Literature Works that shaped Our Lives, By Douglas Ogbankwa Esq.

It was Francis Bacon that once said: “Reading makes a man, writing makes a prepared man, while speaking makes a complete man.”

And so, as young boys and girls, who loved to read, we started with Queen Primer and Later Common Errors in English by Jowitz and Nnamonu, that shaped our English. Of course, I inherited my mother’s dictionary. My mother was a teacher and this assisted me in having access to a lot of books.

I was fortunate to have a father that bought newspapers, so I was selling the old newspapers, then I started reading newspapers when I was in Primary 3 and then I bought my first news paper Champion Newspaper when I was in Primary 6 in Arinze Primary School in Benin City. Now, I read myself in National newspapers and even International online publications. What a feeling! It is your habits that determine what you will be. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Around that same time I read Lamb Tales from Shakespeare from where I read epics of Williams Shakespeare like King Leah, Midsummer Night Dreams, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, the Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew –
which shaped my character in handling stubborn women, which I enjoyed doing with seamless skills as a young man, using the tactics acquired from from the book.

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I came across lovely books like Mr. SMO Aka’s My Father’s Car, The African writers’ series had sublime books like the Passport of Mallam Millian, Efuru and the Rivers Between, all written by the first female author in Nigeria – Flora Nwapa.

I read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, when I was in JSS 2, from where I churned out interesting Igbo Proverbs like: He who brings Kola brings life, since they have learned to shoot with out missing, I too have learned to fly without stopping, you stand in the ruins of the house of a brave man to point at the house of a coward. I also read other books by Chinua Achebe like :Arrow of God,” “Girls of War” and just before he died, I read his brutally frank book – “There Was a Country.”

We were also invited into the amazing books and poems of the first African to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, Prof. Wole Soyinka. I read “Death and the King’s Horse Man, Kogi’s Harvest, The Man Died, The Mystery Gun Man”, etc.

I like Wole Soyinka’s poems. They are mostly written in free verse. In “Abiku” the persona says: “In vain your bangles cast, charmed circles at my feet, I am Abiku, calling for the first And the repeated time.”

I reckon that Professor John Pepper Clark also wrote “Abiku”, just as he wrote “The Casualties”, “The Nigerian Railways”, “Ibadan”, etc. Worthy of mention is the satirical monologue, “The Telephone Conversation”, by Prof. Wole Soyinka that lampooned the needless recourse to racism and white supremacy.

Talking about satires, who would forget Prof. Niyi Osundare with his profound satires, which include “They too are the Earth”, spurned from his Anthology: “Songs of the Earth”, where he asked the rhetorical question:

“Are they of this Earth?
Those who Harry the Hills and fritter the forests?”

He also deprecated the epileptic power supply in Nigeria orchestrated by those who run the Power Sector when he stated in his untitled Satire, that: “A Desperate Match stabs the dark in Nepa’s Darkdom”.

The poems in different regions in Africa had their unique motif based on unique historical experiences. East african poems dwelled on the paradox of independence. Poems like Richard Ntiru’s “Pauper “, Henry Barlow’s “Building the Nation “, jared Ngira’s “No Coffin, No Grave”, etc.

In Southern Africa, most of the poems depict racism and colonialism. Poems like Oswald Mtshali’s “The Washer Woman’s Prayer”, Dennis Brutu’s ‘”Night Fall in Soweto,” and ‘”A Traboudor I traverse,” et. al.

In West Africa the motif of the poems dwelt on cultural reawakening. You have poems like Olokun by J.P., where the persona said: “I am Jealous and Passionate like Jehovah, God of the Jews.”

You had a short but profound poem by Kofi Awoonor called “The Cathedral” where the persona posited thus: “On this dirty patch,
a tree once stood
shedding incense on the infant corn it’s boughs stretched across a heaven brightened by the last fires of a tribe. They sent surveyors and builders who cut that tree planting in its place a huge senseless cathedral of doom.”

Who will forget foreign books like “Animal Farm”, “Ninety Eighty Four” by George Orwell. “Some animals are equal, but others are more equal to others.” A prose whose thematic exploration dwelt on the deceit by power mongers and convenience criticism, viewed viz a viz the burden of Leadership that leads to the maintenance of an oppressive status quo.

Who will forget :The Lord of the Flies:- By Thomas Golding, which has three profound themes that defines the essence of mankind to wit:

1. Man’s inhumanity to man.

2. Man’s way is inherently evil; and

3. British civilization or any other Civilization for that matter can not stop man’s irrational behavior.

‘The Old Man and the Sea’ and ‘Arms and the Man’ by Ernest Hermmingway. ‘The Great Expectation’ and ‘Oliver Twist’, by Charles Dickens. ‘The Mayor of Castebridge’ by Thomas Hardy, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, by Charles Dickens were some of the profound prose we read.

By the way, we also read prose for pleasure, I read all of the James Hardley Chase Collections, but my best was: “No Orchard for Miss Blandish”, a riveting piece of prose that kept me on the edge, while I read.

I even read Mills and Boon, which gave young Nigerian girls an el dorado impression about love, which they found not to be true when they encountered Nigerian men, one of the best in the world in love game.

I ready thrillers like those of John Grisham: The Last Jury, the Firm, the Partner, a Time to Kill, the Client, etc. I also read the Trilogy of Jeffrey Archer: Kane and Abel, the Prodigal Daughter and Shall We Tell the President. Same way, I was entertained by the vintage prose of Sidney Sheldon: The Master of the Game, the Wirl Winds of the gods, If Tomorrow Comes. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, a Woman of Substance, by Barbara Taylor Bradford, the Odeyssey File, Dogs of War, the Devil’s Alternative all by Fredrick Forsythe.

We also had lovely foreign poems like: ‘Two Looks at Two’, by Robert Frost, ‘Death Be Not Proud’ by John Donne, ‘My Last Duchess’ by Thomas Browning, William Wordsworth’s ‘The World is Too Much With Us’ and ‘The Solitary Reaper’.

When you see people speak and write well it is not a mistake. It was borne out of nights of burning the midnight oil and candle reading books. If you want to hide something in Nigeria, put it in a book or newspaper, they will only see it when they are eating “Suya” and “Akara”, by which time, It would have become stale!

At this juncture, I must commend Pastor Michael Omoregbee ‘Uncle Mike’ my English and Literature Teacher, of Standard Lectures and Standard Schools in Benin City, who inspired me to rekindle my interest in Literature, upon which I have even formed the Benin Writers’ Society, the only one of its kind in the whole Edo and Delta State, to my knowledge. Teachers rewards are now on Earth, not in heaven. Thank you very much sir.

“Teachers rule the World, not Politicians.” -George Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States.

Most of our young ones no longer read. They only watch BBNaija, African Magic, ZeeWorld- Zombie’s World, Sound City, Rok, etc. They are also enmeshed in partying, posting pictures on Facebook without ‘facing their book’. A generation that does not read cannot lead and in the land of the blind, a one eyed man is King.

Government is not even doing enough. There are no programmes in place to rekindle the reading culture. They are concerned about hosting the Winners of BBNaija, Beauty Queens and Musicians.

We better wake up, else others will write our story for us to read!

▪︎About the Writer:

Douglas Ogbankwa Esq. is a Benin-based Lawyer, the immediate Past Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Benin Branch-the Lion Bar, is the President of the Benin Writers’ Society (BWS).