Tanure Ojaide Research Articles

Voices From the Fringes: The Eco-Poetics of Niger Delta Women

To say that the Niger Delta literature or the poetics of extraction in the Delta has attracted numerous scholarly engagements is an understatement. However, most of the critical works written about the Niger Delta have been by male writers such as Gabriel Okara, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Tanure Ojaide, Ogaga Ifowodo, Nnimmo Bassey and others who are known for drawing attention to the environmental despoilment and the suffering of the various Indigenous communities of the Delta. In this article, I am interested in the framing of the Delta by female poets from the region. Building on Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the subaltern, I ask, are Niger Delta women writing? And if so, how do they contextualise women and nature in their poetic imagination? Mindful of the complexities in the region, what literary devices do they employ to aid their navigation of the murky confluence of state power, multinational corporations, and environmental degradation that abounds in the region unabated? This work applies the theoretical positions of ecofeminist scholars to the close reading of select poems from Sophia Obi’s Tears in a Basket (2005), Ekaete George’s Saints and Scoundrels (2018), and Iquo DianaAbasi’s Coming Undone as Stitches Tighten (2021).

Traumatogenic metaphors and religious motifs in Niger Delta ecopoetry

The Niger Delta has been a site of trauma as a result of decades of non-stop environmental pollution. Existing studies have explored the socio-political and economic implications of pollution and its quotidian impact on the lived experiences of the people. This study, however, focuses on ecopoetry as a genre that reflects, and reflects on, the trauma of ecological degradation and the spiritual implications for the Niger Delta. By doing so, it explores traumatogenic metaphors and religious motifs in ecopoetry from the region. This informs the purposive selection of two Niger Delta poetry collections—Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself: Quartet (2015) and Stephen Kekeghe’s Rumbling Sky (2020). The poems are subjected to critical literary analysis, undergirded by Jacob Olupona’s perspective of ecology of religion and Stef Craps’ trauma theory, to examine how the impact of environmental degradation on the mental health and spiritual well-being of the people is poetically addressed. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘African ecologies: literary, cultural and religious perspectives’, edited by Adriaan van Klinken, Simon Manda, Damaris Parsitau and Abel Ugba.)

The Futility of Waiting: A Receptionist Study of Tanure Ojaide’s “Waiting” and Isidore Diala’s “Waiting”

This paper uses the Reader-response theory to investigate the futility of waiting as explored in “Waiting” by the two poets in their The Lure of Ash and The Beauty I Have Seen, respectively. It is a coincidence for two poets to pointedly dwell on the same title and subject matter. Isidore Diala and Tanure Ojaide are both second-generation Nigerian poets who witnessed the beginning of the fall of the Nigerian dream. The methodology used is qualitative as excerpts of the key poems and relevant works are cited and analyzed. The work is essentially literary as relevant aspects of literary criticism are deployed to buttress aspects of the paper. The findings of the study are hinged on the fact that the two poets of Ojaide and Diala coincidentally explore the metaphor of “waiting” in their poems of the same title to denounce the political inequalities in their country. The political class is presented as a set of hegemonists who exploit and subjugate the people. The two poems are revolutionary because of the revelation that waiting is futile, and is of the colour of ash. Indeed, waiting is ash, and ash is waiting, a pun stylistically deployed by Diala in his “Waiting.”

Victimhood Self-construal, Irony of Tears and Melancholy amid Wealth: Critical Assessment of Select Literary and Visual Metaphors on the Niger Delta Environmental Despoilment

Studies on self-construal indicate that man is propelled by what happens around him to react in a certain manner and this reaction, we suggest is a human universal common and a representation of conscious purposive response to concomitant environmental and circumstantial realities. This purposive response encapsulates messages, which an observer articulates and interprets; hence, our study is about deepening our understanding of the factors and variables responsible for victimhood self-construal projected in select texts on the Niger Delta environmental despoilment. Drawing from the theories of eco-criticism, victimhood, and self-construal, this study utilizes an interpretive approach to discuss select instances of victimhood portrayals in the poem ‘Delta Blues’ by Tanure Ojaide, in the drama Hangmen also Die by Esiaba Irobi and in the film Blood and Oil, directed by Curtis Graham. The study examines the primary reason, which is the dispossession of livelihood by environmentally destructive oil exploitation, adduced by the Niger Delta inhabitants to understand how it generates variables that instigate victimhood self-construal. Our observation is that in the texts the inhabitants’ victimhood self-construal can be described as purposive, the propelling variable is their concomitant environmental realities and the texts as communication media have different encumbrances and advantages regarding their efficacy and utility for advocacy.

Demystifying the Labyrynth of The Delta: An Ecolinguistic Appraisal of Selected Poems of Tanure Ojaide

AbstractEcological issues in the context of Niger-Delta, Nigeria have been approached mostly from the perspective of environmental degradation, and marginalisation in previous studies. However, in literary pieces, which are mostly the dominant objects of analysis in those studies, there are underlying linguistic imports, which are reflexive of the beauty of the literary discourses revolving around the Niger-Delta environment. It is based on this backdrop that this study sets out to examine selected poems of Tanure Ojaide from an ecolinguistic perspective. To achieve the aim of the study, five poems are selected purposively from Ojaide’s Songs of Myself and analysed using both qualitative and quantitative approaches to data analysis. The data is also examined using the Eco-critical Discourse Analysis (EDA) approach. The findings from the study reveal the use of rhetorical devices to converge towards emphasising the beauty of the ecological characteristics of the physical environment. The use of imagery by the poet draws on readers’ socio-cognitive instincts towards the appealing to their emotive senses. In conclusion, the use of the eco-linguistic approach to examine the poems has not only revealed the poet’s intents but has also demystified the myth behind the ecosystem of the Niger Delta.

Culpability and Nature-Nature Infractions in Select Poems in Tanure Ojaide’s Narrow Escapes: A Poetic Diary of the Coronavirus Pandemic

In literary imaginings, the infraction of the law by human and nonhuman agents manifests in different planes and character. With a pathology-inclined compass, this study argues that the representation of culpability for the infraction of natural law in Tanure Ojaide’s poetry emanates mainly from the intentionality of human agents and intersects with the unintentionality of nonhuman nature. In the instance of nature-nature infractions, a first-cause anthropocentric infraction by humans intersects with a second-cause infraction from the nonhuman agents, thereby creating the binary of intentional and unintentional culpability. Tanure Ojaide, in Narrow Escape: A Poetic Diary of the Coronavirus Pandemic (2021), chronicles the themes of agonies arising from anthropocentric recklessness and abuse of the ecosystem, which result in nature-nature infractions and the subsequent culpability. With poignant imagery and electrifying fluidity, Ojaide presents a litany of the havoc wreaked by human agents and the nonhuman coronavirus on the physical and biological environments. This litany is expressed through tones of lamentation and caution. The cautionary notes evince hope in the midst of the pathological miasma that assumed a threshold in 2019. Lawrence Buell’s eco-critical view is chosen because it locates anthropocentric negligence and ignorance as liable reasons for the breakdown of law and order in nature. Therefore, in causing the pandemic, sickness, and death, anthropocentrism as well as the coronavirus are shown to be culpable of homicide in the selected poems.

Petroculture: Ecological Precarity and Eco-Activism in Niger Delta Poetry

ABSTRACT This article examines the perspectives through which Niger-Delta poets have engaged with petroculture and eco-precarity in their region. While much scholarship on the Niger-Delta eco-discourse has concentrated on eco-degradation, there is limited scholarship on the poetic exploration of activism targeted at petroculture and ecological precarity. This paper argues that ecological precarity, which speaks to the sense of vulnerability occasioned by oil war, instigates environmental activism in Niger-Delta poetry. Relying on ecocritical discursive strategies in its examination of Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs and Nnimmo Bassey’s We Thought It Was Oil But it was Blood, the paper demonstrates that Niger-Delta ecopoetry seeks to resist modernity’s appropriation of the region as a ‘sacrifice zone’ and the petrocultural treatment of nature as mere resource for human exploitation. It concludes that the selected poetry collections, while condemning the onslaught of petroculture, foreground how poetry functions as an artistic trench for eco-activism.

African Literatures as World Literature ed. by Alexander Fyfe and Madhu Krishnan

Reviewed by: African Literatures as World Literature ed. by Alexander Fyfe and Madhu Krishnan Tanure Ojaide African Literatures as World Literature ED. ALEXANDER FYFE & MADHU KRISHNAN New York. Bloomsbury Academic. 2022. 268 pages. AFRICAN LITERATURES as World Literature is in the Literatures as World Literature series, described as "a novel approach to world literature by analyzing specific constellations—according to language, nation, form, or theme." However, "African literatures" are not united by language, nationality, form, or theme! The first book in the series dealing with the literatures of a continent unified by culture, one would expect the series editor to add "culture" to the defining "constellations" of world literature. In the introductory chapter, Alexander Fyfe and Madhu Krishnan, the editors, lay the theoretical groundwork and issues that undergird the rest of the book. They assert that "world literature, specifically, bifurcates around two interrelated modes: the affirmative and the critical." They go on to define world literature as a "practice … intricately bound not only to the circuits of production, circulation and consecration through which 'a literature' as such is produced but also through its inextricable ties with the external world." The editors emphasize works written in African languages, "cross-border and global dialogue," and transnational literary collaborations. Bhakti Shringarpure's "'African Borders Are Unnatural': Nairobi and the Rise of a World Literature" uses Nairobi as a case study of African literature engaging with migration, mobility, nomadism, exile, and itinerancy. The author discusses how Binyavanga Wainaina and Joy Mboya deploy cosmopolitan experiences of Nairobi in their respective novels. These writers and the literary magazines such as Jalada and Lolwe move the literary conversation beyond the local and national to "a more cosmopolitan, border-defying and transnational agenda." Billy Kahora rejects Shringarpure's argument about Nairobi, the headquarters of "humanitarian consciousness," as inspiring literary creativity and observes that "more often than not, the African novel is now written in the West." Sarah Arens's chapter discusses the francophone Alain Mabanckou's and Koli Jean Bofane's novels set in the two Congo nations, respectively, that "present different visions of African intellectual and literary engagements with the world," which make African literature in French a type of world literature. Another chapter discusses "Kaisa," a narrative Swahili poem set in Angoche in northern Mozambique as world literature. Similarly, early Sesotho, isiXhosa, and isiZulu writings are discussed. Clarissa Vierke and Chapane Mutiua seem to strain to describe these works in indigenous South African languages as "world literature." The ninth chapter, again on Kenyan and Swahili literatures, emphasizes the aesthetics of book production. Lola Shoneyin's chapter on the Aké Festival focuses on the "African world stage" and the Ake Review. She is more "concerned about what Africans think about the works of other Africans than what Western readers think of books authored by Africans." I find Doseline Kiguru's "Contemporary African Literature and Celebrity Capital" very detailed and exhilarating in its analysis of "celebrity capital." Penny Cart-wright discusses two of Binyavanga Wainaina's works as "reversing the global media lens." The last chapter discusses precolonial Fante treatises and essays as literature rather than history. The essays disproportionately represent African literature with eight chapters covering "world literature" issues in Eastern and [End Page 76] South African literatures, two dealing with West African productions, and one with the two Congo nations. There is no single chapter touching on the literature(s) of the Maghreb or North Africa. There are two essays on Nairobi alone, and, adding the essays on Wainaina and Swahili, about five chapters on Kenyan literary productions! This overemphasis on Eastern African literary representations in this book is not borne out by the reality of available literary productions in Africa. In many of the chapters that relate to Kenya and "engaging the world," Wainaina is focused on, and it becomes a form of overkill. There is the impression that world literature has only to do with fiction, as the notion of the novel as the "currency" of world literature is promoted. I believe poetry and drama can also be parts of world literature. "Kaisa," itself a poetic narrative, is the only poetry discussed. There are plays such as Wole Soyinka's Death and the King...

The Print Media and the Evolution of Third-Generation Nigerian Poetry

Previous literary scholarship and critical allusions to the evolution of Nigerian literature have unanimously acknowledged the emergence of a third generation of Nigerian poetry. This development which gained accentuation between 1980 and 2000, threw up an avalanche of successors to the second-generation poets, notably: Odia Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide, Niyi Osundare, Okinba Launko, Catherine Acholonu and Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie. Despite the visible numerical strength of this new generation of writers; their aggregate prolificity and their gross contribution to our national creative output, adequate seminal attention has not been paid to the role of the print media in the catalysation of this milieu. This study, therefore, situates the third generation of Nigerian poets and their works, within the context that they are bonafide products of the print media. They sprouted and flourished in an era where creative activity, triggered by national socio-economic realities, bloomed without collateral and commensurate outlets for the expression of this creative outburst. They have continued to sustain the richness and robustness of Nigeria’s poetic traditions. Their continuing commitment to socio-political engagements has reinforced the enterprise of preceding generations. This study will constitute a veritable reference material on the emerging corpus of critical discourse on the evolution of Nigerian poetry, deriving from the pages of Nigerian newspapers, en route to the 20th century.

The itineraries of agency and resistance in the petrofiction of the Niger Delta: Okpewho’s Tides and Ojaide’s The Activist

The impact from natural resource extraction finds expression in the petrofiction of the Niger Delta through the nature and role of characters that function in agency. A study of the major characters in Isidore Okpewho’s Tides and Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist reveals itineraries of human agency in their responses to the effect of oil extraction. While a group of characters shows that environmental action can become a counterpane for self-seeking and self-motivated intellectuals at the detriment of solidarity with all including human, nonhuman and the general economy, this study also reveals that there is still a set of intellectuals that remain consistent to the genuine need for a safe and clean environment. Our overall goal in this contribution is achieved through a renegotiation of the value of agency in both the work of Cajetan Iheka as well as that of Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin. Iheka privileges agency that is attuned to a shift from an emphasis on the human to the nonhuman. Huggan and Tiffin accommodate agency that underpins both human and animals. While acknowledging the importance of both positions, this article calls for a return to a focus on human agency especially in relation to the factor of accountability which remains an unfinished business. The call for general action against resource extraction and its impact will remain elusive as long as there are divergences in human agency.

A Comparative Study of Environmental Struggles in the Poetry of Tanure Ojaide and Marilyn Dumont of First Nations (Canada)

Earlier studies on the Niger Delta poetry of Nigeria and First Nations poetry of Canada have focused primarily on the environmental and minority concerns in the individual literature of these two regions. The environmental concerns in these two literary traditions are a result of the minority status of the regions with hegemonies depriving the indigenous people of control in the ways their landscapes and waterscapes are engaged. This present study takes these issues to a comparative level, investigating how the two marginal groups are reacting to the hegemonies that pushed them to the peripheries and the aesthetics the selected poets employ to combat local and global environmental changes in their collections. Tanure Ojaide’s Niger Delta Blues and Other Poems, and Dumont Marilyn’s The Pemmican Eaters are comparatively explored with the focus of exposing the similarities and differences in the portraitures of their environments. This study finds that the selected poets from both regions depict the primordial symbiotic relationship that existed between humans and non-humans in their environments, especially prior to the commencement of mineral resources exploitation in their regions. Poems from both regions compare the harmonious past with the disharmony of the present to raise global awareness of the problems caused by capitalist agents in the exploitation of the environment. Similarly, oral traditions are depicted as viable aesthetics which promote the harmonious human-environment relationship. The selected collections of poetry have political undertones and represent the people’s collective aspirations, it is against this that they recreate the myths around their activists and heroes to document the history and raise environmental consciousness among the people. The poets of the two literary traditions compared, however, differ in the following areas: the poets of First Nations are more impressionistic in depicting environmental struggles while Niger Delta poets rely on metaphors and images to portray their environmental struggles. The study concludes that the environmental and minority struggles portrayed in the selected collections show the pursuit of environmental justice for their marginalised regions, and by extension, it is a contribution to the global environmental discourse.

Niger Delta Literature: Emerging Thematic Preoccupations in Nigerian Literature

The Nigeria Delta region has long been a hotbed of literary activity, producing writers of international repute such as Tanure Ojaide, Chris Aban and Ken Saro-Wiwa. However, in recent years, there has been an emergence of new voices from the region, which is bringing to the fore new thematic preoccupations that reflect the changing socio-political realities of the region. Thus, the paper provides an overview of the emerging thematic preoccupations in Nigeria Delta literature, drawing from a range of contemporary literary works from the region. The paper identifies three key themes that are increasingly becoming central to the discourse of Nigeria Delta literature: environmental degradation, political corruption, and youth restiveness. The first theme, environmental degradation, reflects the devastating impact of oil exploration and exploitation on the Niger Delta region. The second theme, political corruption, is a recurring motif in Nigeria Delta literature. The third theme, youth restiveness, reflects the increasing frustration and anger of young people in the Niger Delta region. Overall, this paper argues that the emerging thematic preoccupations in Nigeria Delta literature reflect the changing socio-political realities of the region. By engaging with these themes, Nigeria Delta writers are providing powerful critiques of the problems facing the region, as well as offering new visions for a more just and equitable future.

A Marxist Reading of Tanure Ojaide's The Activist

A Marxist Reading of Tanure Ojaide's The Activist

Nature as a Device in Tanure Ojaide’s The Tales of the Harmattan and Flora Nwapa’s Cassava Song and Rice Song

This paper examines nature as a device in Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of the Harmattan and Flora Nwapa’s Cassava Song and Rice Song. It proceeds on the assumption that there is a relationship between nature and literature beyond the interest of the Romantics and Ecocriticism and that this relationship is often demonstrated aesthetically and thematically to express the human condition. With emphasis on the metaphorization of the components that make up nature, this paper deploys Peter Steiner’s Machine model of Formalism which sees literary criticism as a sort of mechanics and the text as a heap of devices. In this regard, Formalism is here deployed as a means of exploring the extent to which nature functions as a device in The Tale of the Harmattan and Cassava Song and Rice Song. It emphasizes the figurative use of nature to estrange the ordinary. This paper finds that the figurative use of nature helps to establish the aesthetic grounds that justifies the literariness of the poem. The paper also finds that the presence of nature in the poems heighten the aesthetic quality of the poems because nature readily finds expression in patterns or attributes common to all its components. Thus, the metaphorization of nature components as a means of portraying the human condition.

Issues of ideal national identities in Tanure Ojaide’s The Questioner: A psychoanalytic approach

Environmental degradation has been a major topic of concern all over the world, especially because lands exploited for mining mineral resources such as crude oil become contaminated to such an extent that the natural ecosystems of many communities in the world are destroyed. Nigeria is not exempted from this problem and in particular, the Niger-Delta area has for decades suffered great deterioration due to the exploration and exploitation of oil. This situation may have instigated Tanure Ojaide to write poems that bring to the fore the psychological disposition of a people plagued with environmental degradation in the Niger-Delta area of Nigeria to call the world’s attention to the deterioration of life in the Niger-Delta. It is against this backdrop that this study understudies The Questioner, a collection of poems in order to further encapsulate the gory picture of environmental depreciation, neglect, corruption and unconcern for the people of the Niger-Delta. With the application of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical discourse, this study identifies the formation or adoption of questionable identities by individuals who are bedeviled with problems associated with environmental degradation. Hence, by the end of this research, it is observed that the personae in the poems studied, were embroiled in psychological conflicts that caused the fragmentation of their identities as a result of the devastating effects of environmental degradation.

Monumental Inhumanity beyond Tears: Lamentations of Despoil in Nagaland and Niger Delta Eco-poetics

This paper examines the social interventions, inclinations and paradigms in Temsula Ao’s poem “My Hills” and Tanure Ojaide’s poem “Delta Blues” as reflections and interrogation of deplorable human actions propelling the degradation eco-heritage in Nagaland Northeast India, and Niger Delta south-south Nigeria. Thus, our focus will be on how both poets present similarities in their lamentations and advocacy against monumental inhumanity destroying natural environment. Therefore, drawing from the concepts of eco-criticism, this paper examines nuance of advocacy and interrogation of the direct/indirect complicity and disinterest subsumed in the shades of actions and inactions of both ‘insiders’ and ‘others’ who are in many ways, interwoven in the social malaises and negativities Ao and Ojaide project. To add rigor to the analysis, this paper adopts ‘eco-criticism’, to discuss the portrayal of social identity questions, environment despoil, and the subsisting human/environment symbiosis in Nagaland and Niger Delta as portrayed in the selected poems. In the end, the study observes that the selected poems are advocacy texts subsumed in nuances of social intervention paradigms that project certain universal commons reflective of inhabitants of regions in despoil and environment degradation.

Armed Conflict, Political Violence, and Poetic Language in Tanure Ojaide’s The Questioner and Other Poems

Armed Conflict, Political Violence, and Poetic Language in Tanure Ojaide’s The Questioner and Other Poems

Naming and describing in Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures and Other Poems

This article is a stylistic study of selected poems in Tanure Ojaide's The Fate of Vultures and Other Poems. It sees stylistics as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics, and it adopts a critical stylistic approach, using naming and describing as critical stylistic tools to uncover how ideology and social meaning are encoded by the poet in the selected poems. The study applies the Hallidayan experiential metafunction of the nominal group as a linguistic framework with emphasis on nominal group structure and clause structure. In all, five poems are selected from the collection to allow for a qualitative, detailed and rigorous analysis. Our findings reveal that Ojaide explores more of the deictic + thing + qualifier experiential structural type in the nominal group structure to provide detailed social and ideological meaning inherent in the selected poems. We conclude that naming and describing as critical stylistic tools afford Ojaide a means to encode his resistance, political ideology and social meanings in the selected poems.

‘Tears in Verses’: Leadership and Social Disillusionment in Tanure Ojaide’s Poetry

Abstract: This paper examines leadership, nationhood and social disillusionment in Tanure Ojaide’s poetry. The paper notes that one phenomenal trait characterising Nigerian writers, especially the one christened as second generation, is their innate susceptibility and strong resolve in confronting leadership and other socio-political ruptures in the society. Right from the dawn of independence, Nigerian writers have always been on the defensive and, in varying degrees, have depicted poignantly, corruption, injustices, oppression, exploitation and other forms of malfeasances perpetrated against the people by the leadership class. This orientation, to a large extent, informs the writings of Tanure Ojaide. Against this backdrop, this paper examines not only the creative depth of his poetry, but also the potency of his works in addressing socio-political foibles in the Nigerian society. Through an analysis of select poems in The Endless Song and Delta Blues and Home Songs, this research establishes that leadership is simply the cog in the wheels of the nation’s path to greatness and has, consequently, rendered the nation and her people miserably dispossessed, traumatised and disillusioned. The paper adopts New Historicism as theoretical framework and concludes that Nigeria may plunge into a precipice, if visionless leaders continue to parade the country’s leadership space.

Rethinking Ecological Subalterns in Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist

This study explores the concept of subaltern and how its meaning has evolved over the years within the broader scope of postcolonial theory. The study shall trace the concept of subaltern from its anthropocentric meaning in Antonio Gramsci’s writings to Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak’s ideological perspectives. We shall also trace its inroad into the ecocritical study in the works of Michael Egan and Sergio Ruiz Cayuela while maintaining its anthropocentric leaning. The study shall further attempt a redefinition of the subaltern concept to accommodate non-humans in the class of the subordinated social group. Bearing in mind the anthropocentric leaning of the concept of the subaltern, which excludes non-human members of the ecology, we shall redefine the term from its previous usage in environmental literary studies and expand it to include non-humans as a subordinated group. The study shall analyse the relationship between humans and non-humans to determine if non-humans are treated as subordinates or worse than subordinated humans. The study shall draw instances from Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist (2006) to justify the classification of non-humans as the ultimate ecological subalterns of the Niger Delta Environment. We shall consider human relationships with non-humans (land, air, water, animals, vegetation, sea lives) to determine their status as subalterns. The crux of the study is basically to expand the scope of the subaltern theory by analysing the environmental despoliation prevalent in the oil-rich Niger Delta environments of Nigeria.