An African Eclipse is Chin Ce's first published book of poems. It is quite in the character of recent political
poetry which vehemently attacks the power structures of African nation states. With independence, the political administration in Africa was marred by leaders who alienate the generality of the populace and whose anti-democratic programmes therefore debar genuine economic and social transformation of the continent. Allied to the issue of failed leadership is Chin Ce’s concern with the incidence of youth delinquency seen in the emergence of questionable characters to positions of leadership.Reading Nigerian poet Chin Ce’s African Eclipse collection is thus like reading Nigerian history on which is inscribed the serial reversals of Africa’s fortunes since self rule was achieved in the middle of the twentieth century by most nation states. An African Eclipse thus provides glimpses of Africa around which the Nigerian history is also engrafted.Consequently the history that emerges is one of political betrayal, public sycophancy around the circle of Nigerian military and civilian leaders and their followers. The poet points accusing fingers to the failure of leadership and enjoins the people to a new awareness of the necessity of social cleansing of the land seen in Chin Ce's idea of Rebirth. Vigilance political or artistic is encouraged.The theme poem ‘African Eclipse’ is in the form of a poetic apostrophe performed by a bard singer to a Nigerian president whose politics of self promotion at the expense of public good has sparked the ire of the bard spokesman of the people. The bard unequivocally rewrites the history of state terrorism against citizens and warns of possible consequences of this organized state crime. He takes philosophic resistance on the side of the people and brings even the landscape to declaim this despoliation in state affairs of the Nigerian nation state.In strong, lamentation tones African Eclipse writes off political leaders of Nigeria describing them variously as treacherous reptiles that serially disenfranchise the people having systematically misappropriated public resources for their own self enhancement. Thus in the eclipse even the environment witnesses this crumbling of the colonial inheritance leaving but a dim hope in ‘Eagle’ the one poetry that offers advice to the people after the darkness of the eclipse ‘in the season of another life.’