the evolution of these poets. If anti-colonial, nationalist zest and passion could be
attributed for the making of the first generation poets during what Robert Wren (1990)
has christened “those magical years”, the second generation poets inhabit another
worldview and space created mainly by the pulse of post-independence socio-political
circumstances. It was these that conversely induced another tune of poetic and literary
creativity generally. More and more, it was beginning to register that while the colonial
legacy aided the foundation for a drift in socio-political values, the reality on the ground
was that power had since been handed over to the otherwise nationalists-turned
politicians and administrators. The generally failed state of things could therefore be
blamed less on colonialism except only in the diachronic sense than on the immediate
African successors of colonialism who had begun to exceed colonial bungling and
corruption in their dealings. In the West African sub-region, for instance, things had
become so bad as to engender the interruption of civil administration by military coups
and adventurism. This was the case especially in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo and the Republic
of Benin.
Once the socio-political malady was identified, it appeared the stage was set for ushering
in a new voice of African poets. This was not only in the West African sub-region, but in
every other part of sub-Saharan Africa where the first wave of political mobilization and
revival of traditional values, and in some cases, the propagation of socialist ideology, had
taken root. However, there was a fundamental neglect, and that was the need to eliminate
corruption (Henry Bienen 1987:48). It was this loophole that was capitalized upon by the
military in the West African sub-region, especially as they intervened and disrupted civil
governance for decades. In each case, they couched their take-over speeches in accurately
ostensive terms for which the citizenry responded with vulnerable enthusiasm and
credulity. As a region thoroughly buffeted by military coups and counter coups, it
became evident, in the words of John Harbeson (1987:13), that while the first wave of
politicians who took over from colonial masters belonged in their own right to the first
generation of African rulers, the ostensibly intervening phase of the military could be said
to betray “a second generation phenomenon.” Usually, their intervention was populist in
approach and appeared to provide a source of optimism both locally and internationally;