CHAPTER TWO
PATH OF RESCUE AS PATH OF THUNDER : MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
AND THE DESCENT INTO NATIONAL TRAUMA IN OLU OGUIBE’S A
GATHERING FEAR AND KOFI ANYIDOHO’S EARTHCHILD
Military intervention or praetorianism, i.e., ‘a situation in which military
officers are major or predominant actors by virtue of their actual or
threatened use of force’, has preoccupied the attention of those interested in
the politics of changing or developing societies of the Third World
Constantine P. Danopoulos, “Intervention and Withdrawals:
Notes and Perspectives”
Dad was redreaming the world as he slept...He saw the economic boom in
advance, saw its orgiastic squander,the suffering to follow, the exile to
strange lands, the depleting of the people’s will for transformation Ben
Okri, The Famished RoadThis chapter is concerned with Olu Oguibe’s A Gathering Fear and Kofi Anyidoho’s
EarthChild. Basically it intends to examine dimensions of exile in the texts as framed by
the specific historical circumstance of military dictatorship in both Nigeria and Ghana. I
argue that the incursion of the military into politics first in the 1960s in West Africa was
opportunistic as they capitalized on the derailment of the nationalists who took over the
reins of administration from the colonialists. For that reason, it was no surprise that they
could not rise to the occasion of doing better than their civilian counterparts. Therefore,
the following questions are crucial in the unfolding of the chapter: In the specific
historical context of the 1980s against which both texts are set, what specific images are
there to illustrate the directness of the writers’ response to the historical epoch? More
specifically, how does this response play out in Oguibe’s poetry, first, in the depiction of
conditions of home; and how do these conditions ultimately induce exile? How,
therefore, does he, like many others he is presumed to represent, respond to the condition
of exile. What are the limitations of the assumption that he as an artist cum intellectual
can be seen as a voice to the suffering others? To what extent can the tropes of
commitment and nationalism be taken seriously; and how do Oguibe’s sentiments of
return play out in text? With reference to Anyidoho, how does military dictatorship
inspire his poetry about home and exile? What are the multiple layers of exile that one