

argue, equally, that Okigbo was not a mere copy cat, struggling to be a modern Yeats,

inebriated by his grandiloquent bluff, rather he showed a great mind that suggested a

meddling with the occult, often believing at times that he was the very reincarnation of his

grandfather father, Ijejiofor of the Oto family, who provided the priesthood to the shrine of

the deity Idoto, the cornerstone of his creative reference. Yet, a son of a Christian convert,

Okigbo was later to fuse his poetry with the mythical touch of Christian ritual practice.

From the outset of Okigbo’s poetry, that is, Heavensgate, he takes the reader into the

mythic world of the traditional goddess Idoto. He writes: “Before you mother Idoto / naked I

stand; before your watery presence, a prodigal” (6). At this level, he surrenders himself to the

legendary power of the Idoto goddess eulogising the “oil bean”, the “tortoise” and the

“python” which are totems for her worship. Ali Mazrui, in The Trial of Christopher Okigbo

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recognises the central role that Igbo mythology occupies in the world view of Okigbo’s poetry

when he remarks that, “Idoto was the goddess of Okigbo’s community in Ijoto with her shrine

beside a sacred river…the oil bean had an intricate sacred symbolism” (53). Firm in his view

that he was powered by a force beyond the ordinary eye, Okigbo began to wound his way into

a local mythological journey in the form of a traditional pilgrimage that was also symbolic of

the continent’s much needed return to her cultural roots after the wanton cultural imperialism

perpetrated by the colonialists. Having established the central importance of the Idoto goddess

at Heavensgate, Okigbo then uses incantatory language of a praise singer variously referring

to the goddess as the “Oblong – headed Lioness” (“Siren Limits”), “Anna at the knobs of the

panel oblong” (“The Passage”) and finally invoking the spirit of the goddess to protect him.

He writes:

Time for worship:

Anna of the Panel oblongs

Protect me

From them fucking angels. (Newcomer, 17)

From the above observation, one notices that the Idoto mythology is employed not for its

own sake. In using the goddess as a personal symbol, elevating it to a saviour, it emerges as a

force representing the protection of indigenous cultures and religions from westernization.

Heavensgate thus marked his return to the African part of his heritage and self renewal before

the goddess of the earth, Idoto.

Elsewhere, as in “Limits V”, the poet takes the reader not only to the powerful marine

influences of the goddess but to ancient Egyptian folklore and Mesopotamia civilization. He

states:

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Oblong headed Lioness

No shield is proof against her

Wound me, o sea weed.

When you have finished

And done up my stitches

Wake me near the alter

And this poem will be finished…. (24)

One wound have expected the poet to talk of waking him at the shrine. Yet he talks of an

“alter”, a word synonymous with Christian ritual worship. But the point he underscores here

is the limitless power of the goddess who seems to be carrying out a surgical operation on the

pilgrim – initiate, to ensure that he is clean enough for acceptance into the shrine. Displaying

a very rich scholarly bent, Okigbo lures the reader into the mythical universe of the Egyptian

pharaohs and their ancient mamelukes. He intimates: “On an empty sarcophagus / hewn out of

alabaster / a branch of fennel on an / empty sarcophagus” (28). Using a footnote, he remarks

that the sarcophagus represents the “body of one of the Egyptian Pharaohs which is said to

have metamorphosed into a fennel branch” (28). This instance, like many others,

demonstrates the wide intellectual presence of Okigbo’s poetry establishing him as one of the

grandmasters in the art of modern African poetry.

As a mark of honour for one of the pioneer visionaries in African poetry, he was

awarded first prize in poetry at a Conference in African writing in Senegal in 1966 but

rejected it on grounds that no such thing existed as Negro Arts. He had once asserted, as Ali

Mazrui observes, that: “There is no African Literature. There is good writing and bad writing,

that’s all” (The Trial..., 70). So, rather than accept the prize offered him, “…his answer had

45

once again the aggressive fanaticism of the paramount Universalist. He had proclaimed.

‘There is no such thing as Negro Art’ ” (70).

This is typical of the aura of controversy that often surrounded the talented young

poet. The African myths in his poetry, whether those borrowed from Igbo cosmology or

Ancient Egyptian civilization, showed his attachment and unwavering struggle for African

nationalism, yet he refused the concept of negritude on grounds that it was a romantic pursuit

of the mystique of Blackness. He would definitely have been at odds with Molefi Kete Asante

who argues in Afrocentricity that

On another level, somewhat related is the idea of negritude

expounded by African writers trying to explicate the peculiar

dimensions of the African personality. With negritude…we get

another indication of how the rise of Black spirits will interact with

Africans. (70)

What seems rather fascinating, whether all African scholars settle for, or reject the concept of

negritude, is the fact that most of the early African writers, consciously or unconsciously,

were in search of a union with their being, and by consequence, established a mode of writing

that showed signs of a mythical reunion with their roots. This is what Okigbo largely does in

his early poems, namely: “Distances” and “Limits”.

In his later poetry, however, particularly that concerned with Nigerian post

independence trauma, he abandons the local myths drawn from his immediate cultural

environment and opts for a more militant approach. He explores the thunder motif in almost

the same manner like T. S Eliot. Nkengasong examines this aspect of the thunder motif in

Eliot’s poetry as a borrowing from Oriental myths. He indicates that “Eliot uses Oriental

Myths in “What the thunder Said”, using Hindu concepts of “Da, Datta, Dayadvam” which

means ‘give”, ‘sympathise’ and ‘control” (23). An ardent admirer of Eliot, this mythical

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concept of the power of thunder to sort out perpetrators of evil and punish them is explored. It

is believed, in most cultures in Africa, that thunder possesses the mythical power of justice

and has been extensively used in some communities to exorcise it of those who perpetuate

evil with impunity. The Path of Thunder poems are “Poems prophesying war” Here the poet

starts by enacting the horrifying power of Thunder. In “Thunder Can Break”, he shows that

thunder certainly does not break innocents; it breaks the nation looters whose obituary he

writes in the following highly charged words: “Bring them out we say, bring them out/faces

and hands and feet – Lo your hostages/Thunder can break – Earth, bind me fast” (63).

The nation looters, the “elephants” have all been taken hostage by thunder and

lumped together in the same cage, waiting for the people’s jungle power to be exercised.

Continuing with almost the same fiery frame of mind, the poet again celebrates the coming of

thunder in “Hurrah for thunder” (67). Here, he does not only show the futility of the art of

government as practised by the neo colonial elite, he makes prophetic statements that

foreshadow his impending fall amidst the carnage. He quips:

Today – for tomorrow, today becomes yesterday.

How many million promises can ever fill a basket?

If I don’t learn to shut my mouth, I’ll soon go to hell

I, Okigbo, town-crier, together with my iron bell. (67)

He had become the self-declared “town-crier” with his “iron-bell” haranguing and warning

the blood-thirsty Politicians that the time of reckoning was rife. “Elegy for Alto” is the last

poem under the collection Path of Thunder. The poem is widely read today as the poet’s “last

testament” embodying his own prophecy as a sacrificial lamb for human freedom. He wrote

this of the politicians before concluding with the prophecy of his own impending death:

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The ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps…

POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps…

The ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter…

O mother earth, unbind me; let this be

My last testament let this be

The ram’s hidden wish to the sword’s

Secret prayer to the scabbard. (72)

The fact that the poet aggressively capitalises words like “ROBBERS”,

“POLITICIANS”, shows his distaste for their acts against the nation. The Nigerian crisis had

indeed come to a head by 1966 with the massacre of thousands of Igbos in the North. Living

in Ibadan then, Okigbo relocated to Eastern Nigeria to await the outcome of events and with

the declaration of the independent state of Biafra on May 30, 1967, full scale war ensued. The

poet immediately joined the new state’s army as a major and was killed at the Nsuka front in

1967. Ali Mazrui, as a moving tribute to him, enacted a post humus trial of him on the

following count: “Okigbo gave his life to the concept of Biafra…that was a mortal concept,

transient to his inner being. No great artist has the right to carry patriotism to the extent of

destroying his creative potential; Okigbo subordinated the interests of generations of Africans

to the needs of a collection of Igbos at an isolated moment in historical time (41). Whether

right or wrong in his political and military options, Okigbo’s verse is widely enjoyed for its

local mythological essence, but in the Path of Thunder Poems, he showed signs of

indebtedness to Eliot’s exploration of Oriental concepts of thunder. Yet this is used in an

African cosmological sense to fish out the “ROBBERS”, masquerading as politicians, and

bring them to book. As noted earlier, Okigbo was the son of a Catholic convert, which may

explain why his poetry equally has a touch of ancient Christian myths.

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Opinion is divided about the essence of Christian myths in the poetry of Okigbo and

this in itself is fundamental to the understanding of his divided personality and creative

philosophy. He had noted that “A poet writes poetry and once a work is published, it becomes

public property. It’s left to whoever reads it to decide whether it’s African poetry or English”

(4/8). With this frame of mind, while some scholars adamantly argue that the poet’s use of

traditional myths is to suggest profound hatred for Christian myths, others think that he had

foreseen, like Achebe in Arrow of God, that a selective blend of indigenous and foreign

religions was inevitable. It suffices then to quote the conflicting opinions of two leading

Nigerian scholars, Romanus Egudu and Wole Ogundele. In “The Defence of Culture in the

Poetry of Christopher Okigbo”, Egudu writes in African Literature Today: “Christopher

Okigbo’s reaction to the Christianity that has suppressed his home religion and its gods is that

of contempt and sharp criticism” (17). On the other hand, argues Ogundele in “From the

Labyrinth to the Temple: The structure of Okigbo’s Religious Experience”:

Okigbo’s poetry…demonstrates in the process that all religions,

indigenous or foreign, collective or personal, have a common structure

or experience, that religious experience can be synonymous with

aesthetic experience and too that the language of religion can also be

the language of poetry. (58)

The statement is very important in that it recognises the uniqueness of each religion and more

so, that the ritual and mythical language of religion can indeed be the language of poetry.

Okigbo is adept at often twisting this aspect of Christian mythology with the language of the

local cult of Idoto.

Right from the introductory word to Labyrinths, the poet writes that “The

progression through, “Limits” and “ Distances” is like telling the beats of a rosary (xiv). He

establishes the fact that he is on a local pilgrimage to seek union with his roots but must “tell

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the beats of a rosary” in the course of the penitent journey. This is synonymous with the

Christian concept of repentance often preceded by the telling of the rosary. From this point

throughout, one is constantly brought to the presence of Christian mythical practices. After

the departure point at Heavensgate, the poet persona passes though a crypt labyrinth before

forging a union with his goddess at the “ Newcommer”, but the language used here is one that

is reminiscent of Christian form of worship. He states: “Softly sing the bells of exile/the

angelus/ softy sings my guardian angel (16). Moving a little forward, the poet in his

characteristic controversial manner, dismisses the angels and invokes the spirit of his goddess

in the following words:

Anna of the panel oblongs

protect me

From them fucking angels

Protect me

My sand house and bones. (17)

Whatever the case, the poet at one point or the other, finds succour in Christian myths. “The

angelus” quoted above is a typical Catholic prayer usually said at midday or midnight to

remind faithfuls of the mystique of the annunciation and conception of the Holy Virgin Mary.

Yet, that the poet immediately contradicts the redemptive power of the “angelus”, the

“guardian angel”, dismissing them as “fucking angels” in preference of “Ana of the Panel

oblongs”, lends credit to the view he held, that a writer is free to draw images from varied

sources to avoid being tagged with a single cannon of judgement.

Elsewhere, after establishing the concomitant presence of an alien religion spreading

very fast as seen in “John the Baptist /preaching the gambit (“Limits, vi”), the poet then falls

back on the Babylonian experience of captivity to underscore the frightful fate that awaits his

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community. He states: “For we sense with dog-nose a Babylonian capture/ the martyrdom/

Blended into that chaliced vintage” (46). In Christendom, martyrs are those who give their

lives for their strong religious views. One may then say that rather than just make reference to

Christian values, Okigbo is actually in the process of myth making, blending the abstract and

the real, creating order through disorder, mixing the language of Catholicism as inherited

from his family in Ojoto with the occult language of the Idoto priesthood. Towards the end of

Labyrinths, the Pilgrims are in progress and whether or not they are traditional or Christian

pilgrims, is exactly one of the sources of controversy and obscurity. The poet writes:

In the scattered line of pilgrims bound for shibboleth

In the scattered line of pilgrims from Dan to Beersheba

Prophets martyrs lunatics

Like the long stride of the evening. (22)

It is important to note the kind of personalities that mix in this journey to “shibboleth” or

“Beersheba”. They are prophets, martyrs and lunatics. These Christian symbols are so

intricately mixed with traditional myths that they become dominant rites akin to traditional

African religion. The scattered sources that inform Okigbo’s poetry are summed up in the

following statement by Ali Mazrui:

Okigbo himself had acknowledged his debt to a variety of literatures

and cultures, from classical times to the present day, in English, Latin,

Greek...if these sources have become assimilated into an integral

whole, it is difficult to sort them out, to know where the Babylonian

influence ends and the classical starts. (71)

This statement speaks much about the divided allegiances in his poetry, validating the point

that he often claimed, that he was a “universalist” and not merely an Igbo or an African poet

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but a modern writer experimenting with all cultures and mythologies as seen in the analysis

above. As noted earlier, Besong later got fascinated by the craft of Okigbo; his love for

abstract concepts as well as the musical qualities of his poetry so that in his own poetry, he

often demonstrates the influence of the former. The second part of this chapter examines this

aspect

Besong’s intellectual, cultural and scholarly experience prepared him for a versatile

experimentation with different forms of folklore and myths. Born of the Kenyang ethnic

group in Cameroon, but educated in Nigerian Universities during the hay days of Soyinka’s

influence, Besong received enough fortification that later saw him adopting warrior gods like

Obasinjom, Mfam, Emanya Nkpe and Soyinka’s Ogun in a mythical sense to engage in a

battle with the Cameroonian political class whom he believed are powered by the cult of free

masons (Disgrace, “State of the Union” 80-81, and “Their champagne Party will End” (88-

89). In an article, entitled “Post Re-Unification Anglophone Exile Poetry: Introducing Simon

Mol and Kangsen Feka Wakai”, Besong indicates that “Poetry then, is the way in which the

myth maker relates to the political and economic conditions of his society as a means of

communicating shared experiences” (1/6). With this in mind, he was actually in the business

of myth making not for its sake but as a means of communicating “shared experiences” with a

community that he considered to have fallen into apathy and whose history, due to political

affiliations, had been “politically doctored” (Mbulai, 9) in order to perpetuate their continued

suffering. However, towards the end of his life, he became much more profound and

impatient, switching to a Biblical aura of speech much like Hebrew prophets, sounding a

discordant note to wicked persons and coming to terms with his mortality. Traditional myths

shall be examined before the Christian influences.

In most of his creative works, the Obasinjom traditional cult has often been elected as

a mythical force to bring order and justice to the deprived and persecuted. Thought to have

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originated from the Cross River area of Nigeria and Cameroon, the Obasinjom is reputed to

identify witches and wizards and strip them of evil. That is why in the very first poem in

Disgrace, “The Foolishness of trusting in tribal gods,” Besong goes berserk with a self styled

evil genius, who, particularly at the University of Buea, stifled creativity, suppressed dissident

voices and reduced the administration to a clique of occult members worshiping “tribal gods,”

using the following items for worship: “internal organs/of the warthog/the liver and two

kidneys with fat / on them”, these are sacrificed to the “tribal adders” (3). The poet moves on

to mourn his fate in the following words: “My daughters have endured the suffering that/

should have been mine the pain that I should have borne (3). Yet, he recognises the futility of

the effort of trusting in gods made with human hands which invariably are plastic in nature

and worthless in value. He indicates this in the following words: “they who / had hired a

goldsmith to make a god / of a murderer” (3). These gods, he thinks, will never attain the

sublimity and strength of the Obasinjom war lord. He states:

How can you say you have not defiled yourself?

They are not Obasinjom warriors, who

clothe themselves with the strong

desire to set things right

and to punish and avenge the wrongs

that the people suffer .(5)

The poem states the vast contrast between lesser deities, often with malevolent powers whose

desire is to continuously persecute the just; as against the Obasinjom warrior whose sublime

quality lies in avenging “the wrongs /that the people suffer (5).

Confident in his own cult supremacy, the poet warns the evil doer that “You can

do absolutely / nothing / A stooge has no / honour. / He lives in constant disgrace” (8). These

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are very strong words of foreboding reminiscent of the perilous times within which they were

written. Coming at the hills of the University of Buea heated crisis of 2005, the Governor

Aboeum A Tchoyi Commission was to consider the poet “righteous” enough to pacify

students on rampage, a thing that later back fired leading to his persecution and witch hunt.

The poet then found succour in the Obasinjom deity, empowering it to dismantle a huge

occultic mafia within the academy so that “playwrights / and scholars will possess / this

campus /and enjoy intellectual prosperity and Peace” (“The playwright and he campus

Giants,”15). The same temper and word choice run throughout the other poems in the

collection. Besong had earlier remarked that at a time when direct expression was needed, the

poet no longer sought “refuge behind aesthetics that were enigmatic and indirect” (118),

rather the language became synonymous with a mythology, at times the languor that spoke of

the writer’s confrontation with a politically partisan administration. In the poem “The Mouths

of Liars will be shut”, for example, he adopts a style of cursing that reminds one of Soyinka’s

“Malediction”, a piece that curses a woman for rejoicing at the massacre of her follow

countrymen. In “The Mouths…” as seen elsewhere too, he considers that the University

administrators under whom he worked, found fortification through the “worship of fortune –

tellers / and excelled in necromancy to control events” (9). Consequently, such perpetrators

of evil are reminded of the perilous times that lie ahead. He warns:

You are doomed,

and you have brought this upon yourself

What you have done to others will be done to your

Children, and

Grand-children to the third and fourth

Generations. (9)

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This is a very dark prophecy that foreshadows misery to the successive generations of an

administrator; like original sin, the children and grand children will live to atone for the

casualties inflicted on others by their forebears. In such climates, warns the seer, the “strength

of wotolo astrologers” (11) will be insignificant to the people-power, when Obasinjom would

have done justice for them. Mbulai, in this line, espouses Besong’s views, when he says “he

later became very versatile in his last days as he sensed his own closed world collapsing,

going berserk under mammonite pressures, so in his vision to bring sanity to a society

wallowing in obscurity, one gets the echoes of Yoruba Mythology, of the spell of Ogun, the

promethean hero in Yoruba pantheon one of whose attributes is the shielding of orphans”

(141).

Besong’s traditional myths as noted before, are scattered along the corridors of his

versatile cultural experience, himself alleged to be a disciple of some metaphysical cosmic

force among the Kenyang people, and which he considered to be righteous, he would use this

to vent his crusading sprint against worshipers of malevolent gods and fortune tellers whose

words and prophecy are of no consequence. It is in this light that in poems like

“Appointments in UB” and “Confidence placed in the Party comes to nothing” that the poet is

on an exorcising mission, in a mythical sense, challenging the academia to stand up and make

right choices. In the former poem, for example, he warns “lecturers, whose/rheumy psyche

still bear the scars of occult cannibalism” (22). In the latter poem, he vents his anger at those

who claim to be “fortified, by / the intercession of futurologists, at the champagne / party of

chronic carnivores, in the firmament of power” (27). This is the kind of fierce spirit that

guides most of the sixteen auto-biographical narcissus poems; poems that speak of

persecution and victimization in an environment that should be guided by free thought, non

partisan politics and intellectual prosperity. In trying to purge this kind of society of its

inclemencies, Besong resorted to traditional myths borrowed from his cultural background.

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The Emnaya-Nkpe collected poems on the other hand, are different in that their

setting, by way of geography and time, is not narrowed down to the confines of the

University. Some of the poems, having earlier been published in Just Above Cameroon,

speak, as the title suggests, of the kleptocratic inclemencies of the political elite on the

Cameroonian people. To break through this kind of labyrinth, he fortifies himself, in line with

Eunice Ngong Kum’s view in her article “Revolutionary Aesthetics in Dramaturgy”, that, a

writer is “prophet, philosopher and patriot” (44). Besong again empowers himself with the

mythology of the Emanya – Nkpe cult. This cult is believed to be a Leopard-like secret

society open only to men and is in charged of law and order in society. With this kind of

fortification, the poet begins to challenge the “free masons”, a cult that many think is part of a

large clique of an epicurean class of insensitive politicians to the hew and cry of the citizenry.

In “Their Champagne Party Will End”, for instance, the poet states:

Indeed, they have sworn fealty to their Masonic lodges

and to each to bankrupt our national coffers.

So that they’ll take it upon themselves, for reasons

best known to themselves to speak the folklore of their free-masonry

(they barricade / themselves on the coast).

Their champagne party will end. (89)

The quotation speaks of Besong’s prophetic bent of mind, always contemplating and

predicting trouble for looters of state coffers. Mbulai has rightly argued that this poem is

“peopled by insensitive, sadistic and corrupt banditti and their hapless, suffering citizens,

watching their oil wealth sponged to feed metropolitan neo colonial coffers” (134). This

statement is indeed a great summation, but what is worthy of note too is Besong’s

consciousness of occult practice as one of the apparatus for political gansterism. Enacted

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during the bitter days of economic trauma, the opposite of what was the bloated flatulence of

ill gotten wealth starched in foreign banks, the poet-prophet could not but challenge the “free-

masonry” that even Mephistopheles found an end despite the obsession of his intellect;

consequently, their champagne party will end! So strong is this prophecy that the poem would

later become the title of a collection of poems in Besong’s honour, Their Champagne Party

Will End!

The same frame of mind is seen in poems like “The Party’s Over” and “Requiem for a

sycophantic Omenologist.” In the latter poem, Mbulai argues that it shows the naïve optimism

of the poet following President Ahidjo’s resignation on November 4th, 1982, and adds that

“…with hindsight now we can rightly qualify as misplaced the shrill optimism in the advent

of a new dawn that was not destined to be” (135). Read differently, though, one still finds the

poet’s scepticism with the over jubilant masses during President Ahidjo’s power transition

and warns that:

The neon-suburbia of free-masons

where; they embrace their ouran-outangspell

of an alliance.

To the Euro-Reagnite transnational

Chancelleries

which sensor our coasts. (92)

Despite this sense of foreboding, the poet like many, initially expressed his happiness that

“the shah had to flee ( 92), that is, the prolonged stay of the first president of Cameroon, in

power, and the subsequent transition came as a welcome relief to many. But the “neon-

suburbia of free-masons” is again brought in for exorcism.

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In the former poem, that is, “Requiem for a sycophantic Omenologist,” almost

the same idea is raised, but with the profounder indictment of the political actors of

Anglophone Cameroon who “sold” their compatriots for pieces of silver. Mbulai once again

indicates that the poem speaks of the “infamous political trajectory of Solomon Tandeng

Muna, who rightly or wrongly, was perceived by Cameroonians West of the Margo as having

colluded with Ahidjo in dismantling the state of West-Cameroon …” (127). The poet, states:

Compatriots, the hour has come for the surrogate Omenologist of the

Macabre Imam hired from the West of River Mongo.

He is to disappear soon into his voodoo mask.

Here is the time compatriots: As he jumps into his free mason.

To pull off his iron mask at once…. (97)

As a footnote, this poem is dedicated to P.M. Kale, S.A George whom he considers unsung

heroes of West Cameroon, but he is once again at war with “Omenologists”, “free masons”

and those who wear “voodoo masks” to strip the people of their rightful place in the

historiography of the Cameroonian nation. It is the mythical power of the Emanya-Nkpe,

Mfam, Ogun and Obasinjom that come to his aid in this daunting mission.

Not withstanding his fluid exploration of traditional myths, Besong still extensively

blends these with Christian myths making his poetry somewhat difficult to tie down to single

cannon. Like his muse Okigbo, Besong at times found succour in the word of scripture so

strong that he would assume the aura of ancient Biblical prophets speaking out in the

wilderness of suffering against collective pain. Bernard Fonlon, had rightly argued in The

Genuine Intellectual that,

…a maker of great literature thanks to his scientific and

philosophical bent of mind becomes a seer…into the illusive

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future, a light in the darkness of his days urging men towards

right and rewarding achievement and rich fulfilment, or warning

society should the need arise against impending cataclysm. (132-

133)

Besong’s Disgrace, is essentially fashioned in this philosophy, warning society, in the

same tone and diction of Jeremiah, the ancient Hebrew prophet, who, powered by God, spent

his time struggling to get Israel out of “impending cataclysm”. This perhaps explains why

Mbulai argues that Besong’s prophetic power manifested itself from the very early moments

in his work, “which would towards the closing days of his life, develop into a mature,

profounder trait, even colouring his work in terms of its apocalyptic vision and his debt to the

gnomic idiom and imagery of the grand tradition of Hebrew prophecy (133). Jeremiah was

obsessed, with his community’s perversion and their worship of fortune tellers ignoring the

Almighty God. In almost the same manner, Besong speaks with much bewilderment of “The

Foolishness of Trusting in Tribal gods”. Just like what is enacted in Jeremiah 2: 23-24, that

“How can you say, I have not defiled myself after the Baals…?” Besong poses a similar

question to an administrator – cum - fortune teller worshiper, that “how / can you say you

have not defiled / yourself? (“The foolishness…” (5)). These are thoughts borne of frustration

and disillusionment. But rather than just maintain the cadence of Biblical language, the poet

lapses into the self righteous Obasinjom cult as an ultimate way to salvation.

The style of cursing that the poet adopts in a poem like “The mouths of liars will be

shut” is nothing short of ancient Hebrew myths and cultures. Provoked by the callous

exhibition of human indifference to suffering and neglect, Soyinka’s “Malediction” would not

have been better when the poet states:

What you have done to others will be done to your children

and grand-children

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to the third and fourth generation.

Your ears will be dead to the Oboso and motion de

Soutien to son Excellence

Le Président Biya et Madame Chantal Biya à. (9)

While it is true that the poet had sensed his own close world collapsing and would therefore

adopt the tone and hew of Hebrew seers, it is equally true that the allusions and some

expressions are contemporaneous to the time and mode of composition. A system that

sustains itself through ceaseless “motion de soutiens”, calculated character assassination, the

poet argues that his aesthetic power, must be adequately toned down to capture the temper of

the moment.

In “Collaborator”, the compositional strategy still speaks of Biblical warnings, that has

let Mbulai, once more to intimate that

“…One gets the final impression of a confectioning of

aesthetic influences whose provenance is to be traced to the

combination of impatience and lament in the tone of the

grand prophets of the Hebrew tradition to the themes of

compassion and magnanimity central to the evangelium of

the New Testament”.(140)

Talking of compassion as the milk of human kindness, or the lack of it, the poet writes the

following moving lines: “You cannot offer mercy or give help to widows and orphans. /You

cannot restore sight to the blind or save anyone in distress (7). These lines still reveal

Besong’s mix of religions and cultures; firm in his view about God’s supreme power and a

Catholic at that, he would still fall back on Ogun, one of whose qualities is the shielding of

orphans and consolation of widows.

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When Besong died suddenly on March 8, 2007, newspaper reviews spoke of his power

of prophecy and his unlimited exploitation of Biblical truths which he put to the service of his

art and community. The Post Newspaper of March 2007, for example, captioned such titles

like: “Bate Besong: The Man, His ideas, His vision and His Life” by Babila Mutia, “Bate

Besong: Jeremiah in Cameroon” by Innocent Futcha “Farewell Master of Obscurantism” by

Azore Opio. Most of these articles at one point or the other recognised the “obscure” power of

his expression, his mix of Christian and pagan language and his ability to foreshadow his end

like he wrote in “Mamfe, this Time Tomorrow”, pondering on his imminent transition home:

These…

Seem to be weeping:

“Mamfe, why was this, why this was so?”

Come home my Darling

Mamfe, this time tomorrow. (106)

Mamfe is Besong’s home town. Eulogising his hometown here and mourning her fate, the

poet prophetically submits his mortal self to Mamfe, contemplating the hour mourners will be

in grief as the writer finally transits to his final resting place.

To conclude this chapter, it suffices then to quote once more from Nkengasong’s

exploration of myths in the Poetry of Yeats and Eliot. He writes: “Yeats uses Biblical and

Irish myths but where he attempts a more profound vision into the unknown, he discards all

that is, and all that has been, to concentrate on his creations (139). Myths have the power of

taking one into the metaphysical, the supernatural so that the ordinary reader usually stands in

awe and bewilderment. Okigbo refused to be “stereotyped” on a single canon as an African

poet; itself the bane of controversy, arguing rather, as it were, that he was a Universalist. His

African myths speak of his touch with traditional Igbo cults, yet his mixing of Christian

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language and exploration of the thunder motif, like Eliot, established him as one of the most

controversial poets in recent times. Besong was equally to fall into this mystique, this time not

discarding the existence of African Literature, but showing his obsession with injustice in all

forms. He would adopt the mythology of Ogun, Mfam, and Obasinjom with the view to

dismantling the “free masons” and ardent worshippers of “futurologists” in his community. At

the close of his life however, he found succour, more than ever before, with the word of

scripture and mode of expression of Hebrew seers. The next chapter then props into their

vision; was Okigbo right fighting for Biafra at the detriment of art? Was Besong equally a

secessionist as some considered him? The next chapter examines these aspects.

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CHAPTER THREE

AUTHORIAL IDEOLOGY

Most literary historians, scholars and writers often argue that some of the best literary works

are written from a background of collective social pain and at times political intolerance. In

such climates, argue such scholars, the writer is often actively aroused to operate not only as a

chronicler of his/her time but to assume the role of a socio-political path finder, trying to give

focus and hope to the people in whose behalf he / she writes. Wole Soyinka is very firm in

this view. Ali Mazrui in The Trial, commenting on Soyinka, asserts:

Where the writer in his own community can no longer function as

conscience, he must recognise that his choice lies between denying

himself totally or withdrawing to the position of chronicler and post

mortem surgeon…the writer has often functioned in his society as

the voice of vision in his own time. (89)

In viewing the role of the writer/poet as adumbrated by Soyinka, one is then going to situate

Okigbo’s and Besong’s much contested and debated poetic and “military” visions borne out

of their almost uncompromising views that a poet must not only be a master of his craft but

should stake his own life for mankind’s ultimate salvation.

It is true that the whole body of Okigbo’s poetry is an elaborate epic that captures

the heady days of colonial influence through the post independence mafia of the Tafawa

Balewa and the General Ironsi’s years in office before culminating with the civil war. But the

great burden of his consciousness lies within the confines of the Igbo world view within the

Nigerian nation; their unprecedented genocidal slaughter that troubled most men of

conscience, the consequence of which was the declaration of the independent state of Biafra.

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Therefore, in studying the ideology of Okigbo in this chapter, one shall examine his earlier

poetic assemblage that spoke of his unwavering view of a unified brotherhood and a unified

nation that unfortunately was raped by the looters for office. This is seen in the poems in

Silences. However, this vision for a unified nation began to wane when the “Cain” brothers in

Nigeria began a ferocious attempt at Igbo annihilation. Okigbo was radicalised; his poetry

was then charged with blood and the artist himself was fell by bullets fighting for Biafra. This

is one of the controversies raised in this chapter, namely, as Mazrui argues, that no artist has

the right to carry patriotism beyond the conceivable constraints of his art.

On a similar note, much like Soyinka’s fiery rebuttal, Besong had argued in 1993, in

his keynote address titled: “Literature in the Season of the Diaspora: Notes to the Anglophone

Cameroon Writer”, that

True, the power of the writer is not always strong enough to change

the political and social situation of his time but his art can become a

fighting Literature, he can write works which are artistically profound

and politically correct. He can write works of indictment…which show

how his world is or could be. (35)

Besong’s mind, much like his art, was constantly a “fighting” one. It may be no exaggeration

if one posits that, much as Besong was obsessed by injustice elsewhere in Africa, as in

Nigeria, his academic abode, his world view was largely centred on the Anglophone

Cameroon question in Cameroon. When he once quipped that “I can sell Cameroon for less

than Asomou’s whisky, so I will not say I am a nationalist as such, for I am definitely a

patriot of the Southern Cameroons, not “La Republique”(2/6), many are those who easily got

carried away and stigmatised him with subversive secessionist politics. This is the second

controversy raised in this chapter. That is to say, the Cameroonian political experience as

transmuted in Besong’s poetic vision often carries with it the overall controversy of the

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Cameroonian nation taking into consideration the two culturally distinct entities: English and

French Cameroon. The Biafran situation is also very much similar and it is a subject treated

by many scholars.

Ali Mazrui’s book, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo which throws light to some of the

central arguments raised in this chapter, is a very controversial and intriguing piece of

literature. Okigbo is tried in the “Hereafter” but the book is nothing short of an extensive

evaluation of the poet’s creative vision. Mazrui initially recognises the fact that

Okigbo had inner commitment to the concept of one Nigeria, but until

1966 his disenchantment with events in Nigeria was the

disenchantment of a Nigerian rather than an Igbo. But the Northern

Massacres of May and September had been profoundly disturbing to

many an Igbo intellectual. (125)

This view is made in connection and as a repellent to those who considered Okigbo’s poetry

to have been tragically guided by a sectarian and tribal Igbo consciousness. In corroboration,

Osita Ebiem, in his article entitled “Biafra: Why Okigbo went to War”, indicates from the

outset that “…When Okigbo refused to accept the Poetry Prize in Dakar 1966, it was because

for him, there should be one world standard with which to measure every art as well as the

other areas of human endeavours. So he would not have his works stratified into any narrow

field of Black or Negro art” (4/9). When one reads the poetry of Okigbo that greeted the dawn

of Nigerian independence, one is indeed in the presence of a “Supreme Universalist” (The

Trial 128), one so bothered with the collective struggle of Nigerians of all tribal and regional

lineages to dismantle the bloated flatulence and indolence of those in high office who mocked

the very ideals of the common wealth. Perhaps, a few references to Silences is germane to

buttressing this claim.

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Silences is divided into two sections: “Lament of the Silent Sisters” and “Lament of

the Drums”. In the former, the sisters mourn and lament the fate of the young nation. The

diction, images and allusions in the poem show that it is about the various crises which

characterised the politics of Nigeria’s first Republic which culminated in the first coup let by

the Majors in January 1966. The sisters lament in the following word: “Crier: They struck him

in the ear they struck him in the eye/ they picked his bones for scavenging” (40).

The “him” in question above is the personification of the young nation that has been

struck by greedy politicians. In the midst of this national greed, the poet begins to conjure

images of thunder that could possibly blow the looters off the rails. No doubt, he poses the

question: “And how does one say No in thunder?” (43). In “Laments of the Drums IV”, the

poet is as mournful as usual, but it is that kind of mournfulness that is informed by a radical

bent of mind whereby he begins to sense military action as a means to free the nation from the

socio political imbroglio. Contemplating the nation to have been caught in a cul de sac, the

writer states: “And to the Distant – how shall we go/ The robbers will strip us of our

thunder…” (49).The robbers in question have left the children of Nigeria in ruins. The

following images confirm this view:

The wailing is for the field of men:

For the barren wedded ones;

for the perishing children…

The wailing is for the Great River.

Her pot-bellied watchers

Despoil her…. (50)

The “silent sisters”, much like the “drums,” lament inconsolably for the Great River, Nigeria

which has been despoiled by the men in office. The drums do not sing of peace or feasting but

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of war and death, a thing contemporaneous to the mode of the nation following the run up to

the coup that ousted Tafawa Balewa, quickly followed by a counter coup that equally bloodily

ousted General Ironsi from office.

It is important to note the kind of plural society that is Nigeria, whereby political issues

needed to be carefully handled by men of great vision. Mazrui has indicated that rather than a

blessing, the pluralism was more of a curse. He writes: “Nigeria came into being: Islam, Euro

Christianity and indigenous traditions struggled to forge a new personality in single nation”

(143). Therefore, any outright form of regional politics was but a time bomb that could arouse

general disillusionment. Since “every work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy for every

work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image” (144), it would be seen that Okigbo’s

Silences was but the fulfilment of the prophecy of an embattled nation struggling to contain a

sociologically complex polity in the midst of unimaginable looting of state coffers. Achebe

had equally predicted trouble for the nation in A Man of the People when he strongly

observed that “After seven years of lethargy, any action seemed welcome and desirable; the

country was ripe and impatient to shed in violent exercise the lazy folds of flappy skin and fat

it had put on in the greedy years of indolence (100).

Much in resonance with the above view, “the fighting that broke out… lit a tinder of

discontent in the land (Achebe, 143), and so the Nigerian nation erupted into a paroxysm of

ethnic discontent and genocidal cleansing, which equally warranted a fierce change of mood

in Okigbo’s creative images and his irresistible involvement in the war of secession

championed by the Biafrans. This is one of the controversies of modern times. The question

many have posed is this: is there a boundary between the artist / poet, his art and the society

from where he/she emerges? Okigbo invariably married the three aspects especially in the

poems prophesying war, that is, Path of Thunder. The images and word choice in the Path of

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Thunder collection speak largely of blood shed. He so happily welcomes this in the poem

“Come thunder”. He states:

Now that the triumphant march has entered the last street

Corners,

Remember o dancers, the thunder among the clouds…

The smell of blood already floats in the lavender-mist of

the afternoon

The death sentence lies in ambush along the corridors

of power (66).

In the midst of this disenchantment, the nation is then reduced to a jungle where there is a free

for all display of cannibalistic power: “The snake says to the squirrel / I will swallow you / the

mangoose says to the/ snake / I will mangle you / the elephant says to the mongoose/ I will

strangle you” (70). Was the poet then going to stay aloof from the hot issues of his time by

withdrawing into the limbo of simply documenting the tragedy of the time? Okigbo, firm in

his view that any attempt to divorce the artist from society amounted to a problematic surgical

operation, fleetingly made a statement that in some way, amounted to a threnody of grief for

the young poet. In “Elegy for Alto” he had stated: “O mother earth, unbind me/ let this be/my

last testament… (71). Whether Okigbo committed a blunder to have sided in military action

with the Biafrans as a means of consolidating his poetic convictions has been hotly debated.

Mazrui also argues that

A writer in Africa…needed to be socially committed if he was to

be universally engaged. Social commitment must not be confused

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with social conformity. A writer could be committed by opposing

the folly of his government or the intolerance of society. (89)

Seen in this light, Okigbo simply did not find any dichotomy between the artist and his vision

for the collective brotherhood of mankind. He was not a bloody tribalist, in order to be

“universally engaged,” he had to make a choice between the mundane and the sublime,

between mere poetic rhetoric and the fight for equality. Osita Ebiem, argued that “from the

month of May 1966, Okigbo watched with utmost dismay and disbelief as the Nigerian

government and all her citizens started out to kill every Igbo on sight and all those in hiding

in their bid to cleanse the Nigerian society of every trace of all Igbo People” (6/9).

The practical life of Okigbo; his marriage to a Northerner, his rejection of what he

considered a racially judged prize for his poetry spoke of his universal love for the human

race in general and his country in particular. But Ebiem’s observation above, necessitated a

volte face that some still consider today to be an error in judgment. As late as September 18th,

2010, speaking on the BBC as moderator for the International Playwriting competition, Wole

Soyinka, in his characteristic controversial manner still affirmed the position he held forty

years ago against his government for her policies towards the Igbo thereby reaffirming his

support for Biafra.

As noted before, Okigbo has come under a fierce boot of attacks for siding with a

group of persons fighting against a unified nation which in a way largely compromised his

earlier poetic stance. One of such persons who has brought the poet under the critical lenses of

artistic cross examination is Mazrui. As the title of his book suggests, The Trial of

Christopher Okigbo, the latter tries Okigbo on the count that he had subordinated the ideal of

Nigeria to the vision of Biafra and that he had decided that he was an Igbo first and an artist

second. Mazrui’s charge has the implication that the art of a great artist, of Okigbo’s

magnitude, usually transcends, or should transcend tribal loyalty, that is why on a very formal

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note; he challenges Okigbo in the following words: “Okigbo gave his life to the concept of

Biafra, that was a mortal concept, transient to his inner being. The art of the great poet on the

other hand, carries the seeds of immortality” (41). Okigbo was caught in a web of paradoxical

claims. By “refusing the prize fellow black people offered him, he was refusing to mix art

with nationalism. However, this same young man…later put on a uniform, helped himself to a

gun and engaged in a fratricidal war (The Trial, 70). The question still looms, was Okigbo’s

rejection of the prize for poetry a mark for his distaste for art and nationalism or a nagging

desire to establish a universal cannon for the judgment of art? By actively engaging himself in

the establishment of publishing houses, constantly warning his society of the dangers of

ethnic politics such as exemplified in Path of Thunder, Okigbo was then a nationalist at best.

His actions were in no way a romantic pursuit of fame for the sake of it.

Osita Ebiem is in a way, very fiercely critical of Mazrui’s seemingly contemptuous

comments on Okigbo’s actions. Ebiem writes that

Now, do we still hear Ali Mazrui and all the other lazy and careless

commentators who would never know the colour of freedom and

justice when they see it, pull up their chairs and cover their faces in

the most polluted veils of ignorance and bigotry and call to

judgement the meaning and efficacy of Okigbo’s self sacrifice? (8/9)

To Ebiem, Okigbo’s involvement in the war was in a bid to complete the “Biafran long poem

of liberty, justice, equality and prosperity for all” (9/9). His statement seems to corroborate

Soyinka’s view during the heady days of the struggle, that “Poets have lately taken to gun

running and others are accused of holding up radio stations. It is time for the poet to respond

to this essence of himself (The Trial, 90).

Like Okigbo, Soyinka had indeed responded to the “essence of himself” as a poet who

must speak up against injustice when other men stay docile, when in 1966 he testified against

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his government for her policies against the Igbos. In Before our very Eyes: Tribute to Wole

Soyinka, a book that celebrates Soyinka’s Nobel Prize, Olumuyiwa Awe, in his tribute entitled

“Before My Very Eyes”, states:

By the time of the second coup in July 1966, Wole told me that he had

arrived from the Eastern Region the day before the coup… After

Yakobu Gowon became Head of State as a result of the July 1966

Coup, Wole was incarcerated. (77)

Soyinka’s incarceration was consequent on his ability to bear bold testimony against injustice;

much like is manifested in his militant poetic vision. He is not of Igbo origin; otherwise he

would have fallen under the same accusation such as some have subjected Okigbo that he was

acting within the dictates of tribal moral obligations.

It could be argued then that, Okigbo’s poetic vision is very much a symbolic reflection

of the crisis of an individual and that of a community and a nation in general. Rather than

lazily remain a “post mortem surgeon”, the poet moved on to be a prophet, a “town crier”,

ready to “go to hell,” with his iron bell, urging the earth to “unbind” him so that, his

community could be free. So, much of the onerocritic symbols in his poetry speak largely of

the tragic options he had to take for after all, “by attempting to save his people, the Igbo,

Okigbo was in a profound sense also attempting to save his people’s enemies” (The Trial,

89).

On the other side of the coin is Besong’s much debated political millitantism which to a

large extent may be said to condense within the doorsteps of the Anglophone Cameroon

question before subsequently sprouting to other issues of national justice, the African political

experience and the essence of higher education. Much has been discussed about the

Anglophone experience, by sociologists, particularly Francis Nyamjoh, historians such as

Victor Ngoh, V G Fanso and literary men of all fortes. That Biafra fought to leave Nigeria

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was a consequence of some historical blackout, the question then is whether or not Besong’s

poetic vision has equally been in resonance with secession or has his been a questioning of

state policies that are aimed at cultural annihilation? Sometime in 2006, Besong wrote an

article titled “Welcome, Governor Eyeya Zanga” in which he insisted that

The foundation on which the Cameroonian Federation was built in 1961

was a power arrangement contoured to deal with a sociologically

complex polity as presented by our multi ethnic, linguistic and cultural

diversities. It was a kind of national integration that recognised the two

separate but equal parts and the central government in Amadou

Ahidjo’s Yaoundé as mutually coordinate and not as subordinate one to

the other. (1/6)

This statement is much in conformity with the kind of poetic and even dramatic philosophy

that Besong has throughout championed in his writing. In establishing his creative modus

operandi, he had earlier opted for a stance that would later bring him into conflict with state

security agents. In his keynote address “Literature in the Season of the Diaspora...” he insisted

that the poet “must be the visionary of living truth” (31) and so must never compromise with

the essence of truth and equality for all Cameroonians. On the Anglophone Cameroon

question, he declared:

The landscape of the three decades has ruthlessly shown up all our

political and economic illusion under the guise of the bicultural

character of the two unifying parts (Literature in the Season of the

Diaspora). (33)

In contemplating the way out of the deep rooted problem, the poet sounded mournful when he

remarked that “the agony of the Anglophone Cameroon question is, compounded by the

endless uncertainty as to whether there will ever be an end to it” (34). The question one may

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ask, is, what is Besong’s problem with being an Anglophone in Cameroon as reflected in his

poetry? Perhaps, reference to some of the poems in Disgrace will throw some light to this

question.

The subject matter of most of the Emanya Nkpe poems in Disgrace speak largely of

Besong’s vociferous attack and his agony over what he considers a complete obliteration of

Anglophone Cameroon legendary heroes while those who displayed “quisling characters” are

pedestaled. Equally, the poet speaks against the concept of national integration as it is

fashioned rather at cultural assimilation and brainwashing of Anglophones. In “The Grain of

Bobe Ngum Jua” for example, just like in “Requiem for a Sycophantic Omenologist”,

Besong’s poetic symbols dredge up the very foundation of the union between the two

Cameroons while paying tribute to the heroes who stood for the preservation of the English

Speaking value systems. In the “Grain…” for example, the poet writes:

When Bobe Augustine Ngum Jua died

The iguanas of our Cameroon history books

Who were left behind

Emerged from their prehistoric slime:

Crying Bobe’s fame. (102)

There could be nothing wrong with historians documenting “Bobe’s fame”, but the poet, just

like Mbulai has observed, is unusually critical of such historians who, due to political

affiliations, concentrate rather hypocritically in fanning such sentimental history that suggest

that Anglophone Cameroonians were worst off associating with Nigeria and should now

unquestionably accept those who saved them from the jaws of the Igbos! Mbulai writes:

We see Besong’s confrontation with history, affecting a revisonary

detour on our much doctored historiography which in chronicling our

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march in time sought, on the grounds of political ideology, to

obliterate the authentic heroes who sacrificed their lives in the national

cause while pedestaling those who had danced to the tune of the

colonial masters. (131)

The Anglophone Cameroonians who stood for the preservation of the Anglophone value

system are the likes of Jua, S.A George, P. M Kale but most have remained in obscurity. It is

on this grounds that the poet argues that they should be given their rightful position on the

pages of history.

On the contrary, the sycophants, who sided with the neo-colonialists are

paradoxically celebrated in history, but mocked by the poet in a poem like “Requiem for a

sycophantic Omenologist”. The poet considers the “sycophant” to be the

Omenologist of the macabre Imam

Hired from the West of river Mongo

Daylight robbery for the

Tottering quisling proxies. (97)

Mindful that a “quisling” is that unpardonable person who teams up with an occupying force

to betray his homeland, the poet is perhaps right in calling on his fellow comrades that the

time is rife to unmask the “wooden tiger”, who “colluded with Ahidjo in dismantling the state

of West Cameroon” (Mulai, 134).The scholar considers that the “quisling” in question is S.T

Muna, who, unfortunately today is one of the heroes in history books while Ngum Jua

remains in obscurity. Muna had tragically contributed to the tragedy that Fonlon had earlier

prophesied when he wrote in an article “We Will Make it or Mar” in ABBIA that

In three years of unification, Sundry uses and institutions, thanks to

articles five and six of the Federal Constitution have now come from

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the East into the West. Furthermore, in West Cameroon, they now

drive on the right, the franc has replaced the sterling as legal tender,

the school year has now been stream lined to fit that of the East and

the Metric system has now been replaced by the unwieldy British

measures….With African values moribund, with John Bulism weak

and in danger of being smothered, we will all be French in two

generations or three. (11-12)

These are words spoken more than three decades ago and they today have bearings in the day

to day life of Anglophone Cameroon. Besong has often insisted that the concept of national

integration is a skilfully designed web of cultural, political and economic dwarfing of the

essence of the Anglophone being. A poem such as “Just Above Cameroon” is very much a

questioning of the contradictions of the Cameroonian historiography. Dedicating the poem to

the controversial “Son of the Betis”, Mongo Beti Eza Boto, the man who would later be

considered an enemy in the house, dreaded by the regime in power, Besong writes:

Your history huts are made

Of wild flower and sycamore a steel fort, defying.

Stop, Inquirer, look back and wonder…

I, too, have imprinted a century’s dark decade

You speak to history, to the exile’s lonely

Sigh…. .(43)

History is much often the departure point for most creative artists, like Achebe says, it is

important to trace where the rain starts on one. Conscious of this, Besong still pays tribute to

Mongo Beti, the novelist who in 1987, at the Association of Nigerian Authors Conference in

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Nigeria, delivered a Keynote address, quoted in Cameroon Life of May 1991, in which he

argued:

Anglophones are victims of Biya. Do you know that it is thanks to the

recent publication of the confidential report by the World Bank that

Cameroonians now have a rough idea of the amount of petroleum

extracted from their soil annually?….the dictatorship forces the people

to keep quiet. (21)

With this kind of dark testimony coming from East of the Mongo, there is credence in

affirming most of the views Besong has often held to ridicule in his poetic arsenal while

trying to make Cameroon a land of equality, fairness and genuine democracy.

Talking of democracy, it may not be wrong in arguing that it is thanks to the

English speaking section that the ice of monolithic power were broken in Cameroon with the

launching of the S.D.F party. In its wake, came death and blood letting. That is why in a poem

like “Ntarikon Massacre 1990” (after blood River Day) the poet mourns that

The blood is still fresh

on the slaps,

the morgues are wet

for those whose

tomorrows

are now shards of broken

glass. (59)

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Writing about the general disillusionment that set in in the 1990s, following the spate of

violence and the clamour for economic revival, history scholar Dze-Ngwa in “Youth and

Politics in Cameroon from colonial to Post colonial Periods: A historical Perspective”, writes:

Since the opening of political space in Cameroon since 1990s, some

youth activists have boycotted February 11th and May 20th

Celebrations and frequently attempted to hoist the federation, the

United Nations or the Southern Cameroon’s flags, attempts that have

been brutally challenged by the security forces. No matter the side of

the political divide, these youth have contributed in the political

evolution of Cameroon. (35)

The youth in question are typical of those “whose/tomorrows / are now shards of broken /

glass”. They are those who get disillusioned with the nature of things, much like what the

Igbo’s in Nigeria saw to be a calculated form of cleansing and then decided to seek refuge

beyond the frontiers. The Anglophone Cameroon Youth are those whose fate Besong mourns

in a poem like “After Mandela’s Earth”. He posits: “a litre of petrol / costs more than / a litre

of my Anglophone Cameroon/ blood” (73). Moving ahead, he mourns the fate of a young

Anglophone kid murdered in Buea. He states: “A Splotch/ of blood across his face, Wilson!

(74). These are symbols that speak of his discontent for a system that flourishes in intolerance,

which has carefully schemed up a policy of systemically eroding the values of the

Anglophone system under the guise of national integration.

But the question one may pose again, is that, is Besong’s poetic temper then in support

of the Biafran styled experience of secession like some have argued? Edward Ako, in

“Nationalism in Recent Anglophone Literature”, intimates that “It is ironical that Bate Besong

whose world address focused on Anglophone separation quoted Goethe several times whereas

Goethe is the champion of welt Literature; what unites rather than what separates” (22). From

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Ako’s observation, one would think that Besong’s poetic vision is essentially on “Anglophone

separation” as he puts it. This essay differs with his opinion. When for example, Amiri

Baraka, that icon of the Black Arts Movement in 1960 America, appealed to the American

conscience by articulating and stressing the rhetoric of the “Black Nation”, he was in no way

advocating a nation within a nation, neither was he joining the futile pursuit of Garvey’s back

to Africa Movement. On the contrary, as stated in “Black Art”, he wanted “poems that kill”,

he wanted a society that must break the barriers of injustice while maintaining the universe of

the African American. There is much, in poetic symbolic power, that Bate Besong shares with

Baraka. That he partly defines his poetry as “Anglophone Universe” (Disgrace, 108) may not

mean that he wants a separate utopic universe for this community. He may be suggesting that

in all aspects of national life, and in the special constituent of the English section, fairness of

political, economic, social and cultural endeavours should be seen to flourish. So strong is this

commitment that Eunice Ngongkum has corroborated by saying that “Bate Besong is also

concerned with the way history affects the Anglophone Cameroonian in his special position

as an underprivileged minority in post independence Cameroon” ( 180).

But like Emmanuel Fru Doh has observed in his article, “Anglophone Cameroon

Literature: Is there any such Thing?”, that, to narrow Anglophone Literature to the question of

marginality is to make it look still-born, Besong’s artistic images do not entirely lie on the

Anglophone Cameroon question. Were it so, one may not have found poems like the

autobiographical narcissus poems that speak much about the essence of higher education and

the apparent failure of the intellectual class to redeem the nation. Were it so, then Besong

would not be concerned with the fate of other nations like Burkina Faso, Nigeria and South

Africa as seen in poems like “ For Osagyefo Thomas Sankara” (70) “Facsimile of a Jackal”

(91).

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This chapter has been concerned with the symbolic essence of the poetry of Okigbo

and Besong. In the oneric symbology of their poetic landscape lie the main concerns of the

poets. Whether clouded in obscure images, distant allusions or abrupt contrast; whether

hidden in the universe of ancient, Christian and traditional myths, the poets, to a very large

extent, have been the visionaries of living truth. With Okigbo, his vision for a unified Nigeria

where equality in the midst of pluralism would reign remained unshakable right up to 1966.

By late 1966, such an opinion waned and a volte face became an imperative. The poet opted

for secession, which was not to be realised, at least for now. On a similar note, with only

patchy differences as to historical documents, the English speaking section in Cameroon has

often fleetingly compared their fate to Biafra so that “…Fon Gorji Dinka, a prominent

Anglophone lawyer and traditional ruler, was arrested because he had distributed a pamphlet

declaring the Biya government unconstitutional and asked that the former Southern

Cameroons become independent and rebaptised as the “Republic of Ambazonia” (Nkwi, “The

Anglophone problem” in Cameroon: From a Federal to a Unitary State: 1961-1972. Besong

has been radicalised by this trend of events so that his political ideology has often largely

been to get the Anglophones out of a system where they have been mired, sometimes with the

complicity of their fellow Anglophones whom the poet warns will not “escape the Karmic

consequences of their quisling character” (Cameroon life, May 1991). However Besong is

equally still concerned with the democratic experience of other African states. Conscious of

the great importance these poets have been to their communities and nations, contrary to

Plato’s view that poets often showed distortion of the values of the commonwealth, the next

chapter of this essay demonstrates that the ideas of Okigbo and Besong are adaptable for

teaching in Cameroonian secondary and high schools. If values of nationhood, honesty when

faced with collective wealth, integrity when in position of power, fairness when armed with

instruments of state; must be built in the new generation of students, then Besong and

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Okigbo’s poetry are actually worth teaching. That is why the next chapter examines how

some of their poems could be taught to sixth form students.

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CHAPTER FOUR

THE POETRY OF BATE BESONG AND CHRISTOPHER OKIG BO:

ITS TEACHEABILITY TO SIXTH FORM STUDENTS

H.L.B. Moody, writing in The Teaching of Literature With Special Reference to Developing

Countries, observes quite strongly that “The teaching of poetry in developing countries

presents special difficulties and many teachers are inclined to avoid it as long as they can”

(27). Moody moves on to enumerate some of the problems with poetry that remain a

nightmare to some teachers and students. The language apparatus, he observes, makes poetry

scary and complex. This complexity is noticeable at the very high degree of complex-word

play and the unusually “distorted” syntactic system often employed.

Another very disturbing aspect that Moody observes is the idea that poets often regard

themselves as extraordinary men writing for an extra ordinary audience. Moody states that,

“…Poets have traditionally regarded themselves as prophets and oracles, who deliver

important truths, though often in indirect or puzzling terms” (28). This is largely true because

Christopher Okigbo once said at a literary conference, that, he was not writing his poetry for

non-poets. In a similar vein, Bate Besong has often referred to himself as a troubadour. For

him, to render lines turgid is often considered a mark of true mastery of the business of poetry

and a confirmation of the gift of prophecy, for prophets are wont to speak in an indirect way.

Another very important aspect is that “during the present century, there has been a

considerable cult of obscurity; this does not always make for easy comprehension” (Moody,

29). Critics have considered Okigbo to be one of the founding fathers of the tradition of

obscurantism in African poetry. He once argued that a poet never sets out to communicate

meaning but to share an experience. Coming decades after him, Besong inherited and created

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for himself a poetic tradition that generated much debate among scholars especially

Ambanasom, whose article, “Bate Besong: Is his poetry too difficult for Cameroonians,”

presents the complexities in Besong’s poetry.

Not withstanding some challenges, the poetry of Besong and Okigbo are very much

teachable to the sixth form and a variety of ways could be employed to facilitate students’

understanding of the poems. As a case in point, two poems have been selected for study,

respectively taken from Besong’s Disgrace and Okigbo’s Labyrinths… The poems in question

are “Requiem for the sycophantic Omenologist” (remembering Songho P.M Kale, Nndek S.A.

George) and “Elegy for Slit Drum” (with rattle accompaniment).

“Requiem for the sycophantic Omenologist”

(Remembering Songho P.M. Kale, Ndek S.A.

George).

Compatriots

The hour has come

For the surrogate

Omenologist of the Macabre Imam

Hired from the West of river Mungo

Methuselah, he prophesies loudest,

On the immortal parliament of their apple cart;

A twenty five-year-made

In camp Mbopi reunification-wonder

The time has come as the hatchet man hurries,

To the gehena alone, come on and see

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He is to disappear soon into his voodoo mask,

Here is the time compatriots

As he jumbs into his free mason

Buba…

Before Methuselah concocts some final elixir

Pronounces a ninety-nine point nine percent

Daylight robbery for the

To tottering quisling proxies

Now is the time comrades

To pull off his iron mask

At once.

$ expose his Excellency.

The wooden tiger!

For:

Their centenary has fallen

Its branches are on fire for:

Its trunks will soon be in hell

The members will soon be on fire

Since

The party has gone to jail

Its profiteers will get no bail. Bate Besong

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“Elegy for slit-drum”

(With rattle accompaniment)

CONDOLENCES…from our swollen lips laden with condolences:

The mythmaker accompanies us

The rattles are here with us

Condolences from our split-tongue of the split drum condolences.

One tongue full of fire

One tongue full of stone

Condolences for the twin lips of our drum parted in condolences.

The panther has delivered a hare

The hare is beginning to leap

The panther has delivered a hare

The panther is about to pounce

Condolences already in flight under the burden of this century

Parliament has gone on leave

The members are now on bail

Parliament is now on sale

The voters are lying in wait

Condolences to caress the swollen-cyclists of bleeding mourners

The cabinet has gone to hell

The timbers are now on fire

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The cabinet that sold itself

Ministers are now in goal

Christopher Okigbo.

The two poems above do not in anyway claim to be a representative picture of the

entire poetry of Okigbo and Besong but they are very important in representing some of the

central issues that the two poets championed in their lives. In this light, it would be very

important to arm students with some of the values inherent in both poems as discussed below.

One of the major aspects seen in these poems is the idea of nationhood. Students of the

sixth form should be trained through the medium of poetry, to take pride in national issues

and values. This pride can only be built if the true historical evolution of their country is made

known to them with all the inherent contradictions that always mar the course of human

history but out of which a good future could be built. For example, Cameroon is a product of

the amalgamation of the former East and West Cameroons. Some scholars and writers,

including Besong, often feel that some key politicians in the former West Cameroon betrayed

the people of this region. Some of these politicians are S.T. Muna and to some extent, John

Ngu Foncha. That is why, in a poem such as the aforementioned; Besong refers to the

politician as “quisling proxies,” a quisling being someone who teams up with an occupying

force to betray his country. It will be good for young Cameroonians to have this critical view

of their country as this will arm them better to understand the bicultural construct of the

nation.

In the same vein, challenges of the Nigerian nation could be seen in Okigbo’s “Elegy

for Slit Drum”. A man of Igbo origin, a section highly traumatised within the Nigerian nation,

Okigbo wrote poetry that reflected this trauma as seen in the numerous “condolences” that he

uses in the poem. He would later opt for the secession of the Igbo’s to create the state of

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Biafra; himself going to the warfront. Students will learn here that questions of national

justice, if denied, could erupt into ethnic paroxysm as seen in the Nigerian case. This makes

the above poems very important for students of the sixth form.

Another aspect is the idea of corruption and political inertia which both poets

adamantly condemn and therefore very important for students, the next generations of

scholars and statesmen. In Besong’s “Requiem…”, for example, the idea of socio political

corruption, exemplified through such expressions as “Daylight robbery”, “the party has gone

to jail”, help to illustrate the poet’s distaste for injustice in all forms. It is almost the same line

of thought held by Okigbo in the poem above. Two lines that best capture this rage are:

“Parliament has gone on leave/The members are now on bail” (97). Mocking parliament here

is in a way mocking the entire leadership for its flatulence and inertia; stories were often told

of the excessive greed of Nigeria’s political elite at the dawn of independence, who adorned

themselves in resplendent robes while the majority of the people wallowed in slums. High

school students need to examine some of the sound moral values that these poets stand for.

When Plato, for example, developed hatred for poets, as persons who misrepresented the

ideas of his ideal commonwealth, he did not foresee the coming into existence of corrupt

governments. Were he alive today, his views would definitely be different.

Besong and Okigbo have been credited for their extensive inventive power when it

comes to the ornament of language. Their ability to place words in extraordinary manner

makes their poetry fresh and original. The two poems chosen above end with the following

provocative words: “Their centenary has fallen/its trunks will soon be in hell”, (Disgrace, 97),

“ The cabinet has gone to hell/the timbers are now on fire” (Path of Thunder 105).

The last lines of these poems are remarkable for their apocalyptic prophecy and the similarity

in the image and symbolic landscape. For Okigbo, the “Cabinet has gone to hell”, while the

“Ministers are in goal”. For Besong, “the party / has gone to jail/ its profiteers will get no

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bail”. These are all strong images that suggest the doom of a corrupt lot and therefore a very

fascinating and interesting aspect to introduce to young learners of the sixth form. Granted

however that the language of Besong and Okigbo has been considered obscure, so too has

some pedagogues decried the falling standard of the power of expression in our learners.

Students need to be jostled out of slumber through the introduction of the kind of poetry that

stretches their language a bit further. Having explained how important the poetry of Besong

and Okigbo could be to young learners in the sixth form, it is now important to demonstrate

how these two selected poems could be taught. The example may then be used in teaching

other poems by the same authors should the relevant authorities consider including them in

the curriculum.

The first step may be to pre-empt the difficulties the students may face in understanding

the poems. Here, they are likely to face problems with getting the meanings of individual

words as used in context such as: “Tottering quisling proxies, Macabre Imam, mythmaker”.

Another possible problem may be the difficulty in understanding the metaphorical and

symbolic meaning of words. For example, Besong talks of an “Excellency …who is to jump

into a free-mason buba” (97). While Okigbo talks of a rare and impossible biological

occurrence namely, “The panther has delivered a hare” (107). These are confusables to

students. Understanding the poets’ attitude and responding to their themes is another possible

source of difficulty. Who for example, is that “Excellency” who must be “unmasked” in

Besong’s Poem and why? What then has the ancient “Methuselah” got to do with the

“Excellency” in question? As for Okigbo, one wonders what slit drums have got to do with

“Condolences”, Panthers delivering hares and the parliament finally going to jail. Once the

teacher has noted these difficulties, he now can adopt the following strategies to ease

understanding.

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The teacher may start by presenting two pictures to students for discussion, as a pre-

reading activity. On Besong’s poem, the picture may be a portrait of some of the politicians of

former West Cameroon such as J.N. Foncha, S.T Muna and Ngum Jua. The students may then

discuss their roles in the evolution of the former Southern Cameroon. On Okigbo’s poem, a

portrait of a man beating a drum at a funeral in a typical African fashion may set the right

mood to grasp the meaning of the numerous “Condolences” and the feeling of loss that run

through the poem. Students are free here to give many shades of opinion as suggested by the

pictures in question.

Having discussed these pictures for say 10 minutes, the teacher may then give a brief

historical background that may ease the understanding of the poems. For example, in the case

of Besong’s poem, he may say:

Succeeding John Ngu Foncha as KNDP Prime Minister of West

Cameroon, when the latter moved over to Yaoundé as Vice-

President of the Federation, Jua was unceremoniously sacked by

Ahidjo in 1966…Incidentally, Muna, the object of Besong’s Satire in

“Requiem” was appointed to succeed Jua. Muna would later move to

Yaoundé to succeed Foncha as Vice-President. Muna would later be

denigrated in the popular imagination and history of the Southern

Cameroon’s while Jua even to this day is hailed as one of the last

defenders of these people’s rights and their vision for the nation.

(Mbulai, 2008)

As for Okigbo’s poem, the teacher may briefly present the difficulties the Igbos faced in the

Nigerian Federation as Ali Mazrui rightly observes that

Okigbo had inner commitment to the concept of one Nigeria, but until

1966, his disenchantment with events in Nigeria was the

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disenchantment of a Nigeria rather than an Igbo. But the Northern

Massacres of May and September had been profoundly disturbing to

many an Igbo intellectual (The Trial, 125).

These historical comments may be read or explained to students in order to loosen up and

situate their minds within the socio-historical and political environments of the poets’ time.

The next step could be to present the poems to the students. The teacher may use the

following words: “we are now going to read the poems together, “Requiem for a sycophantic

Omenologist” by Bate Besong and “Elegy for slit Drum” by Christopher Okigbo.When the

students must have read these poems, the teacher may then give some brief information about

the authors. For example, of Besong, he may say:

- Besong was born of Cameroonian parents in Nigeria

- He was educated in Nigerian Universities, before coming back to work in Cameroon.

- He became renowned for his outspoken nature and numerous academic publications

one of which is Disgrace: autobiographical Narcissus.

- He was particularly critical of the idea of national integration which he saw as a means

to “annex” the former West Cameroon.

- He died in 2007.

Of Christopher Okigbo, the teacher may state the following brief biographical information.

- Okigbo was born and educated in Nigeria

- He started writing poetry at a fairly young age expressing his distaste for colonialism.

- He gained world recognition for his originality in writing.

- After the 1966 coups in Nigeria his style of writing changed, he sensed war, reason

why he wrote Path of Thunder: Poems Prophesying War.

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- He joined the Biafran army fighting for secession and was killed at the Nsuka front.

Having given students these brief highlights of the authors’ lives, the teacher may then

pose a few questions that may lead the students to guessing the possible subject matter of the

poems. He/she may ask such question as: Could Bate Besong be talking about political

intrigue? Could the “quisling proxies” and the “Excellency the wooden tiger” be his subject of

attack or veneration? Why is Okigbo paying tribute to a “slit drum,” yet the whole poem is

about “condolences”? These questions may be clues that could lead to meaning. The students’

responses will give direction to the teacher to determine whether the subject matter has been

grasped, failure which the teacher may bring out some possible clusters of words and images

that are likely to obscure meaning. Some of these clusters may be as follows; drawing from

Besong and Okigbo respectively:

- Omenologist of the macabre Imam / Hired from West of River Mungo

- His Excellency the wooden tiger

- Their centenary has fallen.

- Condolences from our split-tongue of the split drum

These statements highlight some of the main images in the poems as well as the

poets’ subjects of ridicule. From Besong’s poem, one notices that the person under attack was

“hired from West of the Mungo, a “wooden tiger” who at the end, like his partners in crime,

finally “goes to hell”. In Okigbo’s case, “Condolences” punctuate the entire atmosphere

creating a feeling of bewilderment, compounded by an absurd anomaly of one species of an

animal giving birth to a different kind. This absurd atmosphere finally ends with the entire

“Cabinet going to hell”. These quotations, well explained to students, may lead them to

determine the subject matter of the poems. Last but not the least “While reading” activity

could be for the teacher to provide some critical opinions of the poems made by scholars.

90

These statements, while not pretending to be the absolute interpretation of the poems, may

greatly help students to form their own independent judgements. For example, of Besong’s

poem, the teacher may state:

Requiem for a sycophantic Omenologist”, is apparently inspired by the

lack-lustre and infamous political trajectory of Salomon Tadeng Muna

who rightly or wrongly, was perceived by many Cameroonians West

of the River Mungo as having colluded with Ahidjo in dismantling the

state of West Cameroon through the 20th May 1972

Referendum….(Mbulai,2008)

As far as Okigbo’s poem is concerned, the teacher may state the following critical position

held by Osita Ebiem:

Path of Thunder is a series of poems prophesying war and letting the

conflict between art and life, and the charged political climate of the

day to bubble over. This conflict, in “Elegy for Slit Drum”, soars up to

an explosive point as seen in the intensification and repetition of the

thunder motif. The resulting debris is captured in: “parliament has

gone on leave; the cabinet has gone to hell…. (4/9)

These are very interesting critical opinions, if well discussed with students, in addition to the

discussion of the cluster of words, the poets’ lives and time; the learners are likely to form

independent views of the poems. To consolidate this new acquired knowledge and as a post-

reading activity, the teacher may then urge the learners to practice the following: Discuss the

values and world views expressed in the poems showing whether they agree or disagree with

them. Students may do language work, that is, pick out and try to use words in other contexts.

Students may equally be asked to read other poems by the same author .This may help expand

91

the students’ knowledge about the two authors under study. This could be presented in the

form of a lesson plan as demonstrated below.

Lesson Plan on Besong’s “Requiem for a Sycophantic Omenologist” and Okigbo’s “ Elegy

for Slit-Drum”

Student teacher : Edwin Tem Nji

Teacher Trainer : Dr Divine Che Neba

School : LBA

Class : Lower Sixth Arts

Subject : Literature in English

Lesson : Poetry

Topic : Appreciation of Besong’s “Requiem for a Sycophantic

Omenologist” and Okigbo’s “Elegy for Slit Drum”

Duration : 110 Minutes

Date : 20th June, 2011

92

Previous knowledge : Students already have some knowledge about the nature of poetry, the turgidity and allusive nature of its

language but may find it difficult to understand and appropriate these aspects to Besong’s and Okigbo’s poetry

because of their rather too complex nature.

Objectives : By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

-Identify some of the complex elements in both poems and consequently grasp the subject matter of the poems

-Analyse the poems showing how the images and metaphors enhance artistic beauty.

-Demonstrate through their analysis how both poems are similar or different.

Textbook (source of poems) : Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus, Labyrinths with Path of Thunder

Reference : The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary

Teaching Aid : Pictures on charts

Stages Subject matter Teacher’s Activity Students’ Activity Rationale Duration

Introduction -List the names of some of the leading Nigerian

and Cameroonian poets you know

-Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo J.P. Clark,

Odia Ofcimun, Bate Besong Ghalia

-Teacher poses

questions to students

orally.

-Teacher writes names

-Students respond to

teacher’s questions

-Students list names of

some of the poets they

-To situate students

within the context of

Cameroonian and

Nigerian poetry

20 Mins

93

Gwangwa’a etc

-Right, Bate Besong and Christopher Okigbo,

do you know anything about them?

-Okigbo was born in 1932 in Nigeria while

Besong was born in 1953 in Nigeria of

Cameroonian Parents

-Now, look at these 2 pictures on the board,

picture 1 about some of the leading politicians

of former West Cameroon and picture 2 of a

man beating a drum at a funeral.

-What can you say about each of the pictures?

of some of the poets

students may have

given.

-Teacher puts up

pictures on the board.

know.

-Students help teacher to

put up pictures

-Students give their

opinions about the

pictures.

-To help localise the

students within the world

views of Okigbo and

Besong.

-To use pictures as the

departure point for the

analysis of both poems

Presentation -Announce the lesson and write the title of the

lesson on the board.

Brief discussion of some of the historical

realities that might have inspired the Poets.

Example, Some Anglophone Cameroonians

-Teacher asks questions

about historical

realities of the poets’

time.

-Teacher discusses this

-Students respond to

teacher’s questions

-Students discuss history

with teacher.

-Students read poems

-Historical information

enables students to

situate the poems within

a socio political and

historical context.

30 Mins

94

have argued, that after the Foumban

constitutional conference they felt cheated and

their situation was compromised by Politicians

like J.N. Foncha, S.T. Muna as opposed to Jua

who defended the people. Most Anglophone

writing shows this dissatisfaction.

-Igbo people of the Eastern Region of Nigeria

were killed en mass after the coup of 1966,

they felt threatened and Ojokwu declared the

state of Biafra as a mark of secession which let

to war. Nigerian Poetry written at this time

showed this discontent.

-We will now read/study the two poems,

Besong’s “Requiem for a Sycophantic

Omenologist” and Okigbo’s “Elegy for slit

Drum”.

history with students

-Teacher then presents

poems on the board

presented to them -To enable the students

to read the poems as

independent artistic

creations

95

The poems are as follows:

1) “Requiem for a Sycophantic

Omenologist”

Compatriots

The hour has come

For the surrogate omenologist of the Macabre

Imam

Hired from West of River Mungo….

Their centenary has fallen.

Its branches are on fire. For:

Its trunks will soon be in hell

The members will soon be on fire, since:

The party has gone to jail

Its profiteers get no bail

2) “Elegy for slit Drum”

Condolences from our swollen lips…

96

The myth maker accompanies us

The rattles are here with us.

The cabinet has gone to hell

The timber is now on fire

The cabinet that sold itself

Ministers are now in goal.

Practice -Brief discussion of the Poets lives to see if it

relates to the points of view of their poems.

Example

-Besong was educated in Nigeria but came

back to Cameroon.

-He made a name as a poet and dramatist, an

outspoken dissident, critical of the

Cameroonian leadership.

-He died in 2007.

Similarly:

-Teacher in

collaboration with

students discusses the

poets’ lives and

political views.

-Teacher helps students

to bring out some

statements that point to

the political concerns

of both poems.

-Students give

information they may

know about the authors.

-Students bring out

political statements that

point to the subject

matter.

-Students discuss the

images and metaphors

that may help unravel the

-To enable students to

relate the poets’ political

views to the possible

subject matter of the

poems

-To enable them to

develop their own

analysis by picking out

images and metaphors

that ease the

30 mins

97

-Okigbo was born and educated in his

homeland, Nigeria.

-He made a name for his unique style of poetry.

-He was very critical of the Nigerian Post

independent leadership and died fighting for

Biafra.

Relating poets political views to images like

“quisling proxies”, “His Excellency the

wooden Tiger, “Condolences from our Split-

tongue”, the cabinet has gone to hell” found in

both poems.

-Practical discussion of some of the clusters of

images, metaphors and syntactic construction

as they relate to subject matter.

Example:

“The wooden Tiger, Omenologist of the

-Teacher helps students

to high light some

images and metaphors

that may help them to

discover the subject

matter of both poems.

hidden meanings behind

some words.

understanding of the

subject matter

98

Macabre Imam, Parliament has gone to hell

The Panther has delivered a hare

The cabinet has gone to hell

The members get no bail

-Presentation of some critical opinions on both

poems.

Example:

“Requiem” is apparently inspired by the lack-

lustre and infamous political trajectory of S.T

Muna…”

“Elegy…”is one of the poems prophesying war,

it shows the conflict between art and life and

the charged political climate of the day…”

Evaluation

Discussing the world views of the poets

whether they square with the students’ views or

not. For example:

-Teacher asks

controversial questions

for students to give

-Students give views on

questions asked.

-To build student’s

independent critical

opinions on the poems

25 mins

99

-Would Anglophone Cameroonians have been

better off today without politicians like S.T.

Muna or J.N. Foncha?

-Was Muna really a “quisling”?

-Was Okigbo right in prophesying trouble and

joining in the struggle?

conflicting views.

studied

-To help students

increase vocabulary

power through sentence

construction.

Assignment

Read two other poems, one by Besong and

other by Okigbo: “Their champagne party will

End” and “Hurrah for Thunder”. Analyse both

poems

Teachers writes

assignment on the

board

Students copy assignment To consolidate students’

understanding and

analysis of poems

following procedure

used in previous class

5 mins

100

CONCLUSION

This work set out to examine the notion of obscurantism and mythology in the selected

poetry of Bate Besong and Christopher Okigbo.The question of obscurity became topical at

the birth of modern African poetry especially in the 1960s and 1970s, given that some of the

great poets who helped to project the African artistic image, did so in a way that rendered

their poetry rather too difficult. Some of these poets are Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka

and to an extent, J.P. Clark. Their poetry displayed so much indebtedness to the western

literary cannon that some scholars, notably, D.I. Nwoga , argued that rather than call the poets

modern African poets, the temptation will be to call them, modern poets in Africa.

However, with the emergence of the Niyi Osundare School, coming after the death of

Christopher Okigbo, a new aesthetic climate was brought into African Poetry. Osundare

argued that poetry should rather be the hawker’s ditty, that is, it should be a song to be

understood by all the potential buyers, the masses. This was contrary to the type of poetic

sentiment earlier initiated and perpetuated by Christopher Okigbo and Wole Soyinka. The

controversy, therefore, that this work has raised is that, though historically situated within

what many consider to be the third generation epoch of poets, who, as it were, mostly adhere

to the Osundare philosophy, Bate Besong’s poetry has very much been radically different

from the Osundare conception; he is rather a similitude to Okigbo and Soyinka. In placing the

two poets, Besong and Okigbo, side by side, this work has shown the sources some of their

images, their own concept of a “true” poet and his role to his community.

In the course of trying to unravel the sources of their obscure verse, the work has

equally examined the mythological component of their poetry. By myth here, the concern has

been with the way in which traditional and ancient Christian believes have been put in the

service of their poetry. For Okigbo, by borrowing from the local cult of the Idoto priesthood,

switching to Western, Hindu, Christian and Egyptian myths, he has demonstrated the versatile

101

nature of the poet and to some degree; his fervent believe that “true” poets must have a touch

with the supernatural in order to be truly divinely inspired. For Besong, by ordaining the

Obasinjom as his artistic guide, he has often considered himself morally right to fight an

epicurean class of politicians, whom he believes are “free masons” and necromancers, and

who, largely, have betrayed the ideals of the commonwealth.

This study employed the New Historicist approach to literary criticism. More than

any other approach, this theory enabled one to examine the authors, their historical

environments in relation to the political, cultural and socio economic situation of their time.

This has helped to shed light on some of the ideological concerns of the poets. For example,

in Okigbo’s poetry, it is evident that up to about 1963, he would not commit himself to direct

political statements in his poetry. But with the events of 1966; the coups, the corruption and

flatulence of politicians in high places, sharply contrasted with the penury of the masses, the

ethnic cleansing and subsequently the war, Okigbo’s views changed and an artistic volte face

became imperative. This may explain why in the Path of Thunder poems, he is

uncompromisingly radical, rejecting the politicians and finally committing himself, in real

life, to physical combat, but dying tragically in its wake. With almost the same frame of mind,

Besong rejected the version of Anglophone Cameroon history often told by some sentimental

and politically partisan historians. In his quest to use poetry as a medium for political

consciousness, he reinvests vigour into the version of history that celebrates Anglophone

Cameroon heroes like Augustine Ngum Jua; S.A. George, while rejecting the “quislings”,

whom he considers to have sold out to the machinations of the Ahidjo government.

It is for the above reason that Chapter Three of this work is entitled Authorial

Ideology. It examined the question of being a “Biafran” or an Anglophone Cameroonian

within the world views of the poets. In this chapter, one has examined the controversies

behind the poets’ actions; for Okigbo; going to war to fight for secession, for Besong,

102

preaching an ideology that some considered amounted to inciting the population to demand

secession. It is on this basis, that, this work has argued that Besong and Okigbo share many

similarities, if not by way of their radical lives and blood soaked deaths; if not by way of their

obscure mode of poetic expression; at least then, by way of their ideological commitment on

behalf of the minorities in their countries: Eastern Nigerians and former Southern

Cameroonians respectively.

Including some of the poems of these two poets in the high school curriculum

could also be a welcome initiative. It is on such basis that the last chapter has shown how two

poems by both authors could be taught to sixth form students. The poems are important for

their intrinsic and aesthetic values. They may also go a long way in helping students build

interest in national issues, fight corruption, for these, among others, are some of the ideas

handled in both poems.

Considering that much scholarly work has been done respectively on both

poets, this study’s contribution to literature is that, both poets have been placed side by side

each other, unravelling some of the sources of their obscure verse which, to an extent, is

informed by a similar creative experience. By standing up against the troubled political

climate of their time, both poets gave fresh impetus to the political history of their countries.

The study also claims, like no non before, that both artists probably worshiped the occult, firm

in their views that only such a “fortified” mind could bring order to their societies wallowing

in despair.

It is for the aforementioned reason that this study suggests that for possible future

research purposes, it may be necessary to expand on the poets’ ardent obsession with the

occult manifested both in terms of language use and the sources of their references. This work

has not exhaustively dealt with this subject. Both poets so conveniently blended ancient and

modern, Christian and pagan concepts; at times considering themselves to have been powered

103

by metaphysical forces ordained to bring order to a chaotic world. It may be good to

exhaustively analyse this dimension of their poetry.

104

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