89th birthday of Christopher Okigbo – great Biafran and Africa’s most influential and celebrated poet

(Born 16 August 1930, Ojoto, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe  

TODAY, Friday 16 August 2019, is the 89th birthday of the great Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo.

Okigbo is Africa’s most celebrated and most influential poet. He occupied the poetry chair of the continent’s post- (European)conquest literary academy in the 1960s with Chinua Achebe the head of the novel institute and Wole Soyinka, head of drama.

Okigbo’s scholarship and influences are extensive and varied: Igbo history, mythology, art and philosophy, ancient world religious and spiritual heritage encompassing Nri, Kemet (“ancient Egypt”), Babylon, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Greece and Roman as well as the poetry of Ovid, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Yeats, Mallarmé, Eliot, Pound, Hopkins.

RIGHT from the outset, Okigbo’s perspicacious intellectual contribution in mapping out the tenets of Africa’s renaissance scholarship is his focus on both redeeming the European occupation’s assault on the spiritual embodiment of the African existence, in the wake of the conquest, and confronting a ruthless genocide state-in-the-making in Nigeria at the first half of the 1960s. Okigbo’s worldview does not tolerate any excuses for either the perpetration or perpetuation of any forms of tyranny and subjugation of peoples. Since then, Okigbo’s poetry has had a profound impact on the work of several poets of his generation as well as on the ever-expanding stretch of the continuing-Igbo genocide-generation of poets and writers in other genres.

Crucial site

FIFTY THREE years on, the state in contemporary Africa is essentially a genocide-state – exemplified, most catastrophically, by Nigeria, the Sudan and the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Okigbo’s incisive scholarship (see, especially, Christopher Okigbo, Heavensgate, Silences, Limits, Distances, “Laments of the Masks”, “Laments of the Deer”, “Four Canzones” and Path of Thunder), to the poet’s eternal credit, anticipates the nature and characterisation of the multifocal crises of this development and rigorously interrogates their tragic consequences.

For Okigbo, given the operationalising backdrop of the European conquest and occupation, the spiritual is a crucial site of the African resistance and campaign for the restoration of sovereignty. This is because the eventual goal of the occupation’s assault is aimed at burrowing a cataclastic fault-line in the soul of the people to pre-empt or complicate their determined process of recovery on the morrow of the triumph of freedom.

EVIDENTLY, Okigbo responds to this emergency, in his poetry, by weaving a multilayered and panoramic landscape of often-complex fabric of overarching architecture of ideas that meditates on the variegated spiritual universe of the people.

Genocide

In the 1960-1966 Nigeria historical context, particularly, Okigbo’s poetry of resistance pitches its tent squarely on behalf of those who would confront blatantly-rigged election results (1959/1960-1966) and imposed parties and leaderships (1959-1966), rigged census returns (1962, 1963), arbitrary arrests and detentions (1960-1966), rabid and rampant authoritarianism (1960-1966) and, most tragically of all, the Nigeria state & its British suzerain state-organised genocide against the Igbo people (beginning Sunday 29 May 1966). The poet himself was killed defending his beloved motherland. The dual-genocidists murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or one-quarter of the Igbo population during the 44 months of phases I-III of the genocide – 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. In phase-IV, which the genocidists launched on 13 January 1970 and continues unrelentingly to this day, they have murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo. The latter include the 3000 Igbo murdered since November 2015 by the fiendish Muhammadu Buhari genocidist regime which was installed in power by ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron and Barack Hussein Obama, ex-US president, the first African-descent president in 233 years of the founding of the United States republic. Barack Hussein Obama’s unconscionable support for the Igbo genocide is the abominable legacy of his presidency.

In the gripping lines of Okigbo’s last poem cycle, Path of Thunder, written before the 29 May 1966 outbreak of the Igbo genocide but published posthumously, he breathtakingly presages the contours of the cataclysmic consequences of Africa’s foundational genocide of the 20th century and his own likely death during the slaughter:

AND THE HORN may now paw the air howling goodbye …

For the Eagles are now in sight:
Shadows in the horizon –

THE ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps of showers, of
caterpillar –  

THE EAGLES have come again,
The eagles rain down on us –

POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of
detonators – 
THE EAGLES descend on us,
Bayonets and cannons – 

THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter, of our 
thunder – 

THE EAGLES have chosen their game …
…

POLITICIANS are here in this iron dance of mortars, of
generators –  

THE EAGLES are suddenly there,
New stars of iron dawn;

So let the horn paw the air howling goodbye …

O mother mother Earth, unbind me; let this be
my last testament; let this be
The ram’s hidden wish to the sword the sword’s
secret prayer to the scabbard –
…

BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track – 

THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smouldering in a cave,
together with the mortally wounded birds.
Earth, unbind me; let me be the prodigal; let this be
the ram’s ultimate prayer to the tether …

AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore
Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching;
The new star appears, foreshadows its going
Before a going and coming that goes on forever… (Christopher Okigbo, Labyrinths with Path of Thunder, 2008: 71-72.)

Many a season

CHRISTOPHER IFEKANDU OKIGBO would be appalled by the devastation of Biafra, 53 years after the end of the phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, and 49 years after the launch of phase-IV of the genocide. The Fulani islamist/jihadist-led league of genocidist executioners on the ground in Nigeria and their centrally actuating constituent  pan-African nations’ accomplices – Yoruba, Gwari, Jukun, Jawara, Kanuri, Tiv, Edo, Nupe, Hausa, Urhobo, Bachama – have indeed unleashed a half of century of unmitigated savagery on Igbo people, unprecedented in African history. Co-genocidist Britain, beginning with Prime Minister Harold Wilson on 29 May 1966, couldn’t have bargained for less in constructing such a ghoulish slaughtering coalition with its steadfast Nigerian allies.

Okigbo wouldn’t rest on his laurels, though, in response to challenge and overcome what is undoubtedly a clear, conscious, beastly-scripted and targetedly-driven juggernaut to destroy the Igbo, one of the world’s very talented peoples. Okigbo, who believes in the power of words, would head for his keyboard … and more… 

HISTORY testifies that the quest for human freedom is not often an engagement pursued over just one season. For many, and the Igbo appear to be incorporated in this group, it is rather much more painfully drawn out; it could entail a cast of over several, long seasons. This trajectory, therefore, inevitably, encapsulates its vivid vicissitudes of pain, grief, opportunities, turmoil, setbacks, triumphs, turmoil, grief, opportunities, breakthrough. What is at stake here is for a more focused, more steadfast, and a more enduring understanding of the huge tasks ahead. Surely this is music in the ears of the resourceful and resilient Igbo people.

The Igbo will defeat this half a century of genocide. Unfailingly. The Igbo will rebuild their battered towns and villages and economy – which was Africa’s fastest growing powerhouse on the eve of the genocide. Unquestionably, the Igbo will restore their sovereignty.  

AS THE Okigboan œuvre demonstrates, human freedom eventually prevails most luminously. Okaa Omee.

(Sam Rivers Quintet, “Mellifluous cacophony” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 May 1965])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s latest books on the Igbo genocide and Biafra are The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

What Igbo did for Nigeria prior to the Igbo genocide – 1934-29 May 1966

The world turns and the world changes,

But one thing does not change.

In all my years, one thing does not change,

However you disguise it, this thing does not change:

The perpetual struggle between Good and Evil.

(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”, 1934)

FOR IGBO, prior to 29 May 1966, three important holidays were high up on their annual calendar: the Igbo National Day, the iri ji, or the New Yam Festival, and 1 October. The latter was the day of celebration for the restoration of independence for peoples in Nigeria after 60 years of the British conquest and occupation. Or, so were the thoughts predicated on this date’s designation...

Beacons

Igbo were one of the very few constituent nations in what was Nigeria, again prior to 29 May 1966, who understood, fully, the immense liberatory possibilities ushered in by 1 October and the interlocking challenges of the vast reconstructionary work required for state and societal transformation in the aftermath of foreign occupation. Igbo had the most robust economy in the country in their east region homeland, supplied the country with its leading writers, artists and scholars, supplied the country’s top universities with vice-chancellors (or presidents) and leading professors and scientists, supplied the country with its first indigenous university (the prestigious university at Nsukka), supplied the country with its leading and most spirited pan-Africanists, supplied the country with its top diplomats, supplied the country’s leading high schools with head teachers and administrators, supplied the country with its top bureaucrats, supplied the country with its leading businesspeople, supplied the country with an educated, top-rated professional officers-corps for its military and police forces, supplied the country with its leading sportspersons, essentially and effectively worked the country’s rail, postal, telegraphic, power, shipping and aviation services to quality standards not seen since in Nigeria…

AND THEY WERE surely aware of the vicissitudes engendered by this historic age precisely because the Igbo nation played the vanguard role in the freeing of Nigeria from Britain, beginning from the mid-1930s. The commentator, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde, couldn’t have been more emphatic in summarising the thrust of the Igbo mission during the period:

The Igbo nation ha[s] attributes most other Nigerian nationalities can only dream of and are what most other nations [are] not. The Igbo made Nigeria better. Any wonder then that the Igbo can do without Nigeria; but Nigeria and her myriad nationalities cannot do without the Igbo? Take the Igbo out of the Nigeria equation … and Nigeria will be gasping for air (nigeriavillagesquare.com, 28 July 2004).

The Igbo’s break with Nigeria occurred catastrophically on 29 May 1966. On this day, leaders of the Fulani north region (feudal overlords, muslim clergy, military, police, businesspeople, academics, civic servants, other public officials and patrons, alimajiri), who were long opposed to the liberation of Nigeria (there were no comparable clusters of political, cultural, ideational, religious, national or racial groupings anywhere else in the South World, during the era, which had a similar, unenviable disposition of hostility to emancipation from the European occupation of their lands as the Hausa-Fulani leadership), launched waves of premeditated genocidal attacks on Igbo migrant populations resident in the north. These attacks were later expanded to Biafra during the third phase which began on 6 July 1967, boosted particularly by the robust participation in the slaughter by the Yoruba, Urhobo, and Edo constituent pan-African nations of west Nigeria as well as others elsewhere in the country, especially Hausa, Tiv, Nupe, Kanuri, Jukun, Bachama, Jarawa. 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population were murdered during those 44 dreadful months.

Opportunism

THE YORUBA SUPPORT FOR THE GENOCIDE, as from 6 July 1967, for instance, bears all the hallmark of a squelching cadence of opportunism. Influential Yoruba personages (especially Obasanjo, Adekunle, Gbadamosi-King, Akinrinade, Rotimi, Are, Taiwo) under the operational gaze of chief genocidist “theorist” Obafemi Awolowo, plunged headlong, carrying out their own role in this gruesome foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa most fiendishly, particularly across their chosen south Igboland killing fields. The Yoruba appeared to have lost, quite spectacularly, the 1930s-1960s Igbo-Yoruba competitive “preparatory drive” to develop the high-level humanpower and ancillary resources required to run the prospective post-conquest state after the British departure. They therefore viewed the outbreak of the mid-1966 Igbo mass killings in the north region and elsewhere as welcome season to “avenge” their “loss” during the great sociocultural rivalry of those previous three decades, clutching onto any bomb or missile available, from July 1967, on their onward death-march east to lob, remorselessly, into besieged Biafra, into a Biafran home, Biafran school, Biafran shrine, Biafran church, Biafran hospital, Biafran office, Biafran market, Biafran farmland, Biafran factory/industrial enterprise, Biafran children’s playground, Biafran town hall, Biafran refugee centre…

Civilisation

FIFTY years on, Biafrans have written an extraordinary essay on human survival and fortitude, a beacon of the tenacity of the spirit of human overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginable brutish forces. On this eve of the 50th anniversary of the launch of the genocide, Biafrans are putting final touches to the restoration of the sovereignty of their beloved Biafra, this Land of the Rising Sun. The construction of this advanced civilisation in southwestcentral Africa has already begun.

(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Turnaround” [personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Red Mitchell, bass; Shelly Manne, drums; recorded: Contemporary’s Studio, Los Angeles, US, 23 February 1959])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s books on the Igbo genocide and Biafra include Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011), Biafra Revisited (2006) and African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe (2001)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe