ABSTRACT
It is very interesting sometimes when people who are exposed to two different cultures found almost exact elements from both cultures, especially when those elements represent core positions in each culture. Perhaps what is even more interesting is if those elements happen to be human elements, meaning human beings, and if they are also poets! Mamman Shata Katsina and Omoeke Amao Ilorin are strikingly stunning, especially in their use of traditional African oral cultural materials and preoccupation with the socio-political realities of their social groups. Their works, created in the local Nigerian languages of Hausa and Yorùbá, respectively, are greatly infl uenced by Islamic values. Not all Hausa and Yorùbá elements are similar, but Katsina and Ilorin elements are. Yet, Mamman Shata’s Waka is rooted in Hausa/Fulani tradition while Dadakúàdà, the poetry of Ilorin, was thought to have originated in masquerade cultic chants.
