Browsing by Author "Olanike, O."

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    Aesthetics of Oral Performance in Akeem Lasisi and Niyi Osundare’s Poetry: An Appraisal of Onarebu (Proce) and Not in my Season of Songs
    (2024) Olanike, O.
    Poetry occupies a predominant position in Yoruba oral performance tradition and continually manifests in distinctively changing forms. One such distinct form is performance poetry, which, due to its highly adaptive nature, yields to diverse oral performative presentations. Earlier works done on this characteristically oral manifestation of poetry have concentrated on themes and aesthetics, with little attention paid to processes of the oral delivery itself, particularly as deployed by individual poets. This study is, therefore, designed to examine oral performance processes by two Yoruba poets, Niyi Osundare and Akeem Lasisi, with a view to determining how their approaches have changed the Yoruba oral performance’s poetic tradition and constituted important means of its continuity. The interpretive design is utilised. One poem each of Niyi Osundare and Akeem Lasisi is purposively selected based on their richness in Yoruba oral performance characteristics. Data are subjected to literary analysis. Niyi Osundare and Akeem Lasisi’s poetic compositions are basically characterised by a strong musical ambiance which often manifests in songs, dance with the accompaniment of various musical instruments, notably, Yoruba drums. Other performance-oriented characteristics common to both poets are performer-audience interaction, call-and-response strategies, chanting, code-switching, witticisms, as well as uniquely inventive Yoruba-inspired English neologisms.
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    An exploration of Continuity and Change of Yoruba Oral Performance Strategies in the Poetry of Akeem Lasisi
    (2024) Olanike, O.
    Two poems of Akeen Lasisi are examined in this study, Àsàbí Alákàrà’ Corresponding Author email and “Ekun Ìyàwó”. Akeem Lasisi’s poetry performance is orchestrated Olanike.olaleru@kwasu.edu.ng directly on stage through the deployment of a rich blend of actors, singers, dancers and drummers. Lasisi also adds the comic trope of satiric banter. The comedic embellishment is used by Lasisi to revolutionise the Yoruba oral performance in English. By adopting video, Lasisi progresses from “written orality” into contemporary “digital orality”. In conclusion, Akeem Lasisi presents unwritten performed poetry, conceived as “performance actual”, using digital platforms. By these, he injects unique Performance Poetics, enactive styles that transform the Yoruba oral performance poetic Orality tradition, and also ensures its continuity.
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    Echoes of Environmental Degradation and Social Dislocation in Niyi Osundare's City Without People
    (2024) Olanike, O.
    Sustained research on the poetry of Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare has largely concentrated on his sociopolitical preoccupations and unrelenting celebrations of nature, particularly in the tradition of the Romantics, including the unique stylo-linguistic character of his writings. Moreover, as a nationally and internationally decorated poet, scores of well-placed studies continue to privilege Osundare’s more popular volumes, creating a critical gap in his overall “global humanistic vision” (Diala). One such issue, addressed in the less-acclaimed City Without People (2012), is environmental abuse and its direct link to human suffering. The sombre, quite melancholic City Without People dwells on nothing else but Osundare’s own traumatic experience of Hurricane Katrina. However, starting with the volume’s ominous title, a closer reading reveals a work that points to environmental degradation as a vital part of the larger issue of climate change. Eco-criticism, a broad investigative tool for dissecting global ecological issues through the intersections of literature, culture, and the physical environment has been adopted as the theoretical framework for this paper. The devastating consequences of environmental ill-treatment on all aspects of human life are signified in this work. While the volume’s super-ordinate focus stays on Osundare’s losses from Katrina, the causative theme of climate change, particularly as engendered by human mishandling of the natural environment, is firmly embedded. Therefore, this paper argues that City Without People echoes environmental degradation as a contributing factor to climate change. Purposively selected for analysis of this focus are four poems: “Water Never Forgets” (19), “Path of Thunder” (20), “City Without People” (35), and “Katrina’s Diaspora” (43). The paper concluded that Osundare’s City Without People compellingly addresses environmental degradation and its severe threats to man’s physical and social well-being.
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    Idioms of Migration Blues in Niyi Osundare’s Entry Point Encounter
    (2024) Olanike, O.
    The Nigerian literary landscape abounds with works whose main preoccupation has been with migration and attendant diasporic concerns. Writers and scholars have regularly looked at varying impacts of relocation on citizens and by implication, the nation. Migration, which could also be another word for displacement, as an activity that inevitably moves people from familiar territories to new, somewhat strange environments, is often fraught with its own apprehensions coupled with awkward experiences. Regardless of the migrant’s secret expectations of probable positive change, the arduous demands of immigration processes can render the sojourner frustrated and vulnerable. Particularly, anxieties can arise for the immigrant where admittance rules tend to fluctuate from an immigration officer’s whims to unwritten codes of qualification for admittance. As a result, a prospective immigrant’s encounters with minders of the critical intersections of immigration entry points may either exacerbate, or alleviate the immigrant’s burden. In light of the above-stated issues, this paper examined representations of typical frustrating immigration experiences presented in Niyi Osundare’s: “Entry Point Encounter” a poem in Pages from the Book of the Sun (2002). The paper was able to conclude, through a critical examination of this poem that immigrants from Africa, in this case represented by a Nigerian, that although lawfully exercising their rights to unhampered movement as citizens of a free world, are often subjected to racist treatment such as racial profiling, provocation, and other acts of deliberate disrespect of their persons based on pre-conceived, but unjustifiable discrimination.
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    Narratives of Sociopolitical Realities in Jade Osiberu's Gangs of Lagos
    (2025) Ojebisi, O.T.; Olanike, O.
    This study examines the socio-political realities depicted in Jade Osiberu’s Gangs of Lagos, a film that explores the lives of young people navigating the complexities of Lagos City. Through a critical examination of the film’s narrative, character development, and cinematography, this research reveals the ways in which the film critiques the exploitative and oppressive systems of capitalism, highlighting the struggles of the working class and the marginalized. The study applies Marxist concepts such as class struggle, alienation, and false consciousness to analyze the film’s portrayal of the sociopolitical realities of Lagos City. The analysis reveals how the film exposes the contradictions of capitalist ideology, showcasing the ways in which the ruling class maintains power and control over the working class. The findings of this research demonstrate that Gangs of Lagos offers a scathing critique of the sociopolitical realities of Lagos City, highlighting the need for class consciousness and collective action to challenge the dominant ideologies of capitalism. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between ideology, culture, and power in Nigerian cinema, underscoring the importance of Marxist theory in analyzing the sociopolitical realities depicted in film.
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    Patriarchy and the Concept of Power in Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter
    (2025) Olanike, O.
    Whereas the human species is biologically and inherently delineated in dispositions, yet socio-cultural, and even religious institutions continually project other attributes unto them. These contrived gender attributes, largely synthetic tend to mould the genders into forced constructs within which they must operate, or else society will be displeased. Moreover, the contrived male-female categorisations determine their personalities, abilities and capability, in short, their power of being. Within the African cultural space, behavioural attitudes, reinforced by entrenched belief systems, persistently endows the man as characteristically strong, honourable, and having authority, but the woman as feeble, of minimal-intellect and emotionally unstable, and therefore feeble in critical decision-making capabilities. This paper sets out to debunk the fallacy of this patently false portraiture of the gender types; and argues rather that women are able to, and have taken courageous actions in the face of difficult challenges just as men. The paper contends also that women are not emotionally stable, but they are no less secure as men when dealing with difficulties of life. Employing the Liberal hypothesis of the Feminist theory, the paper argues using qualitative analytical method that the patriarchal concept of power being strictly male-domiciled, is demonstrably false, as it overlooks the particular variables of personality, inner strength as well as the resourcefulness and intelligence of individual women. This paper’s textual analysis of Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter reveals how the well-judged actions of Ramatoulaye and Aissatou rescued them from becoming victims of their strongly patriarchal society, thus upturning the prevailing male-female power dynamics. Having suffered societal-enabled and devastating marital betrayals, these women competently handled the accompanying fallouts without falling apart. Their individual and successful, overcoming of culturally-engendered tragedies disprove received notions about male superiority. Ramatoulaye and Aissatou, by their strong actions in the face of overwhelming societal opposition and hostility, proved that when women strategically confront cultural stereotyping, the status-quo is reversible. The paper therefore concluded that the concept of absolute male power and female feebleness is only a false contrivance of the patriarchal system.