One of Nigeria’s most celebrated authors is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I like reading Chimamanda’s books and I love watching her podcasts. While watching one of her podcast earlier this year I was struck by a comment she made. While growing up, Chimamanda’s literary influence were mostly English (not just in English language). She sounded as if she did not have access to books written in Igbo language or books written by African authors as a young child.
Igboland has produced some of Nigeria’s top authors and poets. Of notes are Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and Christopher Okigbo (a great poet who died very young during the civil war). Even if those authors did not write in Igbo, their works were available in English language. By the time Chimamanda was growing up, African Writers Series had dozens of books in print.
My experience growing up was very different. I grew up in South Western Nigeria, where Yoruba was the mother tongue. In my primary school days, there were many novels written in Yoruba.
I can’t recall the first time I read a Yoruba novel, but I can guesstimate it to be when I was between the ages of 7 and 8. The biggest event in my childhood was our relocation which took place when I was aged 9, an event that remains vivid in my memory. By that time, I had read several Yoruba novels. In fact, I was addicted to those books. It was after our relocation that my father banned us from reading those books and went ahead to purchase five books. I remember the books very well: Alan Quartermain, King Solomon’s mine, David Copperfield, More Tales from Shakespeare and Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.
My first taste of literature in English was not tasteful at all. I moved from reading books that were Harry Porter like to Alan Quartermain, a book that started very slowly and felt dry and uninteresting. My older sister was handed King Solomon’s Mines to read and she threw it under the bed. The purpose of banning us from reading Yoruba books was to improve our English as we prepared to go to high school and sit for competitive admission exams. My father also banned us from praying in Yoruba language at our daily prayer time. By the time I finished reading Alan Quartermain, I developed a taste for novels written in English language, so, my father’s project was very successful.
Novels written in Yoruba were in abundance in South Western Nigeria. The leading author was Chief Daniel Olufemi Fagunwa. His books were the very first ones that I read. “Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole” (The Forest of A Thousand Daemons) is reputed to be the first book published in an African language.
There were other notable authors in South Western Nigeria, who wrote in Yoruba Language. Adebayo Faleti was one of them. Faleti, a newscaster, was very productive and prolific. I remember a few of his books very well. “Nwon Ro Pe Were Ni” (translated “People thought she lost her mind”) was a book that left a strong impression on me. Faleti also loved to dip into Yoruba history and those were the sources of “Omo Olokun Esin”, a book that is essentially the same story as Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman”. One of the more popular historical fiction by Faleti was “Bashorun Gaa” which eventually became a Nollywood movie.
While Fagunwa (and the likes of J.O Ogundele) wrote about the supernatural and Faleti (and others such as Olu Daramola) focused on issues in society and history, there were other authors writing in Yoruba language and exploring other genres. Of note among these was Kola Akinlade, who wrote a few books in his detective series around a detective (Akin Olusile? I can’t recollect) who gathered information to solve crimes as he sat in pubs, washing down chicken with beer.
As I grew up, many of these books became TV series. For example, the Late Duro Ladipo produced “Igbo Irunmole”, Fagunwa’s first book.
I hate to stop now, but I have to, as I planned to write 250 words, but now I am well over seven hundred. In subsequent post, I plan to review some of these books, starting with “Nwon Ro Pe Were Ni” by Adebayo Faleti.
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