No doubt, Gabriel Okara has made inimitable contribution to the evolution, growth and development of Nigerian Literature—especially in its essential aesthetic and ideological manifestations in later years as we began to etch an enduring character and canon for our literature. In spite of all these, it is painful to note that recognition for this pioneer author came in slow, intermittent trickles –both from within the pen fraternity and on the national scene. Unlike other members of the first and foremost generation of Nigerian writers in English—a generation that includes Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J.P. bekederemo- Clark, Mabel Segun, among others, Gabriel Okara did not attract early attention of international publishers, the literati and the public. Some have attributed this to the fact that he was not, like his colleagues, many of whom were much younger than he was (it is fact important to note that, apart from Cyprian Ekwensi who had passed on a  few years back, Gabriel Okara was, until his demise last week, the oldest Nigerian writer alive), a mainstream university-based writer. Indeed, he was not nurstended at the University College of Ibadan, where the crop of the first published Nigerian writers emerged from, and where the cluster of Nigerian publishing houses domiciled– in Ibadan. Okara was not a mainstream university person even though he was a university graduate.

. He had worked in the British Overseas Airways Corporation, when his ambition to enlist in the British Royal Air Force was frustrated by his failure to complete his training as a pilot. He taught in schools and even tried to inherit his father’s vocation as a businessman. He later became a printer and a bookbinder for the colonial government in Nigeria. He worked mainly as a journalist in the Nigerian Ministry of Information and, the Eastern Nigerian Information Service, the Newspaper and Television Corps and rose to the pinnacle of his career as a General Manager. But is spite of this outside-ness, Okara was a member of the ‘Ibadan Harvest of Poets’, as my friend, G.G. Darah , that Urhobo born, radical folk literature scholar put it in 1986. Indeed, as I have hinted above, the very first poetic output of Gabriel Okara appeared in the maiden issue of Black Orpheus, which also featured Ekwensi’s The Leopard’s Claw, 1950 and The People of the City, 1954. There was also Aluko’s One Man One Wife and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, 1952.

One of the reasons for the poor initial recognition of Okara was the thinness of his published creative output. His published works include, “The Call of the River Nun (1953), The Voice (1964), The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978) which jointly won The Commonwealth Poetry Award. To this thin list must be added the numerous works in children literature in the nineties and beyond.  One important and painful reason for the paucity of his creative output was the fact that many of his manuscripts got destroyed during the Nigerian Civil War. Obviously, his showing on the nation’s literary scene could have been more appreciable judging from the international fame his novel, The Voce published in 1964 brought to him. Part of that fame is a reason why the man must be celebrated as he was one of the earliest writers of Africa to have carved a character and tenor for the English language in the cultural sub-soil of Africa, addressing the critical need to domesticate the language and make it embody African thought in the literary form. Okara’s The Voice presented one of the key approaches to the expedient task of injecting what is aptly referred to and couched as ‘Senghorian black blood’ into the ‘rusty joints of the foreign languages, to borrow Ngugi wa Thiong’O’s derisory phraseology for African writers preference for writing in a tamed English rather than enriching the indigenous languages through their literature.

Now that Gabriel Okara has left us alone, it is germane to quote extensively his proposition in this regard, one which he actualized in The Voice:

As a writer who believes in the utilization of African ideas, African philosophy and African folklore and imagery to the fullest extent possible, I am of the opinion the only way to use them effectively is to translate them almost literally from the African language native to the writer into whatever European language he is using as a medium of expression. I have endeavoured in my words to keep as close as possible to the vernacular expressions… In order to capture the vivid images of African speech, I had to eschew the habit of expressing my thoughts first in English. It was difficult at first, but I had to learn. I had to study each Ijaw expression I used and discover the probable situation in which it was used in order to bring out the nearest meaning in English…

Now, this is nearly fifty years ago; 1962 to be precise. How further away from this position have we gone in taming our English to accommodate our thoughts? In which language do we carry out our thoughts, if and when we do actually think? This is an age, in which as a result of the crippling powers of urban drift, our current generation of children neither speak the prohibited vernacular in the schools, nor can they speak English intelligibly—they are in the vicious circle of what I once described as the ‘zero option’ language. We will sorely miss the admonition of Gabriel Okara in this regard. Yes, there are those of his generation of writers who have opted, rather than laboring vigorously to enrich the foreign languages, to write and enrich their own languages and create literary monuments through those languages. Ngugi wa ‘Thiong’O, the radical Kenyan novelist is one. Our own Wole Soyinka would in fact opt for Swahili as our continental language. Okara has left his own indelible form and impression on the English language by bringing it as close as possible to the temper, tenor, thought and phraseology of his Ijo nation, believing that a language is a living thing and ‘ Nigerian English’ is an achievable feat. Achebe is unabashed in his conviction that the English language is ‘able to carry the weight of  (his ) African experience’ by being ‘new english’ as Okara has problematized it. We cannot forget this contribution to the deployment of English to ‘express our own ideas, thinking and philosophy in our own way’

In doing this tribute, we must properly locate the essential uniqueness of this great man of letters who kept writing until the end. This is in the area of his experimentation with language—an attribute which he had spoken extensively on above and one which he shared with the late Amos Tutuola. Okara’s The Voice did for Ijo (Izon) culture what Tutuola’s  The Palmwine Drinkard did for the Yoruba folk narrative. This is in the area of transliteration into English. Both men engaged in what was essentially a unique and original domestication of the English language into a fresh and intriguing style of fiction in English in Nigeria and Africa. These efforts, more in the case of Tutuola than of Okara, were largely disparaged and contemned in western circles. These courageous writers fused Ijo and Yoruba syntax, respectively, with English with Quixotic daringness. What marks the difference between the two writers, of course, was that, while Tutuola did his transliteration barely self-consciously, being barely lettered in the English language, Okara ‘s effort was conscious, deliberate and studied; remember that Okara was a university graduate with a degree in Journalism. He was, as we have noted, alongside the rest of the writers of his generation, engaged with the task of making the foreign language carry the burden of expression of the African experience. This is a major contribution for which Okara must be remembered.

As we celebrate this great man of letters who put nine decades of his life to the service of humanity as a writer and public servant, it is important to restate the need for our nation to offer greater appreciation to our people of culture and letters who have served selflessly a nation that has been bled and bruised by those who put themselves in the bracket of governance. Okara did not have a house of his own. Sometime ago, one Governor promised to build him a house. He never did. I am told that it took one of Okara’s brothers to renovate his house for him. Okara paid his due to his country and his ethnic nation. The River Nun of his poem is entirely in Bayelsa State. It is a living Nigerian river. It should flow into the conscience of our rulers from Bayelsa and the nation, to immortalize this great man who lent so much dream and vision to our unsettled nation, as he answered the call of the River Nun, recently.

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