I WROTE a piece last year calling for the need for spaces where we discuss contemporary arts, meaning-making, and the trajectory of Nigerian literature. Whether we agree or not, a generational discontinuity permeates the interpretation and connection between the different generations of Nigerian writers and critics. This is not to shun the privilege someone like me has in relating with writers from the second to the third generation. However, we cannot use individual privileges to deny the existence of a problem.
In 2019, when I read an essay by Uduma Kalu announcing my generation as “The Suicide Generation”, I felt the need to speak to such classification — a classification I felt was imperceptive, and gaited in the trail of classical Nigerian ‘an Elder don talk’ and so shall it be. My revulsion moved me to start an essay I titled “Suicide and New Nigerian Poetry”, and somehow, from 2019 till now, the project morphed into something else. It was also around the time Oris published “Trauma and a Victim Complex in Nigerian Writing”, and I felt the cursory gaze into the psychodynamics of the new age and collective response created by the social wellbeing of my generation does not give space for a proper classification of our writings. This was worrisome because Kalu is from the older generation, and Oris is from the fourth generation; hence, it reflects that even new Nigerian writers were not in a safe spot to understand and interpret their own writings. This attests to the danger of the absence of literary spaces. The first, second, and third generations had magazines, journals, and even physical platforms where they met to agree and disagree, but what of the fourth generation?
The lack of spaces and the need for them pushed me to write about the ANA Mbari series last year. The question bugging me was: would the New Mbari be a space where young people would also be given the platform, if you like, say freedom, to assert their own audacity? In Nigeria, where status matters not only in community and village gatherings but also in intellectual circles, would we not bring in the typical “I am a Prof or a Dr, so my words are final” sentiments into conversations? At one of the Mbari series in 2023, a professor, operating under the assumption that young Nigerians are disinclined to read, casually dismissed my idea of the unique poetics and sensibility of the fourth generation. For him, it was a bloated view of an unserious age. Of course, I took the bolekaja path to assert myself. But what about young people who wish to express their perspectives and have their voices heard — voices which detail their unique journeys and worldviews? This concern details the continued relevance of the historical Mbari Club with young people who drove the artistic and intellectual exchange of their time. I wrote that:
There is an argument — sadly a silent one — on the transition of Nigeria into ...modern age. While we criticise this turn, I am sure we all agree that we could not have stopped at the bus stop of what drove Nigerian modernism in the 60s, the Alter-Native movement of the 70s, and the rage poetics of the 80s and 90s. Mbari Club was the mainstream discourse platform for young people. In Nigeria today, such platforms do not exist. The places where serious literary conversations thrive are inside university journals, which are rife with a “[dull] kind of disciplinary monotony, a compulsive proclivity for discursive obscurantism and circumambulatory diction” (Helen Sword, Stylish Academic Writing ). So we don’t even access them…
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As Biere and Jahn note, “For it is on the heritage of the past, that the literature of the future must be based” (Beier & Jahn 4). And will Mbari be the next place young people converge to discuss today’s post-coloniality or postmodernity? If “Mbari Club helped to influence and form the discourse of artistic modernism during this time in Nigeria and Africa” (Isabelle Malz & Nadine Siegert), where is the platform forming or curating the discourse of contemporary Nigerian and African journey? Where are the spaces like the imaginary room in Esiaba Irobi’s space where Soyinka and Chinweizu, and co battled out their stands in Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh?
I hope this edition’s exploration of Mbari’s past will also create avenues for future editions where young scholars and critics can converge to discuss the state of contemporary literary production in Nigeria. Professor Udenta did something akin to this last time where about six critics and writers met at his house with intense conversation and discussion on literary and critical production of the new generation and a discussion with Professor E. E. Sule on such a project is underway but it should not be built around the passion and support of individuals alone. Institutions must incorporate this sort of concept into their programmes.
Oko Owi Ocho
Iseyin, Oyo State
2025.06.28