Video: Nigeria Is Not Poor, But Badly Misgoverned – Prof. Niyi Osundare

Professor Niyi Osundare, a renowned scholar and Nigerian poet, engaged in a conversation with Gbenro Adesina about the values that have influenced his life. From the discipline of his childhood to the rigour of his student years, he reflected on simplicity, cultural identity, and the parental lessons that molded him. In addition to his literary achievements, Osundare shared insights into the personal philosophies that have guided his path as a writer, educator, and voice of conscience. He reflected on Nigeria’s leadership crisis, the challenges faced by his peers, and the lasting affection that has bound him to his homeland. This goes beyond a poet’s testimony; it embodies the voice of a citizen demanding accountability from his country. Excerpts:

Q: Your style of dressing is quite simple, much like other great literary writers and critics such as Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Chinua Achebe. What informs this choice?

A: There is nothing dramatic or remarkable about it. This is who I am. I believe that some of the most valuable things in life are simple. Maybe, we are like Soyinka because he was our teacher and somebody we admire a lot. Remember, in the 1960s, there was the Mbari Club. Those were wonderful days when we had the likes of Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, J. P. Clark, Chinua Achebe, the unforgettable Ulli Beier, and Demas Nwoko. These were our role models in many ways. Through them, we learnt that it was not the coat and tie that mattered’ not the flowing agbada worn by flamboyant politicians who hid. a lot of evil under their big robes. Why can’t we create something decent, beautiful and simple to wear? That was how the embroidered top came about. The Mbari group went directly to patronise local cloth weavers, including adire makers in Osogbo, Ede, Abeokuta, and so on. They promoted batik, a fabric the so-called Nigerian elite once looked down upon. Many people put on layers of fabric but they are naked; whatever they wear, it is easy to see through them, especially in terms of what they stand for. No matter what they put on, we can see through them.  Simplicity is the common trait of artists all over the world. Clothing is meant, first and foremost, to provide comfort. Why should I buy a lace material costing   N10,000 per yard simply to impress? It becomes even more illogical when these fabrics are imported. Personally, I believe it is more reasonable to use locally made products because they are ours. More of our time should be devoted to thinking, building, and improving the country rather than exhausting our energy and resources on the flamboyance of   our wardrobes. Yes, many artists and writers dress differently. That is one aspect of their creative difference.

Prof. Niyi Osundare

Q: Do you remember any of the pranks you played when you were growing up?

A: Many of my colleagues considered me to be “Mr Pure”. Why? I had no room for pranks, for I have been brought up to take life seriously. Remember: my background provided none of the indulgences and latitudes that came naturally to the rich and privileged. Life, I was frequently told, is something to be held with both hands.  No loafing around; no silly risks. I had extremely stern parents. I have never put a cigarette in my mouth, and that’s a result of their prohibition. We were not allowed to drink, and that upbringing has had a lasting effect on my life. I’m not a teetotaler, but I think the last time 1 had a bottle of beer was about three years ago! Moderation, discipline, temperance, and an abstemious life matter a great deal. I used to think my parents were too strict, but I later realised that my teachers and my father complemented one another. I was fortunate not to have received much of the teachers’ cane, largely because I was a bright student and favourite of most of my teachers. From the inception of my schooling, I was doing well in school, and the only way I could keep it up was by focusing on my reading. So, I can’t remember any prank. I attended Amoye Grammar School, Ikere Ekiti, a boarding school. Upon my set’s entry in 1961, the entire school population went up to either 81 – or 83. The principal knew the names of virtually everybody. Chief Adeniran was a conscientious administrator, meticulous, and strict disciplinarian. He taught us Latin. One of the subjects that earned me an A1 grade in the WASCE, and which remains one of my favourites to this day. I am just looking at how the home discipline morphed into the school discipline. If I thought my father was strict, what about these teachers? In those days, if you were punished in school and you got home and reported, your parents would go to school to thank the teacher for doing his job. These days, they will go with a team of thugs to bash the teacher. Many people would consider me a nerd these days. I have always loved  books, and swotted myself to the top of the class. Before I entered Amoye Grammar School in 1961 as a student, I had read, no, studied, half of First Steps in Latin and one-third of Latin for Today. Latin is rigorous, and I felt challenged and inspired by its rigour. ….. There was a contrast between my father and my mother. My father was a tenacious, extremely industrious farmer who spared little time for rest People said that I inherited my ‘workaholic’ disposition from him. I think they are not far from the truth. No matter how bad the weather was, my father would find his way to the farm. I remember one instance. The Osun River was in full flood because it was the rainy season. (Our family was named after the Osun River. It was just a couple of yards from my family house. It also crosses the way to my father’s farm).  Nobody wanted to cross because the river had a fast and furious current  As we approached, we saw that people were retreating from the river and heading home. But my father was going toward the river. When we got to the edge, he put me on his shoulder and swam across the river. The furious river could have swept both of us away, but father dared the danger! When we got to the other side, both of us were wet and dripping. He said, “That is life”. It is not every time you walk through the easy path. This is the kind of father I had. He didn’t want to miss his beat on the farm. Father had little sympathy for the lazy. Poverty, as he saw it, was a disease, but hard work, honesty of purpose, conscientiousness, and wisdom were the cure.

 My mother was a cloth weaver and cloth-dyer (Iya Alaro). She wove the fabric that was tailored into my first school uniform in 1953. The cotton came from my father’s farm. My mother made the required fabric with it and passed it on to my father’s brother, a tailor who sewed it as my first uniform. My mother was a very thoughtful, methodical, quiet, and tough person – compassionate and honest. In 1958, I, on my way from school, I got to Oja Oba, the King’s Market. The one right in front of the Oba’s palace. I saw a kobo on the ground, I didn’t know how it got there. I picked it up. It was a lot of money in those days. When I got home, I showed it to my mother. I expected her to collect it from me because at that time, a kobo was a big fortune! Mother’s countenance changed dramatically as she pulled my ear until I winced from the pain. “Money doesn’t grow on the ground”, she said in an uncharacteristically loud voice. I do not come from the folds of those who thrive on other people’s money. You were NOT born in the family of boon-seekers. Go back now and return that kobo to where you found it. Never again must you take what doesn’t belong to you!”. I ran back and threw the kobo back to the dusty road. I returned home “koboless” (moneyless) but richer than any king in the world. So, these are a few instances of the values that shaped my life. People who say I am “harsh” and “too frugal” need to know something about the golden rules of my childhood days and family’s application of them. I had no time for pranks. When we came back from school, my mates and friends would go to Osun River to swim. There was an accident sometime, and one of them was swept away by the current. So, fear of drowning added to my mother’s prohibition order. Once I was back from school, you would hear my mother asking, ‘Have you done your homework? My mother used to say “nobody knows what tomorrow is going to be like. I want you to know how to cook and cook well, without depending on anyone to do this for you”.  I never envisaged that life would be like this. I am still very much a man of the kitchen. My father was fond of saying, “It is book knowledge I don’t have, but I know my inu (inside, mind)”. I never saw my parents envying anyone because of their possessions, never heard them speaking ill of others, whether in public or behind their backs. “Ubi i ye” (Evil never prospers) – that was one of my mother’s favourite sayings, almost as frequently uttered as another one “Erun kan i je ke run kan a o” One mouth must not do all the eating while all other mouths are condemned to only watching). Suuru (patience) was one of her cardinal virtues. Suuru baba iwa (Patience, father of good character), she often said.

On the day of my departure for secondary school in January 1961, my father summoned me before the family, and they all wished me well and prayed for me.  As I rose from my knees, my father said in his typical authoritative voice: “Ranti omo eni ti iwo n se” (remember whose son you are) and write that in all the books I have bought for you. For many years in high school, I carried out that paternal injunction. In all my books, after writing my name, I’d write, “Ranti omo eni ti iwo n se”. For a father to be able to say that, he must have been confident in himself that he must have been sure about his own character.  I was a strict follower of school rules. Never sneaked out of boarding school. Never applied for exeats (permission to go out of campus). I remember one day when our House Master said to me”: “Osundare, for one year, you didn’t take an exeat”. I was always in the library. We had an Open Day once a month. That day, we could go out after breakfast and come back before dinner. I didn’t go out many times. In my final year, I learnt that all the teachers voted to make me the School Library Prefect. Yes, a unanimous decision!  When our school certificate results came out in March 1967, I had distinctions in six subjects, I said to our principal’s hearing “thanks to Amoye library”. I was told that for many years, our Principal cited this exultation in his address to my juniors. I’ve always been a book person, curious and hungry for knowledge. It wasn’t easy because some of my colleagues saw me as too bookish. There was strict discipline in those days. There were three secondary schools in Ikere: Annunciation School, and St Louis Grammar School, owned by the Catholic Mission, and Amoye Grammar School, set up by Ikere Community. Of course, there was a lot of healthy competition among the three. Academic brilliance was regarded very highly and attracted a lot of respect – and envy.

I had many admirers, but I made sure I didn’t allow this to get in my way. Being the top student in one’s class was a burden which came with its own anxiety.

Well, I hope I haven’t painted the picture of a book-nourished, fun-starved robot plodding his youthful days like a robot. That would be far from the whole truth. Fact is, I was also a happy, even joyful lad who loved music and could really shake a leg when it came to vigorous dancing. In our part of Nigeria, dance styles changed really frequently in those days when highlife ruled the waves and traditional Yoruba festivals were memorable for their songs and dance moves. Furthermore, my life on the drama stage started pretty early – in my primary school days when I became a star actor both at school and also the Ile Asa theatre activities which featured every year between Christmas and New Year, with Egbon Omotayo Ayodele as playwright, director, producer, motivator, and pacesetter rolled into one! As I have acknowledged in Niyi Osundare: A Literary Biography, by Professor E.E. Sule, and other places, my indebtedness to Oga Omotayo is lifelong and immeasurable.

Q: You and many of your colleagues, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, among others, relocated abroad and one wonders why you didn’t stay back to give back to Nigeria that made you?

A: By way of correction, Achebe never ‘left’ the country as is the practice today. It was circumstances that led to his departure. In 1990, he had a terrible accident on his way between Nsukka and Lagos. That was what took him abroad. He had to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The care he needed was not available in Nigeria. I used to speak with him on the phone. Of course, you couldn’t speak with Obierika (that name from the timeless Things Fall Apart, was my sobriquet for him) without taking something away at the end of the conversation. The Eagle on Iroko was no novelist and thinker by accident.  Achebe was a deeply Igbo/African person, indigenous to the core. Exile was unkind to somebody like him. His is completely beyond the typical japa story; far, far from the diaspora dislocation syndrome.

After his university education in England, Wole Soyinka returned to Nigeria. He was the one who set up the Orisun Theatre in UI and he started playing his role as a teacher and dramatist. He was one of the pioneers that built up the academic drama tradition in Nigerian. But far more than that he in the rough and tumble of Nigerian politics right from the time the country became independent, when the country turned sour and dangerous!  The things his eye saw during the “Wetie” years, oh! My God. I don’t think there is any Nigerian writer that had suffered the way Soyinka had in the hands of successive Nigerian governments and yet, he refused to abandon the country.  Remember his sizzling satirical song, “I love my country, I no go lie/ Na inside am I go live and die/ When e push me so/, I push am so/. E push me, I push am, I no go go.” An anthem of obstinate determination and patriotism. The Nigerian crisis blew out into a civil war. He put his life at risk to avert the course of events, convinced that that war would not solve the Nigerian problem.  General Gowon’s military government picked him up and dumped him in many months of incarceration by solitary confinement. When he was released, he had to leave the country for a couple of years. But he came back. Yes, Soyinka came back and has remained, even right now in his nineties, a formidable defender of Freedom and monitor of the nation’s conscience, and a voice that earns respect because he so richly deserves it.

And now my own story. Not ‘japa’ by any means. We have a deaf child who was frustrated by the total lack of facilities for people with her kind of challenge in Nigeria. Not even the University Staff School could provide what she needed. Matters were getting really desperate, and we had to take her abroad.  I thought about places like Kenya, South Africa, even Morocco, but I had no money. The bailout came eventually from the University of New Orleans where I had spent my second Fulbright year before returning to Nigeria in October 1992. It was at that point I spoke to Professor Linda Blanton during whose term as Chair of the English Department I was appointed Associate Professor in 1991. Mine was, indeed, a reluctant departure for the University would have liked me to stay on, while I too wouldn’t have minded, for my family and I had found the university hospitable in many respects. But the Nigeria pull was strong; there was also the Fulbright principle that mandated the return of those on the programme to their home countries.

That was October 22, 1992. Professor Phillp Coulter, Dean of Liberal Arts and Professor Linda Blanton, Chair of English Department said good bye, with a touching caveat: if you want to come back in the future, just know that the door here is open. Little did I know that my family and I would be knocking on that door exactly five years later, with our girl as the main reason. All it took from our side was a letter to Linda Blanton and Mackie, her husband, and later, to Professor John Cooke, the new Chair of English. Dean Coulter was there for my second coming, his five-year old prophecy having come to pass! Janet Thomas, diligent and methodical, filed in all the papers, and our visa quest at the American Consulate in Lagos was short and smooth.

My departure from Nigeria this time was hurried and stressful. It had all the hurry-hurry pressure of an emergency exit. As head of the department, I found it really challenging to leave in the middle of the academic session. A trip to the Vice Chancellor’s office relieved me of some of the administrative burden. Professor Omoniyi Adewoye (the V,C,) lent me a listening ear. After a brief consultation, Dr. (now Prof.) Lekan Oyeleye, one of my colleagues in the Language Section, became the Acting Head of Department. Another major concern: my Ph.D. students whose works were in different stages of completion. I assured these students their programmes would not come to any harm as a result of my departure. And they didn’t. For a long time, I combined my University of Ibadan carryovers with full-time teaching at the University of New Orleans. And I tell you, it was almost back-breaking. For, teaching in America is labour, hard labour, and quite often, you can see the impact of your teaching on your students. As I have said again and again in Nigeria, many, many of our Nigerian teachers have a lot to learn from the accountability, transparency, and conscientiousness that characterise university teaching in Europe and the US; the fact that every course must have a sound, meticulously curated syllabus followed and executed to the letter by the teacher. The insistence on student evaluation of every course and its teacher, the democratisation and humanisation of the classroom and the intellectual activities therein; the cultivation of MUTUAL RESPECT between students and teachers; the restoration of conscientious pedagogy that was the hallmark of Nigerian universities in those days…. Of course, all these can only happen if our rulers recognise teachers as the light-givers of our society, by paying them well and caring for their welfare. Today, the pauperisation of our teaching crew has resulted in the creation of the ‘hungry Professor’ whose take-home pay cannot take them home (bless ASUU for giving us that wisecrack!)……

As I was saying, when I left Nigeria, I carried Nigeria with me. My four Ph.D. students completed their programmes in good time. Today, two of them are professors in Nigerian universities, one recently retired as an award-winning, highly respected Permanent Secretary in the federal civil service. My contact and interactions with my alma mater, the University of Ibadan continues through the delivery of occasional lectures (Bless Professor Tunde Omobowale and others who have made sure I never come home without a sound intellectual exchange with some of the students. I wish he knew how intellectually inspiring these sessions have been for me!). There is also a lot of mentoring to do for aspiring students whose young minds are still malleable as clay, whose questions are in need of answers, whose dreams are rich and raw, vast and volatile, whose consciousness is as tender as a tendril; innocent souls trying to figure out what to do with the nightmare called Nigeria; students of classrooms beyond walls….. As I said in my valedictory lecture 2005, (twenty years ago: how time flies!), the University of Ibadan has given so much to me and members of my generation. It will always my anchor, my fountainhead and locus of reference……

Now, the diaspora. This is a topic I have said so much about because I don’t hear people in Nigeria talking enough about it; and the few who do often make the wrong noises. It is a pertinently recurrent trope in my forthcoming book of literary essays, titled Truth Is Trouble. So many of our best brains have joined the so-called japa train, and the ones that are still here are doing everything to run away. Our young ones are abandoning the country the way passengers jump out of a sinking ship. What do you say about a country where life is cheap, sanity is rare, food is scarce, healthcare is hell, governance is absent. A country where power outages dump the people into perpetual darkness because it hasn’t mastered the common technology of power generation even at this end of the first quarter of the 21^st century!       

Nigerian rulers will forever be held responsible for the harm they are doing to this country, through their rampart, uncontrollable corruption and criminal impunity. The funds meant for this country’s development have gone to the development of their private bank accounts, while the populace are dumped into medieval misery. It is our rulers that are driving our best brains abroad. They don’t seem to know the danger in the brain flight they have caused. All they care about is the inflow of ‘diaspora remittances’ from our glorious ‘patriots’ on the other side of the ocean’. 

Q: Do you think people like you should go into government to contribute to national rescue, and have you ever been invited to participate in governance?

A: Yes, I’ve been asked this question several times. Years back, during General Babangida’s presidency, I was approached to consider the position of commissioner in the old Ondo State. I said no because I couldn’t see myself in the cabinet of a military junta. I didn’t want to run into any temptation with my eyes open or closed. During Gen Sani Abacha’s despotic rule, another proposition came, this time for the post of an ambassador. Ambassador for the junta which hanged Ken Saro Wiwa and other activists against environmental devastation! How would I, as a faithful ambassador have felt if I was the one delegated to defend Saro Wiwa’s murder in some strange diplomatic lingo?  

I was appointed to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments at the inception of former President Obasanjo’s government in 1999. I turned down this offer because of the way it was made. There was no prior consultation with me before my name popped up in the mass media as one of the lucky appointees. I felt this was improper; an abuse of the simplest of public service protocols. I learnt about the appointment at Heathrow Airport from two friends and colleagues who had just arrived from Nigeria for a conference at Cambridge University where I too was heading after my flight from the US. My first response was a three-word retort: HIRED ON RADIO! This incident never came up again in our four days together at Cambridge, and I thought that was the end of it all. But it wasn’t. Upon my return to my US base, I was shocked at the number of congratulatory messages on my voicemail. My consternation reached the peak when I picked up the phone so as to say a brief hello to a highly respected co-alumnus of Christ’s School on a visit to Washington, DC. He too welcomed me with light-hearted felicitation. When I told him how offensive I felt about the announcement of this appointment, he responded with a sagacious laughter, then said something to this effect: I knew you wouldn’t take it. Three other alumni have just left after a visit. Two of them agreed with me, but the third said ‘of course he will. How are you sure he got it? In this country, nobody gets anything without lobbying for it. Yes, including these so-called radicals’. …. I said a rapid good night to our senior alumnus, and went straight to my computer. A few hours later, ‘Hired On Radio’ was born, a piece in which I stated my case about the disrespectful way my appointment was announced, the incivility of this practice in a nascent civilian dispensation. My conclusion: whoever hires you on radio without seeking your consent may one day complete your humiliation by firing you on the same medium. The article appeared in many Nigerian newspapers and generated quite a bit of media conversation.

Of course, I have been taunted and berated by some people who question my patriotism in turning down government appointments. My usual answer: my calling is teaching, the most patriotic of all professions. I am an aspirer to enlightened and enlightening criticism, one of the most constructive planks in the practice of nation building.

The damage the AGIP (Any Government in Power) ilk has done to Nigerian public conscience and propagation of corruption is incalculable. The hustling for government jobs is one of the killers of academic freedom and professional pride in the Nigerian university system. It has cost our academics their self-respect. When a university professor falls on his knees before a barely literate but unaccountably powerful governor in a hapless lobby for government appointment, how can this desperate supplicant go back to the Ivory Tower and wax eloquent on lofty ideals such as university autonomy and academic freedom?

Q: Do you consider the Yoruba political leaders who symbolically wear Awo’s cap as true Awoists?

A: A few are, many are not. Ha! Awolowo? Let us not dishonour that name and the legacy of its bearer. That was a man in a million. When he died in 1987, he had a book he was working on. When we heard about his death, I told my students that Awolowo was not writing because he wanted to apply for a professorship. I said that Awo was a man of ideas. It is such a man that builds countries. Ask late Lee Kuan Yew, Barrack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Chairman Mao, a people’s leader and poet. How many of those who claim to be Awoists have read Awo’s books? His 1947 book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, remains so foundational and so indispensable. In it, he avers that the only thing that can save us is a working federal system because Nigeria is a multilingual and ethnic country. The centre shouldn’t be made so strong and powerful that it can swallow up the federating units. We practiced a fairly true federalism between 1960 and 1966, and those were years of remarkable development in many parts of Nigeria. Awolowo had foreseen many of the challenges we are facing today and procured ways of preventing them. He was a man of ideas. People trusted him. Look at what Awolowo did for Ibadan. He didn’t take all the modern developments in this city to Ikenne, his hometown. He saw Ibadan as the city of diversity that has all it takes to be the political and administrative headquarters of the then Western Region. The first comprehensive civil service secretariat in Nigeria was built in Ibadan. In the secondary school, we used to go on excursions to Ibadan, all the way from Ekiti, just to see what Awolowo had done: the Secretariat, Liberty Stadium, Lafia Canning factory, Bodija Housing Estate, and Cocoa House. Cocoa House provided the inspiration for some of the poems in Village Voices, my second book of poems. Something unique and unforgettably tall in the edifice. My father used to call it ‘ule aosifila’ (The house that is so tall that when you look at it, your cap falls off your head). But the old man never forgot to quip that ‘Ule ian Agbe) (Farmers’ House) was actually out of reach to the farmers whose hard labour produced the golden crop!

Awolowo was a thinker; a progressive thinker in the ranks of Kwame Nkrumah. I think this is how the South West has been able to make some headway. He was able to do so much because he didn’t demand respect; he earned it.  Awolowo established all his projects at the time crude oil had not corrupted the Nigerian economy and Nigerian mind. Cocoa, palm oil, rubber, timber were the products which financed his projects. Driven by efficient management, frugality, and accountability. This is how the free education programme, ridiculed as an ambitious impossibility in some other parts of Nigeria, was successfully financed and implemented. It remains Awolowo’s greatest legacy to this day.  His Cabinet worked with and for him. They looked up to him and followed his example because they trusted him. They knew he was a leader without imposing himself on them. That day in January 1955, when free education began, the streets of Ikere, my home town, bubbled with joy.  Children of different ages, heading for the future. There were girls who were already in their mid-teens who wanted school nonetheless. Some of them had been betrothed, but the hunger for education propelled their freedom. some were so tall they had to sit at the back of the class. But they pressed on in search of education. This is the humble beginning of many of today’s professors, writers/artists. doctors, nurses, lawyers, and engineers, etc.

Of course, things are different today. Utterly different. For Nigeria has gone into a drastic regression. Awolowo laboured to build the human mind and the modern state; our present politicians are busy building their private bank accounts. Of course, there are still people that are Awoist in mind and matter, in deed and truth, but they are few – and far between. For, where is the Awoist cerebral acuity, principle, discipline, temperance, frugality, and seriousness of purpose in the present band political opportunists who hop from one political party to another the way prostitutes change commercial clients? It is one thing to put the Awo cap on your head; but I am more interested in the kind of brain that cap is covering. Next time you meet the Awo- cap politician, ask how many of Awo’s book he has ever read.

Q: Did you apply to study English at the university, and if you hadn’t become an English teacher, what alternative career would you have pursued?

A: I was admitted to UI to study English. I applied to only two universities: University of Lagos (Unilag) for Mass Communication; and University of Ibadan for English. I love Mass Communication. I also thought about Accountancy, but Mathematics and I were not happy friends! . Mass Communication was what I really wanted. I would have been among the first set to study Mass Communication as a full degree course in Unilag. But I didn’t honour Unilag’s admission offer because my alma mater, Christ’s School, graciously offered me a bursary for a degree in English at the University of Ibadan. This came as a mark of honour and matter of necessity. My very first alma mater, Amoye Grammar School, also offered a similar bursary, but it came just one week after my acceptance of the one by Christ’s School. I had to pay a special visit to Amoye to explain the situation to the Principal, Sammie Fal Adeniran whereupon my old Latin teacher shook my hand and said with cheerful assurance “Christ’s School is a pride to all of us. We are happy they too have honoured you. We produced you for them….”

At the University of Ibadan, I was also offered a federal government scholarship which I declined because I already had one.

I was admitted to UI to study English with History and Latin as subsidiaries.  I loved both subsidiaries, but wanted something outside the Humanities. I went to the Faculty of The Social Sciences and traded History for Sociology. I responded to the magical pull of the Theatre; so, I dropped Latin for a long-desired sojourn in the School of Drama.

Q: Were you taught by foreign teachers during your studies?

A: Yes. When I entered UI in 1969, there were only three black lecturers: the then Mr. L. Ayo Banjo, Drs. Dan Izevbaye, and Oyin Ogunba. All the others (about six or seven of them) were white. Dr Izevbaye taught me from 1969 to 1972.  All of them were memorable teachers and role models. As I said in my valedictory lecture some 20 years ago, these teachers showed me the universe in the university. At the end, I settled for an English major, with Sociology and Drama as subsidiaries. My experiences in the past 56 years have left me convinced that I couldn’t have opted for a better combination and a better institution.  

Q: What inspired you to become a poet?

A: My upbringing. My father was a drummer and a singer who sang melodiously as we worked on the farm. His sister was also a drummer and a singer. The song is in our family. I’ve been on stage ever since elementary school. At a point, when we were in secondary school, we began to compose our own plays. I loved knowledge and literature. When I read a good work, I say to myself that someday, I too would be able to write like this. Within the family, music was ever present. What about Yoruba culture? In my many years of writing and singing and dancing, I have yet to find a language that is more sound-sensitive, music – driven than Yoruba, a language that is replete with   idioms, proverbs, words and unique expressions. Also, Ikere festivals:  Olosuta, Osun, Oloba, Ogunoye, and Egungun festivals. There are always occasions to sing and dance. Always reasons for celebration. In my childhood days, I used to follow street bands until I lost my way and had to be led back home by relatives or kind volunteers. I just loved dancing and singing with them. To this day, I still find it difficult to resist the sound of a resonant drum or the melody of a well-endowed singer.

I’ve always wanted to write. I was a book buff in my school days, and I was lucky to have teachers who stoked the fire of my imagination and encouraged me to read and write, sing and dance. There was Mr. Olatona of St. Luke’s primary school, Ikere, a marvelous song composer and prodigious dramaturge whose Yoruba adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, Bible stories and folklore fables, fitted so wonderfully well in the Yoruba setting and Yoruba dramatic tradition. There was Mr. G.O Bezi of the same school who, as my Primary 5 teacher in 1958, heard me read a poem and enthused: “Osundare my Boy, one day, you will write your own” ; the unforgettable Mr. S. Ola Ojimi of Amoye Grammar School who taught me poetry the way no other teacher had done before, and left a lifelong imprint on my poetry and poetic practice; Mr. (now Professor)  Ajisafe, our General Paper coordinator and teacher at Christ’s School who held up one of my essays for class display, describing it as the work of “a future modern writer”; Mr. S.A. Oloketuyi, veteran literature teacher  who concluded his end-of-year report in 1967 with a simple declarative tonic” “Osundare is an academic giant”, and later “told me later: “Your literary appreciation is superb; when will you start writing  your own poems ?”. On the home front was Mr. Omotayo Ayodele, my brother, mentor, and role model who was also the inaugurator, director, and producer of the annual Ile Asa drama entertainment. Like Mr. Olatona of St. Luke’s School, Oga Tayo was my inspirer in many ways. When I completed my first book of Selected Poems in 1992, I had no hesitation in dedicating it to the man who “taught me abiding lessons/In love and generosity”     

Poetry chose me very early. I was lucky to have people everywhere I went who aided my answering of its call.

Q: One of your major thematic preoccupations is ecology. What inspires your engagement with eco-literature? And how would you assess the Nigerian government’s attitude toward the environment?

A: My family and cultural background rooted me in my respect for Nature and the environment Both are my unfailing sources of inspiration. Our family name is Osundare, after the longest river in the western part of Nigeria. The river is close to our family house and not far from our farm. Secondly, my father was a farmer, and you know how close that got all the family to the earth. Thirdly, we live in the rain forest region of the world, and you know how prominent trees are in my writings. In addition to being a farmer, my father was also a lay herbalist, a person who knew what to do with the leaves of the tree, the bark, and the roots. These were the materials our people used to prepare the herbal infusions that took care of all manner of ailments before the advent of the Western doctors and their ‘pharma’ miracles. The houses we lived in the past were roofed with leaves and rafia palm fronds; the walls were built with mud’ yes, mud from the earth. Everything we used came from Nature. Our people knew and respected the complementary bond between the forest and the village/town as two vital spaces of human existence. Call me naturalist or animist if you like, but I believe every item of Nature has life. If you talk intimately to a tree, it will talk back. But you have to know how to listen; if you can reduce the sympathy gap between you and the tree. Trees breathe. Trees sigh. Trees sing. To plagiarise two lines from my recent book: Trees bleed when cut? They burn when ignited. In their own way, the protest the brutal assaults on their existence. They are sad at our immoral lack of appreciation of their many kindnesses and their enhancement of human existence. They are our neighbours who purify our air and we reward with poisonous defoliants and root-killers. They are horrified at the ways we reward their beneficence with sharp machetes and murderous chainsaws. These are some of the proclamations in “We Are the Trees of the World”, that core part of my recent eco-centric book of poems (Green: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet) where Trees speak in their own voices, much as the poet speaks for them in its predecessor, The Eye of the Earth … This sylvan advocacy is also the burden of ‘The Tree and I’, my essay-in-progress.

Considering the above, you can see now why I was/am so horrified and saddened by the destruction of the Heritage Park by authorities of my dear alma mater, the University of Ibadan. That diligently, professionally curated piece of arboreal beauty was mowed down, to create room, we were told, for a gigantic administrative building. All of a sudden, the chainsaws and machetes descended, and one after another, the peaceful, innocent trees were done to death. All of a sudden that sacred place where poets stood and stared; where happy student lovers held hands as they laughed along; that bowery escape from the heat of the university campus and horror of the Nigerian state; where birdsongs unburdened the day and butterflies unfurled the wings; that green space with a modicum of silence in a country ruled by noise and nonsense…..

As I said after my immediate sight of the chilling rubble, those trees were murdered, not felled, and the space where their charred skeletons laid had become a cemetery. I was/am terribly amazed that this ecological mayhem could be perpetrated by a university, ideally the centre of learning, of cultural and scientific cultivation, and respect for human and ecological dignity.

Generally, at the federal, state, and local government levels, Nigerian rulers have zero tolerance of green spaces. Those spaces are regarded as empty lots waiting for the so-called developer’s caterpillars and the creation of junkyards of steel. concrete, and glass. What lesson (or lecture) do Nigerian universities have for our philistine rulers and their own definition of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’. I ask again, what has happened to the universe in the Nigeria university?   

 Q: Looking back, which of your books do you feel best represent who you are?

A: All of them bear the fingerprints of my soul, vision, and spirit. All of them. 

Q: What’s your view on the idea of ‘art for art’s sake,’ especially when it comes to African literature?

A: I have addressed this issue many, many times and in different places. My third book of poetry ‘A Nib in the Pond, even dealt with it in a meta poem titled ‘Art for Ass Sake’. Some pundits postulate that the purpose of the poem is to ‘be’, not to ‘mean’; the golden rule for the writer is ‘show, don’t tell’. Some writers venerate this slogan like a sacred dictum. But we need to ask: can a poem really ‘be’ without ‘meaning’?  Which kind of writer is so eager to ‘show’ but afraid of ‘telling’? In my part of the world, the ‘showing’ is not complete without the ‘telling’, nor is the ‘being’ whole without the ‘meaning’. My own creative practice has a tent large enough to accommodate each pair – comfortably and conscientiously.

Q:  What are your thoughts on the role of indigenous language in Nigerian literature?

A: Your question brings painful memories of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, that great writer and scholar who spent most of his life pointing our attention to the importance of the language issue to African culture, African literature, and African dignity. This was the core issue in his push for the decolonisation of Africa. Bless his brave soul. The last time he and I spoke, he asked in his usually humorous way: “Are you already knocking on my door?”. My answer was “Not yet, but I will do so as soon as I returned from Nigeria”. Little did I know that he would have crossed to the other side of the Great River by the time I returned to the US…..

African literature and the language issue. That issue remains an issue. The clamour it generated about three decades ago has withered into a murmur, not because the issue has been solved, but the impetus that drove it has waned because of the socio-political situation in African countries 

 The indigenous languages are suffering. The problem is, again, because we don’t have thoughtful leaders in Africa. Language is not just cultural phenomenon. It is also political. There is something called Language Engineering. We had something close to it some years ago when it was said that every Nigerian child must learn the language of the local environment and one Nigerian language. Nobody is talking about that any more. The struggle for socio-economic and political survival has turned the fight for indigenous languages into some kind of frivolous pastime. But this is far from being the end to the advocacy for indigenous languages, for I still believe that the future of African literature cannot be complete without works in indigenous languages. The real problem is how to make that future begin now and right away…..

 I write in both Yoruba and English, but most of my works are in English. In the past two decades or so I have been doing some amulumala (mixture), making sure that none of my creative works is published without some of their contents being in Yoruba. I was tremendously impressed last year when the organisers of the Golden Key Award requested and used one of my Yoruba poems as the opening, pivotal poem in a 159-page Serbian translation of a selection of my poems as a significant part of the honour which came with my winning the Golden Key Poetry Award regarded as Serbia’s most prestigious poetry award. I never missed the point that it was their high respect for their indigenous language that they extended to mine.

As I have said in the conclusion of my essay, ‘Yoruba Thoughts, English Words: A Poet’s Journey Through the Tunnel of Two Tongues’, there is no wholly satisfactory alternative to creating and performing Yoruba poetry in its indigenous medium’. In the meantime, the bilingual/multilingual experimentations continue.  Hoping – and pushing for – that time when a truly culture-conscious and enlightened African leadership would be able to carry out the real ‘language engineering’ Africa needs and deserves     

Q: How do you want to be remembered?

A: Let me answer this question with a few lines from ‘A Song for All Seasons’, a poem originally dedicated to my friend and colleague, Tanure Ojaide

He lived his time
And ploughed its rhyme
Drained its vinegar
Drank its wine
Reaped its pain
Tilled its joy
He shortened its night
Prolonged its day

Let every mouth tell
A listening ear:
We find in his many and varied songs
Voices of his and other times

From Songs of the Season, 1990