Onitsha Market Literature is a term used to designate the popular
pamphlets that were sold at the large market in Onitsha, Nigeria, in the
middle decades of the 20th Century. Written by and intended for the
"common" or "uneducated" people, this literature covered a range of
genres including fiction, current events, plays, social advice and
language study. Starting in the 1960s, European and American scholars
began to take an interest in this form of popular literature, especially
insofar as it reflected African social conditions. It is not known whether
any individual or group of people ever came together, sat down, planned
and worked out the details of what they wanted to do in advance before
they started publishing and selling pamphlets in the Onitsha market
literature series to the public. However, what is known is that, according
to Emmanuel Obiechina, the first pamphlets in the series were published
in 1947.
It could be said that the first publications in the Onitsha market literature
were written by Cyprian Ekwensi, who later became a famous Nigerian
novelist. The titles of the pamphlets written by Ekwensi were "When
love whispers" and a collection of Igbo folktales called "Ikolo the
wrestler and other Igbo tales". All these were published in 1947.
Another factor which spurred people on to writing the chapbooks was
the end of the Second World War. The Nigerian soldiers, who fought in
India and the Far East, came back with copies of Indian and Victorian
drugstore pulp magazines which served as models for the pamphlet
literature.
It has been said that a good number of young people with the minimum
educational qualification of standard six found their ways to Onitsha
either to trade or to work as apprentices in various trades and
professions. It was this group of new literates, school leavers, school
teachers, low-level clerks, artisans, provincial correspondents of daily
newspapers who now devoted their time to writing the Onitsha market
pamphlets. Most of the authors of the Onitsha chapbooks were amateurs
rather than professionals. Another group of people who wrote the
Onitsha market pamphlets were local printing press owners, booksellers,
journalists, railwaymen, traders, and farmers. Some of the pamphlets
were written by grammar school boys who wrote under pseudo names so
that their school authorities would not identify and then punish them.
Most of the pamphlet authors maintained that financial gain was not
their reason for writing the pamphlets. The authors already had full-time
employment from which they earned their living and they merely took
up writing as part-time and for the joy of it. Consequently, even if they
earned little money from their writing, that was regarded as a
supplementary family income. A good number of the authors wrote a
preface to the finished work in which they gave biographical details of
their lives. Usually such a preface gave the details as to how and why
the authors came to be personally involved in pamphlet writing.
The strategic position of the city of Onitsha on the eastern bank of the
River Niger also contributed to the success of the market literature.
Onitsha is easily accessible from all parts of Nigeria and people come
from all parts of the Federation and also from other countries in West
Africa either to buy or sell their commodities at Onitsha. The pamphlets
were sold in various bookshops in Onitsha as well as in the open
markets. Roadside hawkers as well as peripatetic booksellers helped to
sell thousands of copies of the pamphlets. Travellers passing through
Onitsha boasted of buying copies of the cheap chapbooks to show to
their relatives and friends at home. Onitsha town has a large home-based
market and many educational institutions. There are thousands of traders
in the Onitsha market and also thousands of grammar school boys and
girls in Onitsha who bought copies of the pamphlets.
The publication and distribution of the pamphlets coincided with the
period when many people were becoming educated in Eastern Nigeria.
Even the Onitsha traders who were not educated, decided to go to the
night schools to learn how to read and write. By so doing, they were
able to read the stories by themselves. Some illiterate traders who
bought the pamphlets but decided not to go to the night schools, availed
themselves of the services of the Onitsha public scribes. These were
educated people who had it as their full-time job to read or write letters
as well as read stories from books to illiterates and charge them for the
service.
There were still other factors which contributed to. By the time the first set of pamphlets was published in
1947, public libraries did not exist in Eastern Nigeria. The market
booksellers concentrated their efforts in selling prescribed school
textbooks and not popular fiction and general trade books. The people
had nowhere to go when they wanted to read some light materials. This
meant that for many years, Nigerians were suffering from book hunger.
Consequently, when the Onitsha market pamphlets were issued, the
people were happy and the cheapness of the retail price enabled them to
buy the copies in large numbers. As already stated, the 5-year period,
1958 to 1962 may be described as the heyday of the Onitsha market
literature pamphlets. During that period, one could easily go to a
bookshop and select up to 200 titles. The popularity of the chapbooks
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