The Politics of Dispossession and the Redemptive Praxis in G’Ebinyo Ogbowei’s Marsh Boy and Other Poems

Abstract

This essay interrogates how African writers, especially those from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria have used their works to shape society; redirects its steps to the path of progress and at the same time, chastise obstinate characters in the society. The study relies on G’Ebinyo Ogbowei’s Marsh Boy and Other Poems which he employs as a radical tool to participate in the struggle for liberation of his people from the hands of their tormentors. The sociological theory which entails the extrinsic relationship between literature and society is adopted in this paper to foreground the revolutionary dialectics of Ogbowei poetry and the social formation that birthed them. Our motivation derives essentially from Mao Tse-Tung’s conviction that “revolutionary literature and art are the products of the reflection of the life of the people in the brains of revolutionary writers”. Thus, this essay provides new insights into Ogbowei’s poetics as a leitmotif for motivating mass movement against socio-economic and political ruptures in Nigeria. It argues that Ogbowei, through his poetry, not only confronts evil in all its manifestation in the lives of the people but also lampoons the insensitive nature of the Nigerian government who collaborates with foreign capitalist oil multinationals to defraud the people.