KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

Book Review

Oseloka Obaze^*

selonnes@aol.com

Saturday 12 February 2011

Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight

Obi Nwakanma

(ISBN-978-1-184701-013-1; United Kingdom, James Currey  Publishers; 2010, Pp. 279, Price, $68.00)
Available at:  http://www.jamescurrey.com  & http://www.Barnes&Noble.com

Obi Nwakanma’s, Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight, a dense 279-page biography of Nigeria’s literary iconoclast, Christopher Okigbo, is an undertaking that justifies every effort and enervated muscle he put into it.  There is a certain degree of impetuousness in Nwakanma’s choice of a study subject, for Okigbo was an enigma, and did not live very long. Yet there is a near consensus that he belonged to a class of literary icons whose genre of poetry simply spoke to their being genius. Anyone who would read Nwakanma’s book, would have been afforded a beyond-cameo look into Okigbo’s mercurial life, his genius, inner soul, foibles and proclivities, all of which, were framed according to Nwakanma, in the “context of an existential paradox of ‘seeking fulfilment from nullity’”(p.193).

In electing to be the first person to render the first full-length biography of Christopher Okigbo, Nwakanma was not just audacious, but perhaps driven by the zeal to fill an obvious void.   Unquestionably, Okigbo was among Africa’s most anthologized poets, if not the foremost.  Nwakanma confessed being “challenged to make a full discovery of Okigbo’s human essence, a prospect which I thought, would unveil the enigma of the poetry… I wanted to recover him fully as an individual who loved intensely… and who wrote poetry that was volcanic and enchanting.”

This volume, the product of Nwakanma’s near-mystical and mythic-breaking desire, is energetically well researched. Unquestionably, Okigbo’s life, a mere forty years, was accomplished, as it was unfinished, resulting in all things about him, lingering like a suspended animation.  Nwakanma was not oblivious of this fact. As he noted, “By placing Okigbo in time and clothing him with spirit, I hoped to close a critical gap in modern Africa literature.”  This point does raise a critical question: which had a greater ascendancy, Okigbo the man who wrote poetry or Okigbo’s poetry, which defined the man? 

Chris Okigbo was like all men mortal, but his iconoclastic and cult-hero standing might have had more to do with his gravitas, predilections, “liberated pleasures” of good life and women, his abridged dramatic life and the eventual manner of his death, as much as it had to do with his philosophy or poetry. With his death, there seemed to be nothing left, yet something unfulfilled and something missing, thus the inevitably supposition that his poetry held answers to the lacunae. It is such evident void; contradictions and intricacies that Nwakanma sought to explore. He does a magnificent job of it.

In Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight, Nwakanma imbues his readers with awe and reverence, with his gripping and picturesque presentation of Okigbo the man, a happy hedonist, who achieved fame in life and greater renown in death. Nwakanma captures the alluring essence of Okigbo, which made him a hero and enigmatic to many, most who only know him posthumously. Because Okigbo belonged to the fringe of those gifted and noble literary few, once ensconced in the halcyon environs of the prestigious Government College Umuahia, which included Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Chike Momah and Gabriel Okara, his literary pedigree was not in question. 

What also remains incontestable was that Okigbo had a well-rounded personality, as poet, athlete, soldier, lover, civil servant, classical scholar, teacher, librarian, father and bohemian.   By documenting pertinent validations from Okigbo’s living peers, Nwakanma affirms the veracity of Okigbo’s bona fides. As Alex Ekwueme recalled, Okigbo on a visit to Kings College, “made friends with many students and generally exuded a level of charm and self-confidence we had not thought possible from a student brought up in a rural setting such as Umudike-Umuahia”(p.67). What might be unclear for years to come is which particular vocation or a combination of several that influenced Okigbo’s unbridled passion for poetry the most, or whether his flair and flare derived from his tortured environment and existential frustrations. Is it possible then, that his poetry helped to shape the narratives about his life or vice verser?  That Okigbo could have excelled in any chosen field of human endeavour, his idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, was equally incontestable.

Yet in navigating Nwakanma’s labor of love, it becomes abundantly evident that Okigbo’s legend rested firmly on two distinct pedestals: first, he died young, and second, he sacrificed an extraordinarily gifted artistic life for the cause of Biafra.  Such choices, especially martyrdom were the stuff of legends. Okigbo, personified in those immortal words of Winston Churchill, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”  It is noteworthy, that in his reaction to this work, author Chike Momah, a high school contemporary of Okigbo said to this critic, “Nwakanma captured the very essence of Okigbo -his persona and all.” Indeed, if the goal was, as Nwakanma asserts, to trace Okigbo’s “path of growth and the influences that conspired to shape his life and poetry,” then, this work is mission accomplished, though one suspects that the legend of Chris Okigbo and his genius are still unfolding. That said it needs pointing out that, as acknowledged by Nwakanma, “Literary biographies are mercilessly difficult.”  It is even more so, in Nigeria, a nation not known for keeping historical records. Moreover, it is perhaps in this context that one might excuse any void in Nwakanma’s noble efforts.

Structurally, Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight is rendered delightfully in eight sequential parts – a tacit tribute to Okigbo’s methodical mind and to Nwakanma, who sought counsel from Donatus Nwoga and did faithful justice to abiding his guidance.   Though compartmentalized to represent timeframes, places and subjects, the parts, in their totality offers a diametric and unvarnished picture of the man Okigbo, from birth to grace and death. In all, Okigbo, the poet, sportsman, genius, and activist, who combined cricket and politics with aplomb and flirted with officialdom, poetry and the yeoman’s chore of being a librarian, are captured vividly.  So were his peccadilloes and non-timorous tendencies.  

Nwakanma documents how in the varied enterprises he crisscrossed in his forty years on earth; Okigbo would become famous, for his irrepressible spirit, poetry and his other works of literature.  Between 1961 and 1968, Okigbo churned out mesmerizing works, as if he was presciently aware of his abridged life and his compact with posterity.  Nwakanma, portrays Okigbo without malice as the quintessential rebel-with-a-cause that he was, noting in that context, that Okigbo exhibited right from birth, “an early sign of stubborn will” as he was “restless and temperamental”.  Clearly, an incarnate of his maternal grandfather, Ikejiofor, who was an able Ojoto warrior, it was hardly coincidental that Okigbo like his forebear, also died in battle. Perhaps, Okigbo’s choice of martyrdom was preordained.

In this work, some tender and unedifying moments are juxtaposed and defining circumstances, complexities and paradoxes that form the mosaic of Okigbo’s life. The passing of Okigbo’s mom when he was tender and his later attempts to reconnect with her is explained as possible reasons for transforming her “into eternal metaphor” in his imagination and poems as well as his “compulsive womanizing in his adult life” all in bid to fill a void. Furthermore, Nwakanma elucidates successfully, Okigbo’s oedipal tendencies, which resonates throughout this work and is indeed, anchored on Okigbo behaviour and own words.

In a letter to a friend, Okigbo described his courtship with his eventual wife, Safi:  “There is an innocence and purity about Safi. Sometimes I think no man has the right to her. Sometimes she reminds me of an inscrutable wraith. I am madly in love with her, more than it is possible with any woman.”  Embedded in these lines, especially the notion of “inscrutable wraith” were elements of Adam’s complex, which Okigbo undoubtedly possessed.  In Safi, he owned what he felt other men more accomplished than he, had the right to posses or coveted. Yet it was recalled how youthful Okigbo had engaged in adulterous philandering, which led Chike Momah to recall “a natural amazement that a boy so immature as Christopher could get embroiled in a affair so potentially explosive.” Nevertheless, for all his gall, Okigbo was in his elder brother’s words, the quintessential “recondite raconteur”, and a soul vested with the uncanny ability for “high drama” and “propensity for showmanship”, a point Safi also affirmed. Still, he was by the accounts of his peers, “a fearless and an unorthodox sort of fellow” (p.39) who broke rules with as much finesse as with boundless braggadocio.

Only in reading Nwakanma’s work in its entirety will one gain a full insight into Okigbo’s life, which is to say that no review or critique, objective or otherwise, would offer such an insight. Suffice it to affirm then, as has been averred that Okigbo was an outstanding sportsman, an effortless but destructive genius, “who was excellent in the subjects he liked”(p.40).  Furthermore, he was “someone who could accomplish anything if he put his mind to it”(p.43).  Hence, the portrait of Okigbo that emerges -- a socialite, scholar, bureaucrat, soldier, or frustrated politician -- is not necessarily that of a gadfly as much as it is that of an impertinent and overachieving activist, with a knack of insinuating himself into any circumstance and doing so remarkably well that every encounter, no mater its brevity could still be recalled vividly.

Okigbo the rebel emerged a high school encounter with his Geography master during his 1950 Cambridge examinations.  He carried that trait forth to his being sacked from the colonial service; his 1966 rejection of his first place literary award from the First Negro Festival of the Art (FESTAC) for his works Limits, and eventually, in his immersing himself into the Biafran secession struggle. Indeed, there is a suggestion that his early contacts and friendship with Major Emma Ifeajuna, might have influenced in part, the thinking that led to Nigeria’s first military coup in January of 1966.

In sum, Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight sheds light into a life so fundamentally defined by the times and insidious tumult of his generation, but one which in turn, has enriched posterity by showing that individuals with vision and determination can and do make a difference, even when their personal, social and political tilt seems off-base, initially.

This book, despite its richness has some rather evident flaws, pertaining to editing and minor but discernible errors of names, timelines and facts that needs correcting in the revised version. I will point out just a few.  The Anwunah brothers mentioned on page 23 were “Anthony” and “Patrick” not “Edward” and “Patrick”.   On page 69, “George Alele” was named amongst Nigeria’s cricket greats; the entry should have been “Christian Alele”. If indeed, Okafor Okigbo was born in 1850, it is obvious that he was born in the “middle of the fifth decade”, not “early in the fifth decade” as the author asserts.   On page 57, there were two entries indicating that Okigbo took his school  certificate exam in “March 1950” and in “May 1950”. Likewise, Chinua Achebe supposedly left University College, Ibadan in 1954, when indeed, he left in 1953. On a historical note, whereas Western and Eastern regions of Nigeria both attained home rule in 1951, the author lists them as having done so in 1951 and 1954 respectively.  There are several other minor errors not mentioned here.

Beyond these minor limitations, which does no major harm to the substance; Nwakanma has in this noteworthy volume, delivered an unquestionably powerful, revelatory and incisive narrative of a dazzling, precocious and determined soul, in search of his mission in life. Okigbo’s life, like his poetry, was “volcanic and enchanting” and Nwakanma succeeded in rendering it accordingly. He also documented how in Okigbo’s quest to self-actualize; his subject achieved unsolicited renown, even if posthumously.  There is hardly any opacity of facts about Okigbo’s life, his gravitas, bonhomie and foibles. Apropos Nwakanma’s mission, he has succeeded in closing a critical gap in modern Africa literature. Okigbo lives! Yet in Nwakanma’s mind, “Nowhere better than in Okigbo’s poetry, can we find him more alive.”

Christopher Okigbo, his family and admirers could not have asked for a more dedicated and better biographer than Obi Nwakanma to research and write Okigbo’s biography. Along with its overabundance of vital details, the cadences of this rendition is further enriched by its “aesthetic clarity” and intertwine of Nwakanma’s embracing writing style that results in a flourish of elegant prose and poetry.   For students of African poetry and poets, Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight is a must have and a must read.

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Mr. Oseloka Obaze is a founding member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes.  He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE).  From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the Editor-At-Large.   He is also on the editorial board of  The Amaka Gazette, journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America.    His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was second among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004.   He is working on a novel titled “Happy Eulogy”.  He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby.  © Copyright 12 February 2011.