Literature As Memory, Prophecy And Nationhood: Prof. Sunny Awhefeada’s Inaugural Lecture Draws Eminent Dignitaries To DELSU

By Akpobomeh Oghenerukevwe

The 117th Inaugural Lecture of Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka, was a convergence of scholarship, culture, and state significance as eminent personalities from across Delta State gathered to witness the intellectual milestone of Professor Sunny Awhefeada, one of Nigeria’s most respected literary scholars.

Delivered under the title “The Literature of Our State: An Evolutionary Engagement with Modern Nigerian Literature,” the lecture reaffirmed Nigerian literature as a moral compass, historical archive, and visionary force in the nation’s journey from colonialism to the digital age.

The event attracted a distinguished audience that reflected its importance. Among those in attendance were the Deputy Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Arthur Akpowowo; the Ovie of Umiaghwa–Abraka Kingdom, His Royal Majesty, Air Vice Marshal Ochuko Ararile (Rtd.) and the Chairman, Governing Council, DELSU, Abraka, General Alexander Ogomudia (rtd.), alongside principal officers of the university, professors, prelates, traditional rulers, senior academics, and guests drawn from the length and breadth of the state.

In his lecture, Professor Awhefeada embarked on a sweeping intellectual journey through modern Nigerian literature, beginning with early pioneers such as J.P. Clark and Christopher Okigbo, whose works captured the anguish of colonial domination and the crisis of cultural displacement. He said that Clark’s poetic articulation of “unprecedented suffering” and the symbolic despair in Hand over Head were presented as defining metaphors of colonial hopelessness, adding that Okigbo’s spiritual homecoming in Heavensgate signified a return to indigenous identity after Western detours.

Awhefeada positioned Nigerian literature as inherently prophetic. He revisited Chinua Achebe’s ‘A Man of the People’, which anticipated the January 15, 1966 military coup only days before it occurred, an episode that he noted underscored literature’s uncanny ability to read the nation’s political future. This prophetic tradition, he argued, reached a critical juncture during the Nigerian Civil War, when writers abandoned nostalgic reconstructions of the past to confront the brutal immediacy of the present.

The war, according to Awhefeada, redefined Nigerian writing.

According to him, Christopher Okigbo’s Path of Thunder foretold the coming cataclysm, while his death as a Biafran combatant elevated him into literary immortality.

Continuing, the don said that post-war works such as J.P. Clark’s Casualties universalised loss, asserting that all Nigerians were victims of the conflict, just as he said that Wole Soyinka’s prison writings exposed the moral bankruptcy of dictatorship and the violence of repression.

Moving beyond war literature, Awhefeada traced the emergence of social realism and Marxist-inspired writing in the 1970s and 1980s, highlighting figures like Festus Iyayi, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, and Tanure Ojaide, who redirected literature toward the lived realities of ordinary people, poverty, hunger, inequality, and systemic injustice. Poetry descended from the ivory tower to the marketplace, becoming, in Osundare’s words, “the lyric of the marketplace” and “the hawker’s duty.”

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Drama and prose followed similar revolutionary paths, with Femi Osofisan rejecting ritual sacrifice narratives in favour of collective consciousness and change. Yet, Awhefeada was careful to stress that Nigerian literature remained ideologically plural, with writers like Achebe, Soyinka, and Clark continuing to critique dictatorship and elite failure from diverse philosophical standpoints.

One of the most resonant moments of the lecture came with Awhefeada’s discussion of gender and narrative power, particularly Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, which marked a turning point in the portrayal of women in Nigerian fiction. He recalled that through the character of Beatrice, Achebe dismantled earlier silences around women, positioning them as custodians of memory, agency, and the nation’s moral future.

The lecture hall, already animated by rigorous scholarship, erupted in warm laughter and applause when Professor Awhefeada momentarily departed from formal analysis to share a personal anecdote. In a moving and humorous aside, delivered partly in the Urhobo dialect, he recalled how poetry once became his instrument of love, revealing how he used verse to win the heart of his wife during their younger days, when she was still a law student. Today, she stands as a distinguished Professor of Law, a fact that added emotional depth and human warmth to the occasion, reminding the audience that literature is not only a tool of resistance and memory, but also of intimacy and affection.

The lecture was further enriched at the reception by a melodramatic performance staged by students of the Department of English and Literary Studies, under the supervision of Dr. Aghogho Agbamu. The short but powerful drama interrogated Nigeria’s postcolonial dilemma, foregrounding insecurity, injustice, and the destructive consequences of disunity within diversity. Through symbolism and narrative tension, the students presented Nigeria as a nation of urgent concern,echoing many of the themes articulated in the lecture.

Adding cultural colour to the ceremony, Ẹma dancers thrilled guests with an energetic and graceful display, affirming the inseparability of literature, performance, and indigenous expression.

In all, Professor Sunny Awhefeada’s inaugural lecture stood as both an intellectual landmark and a cultural celebration. It affirmed Nigerian literature as a resilient, adaptive, and indispensable force,one that remembers the past, interrogates the present, and continues to imagine possibilities for the future, even in the face of national adversity.