Throwback Thursday: Nigeria’s legendary Poets
By Abimbola Mohammed
In continuation of our last week throwback Thursday, we present the Nigerian Poets whose works are now legendary in the literary world.
Christopher Okigbo
Of the top Nigerian poets on this list, this poet is a rare-breed. Christopher ‘Ifekandu’ Okigbo was born on 16 August 1932. He was one of the greatest African poets that ever lived. He had a strong background in education, starting with his father, who was a school teacher. Himself, he grew up to become a librarian and teacher.
Okigbo was the assistant librarian at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Like many of his peers, he went to the University of Ibadan to study. He won several awards due to his poetry skills. His collections include Heavensgate, Labyrinth with Path of Thunder, and Collected Poems. In 1966 he was awarded the Langston Hughes Award for African Poetry at a festival of Black African Arts. But he refused, citing that awarding someone shouldn’t be based on race.
He was very active in associations. He is a member of many writing associations and even helped to create some of them. A true believer in his cause, Christopher Akigbo died fighting for the independence of Biafra in 1967. His legacy will continue to live on in libraries across universities in Africa, and in the hearts and minds of many generations of Nigerians to come.
Gabriel Imomotimi Okara
He was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The first modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery, and he has been called “the Nigerian Negritudist.” According to Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, “It is with publication of Gabriel Okara’s first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun.
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
Popularly called Chinua Achebe, was born 16, November 1930, in Ogidi, Nigeria. In 1958 he published Things Fall Apart; his groundbreaking novel which brought him worldwide attention. It has since become one of the most widely read books in modern African literature. Achebe was also a well-published poet. His poetry collections include Collected Poems (2002), Another Africa (1997), and Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems (1973). He was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972 for his first collection, Beware, Soul-Brother, and Other Poems.
Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka is a famous Nigerian poet and writer although, he is most known as a playwright. His literary acclaim gained him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. He was the first Sub-Saharan African to ever receive the award. The 1986 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Wole Soyinka ‘s poem collections include Lost Poems, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, Dedication for Moremi, 1963, Poems from Prison 1969, A Shuttle in the Crypt 1971, Ake: The Years of Childhood 1981.
John Pepper Clark
Popularly called JP Clark, he was a Nigerian poet and playwright. He was also a publisher. Clark was born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother, Clark received his early education at the Native Authority School, Okrika in Burutu LGA and the prestigious Government College in Ughelli, and his BA degree in English at the University of Ibadan, where he edited various magazines, including the Beacon and The Horn. Upon graduation from Ibadan in 1960, he worked as an information officer in the Ministry of Information, in the old Western Region of Nigeria, as features editor of the Daily Express, and as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. He served for several years as a professor of English at the University of Lagos, a position from which he retired in 1980. While at the University of Lagos he was co-editor of the literary magazine Black Orpheus.
Niyi Osundare
Niyi Osundare is a famous Nigerian writer of children’s books. He was a top poet and one of the greatest writers in Nigeria. Osundare was born in 1947 in Ekiti State. He was the head of English at the University of Ibadan, a fitting job description for a poet won’t you say, and he was also a prolific writer. He managed to author 18 poetry books (Songs from the Marketplace 1983, Village Voices 1984, Moonsongs (1988, The Eye of the Earth 1986, winner of a Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the poetry prize of the Association of Nigerian Authors). The poems are often about afro-centric activism which he was very much involved in, and they speak about the treatment of the African man during post-colonial times. He has a unique take on culturalism in the continent of Africa and often writes about poverty and injustice, his poems are usually in a sing-song manner.
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