(The Kole Omotoso @ 70 Lecture delivered at The Cultural Centre, Akure, Ondo State, April 20, 2013)

IN the immediate aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) a radical tradition of literature, literary criticism, and creative arts developed in the country. The stimulus point and nucleus of the tradition was the University of Ibadan where a number of Marxist scholar-activists were tenured staff. The ideological inspiration for the novel and unorthodox approach to literary and cultural studies was provided by Omafume Friday Onoge of the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences. He completed his doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University in the United States of America during the civil war years. The title of his dissertation was, “Aiyetoro, the Successful Utopia: A Sociological Study of the Holy Apostles Community in Nigeria” In the early 1970s, Onoge was the first in Nigeria to introduce the radical course “Sociology of Literature” which became instantly popular among students due to the Marxist, revolutionary perspectives he brought into it.  The Faculty of Arts where English and other literary courses were taught was under the siege of conservative, anti-socialist, art-for-art-sake teachers, some of them expatriates from Britain and France.

At that time Biodun Jeyifo was undertaking his research in the Department of Theatre Arts. He later went to the United States of America to complete his Ph. D studies and returned to join the Marxist bloc of academics and activists. Jeyifo was a perfect twin figure with Onoge; both were the most informed about the classical works of Marxism and its African manifestations. The ponderous profile of Wole Soyinka hovered like a colossus on campus, having just been freed from two-year imprisonment by the General Yakubu Gowon military junta for supporting the besieged Biafra Republic. We knew Soyinka then more as the father-figure behind the anti-establishment Pirates Confraternity than as an avatar of radical literature and criticism.  But those were our initial impressions made in the absence of praxis.

Strangely enough, Kole Omotoso, was quarantined in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies; he did his doctoral studies on contemporary Arabic Theatre for the University of Edinburgh (1969-1972).  Omotoso’s fame on campus rested more squarely on his stylistically innovative fictional works such as the Combat, Sacrifice and Edifice.  He relocated to the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, as senior lecturer in the Department of African Languages and Literatures. In Ife, he was an early bird rebel in a community of dissidents and iconoclasts that grew around and, sometimes, beyond Soyinka.

Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie was the radical in the Department of English at Ibadan. Her profile for us students was high because she earned a first class honours degree in the Department and she was freshly returned from the US where the militant tradition of African American scholarship and politics was on the ascendancy. Ogundipe-Leslie was an inspiration to the students and young academics who yearned to learn about the insights of feminism in which she was a pioneer critic. She associated with the Marxist camp of scholars, and her contacts with the African American world of letters were an added advantage…

Radicals and Literature in Post-War Nigeria:

As pointed out at the Introduction section of the lecture, the Civil War shattered many ideological taboos and superstitions in Nigeria. The betrayal of the Western nations of Britain, France, and the United States of America has been alluded to. In her desperate quest for allies to contain the Biafra rebellion, Nigeria looked for assistance in the Soviet bloc. Egypt, under the radical, socialist government of Gamel Abdel Nasser, was the linchpin in the diplomatic breakthrough. Soviet military hardware and support was channelled via Egypt. This intervention, done in the name of Afro-Asian solidarity, was pivotal in turning the outcome of the war in favour of the federal side. In January 1970, the bloody war ended, hallmarked by massive physical destruction and death of about one million innocent souls. Thenceforth, the image of the Soviet Union and socialism improved in the popular imagination. The Nigerian Marxist academics and activists took advantage of the positive attitudes to intensify propagation of the ideas of socialism, class analysis, and anti-imperialist agitation. The Marxist caucus in Ibadan was the spearhead of this renaissance.

The Ola Oni-headed Nigerian Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Technology floated the political organ of the New Left Movement which undertook a nation-wide tour of higher institutions to reorganise the socialist forces for the struggle against military dictatorship and the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism. In the East of the country, the group met with Nkenna Nzimiro, Chinua Achebe, Chimere Ikoku, Okwudiba Nnoli, and Arthur Nwankwo who were then operating under the ideological rubric of Frantz Fanon Centre. In the Northern states, the New Left Movement interacted with members of the Aminu Kano NEPU such as Balarabe Musa, Abubakar Rimi, and Baba Omojola who ran the Toilers’ Brigade in the Bohemian quarters of Kano City. In Zaria, there were meetings with Yesufu Bala Usman, Bala Mohammed, Mahmud Turkur, and the Jamaica-born Patrick Wilmot.

For centres in the southwest, the touring comrades rallied the support of Ebenezer Babatope, then a senior administrative staff of the University of Lagos. At the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, the interactive sessions were held with notable left-wing scholars – Segun Osoba, Seinde Arigbede, Toye Olorode, Idowu Awopetu, Biodun Adetugbo, Segun Adewoye, Bayo Ademodi, most of them young Marxists just beginning their academic careers. The outcome of the nation-wide tour enabled the New Left Movement to gauge the mood of the Marxists regarding the necessity to build a socialist political platform to push the fortunes of the radicals in the country. There were, naturally, disagreements and contradictions among the groups in the various parts of the country, but the experience was valuable in the mid-1970s when the military junta of Murtala Mohammed-Obasanjo lifted the ban on partisan politics.

The Onoge course on the Sociology of Literature developed in this milieu of intense political activism. The evolution and popularity of the course have been treated in the introductory section. From the middle of the 1970s, new universities were opened, thus expanding space of radical thoughts to contend in controversy. By 1980, the Marxist caucus at Ife outgrew that of Ibadan, with the relocation to the University there of  Biodun Jeyifo, Ropo Sekoni, Kole Omotoso, Yemi Ogunbiyi, and Femi Osofisan for a brief period. He left Ife for the University of Benin to develop the drama and theatre department there. In the early 1980s, the Ife Marxist school of literature and criticism was the most active in the country. Large classes in departments of Literature in English and Drama and Theatre audited the courses featuring these approaches.

There was a mandatory course on Literature and Ideology at the Literature in English department. From about 1981, the department inaugurated the seminar series that provided room for hard and vigorous exchanges on the emerging discourse on literature, society, and revolution in Africa. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s books on the politics of writing and languages were freshly published. All Marxist-oriented lecturers and students on campus attended the seminars. From the African Languages and Literature department, seminar papers by Olasope Oyelaran, Eileen Wilson (African American) Akinwunmi Isola, and Karin Barber enriched the growing radical discourse. Akinwunmi Isola raised the ideological stakes higher by writing plays that celebrated hitherto ignored  heroines of Yoruba mass struggles such as Madam Tinubu of Egba-Lagos and Efunsetan of Ibadan.  The Marxist dramaturgical tendency and techniques of the German, Bertolt Brecht were liberally applied in the Drama and Theatre section. Wole Soyinka’s “guerrilla theatre” group popularised the radical alternatives. Soyinka’s bestseller musical album, “Unlimited Liability Company” that burlesqued the iniquities of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was the mantra of the campuses and opposition radio stations.

Chief Bola Ige, the then elected governor of Oyo State that included Ife at the time, was engaged in the radical intellectual discourses in the campuses. He contributed immensely to the setting up of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) at Ife in 1981 where Chinua Achebe and Kole Omotoso were elected President and Secretary respectively. Governor Bola Ige also subscribed a weekly column in The Tribune newspaper controlled by his Unity Party of Nigeria under Awolowo’s leadership. One of the first Master’s degree projects I supervised in the early 1980s was Kunle Ajibade’s study of Marxist aesthetics in Festus Iyayi’s debut novel, Violence. The radical efflorescence at Ife was facilitated by the presence of Marxist scholars in other disciplines. Segun Osoba was in History, Dipo Fashina, Geoff Hunt (British) and Femi Taiwo were in Philosophy

In this dynamic setting Kole Omotoso produced works in all populist genres – drama sketches for television, juvenile, whodunit, espionage thrillers like Fella’s Choice, “Uncle Very Very” short stories, and theoretical forays like The Form of the African Novel. His drama works were Shadows in the Horizon and Crisis in which feature fictive representatives of the poor masses who struggle to overcome false consciousness preparatory to engaging their class  oppressors in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic wars. Jeyifo ran the “Bamako Jaji” column in the Ibadan-based Sketch newspaper whilst he engaged in field research on the Yoruba popular travelling theatre on which he published a book-length study. Within the Ife circuit of socialist academics, a fraction opted for peasantry-based guerrilla warfare. The group’s activities were coordinated by Dr. Seinde Arigbede who was based in the Odeomu forest for training. He was joined by Jeyifo and Eddy Madunagu, a Marxist mathematics teacher at the University of Lagos. It was in 1981 that the budding poet, Niyi Osundare inaugurated the “Sunday Poetry” column in the Sunday Tribune newspaper that ran for years and provided material for subsequent anthologies of his poetry. These were the years when Femi Osofisan collaborated with others at Ibadan to initiate the Opon Ifa poetry broadsheet that helped new writers to overcome the obstacles of getting published by established book houses. Osundare is one of the major discoveries of this “guerrilla” channel of publishing.

•Professor Godini G. Darah is of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria