Ethnic; or National: Contemporary Yoruba Poets and the Imagination of the Nation in Wa Gbo...

Arguments and debates about the appropriate linguistic medium for the expression of African literature continue to be recurrent. One such argument against the literature is the assumption that even at its very best, it can only serve a provincial purpose, as it is ethnic-based. Against this backdrop, the article seeks to tackle the reductionist conception of African literature written in African languages by arguing that in spite of the limits imposed on it by the fact of linguistic provinciality, this category of literature does more than articulating exclusively ethnic sentiments and modes of nationalism as a counterforce to the literature written in European languages. To do this, the article examines Wa Gbo., an anthology of contemporary Yoruba poems. I argue that beyond a body of poetry that seeks the consolidation of Yoruba nationalism, the value of this anthology lies substantially in the way most poets centralise the discourse of postcolonial Nigeria by engaging national issues around questions of development. The article concludes that perhaps another way in which the relevance of African literature written in African languages may be assessed is not so much by way of the linguistic medium of expression as the national concerns it articulates.