Eclipsed Visions Esiaba Irobi Interviewed

LEON OSU

N 1989, EARLY IN MY UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES at Uni- versity, , (now , Uturu), Udenta O. I Udenta introduced my ‘Introduction to Drama and Theatre’ class to a budding writer, Esiaba Irobi, whose The Colour of Rusting Gold, alongside Bode Sowande’s Flamengo and Tess Onwueme’s The Reign of Wazobia, we put on stage. Later in my career, as I tinkered with the idea of the African tradition and revolutionary aesthetics in drama for my Master’s thesis, Professor Isidore Diala suggested that Irobi’s plays would blend well with those of Ng×g´ wa Thiong’o to give the best result. The success of that work and the intellectual attention it at- tracted (especially with the Irobi aspect) made me more enthusiastic to explore further the career of this now-established Nigerian dramatist and poet of Igbo extraction. Thus, when he came home on holiday in 2007, I went in the active company of Dick Adindu (a course-mate of mine at Imo State University, Okigwe) to interview Professor Esiaba Irobi at Irobi’s cousin’s residence in Amakohia , Nigeria. Here now, posthumously, is the text of that exclusive and probably last exten- sive interview that Irobi gave. Encompassing the ambitious, daring, and passion- ate dreams of his life and career, it also provides background insights to virtually all his creative works as well as his motivations as artist and social critic.

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LEON O SU: How did Esiaba Irobi come into this world? E SI ABA IROBI: My father’s name is Enoch Amaikpe Irobi and he was a head- master. My mother is Rosana Nwambueze Akwarandu and she was a seam- 104 LEON O SU &E SI ABA IROBI ™ stress, an oral poet of the first order, and a teacher of the domestic kind, teach- ing to make cakes, how to sew, and all that. My village is Amapu Igbengwo in Umuakpara, where you have Eke-Akpara market (which was the revered headquarters for the Aba Women’s Revolution in 1929. That was where the women who had guns were waiting, five miles to Aba). My mother is from Owahia. All these are in Obioma Ngwa in Abia State, Nigeria.

LO: What is the educational background that informed your intellectual growth? EI: Succinctly, one, I had a holistic education. Holistic, this means that I had access to the best of Ngwa culture as well as the best of Western education. I would like to illustrate, even though I want to be succinct. We were brought up in a mission school. But, interestingly, my father’s village did not embrace Christianity very quickly. They had a lot of masquerades, and every Christ- mas when we came home, we would be exposed to those masquerade groups. It was in my father’s village that I learnt how to play masquerade music, and how, though that music is not written, each time it is played it tells a story. So when you make the usual masquerade music rhythm, everybody who is an initiate knows what you are saying. Thus, I was exposed to a holistic educa- tion which involved the performative and the literary. Then I went through a good primary school. And because my father was a headmaster, of course we had a lot of exposure to what was the best in the house. Thereafter, I went to secondary school – Wilcox Memorial Grammar School, Aba, which also exposed me to the culture of Aba people. We had a very good literature teacher, E.F. Kuku, who introduced us to Wordsworth and other Western authors. We didn’t do West African Verse when I did my WASC. We did the Europeans because that was what he learnt at the , Nsukka. But our results were seized. I knew that what he was teaching us was good but it was dangerous. I got the best of the West. I went to Mbawsi Sec- ondary school, Aba, to do my “Second Missionary Journey,” that is, my sec- ond attempt at the WASC exams. And our teacher there gave us West African Verse. I learnt the core African poetic culture in print – from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, etc. – so that they made, for me, the connection be- tween my mother’s poetry and literature. And then I got the confidence in what came from my own culture instead of Western culture. So, you see those two traditions coming together again. Thereafter I went to Nsukka, after I had gone to Uzuakoli Teacher Training College for one year and I taught for some time at Akabo Girls’ Secondary School in Imo State. I couldn’t go to the