By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Before the Golden Jubilee by Omo Uwaifo; Hanon Publishers Limited, Lagos
Omo Uwaifo retired as a lionised electrical engineer but has earned literary respect as a writer of prose. It was surprising when he took to the genre of poetry to put a critical searchlight on the golden jubilee of Nigeria.
His poetry collection, Litany, was among the nine books longlisted for the 2009 NLNG Nigerian Prize for literature. In a curious twist of fate, the judges of the NLNG Prize turned around not to award the coveted prize to any of the listed authors.
The fate that befell Uwaifo’s debut collection of poetry, Litany, was not the first below-the-belt blow to be received from the NLNG Prize judges by our long-suffering author. His 2001 novel, Fattening House, was amongst the three books shortlisted for the inaugural prose phase of the NLNG Prize in 2004 when the judges melodramatically decided that none of the works was deserving of the prize.
It is, indeed, worthy of celebration that Uwaifo has stoically put behind him the setbacks from the judges to keep on reworking his poetry such that we have here in our hands this collection, entitled Before the Golden Jubilee, that puts Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary in profound poetic perspective.
Before the Golden Jubilee is a no-holds-barred eye witness account written from the frontline. Omo Uwaifo does not beat about the bush. He goes to the heart of the matter, making every word to count. He does not dance around the subject, as he admits, “I cannot afford the luxury of the young who probably would have chosen to hope and wait for politicians to find the courage to tell them what the problems are and what they plan on doing to fix them.”
Uwaifo has seen through “the euphoria of independence” having served in the electricity sector in several parts of the country, notably Lagos, Ibadan, Shagamu, Ijebu-Ode, Onitsha and Kaduna. Against the background of all he had borne witness to in the long eventful years, Before the Golden Jubilee represents a true message from the innermost of his heart. A book “dedicated to lives ravaged by small minds in power wherever” can in no way be misunderstood by any reader, no matter how non-aligned one is!
In an insightful prologue, Uwaifo paints the elegiac picture of colonial intrusion and the despoliation of his beloved Benin Kingdom following the valiant resistance of Oba Ovonramwen and his stalwarts. The irony of the monarchy being celebrated in colonising Britain while being derided in Nigeria is not lost on the poet who would rather the diverse ethnic nations of Nigeria were allowed to choose the ways they would want to follow. The anger in the poet is heartfelt as he thunders: “Federal Nigeria is a hoax. Aso believes its Rock is whiter than the White House. What refracted reality!”
Omo Uwaifo in Before the Golden Jubilee has rustled through the innards of a diseased nation approaching actual decease, and makes manifest his unsavoury discovery on the altar of history. Nobody can read Uwaifo’s words without question marks piercing his grey matter. Uwaifo lays everything bare on the page such that nobody can be indifferent to his poetry.
In Before the Golden Jubilee, the word Naaboa, coined from the names of Nigerian leaders at independence, to wit, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello or Abubakar Balewa, and Obafemi Awolowo, is a personification of Nigeria and its concomitant domination by the so-called three major ethnic groups that Uwaifo dubs the Illusionary Tripod (IT) as opposed to the more common WAZOBIA. The poet makes the point that the centre cannot hold for the nation that was meant to stand on three unequal and unsteady legs.
The collection is divided into two broad sections, namely “Matrix” and “From 1966 to 2010”, with the “Matrix” section containing 15 poems, while the second section, “From 1966 to 2010”, accounts for all of 76 poems. Even with the division into two sections, seamlessness is the word for the entire collection.
Before the Golden Jubilee embodies the entire Nigerian gamut of monkeys working and baboon chopping as we say, squandering of riches, electoral roguery, coups and counter-coups, flight, civil war, boom as doom, political chicanery, military legerdemain etc. Central to the Nigerian question is the poem “No Longer at Ease” pg49:
A reluctant and an uncertain South-west,
A humiliated and fidgety South-East
A triumphant and arrogant North
Came together at the end of the war
Gave birth to the Illusionary Tripod (IT)
Conceived by the buccaneers as they exited
But resented by a silent, fractious minority…
Omo Uwaifo in Before the Golden Jubilee has rustled through the innards of a diseased nation approaching actual decease, and makes manifest his unsavoury discovery on the altar of history. Nobody can read Uwaifo’s words without question marks piercing his grey matter. Uwaifo lays everything bare on the page such that nobody can be indifferent to his poetry. Omo Uwaifo has, in this collection, offered poems that shoot guns in the mould of the African-American Imamu Amiri Baraka, formerly known as Leroy Jones.
Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.
