His forebears were shipped off to the Caribbean. But he retraced that journey to re-anchor in Nigeria. That’s the life odyssey of Carlton Lindsay Barrett (born, Lucea, Jamaica, September 15, 1941), who turned 80 on September 15.

The Yoruba would call him “Omowale” – the illustrious child come back home. In The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy, had a similar theme of Clym Yeobright (if in less dramatic fashion), return from cosmopolitan Paris to his native Egdon Heath, England. But unlike the tragedy of Yeobright, Barrett found fulfilment in the adopted land of his roots, even proudly sporting an Uhrobo name, Eseoghene (Gift from God).

The strong scents of Africa came from the 1966 First World Festival of Black Arts, in Dakar, Senegal. At that fiesta, the Negro Digest, dubbed Barrett the “fireball from Jamaica”, in celebration of his booming, progressive Pan-African thinking.

But it was on Nigeria, from Senegal, that Barrett would set his sight – he settled in Nigeria from 1966. Incidentally, Nigeria would host the 2nd World Black Arts & Culture Festival in 1977, FESTAC ’77. He would take the Nigerian citizenship in the mid-1980s, according to Wikipedia, to fully formalise his return.

Dakar may have provided the initial magnet. But that dream of African return was first fired by Dudley Thompson, a Jamaican Pan-Afrcanist, who visited the teenage Barrett’s Clarendon College, Jamaica, in 1957. Dudley pointed towards Ghana – no surprise, given Kwame Nkrumah’s excellent Pan-Africanist activism, which galvanised the then Gold Coast to independence, ahead of its peers.

But Barrett would find his groove in Nigeria, though he would teach in universities in Ghana, Sierra Leone, and of course, the University of Ibadan (UI), at the invite of the young Wole Soyinka, later to become sub-Sahara Africa’s first Nobellist in Literature.

Still, his Nigeria pick was no happenstance. It was somewhat the deep calling to the deep, in continental Africa-Caribbean history, culture and literature; given the common trauma of slavery that yoked the duo. Even then, the spark came from the then young John Pepper Clark, who Barrett had met in London in 1961.

“I came to Nigeria directly because I was influenced by her literature,” Barrett volunteered. “I came to Africa because I wanted to renew the spirit of ancestral hope. I felt”, he explained, “that there was hope in knowing where you came from and that we could renew our links, that we could strengthen our systems.”

The Black identity in a less-than-sympathetic globe, before the age of globalisation, was a popular theme rending the Black intellect, back then.

In Nigeria between 1966 and 1967, he got thrown into a cultural ferment, at the Mbari Art Club, Ibadan, benchmarking his Caribbean heritage against the best and brightest of continental Africa’s, in some cultural renaissance, with Soyinka and co.

But then, the Civil War broke out; and he became director of the pro-Nigeria East Central State (ECS). ECS was one of Nigeria’s 12 original states: the Nigerian joker to split the former Eastern Region into Igbo and non-Igbo areas. He must have met, at UI, Ukpabi Asika, the Igbo young intellectual who nevertheless didn’t share Emeka Ojukwu’s Biafra separatist sentiments. Asika was ECS’s civilian administrator. So, even from very early, this Jamaican, future Nigerian, was thrown into the vortex of intimate Nigerian history, in real time!

After a short post-Civil War exile at London (1970-1973), Barrett returned to Nigeria in 1973, to become a prominent, flourishing figure in the Nigerian cultural kaleidoscope — in the academia, in the theatre, in the media: his “box office” appeal was Caribbean-African issues and the African Diaspora, of which he was a feisty, living proof.

In radio and television, the broadcaster with a rich voice distinguished himself, producing and presenting programmes on jazz, the arts and Africa-Caribbean stuffs, all targeted at the high culture end of the mass media; and drawing top class, visiting artistes, as Jimmy Cliff, Ornette Coleman, Jayne Cortez, Melvin Edwards, and otters – all African-American/Caribbean greats, in a cross-cultural pool. It was as if Barrett’s early Jamaica-Europe odyssey was primed to fulfilling his Nigerian mission.

Aside from Song for Mumu (his first novel released in London in 1967), Lipskybound (Enugu, 1977), Veils of Vengeance (1985), his plays include Jump Kookoo Makka, Home Again and Black Blast. His collection of poetry, The Conflicting Eye, under Eseoghene, his Omowale name, stresses the immense range of this immensely creative soul.

We wish Carlton Lindsay Barrett, distinguished Jamaican-Nigerian, and our very own Eseoghene, the very best of 80, as a very senior Nigerian citizen.

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