Literature is the opium of life – Isaac Attah Ogezi

Isaac’s slight frame belies his impressive creative acumen, glimpses of which could be seen in some of his penned works. This is compounded by his modesty demonstrated when he used just 11 words to sum up who he is: “Legal practitioner, poet, playwright, short story writer and occasional book reviewer,” he said. It was interesting […]

Isaac’s slight frame belies his impressive creative acumen, glimpses of which could be seen in some of his penned works. This is compounded by his modesty demonstrated when he used just 11 words to sum up who he is: “Legal practitioner, poet, playwright, short story writer and occasional book reviewer,” he said.

It was interesting that he would consider himself an “occasional book reviewer” as his Waiting for Savon has kept reviewers busy. The play satirises the Nigerian situation through the characters of three men (a Yoruba, Ibo and a Hausa man) who grapple to live with each other while waiting for an imagined saviour (Savon). It is an ingenious take on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

It is hilarious but beyond the humour, it touches on the fundamental issues of tribalism, corruption and avarice that have plagued Nigeria since independence.

“What inspired me to write Waiting for Savon is what inspired Dennis Brutus to write A Troubadour I Traverse”: it is this great love I have for Nigeria,” he said with an impassioned voice.

The warm reception to his play, Isaac admits, has surprised him because he thought he was writing for a limited audience.

“Waiting for Savon is a drama that belongs to the theatre of the absurd. It appeals [more] to those in theatre than the average reader,” he said.

But the average readers have found his play quite appealing, probably because it is a story the average Nigerian could relate to. The applause that greeted the announcement of his triumph at the ANA Awards night in Akure last October very much confirmed that.

Early romance

But Isaac did not just wake up one day and jump into writing. It was a romance that dates back to his childhood. He admits to having a challenging childhood having to contend with poverty and the hassles of growing up in polygamous home where his mother happened to be the youngest wife.

“During my childhood, literature helped me to escape the war-like nature of life,” he said in his unassuming nature.

Isaac got lost in the escapist world laid before him by the literary masters Cyprian Ekwensi and Chinua Achebe. He read books like Juju Rock, An African Night Entertainment and Chike and the River and fell in love with literature.

But growing up, he leaned more towards plays when he discovered the works of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, American Eugene O’Neil and compatriots Ola Rotimi and Wole Soyinka.

Their influence in his literary orientation will greatly affect his later development and perceptions. When asked why he leans more towards plays than other genres of literature, Isaac says, “Partly because I’m a lawyer and the legal profession is like an extension of the theatre and to do well in the legal profession, you need some skills in acting and theatre.”

Does this imply that Isaac has an aversion for prose? He says no but he has a problem with prose writers. Being a young man, Isaac is of the internet generation where there are lots of things competing for ones attention and some prose writers tend to demand too much attention with excessively large volumes.

“Most novelists can be unnecessarily verbose,” he said lamenting a situation where one writer could take up five pages in description alone. Regardless, some prose writers have impressed him. He lists them as Chinua Achebe, Festus Iyayi and in his generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and “if possible Chika Unigwe.”

He admits Unigwe is good but not necessarily as a novelist “because she is more of a stylist than a story teller. She is better suited at short stories than novels.”

Sharing the opium

Unselfishly, Isaac’s discovery of the ataractic power of literature moved him so much that he decided to share it with the world. He decided to venture into writing.

“When I got to the university I thought I could give people the opium of life because literature to a large extent serves the same functions as religion, it deadens you to the hardship abound,” he said.

It is a decision he has no cause to regret with the rave reviews and the accolades beginning to tumble in, the future could only be bright. But he is not getting carried away by his success. He is a man who likes to have a good laugh and believes that literature should be entertaining, not strenous.

“Entertainment is paramount and should not be subsumed in the preachment which most Marxist writers always mistake literature for,” he said.

But despite his predisposition for humour, he cautions that his play, Waiting for Savon is not just about merriment and a good laugh.

“It is a warning on our statehood as a nation,” he said grimly. And if Nigeria and its leadership heed his warning, they could avoid the fate that befell the nation when they disregarded Achebe’s when he pushed out his Man of the People which predicted accurately, the collapse of the first republic in 1966.

Isaac hopes the same thing would not happen.