The Burden of History in Nsan Eneyo’s The Rich Old Man from Ngorika

Nsan Eneyo’s collection of poems, The Rich Old Man from Ngorika, is a testament to the fact that works of art can be used to celebrate the progress of history, to interrogate its backdrop, or to evaluate both in one linguistic leap. This fact is evinced in the way the collection is preoccupied with the burden of the history of Andoni/Obolo people of the Niger Delta region, straddling individual, familial, as well as communal perspectives and counter-perspectives to such history.

Containing 42 poems, the collection discusses a plethora of issues, covering the history of the origin and evolution of the name “Andoni/Obolo”, as well as the legends associated with the people. The poems are rendered with a lachrymal tone and sombre mood, decrying the socio-political shortcomings of postcolonial Obolo as an ethnic group and as a local government. For instance, in the poem “Andoni Is Obolo Too,” Eneyo takes his readers on a historical tour of the origin and evolution of the name “Andoni,” reflecting (with an indicting tone) on the linguistic influence of Europeans (during the slavery excavation of the Niger Delta region), like John Barbot and Granzillia, on the adulteration of the name “Obolo,” while not sparing “neighbours,” whom he accuses of “holy gossip,” which resulted in further distortion of the name from “Idòni” to “Dòni”—the latter being offered by European expatriates and slave traders in the 17th to 18th centuries, as an alternative to “Idòni”, which she was known by prior to the slave trade era. He writes: “Her neighbours call her Idòni/but her name is Obolo/her language is Obolo/Her neighbours call her Idòni/but Idò is Obolo/A beautiful name on her tongue/unfortunate name corrupted as Idòni” (18). Much more than the bemoaning of the ‘adulteration’ of the name, Eneyo seems rather concerned about identity. This concern springs from a place of consciousness of the reciprocal relationship between ‘name’ and ‘identity’. However, he is rather conservative; to him, whether “Idoni” or “Ido”, it is the same (“Obolo”) people.

In this collection, Eneyo equally shows that the political, economic, and socio-cultural sabotage demonstrated by traditional Andoni leaders during the slave trade era continued through independence to the postmodern Andoni, as we later find in poems such as: “Alas, Mbira”, “Pa Emanuel Ananjin Eneyok”, “Ibiambo Son of Owunwañ”, “Ekeneokot”, “Asakala”, and the eponymous poem “The Rich Old Man from Ngorika”, through which he laments the evil of the new breed of Andoni political and traditional leaders who are merely concerned about how to enrich themselves and their cartels at the detriment of the people and communal development. In the poem, “Alas, Mbira,” Eneyo not only extols the legendary deeds of the warrior-turned ancestor, Mbira, among the Unyeada people of Andoni, but also laments the nature of the new crop of Andoni leaders who are nothing compared to the legendary days of Mbira, both in might and in wit, as he writes: “Alas! Mbira wakes in my bosom/rising in the beauty of the even sun/but these men/of wants, power, and torments/think they worth a worthy name?” (15). For him, then, the new crop of political leaders is not worth any admiration or reverence.

He goes further to lament the burden of the history of contemporary Andoni, which is devoid of the glorious days of such political leaders as Erefrokuma Arong, Mgbugbo-Okwan, Ogbilikara, Ogbolo-akon, and Yok-Obolo, whose “echoes of triggers/lay up the forte and walls”, protecting the people, whereas “now we walk in ego and greed/selfish and heedless creed” of contemporary political and traditional leaders who only plunge Andoni and her development into the abyss of selfish war, making “Obolo sink in blood of Obolo bloods”. The tragedy of the gruesome maiming of Monwon Etete, Ekemere, Emilia Nte, Engr. Mike Ebirien, etc., in Andoni, is symbolic here.

The epic of “Asakala” is particularly fascinating as it is rare, not merely because it valorizes the war exegesis of the Andoni people with their Ogoni & Opobo neighbours in the early 1960s and ’70s, but also because it signifies the sheer emplacement of women in the success of the war expeditions of the Andoni people in history. The story of the might of Asakala has become legendary among the Andoni people, as it is canonised by Eneyo in this collection. The story of a pipe-smoking woman who, while at the seaside at night, upon acknowledging the stealthy advance of the enemies, lit the cannon with the heat from her pipe and vanquished the enemies. Many a woman would run away out of fear, but Asakala stood still, instead resolved to face the foe.

However, one would ask: Who now tells such a story of the role women played in Obolo war history? In these questions—underpinning his lachrymal tone and solemn mood—lies Eneyo’s burden of history, for, indeed, as he writes: “Her name was hastily thrown away/in the bandits of our weakness/and muses of our ego/It is still Ayanda/where Asakala lived/and defended with a pipe” (56-7).

It seems part of the burden of history evoked in this collection is our knack for devaluing history, reflecting the reciprocal dearth or atrophy of records of such history. Thus, it seems, in an attempt to turn the tide of such narrative, Eneyo undertakes the task of such epic renderings, although not without the obvious fact that it’s reflective of a section of Andoni (Unyeada dynasty), which, of course, underlies his background. It should be mentioned that the documentation of history in this collection is a laudable milestone in the association of literary art with the history of Andoni/Obolo people in the first place, as well as in narrowing the coast of written record of such history. In these poems, even if the form of the artefacts will be contended by historians later, a great repertoire of Andoni history is situated, significant not only to literary critics and cultural scholars but to historians and anthropologists as well.

As a literary work, however, the merit of the collection is not so much in its style and form as it is in its thematic preoccupation. In the former, the poet leaves so many stones unturned; in fact, he is not even able to turn the few he touched very well, like his use of language, which suffers the atrophy of literary diet, hence, starves the appetite for literary scholarship. The language as well as style are lame—maybe due to the poet’s emergent preoccupation with the need to deliver his message, in this case, at the expense of literary refinement. The syntax also hobbles in some of the poems, with incongruity of tense, uneven enjambment that dislocates rhythm, dissuading cliché, and consequential structuring of the entire collection, which the poet ignores at the peril of good ordering, which could have contributed to easy accessibility and assessment of thematic evocation and stylistic nuance on the part of the reader. Perhaps a reassessment before reprinting will save, as well as attenuate, the merit due to the collection in the future.