Notes to pages–
of Africa South of the Sahara, Garden City, NY: Anchor Press,; Claude
Wauthier,The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa, (translated by Shirley
Kay) Washington, DC: Three Continents Press,and Robert July,An
African Voice: the Role of the Humanities in African Independence, Durham, NC:
Duke University Press,.
For the excitement generated by the emergence of this body of writings, see
the early issues of the journals,Black OrpheusandTransition.
For a book-length study of this aspect of modern Nigerian literature, see
James Booth,Writers and Politics in Nigeria, London: Hodder and Stoughton,
.
For two critical studies of some of the writers in this group, see Chris
Dunton,Make Man Talk True: Nigerian Drama in English Since, London and
New York: Hans Zell Publishers, and Ahmed Yerima and Ayo
Akinwale, eds.,Theatre and Democracy in Nigeria, Ibadan, Nigeria: Kraft Books,
. For a vigorously polemical criticism of the aesthetic and ideolog-
ical maturity of the fiction of some writers in this group, see Adewale
Maja-Pearce,A Mask Dancing: Nigerian Novelists of the Eighties, London and
New York: Hans Zell Publishers,.
For two representative and influential texts of the Nigerian radical in-
telligentsia, see Yusufu Bala Usman,For the Liberation of Nigeria, London:
New Beacon Books,and Edwin Madunagu,Nigeria: the Economy and the
People, London: New Beacon Books,.
The judge who tried Wole Soyinka in this famous case, Justice Kayode Eso,
has written very extensively on the trial in his memoir,The Mystery Gunman:
History, Politics, Power-Play, Justice, Ibadan: Spectrum Books,, Chapters
–,–.
The “Third Force” initiative is very critically discussed by Kole Omotoso
in his book,Achebe or Soyinka: A Study in Contrasts, Hans Zell Publishers,,
Chapter, “Minority Voices and the Nigerian Civil War.”
Transcriptions of the lyrics of both sides of the album are published in the
appendix to Toyin Falola and Julius Ihonvbere,The Rise and the Fall of Nigeria’s
Second Republic,–, London: Zed Press Books,.
In his book,Wole Soyinka, James Gibbs erroneously remarks that Soyinka
never joined any political party. As a matter of fact, Soyinka did briefly
join the People’s Redemption Party and at a time was that party’s Deputy
Director of Research, a position whose responsibilities he however never
found the time to meet.
This was a parastatal created to supplement the work of the regular national
police in reducing the horrific scale of the carnage on the Nigerian highways
caused by a combination of many factors – totally unsafe and reckless driving
habits; extremely high numbers of vehicles that are not minimally roadwor-
thy on the roads; the corruption and lack of professionalism of the motor
traffic constabulary. Despite the many bureaucratic obstacles placed in its
path, this organization did very laudable work on the country’s highways
before intrigues and machinations of various kinds rendered it ineffectual
by the mid-s.