By Tony Afejuku

Sophia Obiajulu Ogwude, the subject of this column now, is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature, a seasoned one, who taught for above forty years in our country’s universities. In fact, she taught at universities in Owerri in the East of Nigeria and in Abuja (Nigeria’s administrative capital) where she retired recently.

The gleaner-glimpser-glitterer elects to look at her as a critic and scholar who rightly paid her dues before her mandatory retirement in accordance with our country’s regulations relating to academics and scholars of her calibre, standing and distinction. But the gleaner does not wish to be misunderstood.

His interest is purely designed to demonstrate the range and penetration of Sophia Obiajulu Ogwude’s academic discourse which her recent book of criticism delightfully manifests. She entitles it Critiquing the Nigerian Socio-Political Space in Prose Fiction. I estimate it as a book, as an academic discourse, for all seasons. This underscores Sophia Ogwude’s worth as an academic who is an academic – or, better stated, as a literary critic who is a literary critic.

In the 13 main chapters of her discourse Sophia Ogwude comprehensively introduces herself to the gleaner-glimpser-glitterer as one of the finest and most original and independent critical minds of our generation and time. The gleaner admires her discourse, but this admiration should not tempt any reader of this review or critique to call him a partisan critic. Of course, it is the purpose of this essay to affirm the importance or significance of Ogwude’s discourse.

But this is not to say or suggest that this gleaner is in full or complete agreement with her opinions or conclusions relating to what she calls the “Nigerian socio-political space in prose fiction”. Clearly, this is misleading as her focus in the discourse and some of the material she utilises to express her views extend or go beyond the “Nigerian socio-political space in prose fiction.” Blame the gleaner-glimpser-glitterer’s impression here on Ogwude’s mode that compels her to embrace varied interests and perspectives in order to have the feeling and sense of the Nigerian socio-political longitude and latitude which she collapses into a single space to fit her examination of disparate texts.

It is worthwhile here to list in full the titles of the thirteen main chapters of Ogwude’s book. Doing so will energise readers of this discourse not only to search for Ogwude’s book to read, but also to expand limitlessly their appreciation of the gleaner and the author under focus before they read her opinions on the Nigerian condition in particular, and on the human situation in general.

Chapter one: Early Nigerian Prose Fiction; chapter two: Achebe on the Woman Question; Chapter three: politics and Human Rights in Prison Literature; Chapter four: Realities of History and Possible Futures in Emergent New Narratives; Chapter five: Of Hounds and Quarry: The African Human Condition on Canvas; Chapter six: The Voice of a Story-teller Spreading Power with Words; Chapter seven: Essential Art: Realism and Commitment in the Works of Festus Iyayi; Chapetr eight: Transnational Migration and Spatial Spheres of the Nigerian Writer: A Reading of Biyi Bandele, Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie and Chika Unigwe; Chapter nine: Re-Framing Parenthood in Emergent Nigerian Fiction: A Study of Lola Shoneyin and Ayobami Adebayo; Chapter ten: History and Ideology in Chimamanda Adichie’s Fiction; Chapter eleven: Fantasy and Dystopia in African Science Fiction; Chapter twelve: Reincarnation, Mysticism and Fantasy in the Akata Series; Chapter thirteen: The Bionic Woman and the Sorcerer Women as Catalysts: A Reading of The Book of Phoenix and Who Fears Death.

These chapters, in varying degrees, comprise Ogwude’s views and opinions on politics, culture, religion, history, education and geography in contemporary life. What this indicates is that her discourse by and large manifests thematic scholarship and criticism through which she tries to unravel, to all intents and purposes, the fate of modern Nigerian prose fiction. Her selection or inclusion of some texts she calls “prose fiction” is, however, problematic on aesthetic grounds. She calls Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s A Month and
A Day (as well as Ngugi wa Thiongo’s, The Kenyan novelist’s Detained) “prose fiction”. I do not share her opinion in this regard – aesthetically speaking. Am I right in my persuasion? The answer must be a capital YES, and it is a capital YES.

The named texts are prison narratives, prison diaries, which are, factually, recollections, autobiographies, of their respective prison experiences. Thus aesthetically speaking they are not within the genre of prose fiction. But they are important as factual prose narratives that give vent to the subject of politics and fundamental rights – which Ogwude employs rightly and relevantly to tackle and condemn the immorality and oppression in our country’s (and the world’s) socio-political space. We may – and can – query Ogwude’s aesthetic plane, but may not and cannot query her moral plane which she uses the texts in question (among other ones) to elucidate. The gleaner is very impressed by the manner she uses her chosen/selected texts to critique the moral hypocrisy of the oppressors in our socio-political space.
To be continued.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.