Gabriel Okara in Conversation with Professor Azuonye

Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingrain Okara, was born on April 21, 1921, in Bomandi in present day Bayelsa State. After his primary education in both his home state and in the Army School, Creek Road, Port Harcourt, he was admitted to the elite Government College, Umuahia, from where he went to the Yaba College, Lagos. Thereafter, he trained as a book binder at the Federal Government Printer, after what he calls “an adventure” in pig-trading. Armed with an exposure to art, at Umuahia, where he was a student of Ben Enwonwu, he set out for an career in fine art, in 1946, when, according to his account, he experienced a vision of the then recently deceased national political leader, Herbert Macaulay. As he sat down to paint, according to the dream, Macaulay suddenly appeared and plucked the brush from his hand and left three volumes of books marked, Down, Devil, Down. Thereafter, he was dramatically transformed from an artist into a poet. One of his early poems won a prize in the Nigerian Festival of Arts and was later published in Black Orpheus. By the mid-1950’s he was turning out a steady stream of fine lyrics which appeared in the leading African literary journals of the day (Black Orpheus, Presence Africaine, Transition, Nigeria Magazine, etc) and avant-garde anthologies such as Modern Poetry from Africa (edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier). But it was not until 1978 that his first collection of poems, The Fisherman’s invocation, was published, both in Nigeria and in Britain, by Ethiope and Heinemann respectively. Following his training as a bookbinder, Okara joined the Eastern Nigeria Ministry of Information at Enugu where he became the Chief Information Officer. During the Nigerian civil war, he remained in that position under the new Biafran regime, and went on a diplomatic mission on behalf of Biafra to Europe and North America, with Chinua Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi. Towards the end of the war, he was appointed Director of the Biafran Cultural Affairs Department, located in the woods of Ogwa, where he coordinated the artistic life of leading Biafran writers and artists to the end of the war. After the war in 1970, Okara served as Director of the Rivers State Arts Council, Chairman of the State Newspaper, The Tide, and as a Commissioner in the State Government before his retirement in the late 1970’s. Since then he has served as a member of the African Leadership Forum under Olusegun Obasanjo, and continues to take an active interest in public affairs as a public intellectual, environmentalist, and elder statesman. In quiet retirement in the outskirts of Port Harcourt, he has since published a satirical collection of poems, The Dreamer, His Vision, on contemporary Nigerian political decay. He has also completed another collection, As I See It, which is yet to be published

Multimodal pyrethroid resistance in malaria vectors, Anopheles gambiae s.s., Anopheles arabiensis, and Anopheles funestus s.s. in western Kenya.

Anopheles gambiae s.s., Anopheles arabiensis, and Anopheles funestus s.s. are the most important species for malaria transmission. Pyrethroid resistance of these vector mosquitoes is one of the main obstacles against effective vector control. The objective of the present study was to monitor the pyrethroid susceptibility in the 3 major malaria vectors in a highly malaria endemic area in western Kenya and to elucidate the mechanisms of pyrethroid resistance in these species. Gembe East and West, Mbita Division, and 4 main western islands in the Suba district of the Nyanza province in western Kenya were used as the study area. Larval and adult collection and bioassay were conducted, as well as the detection of point mutation in the voltage-gated sodium channel (1014L) by using direct DNA sequencing. A high level of pyrethroid resistance caused by the high frequency of point mutations (L1014S) was detected in An. gambiae s.s. In contrast, P450-related pyrethroid resistance seemed to be widespread in both An. arabiensis and An. funestus s.s. Not a single L1014S mutation was detected in these 2 species. A lack of cross-resistance between DDT and permethrin was also found in An. arabiensis and An. funestus s.s., while An. gambiae s.s. was resistant to both insecticides. It is noteworthy that the above species in the same area are found to be resistant to pyrethroids by their unique resistance mechanisms. Furthermore, it is interesting that 2 different resistance mechanisms have developed in the 2 sibling species in the same area individually. The cross resistance between permethrin and DDT in An. gambiae s.s. may be attributed to the high frequency of kdr mutation, which might be selected by the frequent exposure to ITNs. Similarly, the metabolic pyrethroid resistance in An. arabiensis and An. funestus s.s. is thought to develop without strong selection by DDT

Towards the Evolution of an African Language for African Literature

Language as a problem in African literature has existed (recognised as such or not) from the outset when Africans started to write in the languages of their colonial rulers. The problem surfaced through the writers\u27 own process of self-discovery, and there have been varying degrees of perception and awareness of the problem ranging from indifferent casual scrutiny to the realization that it is a problem which the serious African writer must face and must resolve to overcome

Language as Power: Gabriel Okara's The Voice as a Paradigm

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