Description
A renaissance book about Benin, Edo, Echoes of Great Benin invites you into the quaint world of
probably the greatest living traditionalists of this part of modern Nigeria, the Edo. As she struggles
for relevance in a country much of which she had ruled before the coming of the British, she is as
the proverbial butcher of carrion. Her fingers are slimy with decayed flesh and they stink. She
cannot use them to scratch her itchy body. Her art treasures, artifacts and much of her history, she
lost to the British in 1897. Her famous dry moat, Iya, has decrepit sections of it left. Ibota, the aural
source of Benin stories I knew, now belongs in the past. The people of Benin, the Edo, now speak
Pidgin English in their homes. Indeed, Benin is gradually effacing her history and etching out a life
of anonymity. Please read on for a peep into a bit of her present and a greater look into much of
her past!
Solomon Omorodion Uwaifo was born in 1932 in Benin City capital of Edo State. He has lived in
Lagos most of his life. An Eisenhower Fellow in 1969, Omo Uwaifo as he prefers to be known in
literary circles, is an electrical engineer, a poet, a playwright and a prize winning novelist. His
second novel Fattening House was joint winner of the LNG Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2004. His
first poetry collection, Litany, was long-listed for the LNG Nigeria Prize for Poetry in 2006. He is the
author of several books including Electric Power Distribution Planning and Development, Hanon
Publishers, Lagos, 1994, 1998 and 2010.
ISBN: 978-1-943533-12-1 Ι Published 2017, Paperback | Pan-African University Press
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