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African Literature and the Role of the Nigerian Government College Umuahia
Abstract
Terri Ochiagha, in her paper "African Literature and the Role of the Nigerian Government College Umuahia," discusses how the college contributed towards nurturing the talent of some of the most relevant authors in African literary history. With the help of the testimonies of these authors in interviews, correspondence, essays, autobiographies, and with the aid of literary critics and scholars who realized the role the Umuahia College played in creating a literary elite, Ochiagha analyses this literary phenomenon and takes us on a journey through the school's literary ambience: its library and the novels which were later to prompt the authors' writing back to the Empire, the school magazine that first provided the alumni with a space in which to develop their writing and editing skills, the rising nationalistic fight for the creation of a legitimate university in Nigeria, the suppression of African history from the school curricula, and the literary works written by these authors in which their experience at the college is reflected. It all goes to prove how a school founded on tenets of the British system of elite schools went on to be the seedbed of some of the icons of African literature in English.
In his article, "Playwriting in Three Major Nigerian Languages" Isaiah Ilo analyzes the frequency of playwriting in Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, the three major Nigerian languages, which together hold about a half of the country's estimated population of 140 million. Ilo uses a case study to contrast the importance of the languages, their evolution as literary languages, and their official status with a role in education. Ilo locates the significance of these factors next to an inventory of the plays and a listing of the writers to demonstrate the neglect of the mother tongue by experienced Nigerian dramatists. The study establishes that indigenous-language drama is well-received among the Yoruba and that literature in Hausa has enthusiastic readership while the languages, including Igbo, that is lagging behind in literary growth, fail to attract the interest of experienced dramatists. Ilo concludes that the creation of dramatic masterpieces in the Nigerian languages will probably help in the languages' continued existence, growth, and fortification.
The emergence of a literature in English in Nigeria is usually described as a rapid post-war phenomenon, an unexpected flowering of creative energy which took scarcely more than two decades to produce rich, ripe fruit. According to most published reports, this literature was born suddenly in 1952 out of the pregnant thumb of Amos Tutuola; was nursed through a wobbly infancy by Cyprian Ekwensi, T. M. Aluko, and Onuora Nzekwu; was guided through a magnificent adolescence by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo, and their numerous university-trained followers; was tested by a civil war which left several casualties but no diminution of the will to write; and was later restored to normal prolificacy by the assiduous application of old and new talents.
Writer Saw Me Pushing My Old car and Gov. Gave Me a New One: Gabriel Okara The Sun News Online
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C-o-n-t-r-o-v-e-r-s-y! It's Wrong for Nnolim to Say We're Achebe's Children The Sun News Online
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