Samson Edema and the Search for a “New Dawn” by Sunny Awhefeada

By means of Sunny Awhefeada

The literature curriculum that my generation of students received at the University of Benin, which was the same at other Nigerian universities at the time, was a hybrid of English and African oeuvres. There were occasional attempts to study European literature in translation, but the bulk of what we studied was English and African literature. One of the courses that left a lasting impression on our impressionable minds was ‘Twentieth Century British Literature’, which was called ‘Modernist Literature’ or ‘Modern Literature’ in another curriculum.

The course, regardless of the nomenclature ascribed to it, was anchored in philosophy, psychology, and social history. The world that literature depicted stretched from about 1901 to 1950. The incident that ushered in that world was the death of Queen Victoria, the monarch who ruled the waves for about seventy years, in 1901. From then on, the world struggled with two world wars. , the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which caused the most casualties of any disaster before that time, the 1918 flu, the global economic recession of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the hydrogen bomb in 1945, etc. The frightening incidents shocked humanity and the pall of disillusionment, conditioned by fear and uncertainty, hung over the world.

A major consequence of the foregoing was a “fundamental shift” that replaced religion with philosophy and psychology in humanity’s attempt to confront the overwhelming crises of the time. TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, DH Lawrence and other writers of the period wrote works that frame a world in unprecedented turmoil, pain and hopelessness. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” became the literary touchstone of the leitmotif of the literary representation of the time. Faced with chaos, destruction and hopelessness, the characters embark on a quest for a new order. My teacher at the University of Ibadan, Professor Sam Asein, brilliantly summarized the ethos of the literary manifestation of that period in the following memorable words: “…the underlying anxiety in these works has been to resolve the crisis of a soul in search of meaning and new value systems, whether they be religious, social, ethical or aesthetic.” Asein’s thesis is so central to understanding the literature in question that I have had to recommend this essay to colleagues and students again and again.

The first title of the current essay was “Samson Edema and the Search of Meaning,” with the last three words taken from Asein’s article. A second thought made me settle for the current title that I got from Samson Edema’s Facebook post, my former student turned friend! Samson Edema was my student for four sessions at Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka. His class included Obaro Jonathan, Oge Igbekea, Andy Nwokolo, Ernest Agbonzegbe, Johnson Oruese, Dede Jolomi, Emmanuel Oboli, Paul Dorume, Dike Akassa, Joy Sefia, Affiong Ndemita, Edesiri Agbaghe, Gabriel Sanudje, Jacob Benatti and other young starry-eyed minds who passed through DELSU’s famous English and Literary Studies department. If I remember correctly, it was their class that broke the curse of the acute lack of second class upper division graduates per session in the department. Four or five of them graduated in the Second Class Upper Division and the students in the lower levels saw that it was possible to graduate in that coveted class.

Not only was Samson the ‘Class Rep’, a kind of liaison between the students and teachers, but he was a brilliant student who also tried his hand at creative writing. Along with his friend Obaro Jonathan, now a junior don at DELSU, Samson showed commendable flair and dedication to scholarship. He read widely and could ask questions that confused teachers. He also spoke ‘Big English’ to reflect his status as an English student. Once he visited my family accompanied by Obaro, my wife had to become a spectator, excited by the stilted conversation between the two friends. It remains an episode that my wife remembers to this day. In their class, like all the other classes I have taught in DELSU and elsewhere, there were many brilliant and promising students who worked hard and dreamed of a great future for themselves in Nigeria. Although Nigeria was a ‘wasteland’ then, it was not as dark as it is today. Then dusk fell and their generation thought the land would evolve into night and then dawn. So far it has been too long a night without even the slightest hint of sunrise.

Samson Edema went in search of that dawn in a different climate. When he called me to say hello about a month ago, he gave no indication that he was “escaped” from Nigeria. However, his recent Facebook posts depicted him in settings that were not in Nigeria. One of them has the telling caption “NEW DAWN,” from which I took the title of this essay. After graduating from DELSU, Edema, like any brilliant youngster, went to the University of Ibadan for postgraduate studies, obtaining the prestigious Master of Arts degree in English. He returned to his base and taught in secondary schools. Despite his zeal, focus, cerebral prowess and the certificates to his name, Nigeria undervalued him. Instead of hope, Nigeria offered him hopelessness. Everywhere he went he was confronted with insecurity, hunger, disease, death, political plunder and an acute sense of hopelessness. If he thought hope was around the corner, more disillusionment would be in sight. If Nigeria were to abandon him, he could certainly find hope and meaning elsewhere. And elsewhere it could be anywhere, not just Europe and America. Elsewhere for Edema’s generation could be Sudan, Togo, Gambia or the Republic of Benin! Things are so bad for Nigeria that our youths just want to leave. Samson Edema ‘escaped’ to Great Britain.

The foregoing is not just the story of Samson Edema. It is the experience of generations of Nigerians under forty! They are fleeing the country en masse. Working, unemployed and unemployed people are leaving Nigeria in large numbers. I have lost count of the number of reference letters I have written for former students who are ‘fleeing’ Nigeria this year. I get requests like this every week. And I get the frightening impression that Nigeria’s future is “on the run.” Growing up as children, we were exposed to people who went abroad to study and returned home happily after graduation. That is no longer the case. An overwhelming number of people currently leaving the country, however many, have said goodbye to Nigeria. Some visit occasionally, but they have found a home elsewhere where they find happiness, peace and fulfillment. Not long ago, fewer than forty of a class of more than two hundred students said they would stay in Nigeria after graduation. The others have decided to take up ‘japa’ after graduation. They said they see no hope in Nigeria. When I told them about Olusegun Obasanjo’s pamphlet “I See Hope”, they replied “it is mine”. What is now called the ‘Japa Syndrome’ has created an escape route for our youth. Our ancestors were brought to Europe and America by force and in chains, but today their descendants are moving to the same places of their own free will in search of meaning and a new dawn!