Dr. Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah
African American Studies Department
Morgan 205A
Western Illinois University
Macomb, IL 61455, USA
Written on A Carnival of Looters
The Carnival in the 21st Century
Onookome Okome has called it "lyrical anguish"
("Introduction" 6) and I call it Lore of Sadness, Olafloye's
A Carnival of Looters! From all my analyses of
Tayo, his works from Saga of Sego to A Stroke of Hope, Olafioye
yet again pitches his tent with his people. A deeply personal
sorrow expressed in most of the 66 poems about Nigeria, Africa,
and his poetic paths. Such poems as "The pathology of hope,"
"Dialogue of the deaf," "The Nigerian mfecane," "The million
naira march," "It is... dirty low down," "NFA: no future association,"
and "Pathological intellectuals" show the poet's frustrations
with Nigerian leadership. Sometimes I wonder if the poet sleeps,
or can the committed poet sleep, one who rolls on this horrific
bed of hunting memories of his country's failures! Can the
poet lie still? Or sometime I wonder if Olafioye ever stops
to shake his head from the sorrow he feels for the destruction
of the Nigerian dreams. Although Olafioye has never held political
office in Nigeria, and some might think he should not lose
sleep over destructions he was never responsible for, the
poet, like Wole Soyinka who publicly lambasted his own generation
of Nigerians as "a wasted generation," nurses a resonant pain
for being a part of a generation that has nothing good to
report to their ancestors. This is the collection that shows
the deep structure of a poet's abiding poetics for his native
country. It is a patriotism rooted in Yoruba (African) philosophy
of communal responsibility and pedigree pride and attachment.
Unfortunately, most Nigerian leaders have grossly abused and
insulted their cultural duty of remaining incorruptible and
thus protecting their family names.
Several poems in this collection present Olafioye's
poetic vision, or rather, his artistic agenda: what he sees
as his duty as an artist, or how he defines art in his native
society. In "Art as a seismograph," the poet declares, "Nothing
lasts forever, / except Art: / the seismograph of / human
condition" (90). He realizes that where Nigerian politicians
have failed, the artist and the art must not. He seems to
believe that the artist's word is more effective than the
politician's. Says he, "The artist: an artificer, / Aesthetic
smithery, / Order and truth," (90). He sees art as truth.
He sees his art as everlasting, perhaps the only remaining
cure for his country's wound. He seems to see the writer as
the solution that Nigeria needs at the moment to tell the
truth. Where the politician fails, the artist succeeds, he
seems to say, "Art props fences of stone, / beyond reaches
of termites of time" (90). Yet, what mostly interests me in
this collection is his dialogue with his child, in a way that
it can be connected with his idea of patriotism and lineage
responsibility for the African writer. His poem "Why i write,"
(86) is part of a narration of commitment to a lineage responsibility,
the Nigerian or African lineage responsibility. In what seems
the explanation he owes his child, the poets says, "Daddy
did not stand at roadside / like a tree, askance. /His pen
wept his time / and sang its happiness" (86). In a Yoruba
(African) sense of lineage responsibility, patriotism is a
love of and commitment to the lineage, protecting its name
and guarding its essences, being always ready to provide it
answers about one's actions and capable of asking the elders
and the ancestors for answers to one's own queries. This is
the formula the poet seems to have adopted here in defining
his own patriotism to his native country. In "My patriotic
quest," the poet sings:
Silence is graveyard of hope.
But...
How do you ask ancestors
why the country we love
now sour and firestorm--
sand dunes suffocating the sea?
How do you ask ancestors
why born a nation
that rows backwards in
the boat of progress?
(p. 20)
Like Ama Ata Aidoo's Nana in A Dillema
of a Ghost, who, shocked from her grandchild's callous
disregard for his family custom, raged, "What would I tell
my ancestors?" Olafioye queries the ancestors if they had
kept watchful eyes over Nigeria, or had simply slipped in
their sleep into the beyond! Using an Elaloro discourse
theory, it is certain that Aidoo and Olafioye have both invoked
a traditional African sense of cultural responsibility and
attachments. Both Olafioye and Aidoo, whether they use the
verb "ask" or "tell", emphasize the African tradition of ancestral
guardianship: people's reverence of, and responsibility to,
the ancestor, and their insurance of lineage continuity. Both
Ato (in the case of holding on to African culture) and Nigerian
leaders (in terms of pushing forward a vision for peace and
development), have failed their people, their ancestors. When
Yoruba people say, Iya mi ma sun l'orun, baba mi ma sun
l'orun, "my mother, my father, do not sleep in the beyond,"
they recognize the ancestor's power to guide over them. They
acknowledge the living's recognition of their continued attachment
to their ancestors' lineage. They recognize their responsibility
to jealously guard the lineage's good names. Patriotism to
Olafioye, therefore, means protecting the good country that
the ancestors have left behind, and taking pride in how that
nation has moved forward with development. It is indeed a
shame that all the present Nigerian leadership can show is
a nation "that rows backwards in / the boat of progress" (p.20).
Yet, the poet continues, still defining his own patrotism:
How do you write your pains
in words of comfort
for the hungry and dying?
Tribal phantoms of social lepers.
How do you sing a people--
demoralized and broken,
breathing fiery droughts
in their nostrils?
How do you pray for hope:
a nation
ruled by deamons
with hairs between teeth?
This is a manifesto of an African poet: singing
to answer his children's questions and his ancestors' queries,
to be able to ensure his African lineage's continuity.
