Kufre Usanga

 
The Igbo communal cleansing portrayed here is parallel to the Yoruba communal cleansing with cogent diversions in practice. In Achebe’s Arrow of God, the chief priest, Ezeulu, leads the ablution festival with chants as members of the community gather in the market square and pray for their cleansing. In Soyinka’s The Strong Breed and Femi Osofisan’s No More The Wasted Breed, a male from the lineage of the strong breed is sacrificed at a specified time or a stranger is sacrificed for the cleansing of the community.

At the ‘shrine’, the chief priest is primarily concerned with singing the praise of the deity. Invocative names are offered: ‘secret to eternal rebirth’, ‘great spirit’, ‘furu ihe na-eme ihe, iyidobu na-agba miii!’, ‘maa na-emeroha!’, ‘igwurube oru miii!’ (11). It is not shocking that the deity does not have a name but is known by his praise names because the names capture attributes of his person even as they attempt to define his essence, but not the totality of his being which is profoundly incomprehensible in a way that a single name can do no justice.

The chief priest is sufficiently armed and prepared to hear and understand ‘messages kolanut lobes hear from the ancestors’ so as to interpret to the people. Although a higher spiritual being to other humans because he straddles both the physical and the spiritual and lives as an intermediary between the oracle and the human, the priest acknowledges thus:

                                    every dawn, with dew drops of ablution, you stir
                                    and I come alive, again and again, singing as a bird (10)

 before you bowed, before you small as grain
                                    before you, totem of worship (11)

In line with Igbo oral aesthetics of mkpoku mmuo, praise chants for the goddess Ifa in the poem ‘ifa’ is suffused with symbolism, proverbs, anecdotes, allusions, repetition, alliteration, personification and apostrophizing. Ifa is mother and the use of such elements gives rhythm to these lines thereby reinforcing them as chants:

                                    the river flows, chanting your name, ifa                    
                                    the breeze blows, carrying your name

my mouth opens, trembling as it chants
my mouth opens and river begins to flow
a river trembles, calling all to worship (20)

Whether invoking a cleansing ritual or an ‘initiation’ rite in the shrine, grove or forest, Amu Nnadi’s evocation is poignant in rendering and striking in its fluidity. For this worshipper, ifa is muse and mother, hence he poetizes and lyricizes his native igbo myths and deity’s through such explorations. 

In ‘idoto’, the poet pays homage to Christopher Okigbo’s mother Idoto of ‘The Passage⁸’. His opener, ‘with liquid arms receive, mother’ (15) is reminiscent of Okigbo’s ‘Before, your watery presence’ referencing the goddess’s river abode. But unlike Okigbo, whose cry was of repentance and anguish- a prodigal returning to his roots -, the poet and his group are seekers, pilgrims, requesting safety and guidance as they traverse the sacred grove and indeed guidance so as not to stray from the right path in life.

The poet is not metaphorically naked like Okigbo although he is following in his footsteps and therefore paying obeisance to the elder poet. This poem clearly proves Elliot’s statement of an ephebe poet’s originality surfacing after a thorough digestion of an older poets’ work. The ‘legend’ of Idoto’s greatness is also referenced by Amu Nnadi who asserts thus:

                                    all our masked paths you know
                                    known since spring’s first drops

our searching eye guide mother
that we do not from you wander(15)

Amu Nnadi in this eclectic collection is ambitious and it is beautiful how the diverse oral tropes tie the numerous poems together. With over a hundred poems, this collection traverses existential issues, social commentary, love, spirituality, philosophy and human foibles. The poet’s penetrative gaze moves through Paris, Barcelona, America and returns home to Jos and Abuja. In this, the lines between person and personification, in the best of Elotian tradition, are beautifully blurred.

NOTES/REFERENCES

1. Funso Aiyejina, ‘Recent Nigerian Poetry in English: An Alter / Native Tradition’, Perspectives on Nigerian Literature, 1700 to the Present(vol. 1)  ed Ogunbiyi, Yemi.  A Publication of Guardian Books (Nigeria) Limited. 1988
2. Ushie, Joe. Phases in Nigerian Poetry in English. http://www.africaresearch.org/Papers/Ush1.pdf3/18/17
3. Chinweizu, et-al. Toward the Decolonizationof African LiteratureEnugu: Fourth  Dimension Publishers, 1980.
4. Egudu, R. ‘The Igbo Experience’, Oral Poetry in Nigeria eds Abalogu et-al. Nigeria: Nigeria Magazine, 1981
5. Amu-Nnadi, Chijioke. A Field of Echoes. Nigeria: Parresia, 2016
6. S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, Selected Essays.London: Faber and Faber, 1932
7. Osundare, Niyi, ‘Preface’, The Eye of the Earth. Nigeria: Heinemann Educational Books, 1986.
8. Okigbo, Christopher. Heavensgate. Nigeria: Heineman, 1971.

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