Lyricist Tanure Ojaide: The Master Crafter of Lines and Tales at 70

Tanure Ojaide is a lyricist who for over four decades have voiced dreams, ideals and highlighted an artistic creativity worthy of being declared genuine excellent. This is a chance for this writer to celebratehim and wish him Happy 70thBirthday. It is one’s belief that the best is yet to come from this erudite scripter of […]

Tanure Ojaide is a lyricist who for over four decades have voiced dreams, ideals and highlighted an artistic creativity worthy of being declared genuine excellent. This is a chance for this writer to celebratehim and wish him Happy 70thBirthday. It is one’s belief that the best is yet to come from this erudite scripter of the circumstances of life and ideas. 

Every work of his in the genres that he has devoted his artistic and authorial attention to either as poet-singer, novelist-narrator, commentator or even pure academic essayist proves him to be a man in touch with humanity. It is this clear characteristic that stands him out in the community of creative artists or you may say writers. 

Some of his poems in no particular order include: Labyrinths of the Delta, In the Kingdom of Songs, Delta Blues and Home Songs, Daydream of Ants and Other Poems, Waiting for the Hatching of a Cockerel, In the House of Words, I Want to Dance and Other Poems, When it No Longer Matters Where you Live among several others. 

In I Want to Dance, mentioned above, there is a clear evidence of a poet-performer yearning to excel in his art and showcase active songs to be actualized through verse, dialogue and rhythm. 

The focus on globalization in his poetry reveals the expertise with which issues of home and exile are blended. This relates the symbioses between both local and international spheres of experience that prove his homeland is not lost, being a poet at home while abroad and in Nigeria. 

The widely-travelled creative writer reflects assorted localities, cultures and traditions in his writing. His authorial politics is one that builds and injects a sense of truth and integrity in the reader, who in turn is propelled to act to make him first, and later his universe a better place. This politics runs through his poems like: In a Kingdom of Songs, I want to Dance, Waiting for the Hatching of a Cockerel, among others. 

His works often highlight the contributions and influence of other poets like Wole Soyinka, Edward Braithwaite, Taban Lo Liyong, Ken SaroWiwa, even Homer, Ahiquar among others. This to me proves he is not a poet or novelist cocooned in his own creativity and deliberately or not, does not acknowledge other writers or simply glosses over them. 

His fiction like the eco-centred The Activist, and woman-centred Sovereign Body or political Matters of the Moment have evolved not just approaches that recommend that bridges be built across divides, but are novels that proposition the mending of fences especially in the conflict-ridden Niger Delta Region of Nigeria where he hails from. 

In the latter novel, Ojaide uses the protagonist to identify the strategy of the oppressors, like the multinational Oil companies and the Federal Government, and creates characters who confront this oppression. From the perspectives of gender and embodiment, bodily integrity and the matter of choices open to women, Sovereign Body and The Activist are utilized to discuss gender politics and masculinities. When one considers the role of a writer as prophet and seer, Ojaide assembles the different critiques involving age and power especially in Africa in The Old Man in a State House. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to use the stories to expose how old age impacted African governance and the way out of the challenges harvested by the citizenry of African nation states. 

The mentioned fiction notwithstanding, Ojaide’s fictional writings though fewer than his poetry collection prove his concern for life, the environment politics and the fission and fusion between them. Great Boys An African Childhood is a bildungsroman, chronicling Ojaide’s years of growing up in the Niger Delta Wetlands and ways of life that have far receded into memory. 

Ojaide the writer stands apart from many writers who embrace only the local without a gaze into the worlds outside their frame or scope of existence; or those whofly into bigger spaces without any connections with their local spheres. He combines the local and global social workings in his writings, and this, to me clearly without any ambiguities, make him a truly ‘glocal’ poet. 

People of different ethnic, class, religious and academic standing have been influenced and rightly soby his poems and novels. A compilation of Theses, Dissertations, and critical focus on his writings across continents prove this international influence not because he projects Nigeria, but that he is a writer whose pen scripts the human condition without pretence or pretentiousnessor abashment. 

To be abreast with the works of Ojaide is to know people and places and global histories, locations, and the place of Africa, Nigeria and the Urhobo nation within or outside these configurations.People and theirenvironment matter in his works and this is the essence foregrounded in his artistry. 

This writer has known him for decades now, and makes bold to say that he has easily played the roles of mentor, teacher, parent and friend in the lives of those he interacts with, this writer being one of such. These roles are easily fused in many of the interpersonal relations and cross-social contexts that I have witnessed between him and many individuals, be they his peers or not; and groups here in Nigeria and the United States of America. 

Professor Tanure Ojaide, has built men and built women, planted many who now blossom all over the world within the humanities and outside of it. No wonder in 2016, the Federal Government of Nigeria recognized his métier and honoured him with the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award amidst the several other recognition and literary prizes that he has to his credit to date.

As he joins the Septuagenarian club, he is wished many more seasons of songs and literary harvests. As he gallops on springs to the next decades, may his pen never run dry. Happy Birthday to you sir.

Prof. Evwierhoma is of the University of Abuja