Of Minstrels and Masks: The Legacy of Ezenwa-Ohaeto in Nigerian Writing (review)

This marvelous collection is a fitting tribute to a career of uncommon importance and a personality of great distinction. Until his untimely death on Tuesday, October 25, 2005, from liver cancer, in Cambridge, England, Ezenwa-Ohaeto—a wellknown home-based Nigerian scholar, teacher, pioneer of pidgin poetry, essayist, and performance artist, in a career that spanned nearly three decades—placed several articles and Book Reviews in nearly every one of the major journals in our field and wrote the unforgettable Achebe biography. At the time of his death he was at work on a supplementary Soyinka biography. Yet his institutional affiliations did not include any among the then elite universities of Nigeria with vast research facilities (University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, University of Lagos, the known production mills of Nigeria’s literary giants). That he achieved all his scholarly goals through sheer determination and hard work is what makes his accomplishments so amazing. As the list of contributors to this volume amply bears witness, during his action-packed career Ezenwa-Ohaeto also established extensive professional contacts—especially with scholars in Germany, but also the United Kingdom and the US, and within Nigeria, his birth country, as well as within other parts of Africa.

The tributes gathered in this issue of Matatu collect the thoughts of friends, family members, acquaintances, colleagues, and his professional associates, all of whom mourn his passing and celebrate the eminence of his life and work. The contributions contain glowing accounts and eulogies in various genres, including poetry and short stories of varying quality by fellow poets and fellow short story writers (Gabriel Okara, Okinba Launko, Tanure Ojaide, Odia Ofeimun, Esiaba Irobi, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Ogochukwu Promise, Obodimma Oha, Chika Unigwe, and Toyin Adewale-Gabriel). There are also semibibliographical entries (Bernth Lindfors, Eckhard Breitinger, Ernest Emenyonu); a regular bibliography of his published work (Christine Matzke, Obiwu, and Marcella Knapp); and routine literary interpretations of his poetry (Chantal Zabus, Obodimma Oha, J. O. J. Nwachukwu-Agbada, Sule E. Egya). For particular praise, contributors single out his industry (a seemingly boundless energy and productivity) as well as his personal qualities (infectious humor, lively and boisterous mien, capacity for warm and enduring friendship, and transparent decency, as well as his expressive power and inventiveness). They all profess the admiration and love they have for the fallen general.

Issues within the purview of Ezenwa’s interests in Nigerian literature more generally are also ably covered with essays on Chinua Achebe’s democratic long fiction (Lyn Innes); on Christopher Okigbo (Obi Nwakanma); Femi Osofisan (Tejumola Olaniyan); Uche Umez (Isidore Diala); and topics such as the literary borrowings among Nigerian writers and among them and other African authors (Susan Arendt, Kahiudi Claver Mabana); the literary responses to oil politics (Frank Schulze-Engler); remarkable writing by women (Aderemi Raji-Oyelade); writing by the youth and the reading patterns among this group (Chukwuemeka Ike).

Some of the accounts are quite moving; for example, his widow, Ngozi Ohaeto, who very much idolized her late husband, now endures a deep chasm in her life along with their four young children; and Remi Raji’s “Last Conversation,” containing a detailed note of one of the people privileged to be at his bedside at the Adenbrooke’s Hospital during his last moments.

For this reviewer, the most outstanding feature must be Ezenwa-Ohaeto in his own words, captured in an eloquent and charming interview he had granted Paul Onovoh, in which he gave elaborate responses to questions that touched upon topics ranging from those about experiences he had gained from his world-wide travels, his on-going research on Soyinka, handling the fame that followed on the heels of his Achebe biography, and dealing with nonflattering criticism, to the role of history in story, the future of Igbo studies, the function of literature in the formation of national unity and of the writer in a depressed society. The...