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By CHIKE OKOYE
Last Dance on the Niger, Emma Okocha, Gomslam Books, New York, 2015, pp 114
Emma Okocha’s latest literary output, a collection of thirty-six (36) poems with the title, Last Dance on the Niger, is a book that wails about the massacre of Asaba people during the dawn of the Nigeria civil war in October, 1967. This genocide, which orphaned the author, provides a springboard of pain and effectively makes the work a book drafted in ache and in the environment of pain.
Structurally, Okocha divides the book into five parts, but, thematically, one easily identifies three major clusters. The first group of poems presents, in considerable imagistic detail, the actual gory depictions of the massacre, his discontent with the apologies of General Gowon, and the macabre deeds of Muritala, Ogbemudia, Haruna and other commanders of the abominable Second Division of the Nigerian Army.
This group of poems also contains Okocha’s reverence for the river goddess of his people and her retributive actions against the federal forces. The second cluster of poems treat deprivation, betrayal, loneliness and elegies on individuals, war and death generally; while the last group of poems laments, in an ecocritical manner, further loss suffered by the Asaba people, this time, in the form of deforestation and the decimation of beautiful natural habitats.
On closer scrutiny, Part One of the collection features poems that treat largely the same theme from different perspectives. “Ogbe Osowa” is about the forensic and anthropological search to validate the genocide; “Everlasting Embrace” takes on the positioning of the Asaba massacre against the backdrop of other African genocide scenarios while calling for a memorial and remembrance; and while “Asaba was Bethlehem” alludes to the biblical Rachel who will not be comforted (Onishe the Asaba goddess will not be consoled too), “Black on Black Genocide” laments the traditions that changed as the women had to bury the corpses of their husbands and sons.
“Ogbeosuwa” is a plea, a supplication that memories should not be wiped out but, as heritage, should be preserved, while “Welcome Address” jolts the reader back to the horrific debacle, describing the near escape and eventual death of Izoma Ahaba at the hands of a Lt Usman. “I am the Butcher” is the boast of the despicable butcher and murderer, reminiscent of other historical perpetrators of mass murders; and “Once upon a Time”, a somewhat wistful piece, tells the moral of ‘pride goes before a fall’, while “Rape of the Naked Mad” depicts the 2nd Division soldiers as ravaging vandals that spared no one, decimating generations of Asaba progeny.
An elegy more than others, “Henry Chukwuma” centres on a single person: handsome and endowed beyond description and killed by the soldiers; a painful metaphor for all the beauties Asaba lost to the massacre.
Part Two is resonant with religious and retributive overtones. “Goddess of the Niger”, “The Eleven Commandments”, and “The Python is our Mother” are venerations of sorts to Onishe, the Asaba goddess, while “The Retribution of the River Goddess”, and “Tsunami on the Niger” dwell on the unforgiving mien of the goddess as she takes on the vandal soldiers. “Idegbani” depicts the people as friendly and fun-loving while “The Labour to Make Heaven” is the classical pastoral elegy – Okocha picks on the society to cast aspersions on immorality, corruption and religious charlatanism.
Parts Three and Four contain respectively tones of betrayal, loneliness, disruptions of order, usurpations, ingratitude, bathos, etc., and motley of featured poems by other poets fairly united as a collection of elegies. The last part, Five, sounds ecocritical. With titles such as “The Vegetables are Talking to Me”, and “Idowu wa Oba”, Okocha successfully presents gardens, plains and brooks with herbal qualities that helped cure the ailments of his people as subjected to natural and man-made deforestation; and deftly sets them in the tenor of fellow victims of the genocide. In one stroke, he includes every living thing in Asaba in the list of the wounded and deprived.
Emma Okocha’s Last Dance on the Niger is definitely a new, fresh voice replete with stark metaphors that help the lines tickle the imagination, but it might not fare too favourably in comparison with other notable war poetry armed with say, the heart-wrenching and mature eye-witness depictions of “Poems about War” in Chinua Achebe’s Beware Soul Brother, or the semi-detached, impersonal descriptions in J.P. Clarke’s Casualties. Yet, Okocha’s inchoate childhood perspective could function as an indulging weakness poised as both a potential advantage and as leverage.
His featured poems by poets such as Chimalum Nwankwo, Dennis Osadebay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Homero Aridjis, Kofi Awoonor and Ngozi Ibekwe make the book hover between an anthology and a collection; but their coherence, tautness and elegance are refreshingly contrasting to the leisurely, entertaining and adventurous sprawling of Okocha’s somewhat languorous and melancholic verses. This contrast is beautiful in its variegation. Nevertheless, there are still issues of inconsistencies, mistakes and errors that Okocha could have avoided or corrected.
Chike Okoye (PhD), teaches Literature and Poetry at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
