His inaugural lecture at the Imo State University, Owerri, was expected to create a buzz. Regarded as the university’s most cerebral scholar and one of Nigeria’s acclaimed literary critics of this generation, Prof. Isidore Diala’s inaugural lecture, the twenty-third in the series at IMSU, lived up to its billings: it was adjudged one of the best ever held in the history of the university.
The choice of topic–“Dionysos, Christ, Agwu and the African Writer”–added to the hoopla in the lead up to the lecture. The three gods mentioned in the topic (drawn from Greco-Roman, Judaic and African traditions) are strange bedfellows, and curiosity was set apace how their interface with the African writer could be established. Many who came to the university auditorium were overheard debating the unholy alliance of the pantheon and the near impossible task of achieving a congruence. They couldn’t wait for the lecture to tee off.
Inaugural lectures are special days for scholars. As the procession of senior academics from the university and visiting universities lined from the University Senate Building down to the auditorium before noon that Thursday, their faces bore telltale signs of mirth, amid a kaleidoscope of colours. A delegation from Okwu, Ikeduru, the celebrant’s community, provided a side attraction as their tom-tom beats rent the air opposite the auditorium. Onlookers had many things to feed their eyes on.
The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof Victoria Obasi, was absent due to an official engagement outside town. Professor B.E.B. Nwoke, the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academics, stood on her behalf as the programme got under way. An inaugural lecture, he told the mammoth crowd, was a time for scholars to celebrate and appreciate themselves. He wooed the audience to listen attentively to the celebrated literary scholar.
In Igbo tradition, big masquerades are often heralded with invocations. The task of reading the citation of the big masquerade and his prowess rested on a younger minstrel, Dr. Abba A. Abba, a former student of the latter, who teaches at Edwin Clarke University, Delta State, and doubles as the university’s orator.
Dr. Abba, who described Prof Diala as “a distinguished academic and writer whose seminal contributions to the world of learning constitute a signal example of dedication to a demanding and ambitious intellectual enterprise”, affirmed that “he is a man who has, through his titanically striving scholarly spirit, exemplifies that ‘luminal signpost’ through which is revealed the irresistible beauty of excellence and hard work.”
He further traced his academic odyssey from the old Imo State University, Uturu, Okigwe, to the University of Ibadan, where he earned his masters degree and PhD in English. The orator also highlighted Prof Diala’s illustrious career as a lecturer, which saw him growing through the ranks, heading both the departments of Theatre Arts and English and Literary Studies at various times. Since 2015, he has been the Director, General Studies, and is, currently, the University Orator at IMSU.
Professor Diala’s flourishing career, said Dr. Abba, had seen him presenting papers in conferences in some of the best universities in the world, such as the University of London, UK; the University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Cambridge University, UK; Harvard University, USA, among others.
He has over 60 sole-authored articles, most of them published in some of the best international journals. He is also the author of two seminal monographs, Esiaba Irobi’s Drama and the Postcolony: Theory and Practice of Postcolonial Performance (Kraftbook in 2014) and Andre P. Brink: Politics and a New Humanism (Cambridge Scholars), as well as the editor of four critical anthologies, among others.
He also noted that Prof Diala’s career had been decorated with laurels in recognition of his distinction, including but not limited to research fellowships by the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden; the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge University, UK; the University of London; and, severally, by the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Prof. Diala, he said, remained the only Nigerian scholar to win the NLNG Literary Criticism Prize twice. A creative writer, his two published works, The Pyre and The Lure of Ash, won the 1992 ANA Drama Prize and the 1998ANA/Cadbury Prize, respectively. Only recently, he was admitted as a member of the glamourous Nigerian Academy of Letters.
By the time Prof Diala mounted the rostrum to present his inaugural speech, the University Auditorium was filled to the brim, with some standing or squeezing themselves wherever they could find any space. It was a well-attended event with a sea of heads.
Prof Diala’s introductory remarks put the discourse in perspective: “I seek to make crucial claims about the uses of literature by foregrounding the compact between the literary imagination and the religious vision; to highlight mythology as an abiding spring of the creative writer’s inspiration; and at the same time to note the kinship between the world’s oral and written literatures.
“I especially seek to demonstrate the profound formative impact of the motif of divine self-sacrifice or the myth of the dying god in the Greco-Christian tradition on the imagination of the African writer and establish how they have interpreted their heritage.
“Thus, I explore the concept of self-immolation through mythology, history, and literature, and strive to set in relief the intersections between Christian martyrdom and the carrier and scapegoat traditions in Africa. I equally attempt to examine the impact of the consequent syncretic culture on contemporary African political history.”
As with most myths, Professor Diala declared, “the myth of self-sacrificing saviour has its provenance chiefly in situations of extremity … often referred to as ‘crisis situation’ … in which the magnitude of the threat to the concerned human community is of an apocalyptic dimension and thus requiring the self-sacrifice of an important functionary to extend its lease of life.”
The myth of Dionysos, he added, was at the core of Greek tragedy. It was the same reason that informed his introduction of Agwu to the treatise. “Primarily,” said Prof Diala, “I employ Agwu only as an emblematic figure not just in the African pantheon, but also to stand for the continent’s entire cultural thicket. That is, I use Agwu to symbolise in its entirety the indigenous African tradition to which African writers have resorted in their bid to project an alter-native tradition to the West.”
Agwu, he elaborated, was, in some respects, an equivalent deity to Dionysos and Ogun, whose more illustrious literary divinity had been inscribed in world imagination through the agency of the great Greek tragic writers and Wole Soyinka, respectively.
To do justice to the gamut of the inaugural lecture, Prof Diala’s lecture had eight subdivisions: “Spring or Sparagamos: The Myth of the Dying God”, “The Incarnation: In the Name of the Son”, “The Other God: Ogun Abibiman or Dionysos’ Brother?”, “In their Own Image: Gods with Tribal Marks”, “War and the Ascetic Tradition: A Litany of Folk Martyrs”, “Martyrs Arising: The Mandela-as-Saviour Myth”, and “Armed Messiahs: Images of Soldiers in Nigerian Literature.”
Concluding his lecture, Prof Diala told the enraptured audience: “Religion is fixated on accounting for human’s ontological imprisonment and yearning for redemption; and even more crucially on seeking means of transforming the relationship between the unidentified prison warden or executioner and the prison inmates.
“Sacrifices, propitiatory and expiatory rites involving carriers and scapegoats, are symbolic bridges to approach the warden or at least to ameliorate his fury. Literature, especially in its tragic vision, acknowledges the supernatural in its striving to explain the mystery of the evil in human experience; but literature seeks to illuminate the human condition in time, not eternity.”
It was not just a cerebral feast. There was entertainment galore, which put the audience on the edge of their seats. A dance troupe from the Theatre Arts Department performed breathtaking, traditional dances, while the famous Mbem Ijele, Sylvester Nwokedi, dramatised a poem “Campus” from Prof Diala’s award-winning collection, Lure of Ash, a satirical piece on the university campus peopled with students and scholars with ambivalent ideas.
Hours after the inaugural lecture had ended, Prof Diala’s former students and guests still sat under the canopies, opposite the Senate Building, in defiant of the drizzles, to discuss the aftermath of Dionysos, Christ and Agwu. For the former, it was as if the rendezvous wouldn’t end. Their voices were a befitting swansong to a happy day. Even Agwu itself could have been excited with the slant of the gabfest.
Some of the scholars and writers from other Nigerian universities in attendance included Professors J.O.J. Nwachukwu Agbada, Afam Ebogu, Chinyere Nwanyanwu, Tony Afejeku, Joe Ushie and Ngozi Emezue. Also from the academia were Ogaga Okuyade, Ebi Yeibo, Amanze Akpuda, Greg Mbajiorgu, John Amadi, among others. ANA Vice President, Camillus Ukah, led the writers’ delegation to the epoch-making event.