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Niyi Osundare: Oh Poet, oh Prof., tell me where to keep your garlands

By Sunny Awhefeada
17 November 2016   |   4:12 am
The harmattan was severe in the December of 1998. I was, at the University of Ibadan, a postgraduate student plodding through the dreary twilight of military dictatorship.
Niyi Osundare

Niyi Osundare

The harmattan was severe in the December of 1998. I was, at the University of Ibadan, a postgraduate student plodding through the dreary twilight of military dictatorship. There was a painful uncertainty which the chill of the harmattan made worse. It was on one of such harmattan mornings that I went to the Faculty of Arts for a class billed for 10 a.m. The trek was drudgery. Heavy brown fog hung on the trees. The squirrels nibbled gently at the oghighe fruits that littered the road. The wind drove dry leaves up. They fluttered and dropped to the earth. Occasionally, the sun pierced the heavy foliage to give the skin a warm sensation.

At the Faculty of Arts quadrangle, a small crowd gathered around a newspaper. The subject of interest was a news item announcing that the University de Toulouse, in far away France would be conferring her prestigious honorary doctorate in literature, a highly coveted garland, on Professor Niyi Osundare. The news mellowed everyone around and soon the chill, the somberness gave way to a warm and exciting conversation on Osundare’s poetry, his vocation as a teacher, his interventions as a journalist and his personality. Fortunately for us, the class did not hold and the discourse on Osundare went on ad infinitum. That was 18 years ago!

This week, the University of Ibadan, Osundare’s alma mater will be decorating him with another sublime garland, Honoris Causa doctorate in literature on November 17, the institution’s Founder’s Day. At last, the poet has been honoured at home! This honour is symbolic in many ways. It is very significant coming from UI which is not just Osundare’s alma mater, but the hub of the evolution of modern African literature. Again, it will have a mollifying effect on how the University handled Osundare’s disengagement from it in 2005. Ever, so humane and broadminded, Osundare did say, at his valedictory lecture, that his dialogue with UI was endless. He bore no grudge against the institution and maintained cordiality with it and those connected to it.

The University of Ibadan probably bestowed this garland on Osundare owing principally to his prowess as a poet. But Osundare means a lot more to many people across the world. A poet of global distinction, Osundare has also distinguished himself as a scholar, teacher, public intellectual, humanist and Pan-Africanist. His principal constituency is teaching, but poetry chose him before the classroom. His earliest poetic epiphany won him the 1968 Western State Prize for poetry, six long years before he settled down to a career as university teacher at Ibadan.

Osundare has often been described as the people’s poet. His allegiance to the downtrodden is infectious. Apart from Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, after whom he modeled his people-centered poetry, there is probably no other poet living or dead with an abiding passion for the hoi polloi more than Osundare. While devoting his poetry as a platform of advocacy for the masses, he also deploys it as a combative medium against rulers who misrule, exploit and balkanise humanity.

Osundare’s sense of history gives his poetry a virile functionality, while his recourse to Yoruba lore elevates his craft to the zenith of uncommon freshness and originality. His works remain trailblasing engagements with Nigeria, Africa and the vast universe of humanity beyond race, colour and boundary. He began with Songs of the Marketplace where he sings of the plight of the suffering masses and climaxing with a wish for a world reshaped for the enthronement of egalitarianism.

His next work Village Voices follows the same proletariat allegiance with rural farmers pinned down by capitalist machination. In spite of his early promise, it was The Eye of the Earth which accentuated Osundare’s emergence as a poet of global status. The collection also earned him his first international prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, in 1986. There has been no looking back for this remarkable revolutionary cum Marxist poet. Osundare has published A Nib in the Pond, Moonsongs, Waiting Laughters, Songs of the Season, Horses of Memory, The Word is an Egg, and other memorable collections which typify the grandeur of poetic genius and also set him apart as the poet of hope.

His influence on younger Nigerian poets is legendary. He is courageous as he not only theorised “the writer as a righter”, but practically dared the beast during the era of murderous military dictatorship.

Besides, being a creative writer, his intellectual output as a critic and scholar attests to the sublimity of his thought. His status as a scholar is the epiphenomenon to his calling as a teacher. He taught Creative Writing and Stylistics for many years at Ibadan and generations of students attest to his reputation as a delightful teacher who illuminated their minds. Osundare is also a public intellectual functioning as a journalist. His unforgettable essays in his Newswatch column have been published in book form as Dialogue with My Country. The essays remain as fresh and as germane as they were when they were penned decades ago.

Garlands by way of recognition and awards have rolled in for Osundare. He must have lost count. He, in 2014, was decorated with the Nigerian National Order of Merit, which is the nation’s most prestigious accolade for intellectual enterprise. The UI honorary doctorate is a befitting addition to his string of garlands. This award from his alma mater will touch him the most. Many more garlands will come his way. Is it not appropriate that I end this paean with my poor ability at rhyme? “Oh poet, oh prof.,/tell me where to keep your garlands/Ikerre alone cannot hold them/ neither can Ibadan nor Leeds nor Toronto nor New Orleans/ Abraka awaits your garlands/ Yes, Abraka can and should hold some of them.”
Dr. Awhefeada teaches literature at the Delta State University, Abraka.

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