By Amanda Grants

“Only the Soul like dynamite

Can burst these chains of ignorance”

Chin Ce (Nigerian), born in the years of Nigeria's bloody civil strife, is best known as poet, writer and novelist.  An alumnus of the Calabar school of literary studies and 1988 winner of departmental medal, he severally worked as graphic editor, column editor, essayist and reader for newspaper and publishing houses.

 Among the younger generation of Nigerian poets Chin Ce is most individualistic in blazing a style of his own which is at once effective and drawn inexorably to nativity. A quality of his poetry is its ability to fire the imagination with its lone vision that debunks established religious and traditional notions. For example "The Call," "The Preacher" and "New World" reject religious canons in the same manner that "Prodigal Drums," "Wind and Storm" and "Second Cousins" seem to laugh at notions of patriotism and national development. Religion and politics are in his expressions constricting paradigms which the individual in a 'new world' of self awareness must needs discard.

Chin Ce's sensitivity as a poet and writer chronicles the social and political transitions of African societies which are also avidly portrayed in his fictions. Most of his poems in Full Moon are comparable to Wordsworth's in the lyricism, the gentle celebration of nature and elevation of personal and emotional relationships to greatly passionate intensities. In An African Eclipse, Ce is however concerned with history and social progress. The entire volume attempts to demonstrate how the economic underdevelopment of Africa can be traced directly to a collegiate leadership which, judging from the range of imagery, is rated somewhere between the semi-barbaric states. Images of slovenly reptilian warlords in their near-mediaeval fiefdom fill his descriptions of modern Nigerian leaderships as they alternate between civilian and military regimes in an unending cycle of brutality and impoverishment. Thus for Chin Ce, military  and civilian hierarchies are just two faces of the same coin. The poet graphically presents a cycle of exploitation by local chieftains in the two series entitled "Oracle" and "African Eclipse."  While "Oracle" adopts the mode of the town crier or diviner, the poet persona in "Eclipse" is a modern social critic loudly recasting history from on the side of a neglected humanity. His denunciation of the activities of a Nigerian president in office and his prediction of breakdown and anarchy evokes Shelley's rousing of the men of England against nineteenth century English monarchy.

Ce’s poetry may therefore be read as a challenge of alternate awareness as against inadequate local parodies of Western precepts. They also offer a promise of self awareness. “Requiem,” “The Years,” “Blessings” and “Eagle” hint at a minority field of thought that seeks a way through the predatory instincts of the human condition: “Only the soul/like dynamite/can burst these chains of ignorance” ("Chains”). In "Eagle: A Song of Rebirth" all enlightened humanity are admonished to "...keep watch over the earth/And the spring that flows/From the sacred fountain of the heart..." The notion of immanent good capable of being nourished toward ideal conditions holds some optimism for the individual whose challenge in any corner of the globe, nevertheless, may always be the ultimate question of mastering the self.

 One of Chin Ce's essays "Bards and Tyrants" (ALJ Vol. B5)  has proved his most vitriolic commentary on the Nigerian nation. He was later to opt out of Nigeria for Ghana, a country which in the opinion of the poet holds better communal and national ethos than the "buffoonery of the millennium" that Nigeria is said to represent in the whole of black Africa.

Further Reading

 "Bards and Tyrants: Literature, Leadership and Citizenship Issues of Modern Nigeria" By Chin Ce