International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XII, December 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
The Protest Poetry of Rome Aboh: A Study of a Torrent of Terror.
Etta Julius Ndifon, PhD.
Centre for General Studies, Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Nigeria.
Abstract: The legacy of the second generation of Nigerian poets like Niyi Osundare to contemporary writers is an uncompromising exposition of social and political realities, a passion for justice and equity for the suffering masses, and a belief that the prevailing repressive political system can and should be changed. In their acclaimed mission of the poet as a ‘righter’ of wrongs, recent Nigerian poets are generally continuing in the tradition of protest poetry: their sympathy for the masses is evident in their strident condemnation of societal evils; their methods are artistic and linguistic clarity and directness of expression. Rome Aboh, one of Nigeria’s most recent, third-generation poets, has joined the swelling voices of young poets with his debut collection of poems, A Torrent of Terror. This essay examines his poems in the light of the protest tradition bequeathed to contemporary poets by the older generation of dissident voices. It adopts both the sociological and formalist methods of literary criticism in evaluating his poems, both of which show that Aboh is not simply concerned with portraying the moral turpitude and soico-political decadence that bedevil contemporary society; he is also asking for a general overhaul of the system in ways that will ensure the enthronement of egalitarian and humanistic values. The objective of the paper is to demonstrate the functionality and relevance of contemporary Nigerian poetry.
Keywords: Nigerian poetry, protest, Rome Aboh, social and political reality.
I. INTRODUCTION
The vast landscape of written Nigerian poetry is characterized by chiaroscuro and tonal nuances, but it is all the same a common landscape under the glare of one poetic sun. Whether we peruse the pages of Soyinka, Clark, or Okigbo (representatives of the first generation of written Nigerian poetry), or those of Ojaide, Osundare, Ofeimun and others of what has been termed the second generation, or yet the fairly recent but no less copious pages of Isidore Diala, Joe Ushie, Remi Raji, Sola Osofisan, Olu Oguibe, Afem Akeh, Esiaba Irobi, or Onookome Okome among others of what again has been called the third generation of Nigerian poets, there is the same general concern with the society and the wellbeing of its inhabitants. The poet’s voice has always expressed the feelings and sentiments excited by contemporary experience. That voice, sometimes, is self-indulgent, ruminative, whining; sometimes it rises to a near-hysterical condemnation of the abuses and injustices that the society is subjected to. To the Nigerian poet of all generations, a common abhorrence of social and political injustice animated their poems. Nigerian poetry has, ab initio, been essentially a functional art.
The difference among the poets of different generations is one of temperament and artistic choices