The master of the game: Remembering Kalu Okpi
“Here is to crime; here is to crime for Ikoro’s sake!”
The Smugglers (first published 1977)
Kalu Okpi was not Nigeria’s first thriller-fiction writer, but he brought a swag and vividness to that genre which very few Nigerian, and indeed other African, writers have matched. His novel The Smugglers was the second, on the justifiably famous Macmillan Pacesetters series of novels, to dominate the popular African literary space from the 1970s to the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Those usually fast-paced novels that mostly swung around themes like crime, romance, sex, and all the other stuff that teenagers and young adults love, were the equivalents of the adrenaline-charging English Premiership League football matches for the African youth of those days. Kalu Okpi was a prominent lord of the Pacesetters clan, with ten titles to his credit, namely: The Smugglers, On the Road, Coup!, The South African Affair, Crossfire!, The Politician, and Love, among others.
What made Kalu Okpi’s books stand out was not just their subjects or even the twists and turns of the plots; the sheer escapism, for me, was a turbo-charge. His stories rivalled anything Ian Fleming, Frederick Forsyth, Tom Clancy, and Jeffrey Archer wrote. And all these were in diction that anyone with a working knowledge of English Language could relate to. As a teenager, I grew up on a diet of popular fiction, and Kalu Okpi, even more than James Hadley Chase, initiated me into the world of the word.
“I only came in contact with Achebe long after Kalu Okpi and the other masters of the Pacesetters showed me the world between the pages.”
Okpi was not just a teller of thrilling, action-pulsated whodunits. His brilliance reverberated in romantic tales such as Love and Love Changes Everything, one of his non-Pacesetters masterpieces. The dramatic and cinematic verve to his tales is unsurprising given that Okpi studied Film Production in the United States and was a Chief Script Writer for the Nigerian Television Authority. If his novels graced Nollywood, they would have been box-office hits. He was also a playwright, having written a play titled Echoes and published other plays in his native Igbo language.
One of the ugly faces of the Nigerian, if not the African, literary environment is the downgrading and disparaging of genre fiction or so-called pulp fiction. Only the Chinua Achebes, Wole Soyinkas, Chimamanda Adichies, JP Clarks are worthy of regard because they take on the so-called ‘big’ themes in at times turgid and migraine-inspiring diction. They matter because their works are on the reading lists of university departments and are the subject of seminars and ego-tripping workshops.
While literary fiction deserves its due honour in the literary canon, it is a disservice to continue to disregard the likes of Kalu Okpi, Victor Thorpe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Toni Kan and countless others in academic fora because these popular authors are the ones who initiated an overwhelming number of Nigerians and Africans into the beautiful world of the word. Sorry to say, Wole Soyinka did not, for the majority of young and maybe not-so-young literature lovers, open the highway of romance with books. It was probably Toni Kan with those salacious tales from Hints magazine.
I only came in contact with Achebe long after Kalu Okpi and the other masters of the Pacesetters showed me the world between the pages. And you think they should be disregarded because they are not the focus of some grey-bearded don’s research paper? Their latter-day descendants like Obinna Udenwe, Nkem Akinsoto (popularly known as Myne Whiteman), and yours truly are the ones keeping the literary flame burning on the streets where the book should be, just like Davido’s hit songs and AY’s skits.
Kalu Okpi might have not written serious books, but his subjects and themes were as serious as seriousness. On the Road, on closer examination, is set against the backdrop of the Nigerian military government’s efforts to curb the increasing rate of armed robbery in the 1970s through firing squads. The Oil Conspiracy, another non-Macmillan Pacesetter, examines the tide of corruption among Nigeria’s elite and the culture of burning government buildings to conceal official malfeasance. Then there is the wrenching Biafra Testament which poignantly depicted the Nigerian Civil War long before Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun. The racy James Bond tone of Biafra Testament may make researchers of fiction about Biafra not give that book its due honour, but who promulgated the decree that war literature should make its readers shed blood, metaphorically? Kalu Okpi’s Biafra Testament deserves attention for many reasons, not least that he was a soldier in the Biafran army during the war. After reading the book, I gained insight into why Okpi’s depictions of manoeuvres, tactics, and military action in his other novels resonated: he had practised them in real-life.
In his article “See What the Pacesetters Did to Nigeria’s reading culture,” the poet, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, wrote that Kalu Okpi said “I guess I was a born writer,” and “I only went to school to learn where to put the commas.” Even as far back as when he wrote, Okpi was aware of the disdain of the so-called literary writers who, in his opinion, was represented by the Association of Nigerian Authors, whom he described as “university types.”
Okpi did not write for some high-minded purpose of changing the world, and he was unapologetic about that. For him, literature’s primary assignment was utilitarian: escapism and entertainment. Other purposes, though significant, were tangential. His short fiction was awarded the African Literature prize by Radio Deutsche Welle in 1985.
Kalu Okpi might have been over-influenced by American pop culture, but a careful reading of his books show his maturation into an original voice of rock-solid entertainment. He lived for only 46 years (1947-1993), but he left an everlasting legacy with his contributions to African fiction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henry Chukwuemeka Onyema is a Lagos-based author and historian. He recently published his first novel ‘In Love and In War.’ Email: henrykd2009@yahoo.com