Nigeria Content Online

Gabriel Imomotimi
Okara is 90 today. He is old but he says that he feels strong and still
writes. I went in search of him in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Here is
the chronicle of that adventure.

I remember Pa Okara hasn’t returned my calls. He has missed several of them. I dial his number. It rings. I smile when he picks.

“Hello, sir. It’s Vincent”

“Oh, Vincent. How are you?”

I reply and quickly ask to come over to his place.

He hesitates but I insist. He requests to know when I am coming and I tell him. “3:00pm, sir.”

I am almost late for my appointment. How could I joke with an aged man?

Ndoni Street is a
close. I am in front of No. 10. I knock. There is no response. I recall
that years ago when I first visited the house, a younger woman answered
the gate. And that alone would have brought me back. But she left as
soon as I did. I never saw her again. I knock repeatedly at the gate.

I hear footsteps
from inside. Before me stands a man whose head is covered in gray, with
the exception of the middle of his head, which has no hair. He pulls
the bolt off the protector and lets me in. He’s alone in the house. I
am given a seat. Pa Okara, looking older but stronger, also finds a
seat for himself. He talks about not wanting to have any visitor. But I
am defiant. He is tired. I have to let him sleep. But not without some
words of wisdom from the man marking his 90th birthday. I bring out my
voice recorder and smile at him.

How have you managed to stay energetic, sir?

It’s a state of the
mind – my thinking about the universe, about God, all these things
about nature has kept me going at 90. I try to avoid thoughts of ageing
and dying. Sickness, disease, living and dying and life after death,
all that is not my preoccupation. I know that, one day, one would have
to grow old and die. But you don’t have to hasten that by keeping your
mind on it.

How do you feel at 90, fulfilled?

I feel good. But I
have things I have to do – still – not quite fulfilled as I would love
to. I’m still trying to do what I should do, not thinking about when I
would die. But, generally, I feel strong.

Your love for the arts, tell me about it?

I don’t know how it
came about. It is an inborn trait, what you call talent. When you are
made that way – I think you are made that way. And letting these
traits, trying to use the art to express yourself – the art of music,
poetry and painting, etc. People feel surprised that I express myself
in these artistic forms but not as I think I should – especially in
music. I play Beethoven and a lot of others.

Tell me about poetry in the 40s written by you and others from Government College, Umuahia?

The pre
Independence writers had freedom as their main theme. The young men
that were living abroad then, you have Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Ojikes, who
had American education and ideas. Their writings had majorly freedom as
it theme.

Post-independence,
there was freedom of thought and freedom of writing anything – it was
like an impetus to express oneself in various artistic forms – poetry
was influenced by the joy of freedom. And what we were doing with the
already gotten independence.

Tell me about your poems?

[They are] nothing
special. No particular theme or subject characterises my writing. The
management of this independence – the ambiences of life, it varies. And
there was a little of the political in the collection of poems titled
‘The Dreamer; His Vision.’

Have you read any of the younger writers?

No, I haven’t. I
have been in conferences with some of them but I haven’t read them.
About their writings, I think they would write what they have
experienced or what they have studied.

What makes a good writer?

What makes a good
writer is not just the chosen theme, but how successful he expresses
his idea in whatever form of literature he has chosen.

Do you still write?

Yes, I do. But I can’t disclose them.

Born on April 24,
1921 in Bomoundi, Bayelsa State, Gabriel Okara is one of the early
Nigerian poets. Though he began writing in the 1940s, he is still
relevant in contemporary time. His collection of poems, ‘The Dreamer;
His Vision’, shared the NLNG Literature Prize in 2005 with the late
Ezenwa Ohaeto for his ‘Chants of a Minstrel’. Renowned literary critic,
Charles E. Nnolim, wrote the foreword to the collection published by
University of Port Harcourt Press. His most popular poem, arguably, is
‘The Call of the River Nun’ which won Best Award for Literature in the
Nigeria Festival of Arts in 1953. He has also published children’s
books.

Pa Okara walks me to the gate. He asks about my education and
encourages me. His sense of humour is evergreen. We laugh over a joke.
I leave him thinking about what to put in place to mark his 90th
birthday. Having people like Gabriel Okara around is like having a live
recorder of the events of the past, including the civil war, during
which he lost many manuscripts.