Uchenna Uwakwe

The two Nigerian literary stalwarts whose works graced the pioneering of African creativity, Wole Soyinka and John Pepper Clark (who later chose to be called Ambakaderemo) became more prominent with their separate poems on the same title, ‘Abiku’. The poets’ choices of separate persona’s project such unique perspectives, with moods, that suggest that the titular as well as thematic similarity are merely coincidental in the two poems. In Cyprain Ekwensi’s novel, Iska, there is a seeming invocation of the Abiku soul in the protagonist, Filia Enu. Yet, it comes as another derivation of this myth of re-incarnation. While Filia’s self-will might be adjudged to equate the stubbornness of the persona that Soyinka had elected for his own poem, there are reasons to argue that her mother, Iloma Enu is invested with the mood which Clark had chosen for his own persona. In all, Ekwensi’s satiric novel detracts from implicating the challenges of urbanity for which his protagonists in Jagua Nana and Jagua Nana’s Daughter merely embodied culprits in sex merchandise. But, the author is more inclined to re-presenting the socio-political hypocrisies that have stubbornly been at the root of the decay in the Nigerian society. It is pertinent to examine the extension of the Abiku myth within the prism of modernity and how the author navigates from traditional to the urban settings.