Title: Tribe and Prejudice
Author: Sam Omatseye
Publishers: Origami, Lagos
Year of publication: 2017
Reviewer: Edozie Udeze
Tribe and Prejudice! How it sounds like Jane Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice. Yet this is the story of Nigeria, the tribal issues that have bedeviled the Nigerian society right from inception. It is a poetry collection done by Sam Omatseye, a writer whose powerful lyrical approach is ever rhetorical, incisive and frankly confrontational. Every single issue that has worried this artificial configuration is indeed recounted in this latest offering. There is a human touch to it; the poet is deeply and emotionally concerned about the myriad of social, political, economic, tribal, religious and other petty turbulent sentiments that have kept this society down ever since.
Tribe and Prejudice is a strong statement on the pulling forces of destabilization, destruction, hate, apocalyptic utterances and norms obstructing the growth of a nation- state. How has the society managed its differences, or harmonized those seemingly inordinate stupidities to build or impede the progress and wellbeing of the country?
Impressively, this is a journey that began with hope. The poet saw that hope in the horizon at the beginning when he first set out. It showed him plenty signs of good things to come. So, he captures it thus: “I first saw it in this city, Lagos on a poll cosmopolis”. Here and there, the tribes littered and knitted beneath. He calls the knitting a sort of labyrinth in a tent. This tent is bound together by one tongue. The English Language is this thread, with its strong pull of both the good, the bad and the ugly.
And with it, spoken in a style alien to the original owners, Nigerians use it to abuse one another, communicate, diversify and entangle in one web of crises or the other. And the poet, in his characteristic approach to truth and recompense delves into all these nuances of the pidgin English or what is termed rotten or broken English, a mockery of what the Queen and her subjects hold so sacred. And so with this back-grounding, the poet goes deeper and deeper into the foyers of the society. He points to those issues that worry this nation – whether in the south, north, west, east. Further broken down into more regional menaces, he talks about the Igbo, the Yoruba, the Hausa/Fulani, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, the Efik, the Tiv and other tribes that have clung to those narrow ideas and sentiments to hold the larger society down. These are lyrics and lines you read with bated breath. You feel the agonizing pulse of the people; the rupturing that have consistently been a torn in the flesh of the Nigerian peoples, right, left and centre.
Omatseye intones: “we ringed ourselves in the trenches. In the new liberty to be, the ones we lied in public we tabooed. The distinguished had now been extinguished and unsieved lay siege. To the very sinew of our true beings. It became hip to be a hypocrite. But it was a deceit we had buried. By an effort of communal, give and take. To let Pharisee yield to compromise, that yielded brotherhood. From decade to decade, until that poll”.
It is this pull of hatred, distrust, ethnic jingoism and all the attendant consequences that show that Nigeria may never get it right as a nation. That total cohesion based on love and togetherness have since deserted the people, their beliefs and sincere trust in the enterprise called Nigeria.
Tribal sentiments have already taken pre-eminence in the minds of the people. It is now habitually and perpetually embedded in the psychic of people. Omatseye harps deeply on this; he treats and brings it out and tries to see if anything can be done to ameliorate the situation. Yet the situation sounds more hopeless, more unattainable, defying an end to it.
It is not just a wobbly state, the poet goes on to point to all facets of the society – market places, schools, offices, different communities, the cities and town – all those tendencies of hate which have permeated everywhere, every concept. Then the insurgents emerged, ramming into us, into the inner lives of the people. “Just as a heifer becomes a cow. But that was before the insurgents rammed. Into their lives with the Boko Haram. Defined as a forbidden book. Or bonfire of the mind. Those who learned and preened. Called them the believers in filth. That respected neither faith nor fealty. To blood and god. With screams and machismo and guts…”
In the long run, what have all these resulted into? The poet does not even offer what seems an answer to it. “But the suicides only, showed that belief. Never caved in to the swagger. Of an army that wins. No one could wean them from their love. Of the host who promised virgins. By way of death”. For in other words, death always beacons to all in this society where no one is ever sure of what tomorrow portends for him or her.
But in this strong rendition full of the ideas of a nationhood, the poet does not make it sound gloomy all through. He sees love and deep religious and spiritual invocations in the roles of Susan Wenger. This Osun goddess of immense tremulous mien came, saw and conquered. An Austrian who disowned her own to have a new lease hereby attracts and captures the muted song of Omatseye. He bows before her majesty as he recounts her adventurous strides to bring the Osun-Oshogbo before the gaze of the world. Here he titles it – A Stranger’s Invocation and “before you, this morning, I bow, goddess of Osun. . . “
And on and on he goes into other areas of human lives to touch and unearth issues that bother humanity. Same in Asaba Massacre, 1967, A Mexican Tear, Indolent Beauty, Girl Bomber, The Fart of War. . . All harp on evils, on progress, on good. There are also elements of tenderness in some. In others, he queries man’s wickedness, this innate display of madness that tends to mar rather than strengthen the good ordinances of the world.
So, in 30 poems, Omatseye stretches far afield to pay tributes, evoke emotions, revive love and warns of the dooms ahead. He tries to register in peoples minds and psychic those basic norms that inhibit the society, that stand between different people and their onward journey towards oneness, love, togetherness and effusive cohesion. But the poet needs also to show the way that leads to a universal love, devoid of hate, avarice, idiocy and all other negative tendencies that distort progress and development.
In all, this is a collection calling for a rethink, a reorganization of those things that point the society towards anarchy and bloodbath and all. . .