Okigbo: hard poet, simple poetry?

The Independent/Uganda Team

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo’s poetry must, of course, pose particular problems for readers who are not familiar with the sources and allusions and are unwilling to take them into account, and is, indeed, difficult when the sources are known and understood. Yet it is accessible to the reader who is open to its distinctive mode.

This is true even with other scholars such as J.P. Clark, Chinua Achebe and Timothy Wangusa who have recognised Okgibo as “one of the most gifted and difficult African poets to date. Those are some of Christopher Kirunda’s assertions in his book Hybridity and Christopher Okigbo’s Poetry.

Okgibo’s poetry is the focus of the very insightful and searching analysis of this book which argues for “a multi faceted approach” to its appreciation. It explores a distinctiveness of mode that was born at the time when “the first generation of African writers had to contend with the difficulties of retaining their distinctive voices and concerns in the face of a predominantly non-African readership that sadly, wanted everything foreign domesticated”.

Okigbo responded to this challenge by “exploiting the resources at his disposal from a variety of cultures” while he “retained a distinctively African voice.”

Kirunda asserts that the distinctive voice given to what is considered difficult poetry “is a function of hybridity”. He challenges the reader to explore the interplay of Okigbo’s allusions to literary, mythological, and religious sources in conscious relation to the socio-political and cultural realities of his time and place.

Is this informed liberalism? Kirunda disagrees: “This combined sensibility and inter-cultural voice are not evidence of a tolerant liberalism, but rather serve a powerful poetic purpose…the integrity of its engagement with a specific time and circumstances”— something the author calls “interpretative communities” of Okigbo’s critics; his admirers, those who appreciate the “originality, eclecticism and technical excellence” of his poetry.

Other readers who associate Okigbo’s poetry with “Euro-modernism and derivativeness” and those who are of the persuasion that his poetry is “abstruse and inaccessible” and those who view his poetry as a “record of Nigerian history, but also as a manifestation of nationalism and defence of Igbo culture” fall in the category the author has termed “interpretive communities.”

Many readers have argued that Okgibo’s poetry is complex: is the complexity due to classical scholarship, the influence of other, probably non-African poets, or as Catherine Acholonu would argue, due to his being ‘a priest of a water goddess’ and as such having ‘a lot of spiritual insight sometimes too complex for the ordinary reader’?

Kirunda takes on the task of analysing Okigbo’s poetry especially that published in the posthumous anthology Labyrinths in the five movements: “Heavensgate”, “Limits”, “Silences”, “Distances” and “Path of Thunder”. It is a strenuous assignment that brings to the fore the wide array of influences that inform Okigbo’s craft: From T.S Eliot, Gerald Manley Hopkins, the Bible, Igbo mythology, tales of the Holy Grail, the White Goddess, to Homer, Virgil, Dante; the list is endless.

Yet also, the analysis is clearly aware of opposing views and has a striking clarity not just of purpose but of structure. Following the development of themes and voices and the fusion of influences with commendable fluidity, it makes one wonder why Okigbo’s poetry was ever considered difficult.

All the while, this work does so much to maintain the distinguishing power of Okigbo’s orality of his work. It attempts to draw parallels with other African epics such as Sundiata, Emperor Shaka the Great, and Anthem of the Decades without smothering his uniqueness. Much like The Iliad and The Odyssey, Okigbo’s Labyrinths has a prayer at its outset and employs “lofty and hyperbolical” language and is “not obviously presented as a narrative”.

Perhaps one of the more important and yet not overtly stated aspects dwelt on is Okigbo’s awareness of the times in which he lived. Kirunda reminds us of his confrontation with social evils and a relentless attack on wicked politics: “parliament has gone on leave/the members are now on bail/ parliament is now on sale/the voters are lying in wait”, he mourns Patrice Lumumba in Silences “They struck him in the ear they struck him in the eye”.

On this, the professor writes; the richness of the poetry and its capacity for opening up new perspectives on the distinctively African concerns it develops arise from Okigbo’s espousal of hybridity as an inescapable fact of modern African life. The difficulties then are not an evasion of reality, but the consequence of facing it.

Esiaba Irobi, the Intellectual terrorist

By Nnorom Azuonye/234 Next


I don’t really feel qualified to write about Esiaba Irobi. I have not met anyone quite qualified enough to write about Esiaba Irobi, The Minstrel. He represented something different to everyone he met. To many, he was the consummate artist and academic. To others, he was a benchmark for hard work and diligence. There were some who saw him as a spirit of anarchy. He was also a rude man who wrote many sexually-explicit poems with insane titles, my favourite being ‘A Short History of my Penis.’

I will attempt to write about the Esiaba Irobi I know. A good man. A laughter factory. A prophetic writer. A man who started out as my teacher, then became my friend, and ended up as my brother.

When I heard that Esiaba passed away via several messages, I stopped functioning. Everyone, all at once asking if I could confirm it, friends like Molara Wood and Toyin Adepoju, among others, wanted to be sure before calling the news by its name. I promised to find out from Esiaba’s wife, Uloaku.

The phone call to Berlin was the most frightening call I have ever made, and in the spirit of The Minstrel, I was optimistic that Uloaku would chuckle and tell me there had been a big mistake. It turned out to be wishful thinking. Esiaba was gone. At first I was very strong. I even tapped into my strong belief in reincarnation and shrugged, “Well, Esiaba, it has been a tough journey for you. Go on, sir, reset your life and start over.” Then I added, as we Igbo say when a person is going to our ancestors, “Esiaba, son of Irobi, your world, seven worlds, you will live your earthly life again. In your next life, you will not fall ill in mid life, you will marry young, and raise your family in joy and good health. Go in peace, my brother.”

It was really going well until I told my wife that Esiaba had died. Amaka had also grown close to Esiaba. When he called our home, they would laugh on the phone as he performed poetry and songs down the line on international phone calls. My wife broke down on me and cried. That’s when they gushed; my first tears for Esiaba. Yes, I am a poet too, and I am not afraid to have a good cry if it will stop my chest from exploding.

Nsukka

Esiaba Irobi was my lecturer in the Department of Dramatic Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from 1987 to 1989, when he left for the United Kingdom. Esiaba was more than a lecturer to me; he was an inspiration. Every course he taught me - Theatre History, Improvisation, Basic Acting Skills, and Introduction to Playwriting - opened my mind to the possibilities of the theatre.

Esiaba was not just a theorist, he showed us how to do what he taught. His performances were mesmerising, his energy was overwhelming. As an actor, he transformed even the lamest word in a play into a living entity inhabited by a spirit of dance. I had the privilege of understudying Esiaba as Elesin in Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and The King’s Horseman’, a role he carried with commensurate pomp and passion, under the out-of-this-world direction of Eni Jones Umuko. Esiaba connected, raised and sustained the ritual impetus of that play, helped along with the magnificence of Nwugo Uzoigwe’s Iyaloja. The air in the Arts Theatre at Nsukka was so taut through the performances that it could have strangled people.

The plays

As a playwright, Esiaba wrote some of the angriest, action-packed, issue plays that packed theatres full every night. ‘Nwokedi,’ ‘The Fronded Circle,’ and ‘Hangmen Also Die’ changed the theatre tradition at Nsukka forever. Those of us who dared pick up our pens to write plays were under the heavy influence of Esiaba Irobi. I had small parts in ‘Nwokedi’ as a politician and member of the Ekumeku, but in ‘Hangmen Also Die’, I played the role of Chief Isokipiri Erekosima, who embezzled three million naira compensation meant for ordinary citizens for the destruction of their livelihoods by oil spillage. Erekosima spent half a million of that money on his coronation alone, as the Amatemeso of Izon State, and some on expensive lifestyles and education for his children abroad - because the standards of education in Nigeria had fallen. He was to meet his ancestors when the unemployed graduates-turned-criminals kidnapped, tried, condemned, and hung him from a tree. ‘Hangmen Also Die’ was produced in 1989, directed by Esiaba Irobi himself. Even back then, he foresaw the current crisis that has ravaged Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.

In 2003, I interviewed him; and to the question ‘Who is Esiaba Irobi?’ he replied,

“He is from the Republic of Biafra and has lived all his life in exile in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the USA. Everything he wrote in ‘Hangmen Also Die’ has come to pass, including the hanging of the boys, the killing of the chiefs, the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in a prison in Port Harcourt. The recent revolt by riverine women against foreign oil companies in Nigeria reminds us strongly of Tamara in the play and also resonates with the reason for the iconoclastic philosophy of The Suicide Squad.

“‘Hangmen Also Die’ is the most prophetic of all of Esiaba works. It is a picture of the future. Our future as a country: Area Boys. Bakassi. Armed Robbery. Anarchy! The worst is yet to come. Nigeria will break apart like a loaf of bread in water, it will capsize like a leaking canoe on the River Niger!”

The poetry

I first encountered the power of Esiaba’s poetry at the Anthill, Nsukka, run back in the day by Gbubemi Amas, Big George, and co. He would sing his words and on occasions, break into powerful choruses and dance. He would break sweat performing a poem, and would ensure the poem was etched on the minds of members of the audience.

Following the publication of his seminal poetry collection, ‘Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin,’ it was my honour to host him in London on April 1, 2006. Other poets that read on the same night were Toni Kan, Obemata, and Molara Wood, their readings punctuated with mine. It was all very good, but when Esiaba, the masquerade of the night, stepped up to the stage, he turned the night on its head, with songs, with calls and responses, and with his lyrical pieces rendered with penetrating, seering conviction. Esiaba wrote about some of his characters as people who used words “like a loaded pistol”, but it was he, The Minstrel, a powerful wordsmith, who used words like a loaded pistol. When mixed together and shaken, his words would produce the effect of an atomic bomb, powerful enough to eradicate Nigeria’s terminal diseases, which populate the country’s past, ruling, or aspiring leadership.

Celebrating Esiaba

In 2009, Esiaba got married to the lovely Uloaku, who joined him in America in the summer. They moved together to Berlin, where he took up position as a Distinguished Research Fellow, Freie University, Berlin, Germany 2009-2010 in the “Interweaving Performance Cultures” programme at the University’s International Research Centre.

The painful thing about Esiaba’s life is that he was a man who had a habit of being happy always, no matter his situation. He worked very hard at his craft, and tried as much as he could to enjoy his life. Every time I was on the phone with Esiaba, or sat across the table for a bite or a drink, he had no idea how to be in somebody’s company and not have a funny story to tell, a poem to read, a song to sing, or a political or philosophical idea to banter over. I was quite aware that he was well-respected in literary and academic circles, and had won some awards here and there, but it always surprised me that somehow, Esiaba had never really been publicly celebrated for all his achievements and vision.

Therefore, I asked myself: should we wait for Esiaba to win at least one of the two Nobel Prizes for Literature he used to tell us he would win, before we celebrate him? Or should be celebrate him anyway? I chose the latter, and in the planning of the first Sentinel Literature Festival - December 1 to 4, 2009 - we set aside the final day as ‘Esiaba Irobi Day.’ The plan was simple: on that day, admirers and some of his former students would read their favourite Esiaba poems, then there would be a musical interval, and then the man himself would incinerate the place with a 60-minute performance.

I have never seen anyone as excited about an event as Esiaba was about the ‘Esiaba Irobi Day’ at our festival. I am sure he won’t mind my sharing some of his thoughts for the evening: “My sisters who live in London and my beautiful and lovely wife will cook/provide the food… I suggest very strongly that you change the picture of mine you have chosen. I will send another more exciting photograph which you can use to create a one-page advert in colour. You can then send it as an attachment - INDIVIDUALLY - to everybody who is interested in poetry in the UK…We can also target some Ngwa people who are not literary sensibilities, but who will be coming for the food and the wine and the photograph-taking and to see their rambunctious brother performing in London with a band called The Republic of Biafra!… A lot of Igbo people - if you can find a listserv containing their names-will also want to come…

“I also suggest that you push the event through Toyin Adepoju’s facebook. And the Wole Soyinka Society… Jackie Mackay knows a lot of people in the literary milieu of London. You should try and befriend her. She can help to swell the AUDIENCE on December 4, 2009. We should also think of special invitations to people like Peter Badejo, Osy Okagbue, Yvonne Brewster, Nigerian actors/ theatre directors, etc. The idea of Special Invitations and a kind of DISTINGUISHED high table and brief speeches about the poet will... make them come as well as bring other people… I am planning to have food - Igbo cuisine on December 4. In addition, we can also have some wine, bread, cheese and charge a sensible gate fee for this huge event. I am planning to put on a really powerful show complete with my band: The Republic of Biafra. My son, Nnamdi, will play his saxophone in the band.”

Published and forthcoming works

Esiaba also copied an e-mail he wrote to Jacqueline Mackay to me, and there, I thought we were about to celebrate Esiaba, only for me to learn he was dedicating the show to Ms Mackay. In this e-mail, he wrote, “I will not be “reading” but actually “performing” in the African oral tradition... excerpts from the following published and forthcoming collections: Frozen Music (1985), Handgrenades (1986), Infloresence (1987), Tenants of the Desert (1988), What is Tender about Ted Hughes? (1989), Is This a God I Smash? (1990), Tell Me I am Lying! (1991), The Kingdom of the Mad (1997), Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin (2004), A Calendar of Love (forthcoming), A Short History of my Penis (forthcoming), ZEZE and other LOVE poems (forthcoming), The Tree that Weeps (forthcoming)… It will be a great day and I will make it clear to everybody - before I begin my performance - that this event is specially staged for a great woman who has a lot of love for everything African, including our literature, arts, cuisine, and young men with dysfunctional penises!”

He had it all planned in his head, but due to some unforeseen problems with his travel documents, he could not attend the festival and we had to cancel day 4.

In March 2010, I was delighted when Esiaba wrote me a heartwarming e-mail in which he said his health was on the mend, and he and his wife now had 5-year multiple visas in and out of Britain. Then the masterstroke: he informed me that his wedding ceremony had been fixed for the middle of June and that he would very much like me to organise a poetry event to serve as his bachelor’s eve party. Like the festival show, Esiaba had big plans for his wedding poetry event, and after our last exchange on Wednesday, April 28, I started making plans to realise his big show in London, only this time, he did not just pull out due to problems, he actually did a Michael Jackson on me.

The Sentinel Poetry Movement is a part of what has defined my life since 2002, and one thing I have said at every opportunity, is that Esiaba Irobi was the one that suggested that I grow the idea from the small exercise on my website. I am happy that in his lifetime, Sentinel published Esiaba’s own poetry, and essays; and essays on Irobi’s works by others such as Pius Adesanmi and Afam Akeh. I am also proud that although the big event never happened, there was at least that evening in 2006 when he sang and danced as part of a Sentinel Live Event.

Eulogies

On hearing of his death, many have said wonderful things about Esiaba. The poet, Remi Raji, describes him as “one of the finest, but rarely sung writers.” The truth is that we all wait for the West to adopt and celebrate our best. Esiaba was never going to be a darling of the western world. Our people are singing him now that he is dead. I, however, deeply appreciate some comments on my Facebook page from people I knew were genuine Esiaba friends. Osita Okagbue writes, “With Esiaba, some laughter has left; a joy for life and people has gone! I’ll miss your laughter, our friend, colleague, and my academic nephew.” Gbubemi Amas says, “This is very sad news for anyone who loves life.” And among other tributes, Abdul Mahmud, who writes as Obemata, remembers him this way; “Esiaba was such an engaging poet; memories of his performance at the maiden Sentinel Poetry Live years ago in London are as abiding as the fraternal love and respect he showed to some of us who interacted with him that night”. That was Esiaba, a respecter of kindred spirits. A lover of life.

I am as devastated by Esiaba Irobi’s passing as many of my colleagues, and Esiaba’s students are, but nothing we feel today can compare with what Uloaku, his wife of less than one year must feel, or what his Saxophone-playing son, Nnamdi, must feel. I also hope that Uloaku is well in the know about his unpublished works, and will work tirelessly to make sure they see the light of day. These include such books as ‘How to make love to a Negro all Night and Survive it’, ‘A White Man’s Guide to Black Woman’, ‘Theorizing African Cinema: Ontology, Teleology, Semiology and Narratology’ (Routledge, London), ‘Before They Danced in Chains: African Metalanguages in African-American Performance Aesthetics’, and his novel, too long in the making:‘The Intellectual Terrorist.’

Nnorom Azuonye is the Founder/Editor of ‘Sentinel Literary Quarterly’, and publisher of ‘Sentinel Nigeria’ magazines

UNIZIK: 30 Solid Steps To Excellence

By Anthony Akaeze/Newswatch

From its modest beginning as a university campus 30 years ago, the Nnamdi Azikiwe University has progressively become a flourishing centre of academic excellence

Few things have helped in enhancing the present cosmopolitan status of Awka, capital of Anambra State. Nnamdi Azikiwe University, which started in 1980 as a campus of the then Anambra State University of Technology, is one of them. The growth of the university campus into a full –fledged centre of academic excellence in 30 years is being celebrated today not only by members of the university’s community but by all indigenes of the state and Nigerians generally.

The University has gradually become the pride of the nation. Its achievements are numerous. Apart from being a regular supplier of skilled manpower to the nation, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, with a population of more than 31,000 students, which includes both regular, diploma and postgraduate students, boasts some of the most modern facilities in Nigeria’s educational system. A student of the university described it as a haven of egg heads, a peaceful campus with uninterrupted academic sessions and every student’s dream.

Nnamdi Azikiwe University occupies a large expanse of land with many modern structures spread across its 502 hectares land space. Although movement to the permanent site began in the early 2000s, the university management finally relocated to the new site in 2005. It says a lot about the passion and determination that has, since 1991, propelled the leaders of the university, from Festus Aghagbo Nwako to Pita Ejiofor to Ilochi Austin Okafor and now Boniface Egboka. As part of efforts to upgrade its status, the Awka campus was later made a full fledged university and renamed Nnamdi Azikiwe University in November 1991. This followed the decision of the then military government to split Anambra State into two – Enugu and Anambra - with Awka becoming the capital of the new Anambra State.

Egboka is the fourth person to occupy the position of vice chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University but his relationship with the citidal is as old as the institution itself. He has been a member of staff of the institution since 1982 when he was drafted to teach there as a senior lecturer, and had witnessed its steady progress. A professor of Environmental Hydrogeology, Egboka was confirmed the vice chancellor in June 2009, after first serving as the acting vice chancellor from May 2008.

With such extensive backgound, few people know Nnamdi Azikiwe University better than the Umuchu born academic. Since assuming the position of vice chancellor, Egboka has worked hard to improve on the achievements of his predecessors and is acknowledged to have made significant contributions to the development of the institution in the area of academic excellence, staff and students welfare and infrastructural development. For example, the university now enjoys full accreditation from the National Universities Commision in 59 academic programmes and also has linkage programmes with institutions such as York University, Toronto, Humber College,Toronto; Florida Atlantic University, Florida,USA, and other collaborative linkages with Namibian, Cuban, Swedish Irish and Polish universities.

That is not all. The Egboka administration has ensured that staff salaries are paid regularly. Staff have also enjoyed privileges such as sponsorships for academic programmes in Nigeria or overseas. They also received loans for undergraduate Continuing Education Programme, CEP, or post graduate studies. The idea is to inspire both the staff and lecturers to aspire to give their best at all times for the benefit of the university students.

Beyond that, the Egboka-led management, mindful of the need to create a conducive academic environment, has been working hard to provide adequate infrastructure and amenities on campus such as hostels, adequate water supply and electricity. As a means to augment the current water supply on campus, the Egboka administration had awarded contract for the sinking of a borehole, in a move to end water shortage and prove wrong the view in some quarters that it is difficult, if not impossible, to strike water beneath the ground upon which the university stands.

The VC is optimistic that the effort would yield fruit in the end. He jocularly informs all that “there will be a water dance” in this university, once water is struck. And, as a means to build more infrastructure to complement the existing ones, the university management has entered into a memorandum of understanding with some private firms and individuals to build more student hostels under the build, operate and transfer scheme.

Given the wide expanse of land within the university environment, Egboka is aware of the challenges of providing adequate infrastructure due to inadequate funds. But he remains undaunted. He acknowledged that the university has, over the years, benefited from the benevolence of some kind hearted Nigerians, who had found it worthy to identify and contribute to the school’s cause, both financially and materially. They include Chidi Anyaegbu of Chisco Transport; Stella Okoli of Emzor, Arthur Eze, an engineer, chief Oranika and Ifeanyi Ubah of Capital Oil and Gas Limited. The VC also commended the efforts and contributions of the chairman and members of the university governing council for their wise counsel and support of his administration in the running of the university.

Ultimately, his wish is to leave the university better than he met it. For someone who is conscious of the verdict of history, Egboka said his ambition was to bequeath a worthy legacy that everyone would be proud to remember with a smile. He wants both the Anambra State and federal governments to come to the aid of the university, to enable it achieve more.

Our Graduates are Among the Best

A NEWSWATCH INTERVIEW

Boniface Egboka, professor of environmental hydrogeology and vice chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, spoke to Anthony Akaeze, principal staff writer, about the vision and achievements of the university 30 years after it was established. Excerpts:

Newswatch: Nnamdi Azikiwe University will be 30 years this year. How much progress has been made since then?

Egboka: Right from the beginning, even when it was a state university, the university had very high aims, high ideals, vision and mission. What it is today, followed the initial concept. We are only improving on the past effort. So, Nnamdi Azikiwe University is growing and developing into an international institution of higher learning, an institution that is going to be one of the best in the world. It’s not a tall dream, it’s a realistic dream. So, the university has a dream, founded on father of Nigerian nationalism-Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Zik of Africa. A very good man, a very good Igbo man, a very good Nigerian and African. A brilliant fellow and noble black man, a philosopher, administrator, journalist. This university is modelled around him. So, what Zik was, we are trying to become and eventually we shall be, in terms of citadel of learning in contemporary Africa and international academics. So, it’s a university that is worth the name. We have already attained a high status, such that we are now highly admired, not only nationwide but worldwide.

Newswatch: How easy has it been, managing the affairs of students as their Vice Chancellor?

Egboka: It has been very easy. I’m being frank. I love children, whether in the home or the university. We are here because of them. Our administration is student-centred. When you find yourself in the university as teacher or administrator, you are ever young. You are ageless and innocent. If you treat them well, you will be very happy with what you get. Give them their rights and privileges, recognise that they are humans, and that one day, they would be fathers and mothers. There may be few bad ones, but it’s your primary duty to change them. Eventually, you may succeed in changing 80 or 90 percent of them. The remaining ones you cannot change may turn out to be the bad eggs in the society. There’s nothing you can do about it. But the fault could be traced to their background. Because a child who comes here at say, 18 years, has already come of age.

The university system is the last for mature stage of adolescence. By the time a child comes out of the university, he or she is an adult. So, a child you cannot reform in the university system must have been damaged inexorably from the home. That’s why we insist here that when you bring your child here, once in a while, you should come and know what your child is doing. I call my students children because that’s what they are.

In Igbo culture and tradition, we are children to our parents and seniors. One’s age doesn’t matter. So, here, we regard them as our children. And many of them, 99 percent are good and happy and we try to provide them what they need within our minimum available resources, ensuring that there’s water supply, electricity and that sanitary condition is okay. We also ensure that they are taught by good lecturers who wouldn’t harass or intimidate them, who must release their results as and when due, and try to build them up as human beings. The university is the best place one can work in life.

Newswatch: What would you consider as the main contribution of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University to Nigeria’s development?

Egboka: This university has provided huge manpower to Nigeria. Go to many of the ministries at Abuja, Anambra, Imo and Abia states, go to London, Canada, go to the United States of America, you will find our students in different fields or professions, including banks, ICT centres and universities. We’ve got professors in many Nigerian universities. In post graduate institutions overseas, you will find them. You have our alumni in different parts of Nigeria and the world. Very brilliant men and women. You come to the university itself, the professors and lecturers indulge in lots of research that have led to academic breakthroughs. Our students usually come out tops in interviews. Both the lecturers and students have won many awards and also written many books.

Newswatch: We have heard talks about declining or falling standard of education. We have heard some people talk of half-baked graduates for instance. Do you share this view?

Egboka: I don’t. Whoever holds such view is not well informed. How can you say the standard of education is declining? Where? It’s stronger.

Newswatch: Stronger?

Egboka: I am not kidding. It’s the truth. And I am in a better position to say it. When I was a Geology student at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, do you know how many credit courses I took compared to the situation today? Today, our geology students are engineers equivalent because they take almost half courses that engineering students take. Our engineering students on their part take many courses in the physical sciences. Even those in the arts, who used to dread mathematics like a plaque, you can see the way they manipulate the computer and do their analysis. I think, instead, what is failing is the governmental system. Those who are sharing resources should look back at how they share resources and know where priorities ought to go. Education is key. Maybe the materials and facilities to support education is weak. That is apparently the problem.

Culture and its discontents

By Obi Nwakanma/The Orbit/Vanguard

In the pit of Nigerian politics lies the soul of philistines. A nation cursed with a political leadership without the subtle refinements of culture is doomed to crassness. We see this truth as a matter of fact, reflected in the utter disregard to which the political establishment places culture and matters of cultural policy.
For example, this federal administration, and I’m quite certain, all the administrations of the governments of the affiliating states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has no policy on culture and no cultural programs. In other words the federal government of Nigeria has no cultural policy upon which a culture program can be administered.

This has been so for a long time. Indeed, it does seem that the last administration in Nigeria to appoint a Federal Adviser on Culture was the short-lived administration of General Aguiyi-Ironsi, who retained Nigeria’s famous, world renowned Painter, the now late Professor Ben Enwonwu as Federal Adviser on the Arts, a preferment he held with Balewa also as the Prime Minister’s Adviser on the Arts.

But it was a different era, when political leadership was well educated and highly conscious: the founding president of Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, it must be remembered was a renaissance intellectual and a poet of some significance, and the Prime Minister Balewa was not only an intellectual, a well-read man, but also a novelist who wrote one of the most important Hausa-language novels to date.

The difference today is quite apparent in the emergence of a badly educated and philistinic political leadership who view politics only in terms of the crude structures of power. These men and women today, its often seems, did not receive the kind of sophisticated orientation and exposure that could allow them the judicious insight offered by abstract thought and the subtle power of humane intuition inherent in aesthetic awareness.

Many have never been to a gallery for an exhibition or to an evening of classical musical performance or to a reading of poetry. The Nigerian political leadership is in sum crass and profoundly uncultured. It is an elite without culture; unaware of Nigeria’s artistic heritage and the complexity of her cultural production.

Let me give two startling examples: this past week, I heard about the passing of the poet and publisher, Dr. T.C. Nwosu and the famous broadcaster, Lawrence Emeka. None of the governments in the East, or even the Federation itself, put out a notice in acknowledgement of the contributions of these men to our cultural life. These are just two most recent examples.

When the sculptor Lamidi Fakeye recently passed, there was no gesture to celebrate his contributions. The various governments in Nigeria are unaware of the damage they do in obscuring Nigeria’s cultural capital. Toyin Akinosho, Geologist, Journalist, culture critic and art collector, has done more for the Nigerian artist as an individual than the entire federal government of Nigeria. I am talking of a modest man with modest means.

He has used his personal resources, and at no personal gain, to promote and circulate the works of contemporary Nigerian artists and writers. His home – Mars House – had become a sort of refuge for writers, artists and musicians who find themselves at the edge, or who are passing by, or who need a little consoling space for a bit of solitude to create.

He takes in stray artists like stray dogs. It is easy to run into the cream of Nigeria’s contemporary artists, poets, dramatists, novelists, and critics at Mars House.

I too found occasional refuge in Mars House myself while writing the Okigbo biography for instance, a fact which alas, I failed to acknowledge fully by some inscrutable, inadvertent oversight in the book, but which I make bold here to testify, as part of my gratitude to such easy generosity.

But people like Akinosho cannot, irrespective of their willingness be expected to support Nigeria’s cultural infrastructure as lone rangers. It is unsustainable. It is a burden that requires more substantial foundational support.

There is an urgent need therefore to overhaul the entire culture establishment.

For many years, the ministry of culture has been shunted about and paired with Information, and most recently with Tourism. This is sacrilege. There is need to establish a proper culture ministry, and if it is to be paired with another, the Ministry of Education should be appropriate.

The Ministry of Education and Culture should be overhauled to situate the basic mission of a Nigerian education, and its exposure of its recipients to Nigeria’s classical and contemporary contributions to human cultural production – in literature, in music, in art, in craft, and film.

There is such a thing today called contemporary Nigerian literature and contemporary Nigerian film, but it seems like the basis for affirming and producing as well as circulating these remain fundamentally ambiguous. It is this ambiguity that stultifies Nigeria’s intellectual tradition; the production of citizens civilized by the humane essence of culture rather than by the crass pursuit of deadening lucre.

There is an urgent need to rehabilitate our edifices of culture, and create a very responsive culture administration that should connect heritage to contemporary expressions of aesthetic and social thought. It is time for instance, to place all traditional shrines of our indigenous religions and their scared groves under a heritage trust, make all these federal protected areas under a heritage administration.

There is equally an urgent need to introduce a serious culture curriculum in our public education: I speak of giving our young children opportunities to acquire aesthetic habits through music, art, reading, and other forms of education in our schools.

Art and music education in Nigeria seems dead.

The enrichment, through government aided opportunities for young Nigerians to acquire violins, cello, trombones, saxophones, or even participate in studios and art exhibitions will in many ways reduce dependency on other kinds of distraction.

The opportunity to have music classes or art classes will not only strengthen the visual education, it will also provide serious capacity for abstract thought necessary for creating original and inventive minds.

There is an urgent need to review our funding regime for city, county, regional, and municipal libraries, and the kind of programs that these libraries can embark upon to create a literate society. It is such a terrible shame that some of the ugliest public buildings in Nigeria are its centers of knowledge.

This speaks to the moral condition of Nigeria. This administration must treat as urgent, the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts and the humanities that should provide grants to artists and intellectuals and support public libraries, independent galleries, bookshops and residences in Nigeria, and generally provide stipends for those engaged in artistic creation.

Nigeria wants rebranding, it has the cultural resource, all it needs to do is put its money where its mouth is. It is time to create a full, sufficient, and fully engaged and forward looking culture establishment. This mistreatment of culture – and I do not mean the “Durbar” and “virgin dance” version of national culture – is a mark of our hollowness.

Jonathan Should not run for President, says Falae

GUARDIAN INTERVIEW


Former Finance Minister and joint presidential candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and All Peoples Party (APP) in 1998 Chief Olu Falae, 72, says he is no longer interested in elective office. Going round the country to consult widely on a mega platform that could raise the flag of strong opposition to the dominance of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spoke with ALIFA DANIEL in Abuja on the Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP) recently formed by some opposition political parties. Excerpts:

WHAT is your reaction to the announcement by the recent removal of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof Maurice Iwu?

My immediate reaction was to say "Thank God.' The ordeal is over as far as Iwu is concerned. I am not personally against him but his tenure in INEC has caused a lot of political crises. He should be happy because he has been relieved of that job. He made a mess of his assignment and brought embarrassment to the entire nation. We thank God that he is no longer there and we pray that his successor would do a better job in the interest of the nation.

Many people have expressed the sentiment that Iwu is not the problem and that there are structural problems, which must be confronted and until they are dealt with, it will be difficult getting anyone to do a proper job in INEC.

That is partially correct. Iwu alone was not the problem. But in an organisation, the buck stops with the head. There are other problems. There is attitudinal problem. In this society in particular, which is leadership driven, you needed performance and character to shape the performance of the institution. I have a hypothesis for job performance, which states that regardless of the objective valuation of a job, the level at which it is performed is the level of the incumbent. If the incumbent is higher than the job, he pulls it up to his level and does the job, if he is lower than the job, he drags it down to his level. So, we can apply that to INEC. The total performance at INEC is determined by the structural status of the nation and also by the quality and character of the leader. So, Iwu was an important part of the problem but not the whole of it.

What do you think the electoral body can do about a situation where the President of the country wants to contest an election in a do-or- die atmosphere?

The INEC head should stand his ground or resign the job. That is what I will do; I will stand my ground, let the heavens fall. I will do what is right but if you physically enforce me to do it, I will tell the nation and I will resign. We have faced challenges in the past. I was brought down in detention for a year and a half for saying that the vote of the peoples should count. When I was in detention, there were emissaries sent to me that I should denounce my membership of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and I would go back free. My categorical answer was an irrevocable No! So, people should learn to stand firm. By that time, they took me to court and charged me with treason. Treason is an offence punishable only by death. So in other words, potentially, I was a candidate for the gallows. That was done often and I was offered an easy way out, which was for me to denounce membership of what I believe in and then go home free. The choice was not difficult to make. The answer was clear that I could not betray the idea I believe in. I could not repudiate myself. I stood firm; I told them that I would stay in detention until the Good Lord released me. So, if the head of INEC is being pressurised by an over ambitious President, he has the option to either defy him or resign the job if impossible.

What would you therefore say to the Acting President with all the talk about his interest in the 2011 presidential race?

We are urging him to carry out genuine electoral reforms and ensure that a credible election is conducted. If he is aspiring to be a candidate for that election his moral authority and ability to enforce genuine electoral reform will be diminished, it will be compromised. In his interest, if he wants to achieve success in that area, he should consider not to be a candidate, as it will compromise his ability to perform. It will be difficult for people to believe that he will not take advantage of his position. In public life, substance is important but accepting it quite often is equally important. If I were in his shoes, I will not contest under any circumstance.

Comment on the rumbles within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)?

We thank God that finally it is happening. We expected it to happen long ago because I have never accepted the PDP as a political party. A party is made up of its philosophy and quality of its leadership. What is the philosophy of the PDP? I was talking to a top PDP member recently and he said most of them have not seen any policy document owned by the PDP. Now, the electoral reform is the major debate going on in the country, I don't know of anyone who has heard of the PDP presenting any paper or making any contribution. The PDP has no philosophy that is identifiable in the interest of the people. When we talk of the leadership we cannot see it. We have leaders that will abuse their office; some of them have been tried as governors, even the National Chairman. Therefore, there is zero leadership, zero philosophy in the PDP. That is not a political party. People say, how can you say that the PDP is not a political party when it controls the central government, 28 states out of 36? Of course, we know how they got to that position. But even if they won those elections, rulership of states alone does not make the PDP a party. When the military cease power, they control all the levels of government and does that make the military a party? You can use brigandage and money and rigging and mayhem to get power without being a party. That is what the PDP is doing. I am not surprised that the PDP is imploding today. They are bound to implode because there is nothing that endures that holds them together. It is philosophy and common commitment to values that keep people together in times of crises. If money is the only nexus, they are bound to break. My view is, even if the PDP were doing well, after 12 years in the power, they have to go and take a rest, rejuvenate and refurbish their philosophy, and let the next group take over and serve the nation better. It is competitiveness and it is done in the interest of the nation. In the United Kingdom today, the Labour Party (LP) has been in power for 13 years but in the opinion poll, the Conservative party is leading. The British people want a change. Why don't we have a change here especially when the ruling party messes up this country and brings disgrace and poverty to the country? There is massive unemployment of graduates and yet the ruling party has no answer to that or other failures of the system. Nigerians are embarrassed and disgraced abroad, yet no response. Now is the time for change and that is why we presented the Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP), which came out of the Mega Summit Movement (MSM), a movement set up to get as many groups and parties and persons in Nigeria to come together and offer a credible alternative. People tell me that things are failing, and that past efforts have failed. My answer is that maybe one, two, three of past efforts failed. In terms of probability, we should expect that the fourth effort would succeed. But more importantly, we have the PDP to thank for the monumental mess it has created in the country and that mess is now concentrating in our minds. Many people who are not politicians are asking how they can get involved. The failure of the PDP is galvanising political groups. There are about 22 political parties sponsoring the SDMP and there are thousands of individuals from the parties - PDP, Action Congress (AC) - and there were two or three leading members of the AC in our last meeting. The moment this party is registered, I am convinced that there will be a major political movement. People are waiting for a credible alternative, but they are afraid if it will work or if they will be let down again. By the grace of God we are gradually convincing the people that we will succeed, for the sake of Nigeria. At my age, I should not be running around to contest any election. I am not going to accept any appointment as a minister. I am running around because I want the few people who have credibility, who have compassion for this country to come together create a credible political group that can save this country. If a political party cannot make the wealth of the people its main business, that party can only run the country to the ground, you cannot be stealing the money of the people for whom you are working because any naira stolen is a naira denied to development. You take peoples money to buy properties while the people are dying. There is no potable water; there are no roads to travel on etc. We have to give Nigerians a new lease of life. We challenge the youth to get involved in what we are doing because we are talking about their future, more their future than my future. At 72, I don't know how many more years I have to live. If I am lucky, I will live to 85, 90, more 13 years, 15 years but the youths can look forward to another 60 years. So, it is more of their future than mine that is involved here. It is for their future that we are running around to create a political party everyone can believe in so that the future can be better. We have the potential only that the leadership has been found wanting to covert the potential into wealth, opportunities and jobs.

What is the difference between you and the PDP, because some people will argue that your party is starting out with strange bedfellows just as the PDP? There was the case of Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who with many people left as a result of personal ambition.

We are different from the PDP. First, we have a philosophy document. That is what we believe in. We are social democrats. Social democrats the world over are focused on the welfare of the people. A look at that document will show our plan for Nigeria. We have a philosophy, we have a programme, and we are focused on the nation. The PDP is not focused. If you want to form a party, an all-inclusive party, all kinds of party will move in, but in the due course, those people who are not comfortable with the ideology will move out. There will be inflow and outflow. That is infiltration process. At the end of the process, only the credible ones will remain. Atiku was in the PDP. He had problems with his boss and he moved out, now he is back. Buhari is still in this movement. Yes, he formed his own party, the CPC but there are 22 parties or more in this process. Another party joining them is not a problem. For years, Buhari had no party; he operated under the Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO). When you find yourself in the midst of 22 parties, you will feel the need to convert your organisation into a party, to be at the same level and at par with others. There is a provision in our constitution that all parties that converged to form the mega party will have their members on the Board of Trustee (BoT). If yours is not a political party, you will not have a member in the BoT. So, there are reasons Buhari found it necessary to have his own party. These parties are not the ones joining the mega party, it is individuals who are joining the party. When the SDMP is registered, we decided, that we would resign from our parties and join the new party as individuals, leaving the parties in existence as legal entities while the human beings in the parties have moved to the mega party. That will solve two problems. One, the reluctance of the Nigerian to dissolve his party or to deregister his party and hand over the certificate to INEC will be avoided. Secondly, we know that the ruling party does not want us to succeed because if we succeed, they are out. They will be looking for what they can do to stop us and if we want to dissolve and merge, we will have to go the process. The process is a national convention of the party, we notify and invite INEC to observe the convention and after the convention, the changes will go to the INEC to get a new certificate. If we try to go through that process, the PDP will lay ambush for us somewhere. They will give money to some renegades in the parties to get an injunction that a party cannot merge with another party. They will tie us down with injunctions so that we will not be able to get ready for the next election. That is why we say that the parties will be there but the human beings in that party will move to another party. In my party, there may be some people who might not want to join me in this arrangement. They are free to continue with the party. It is an innovative thing. We are all in this movement, he has his own party and I have my own party. We are all in our parties but we are in this movement. Without this movement, we will not be able to confront and beat the PDP in the next election.

With nine months to the 2011 election there are no talks of any presidential candidate for the SDMP...

I am sure that people know that we are rich in presidential candidates, richer than any other political party.

A singer gives voice to Nigeria’s anger

BY TOM BURGIS/FINANCIAL TIMES

Nneka was about to launch into the final chorus of “Vagabond in Power (VIP)” when the secret service arrived.

She had already stirred up the crowd in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil city, with a few barbs aimed at the political class and Royal Dutch Shell – both frequent targets for animosity in the Niger Delta, where most people have little but violence and despoiled creeks to show for decades of crude extraction.

“There were 15,000 people singing,” the half-Nigerian, half-German singer recalls, sipping water in a corner of Bogobiri, a Lagos bar that serves as a hub for many of the vast capital’s artists and musicians. “It was heavy, heavy energy.”

December’s “peace concert”, organised by a local newspaper, was a world away from the flash Glasgow venue where she had collected the 2009 Mobo award for best African act three months earlier, a recognition of the eclectic blend of soul, reggae, hip-hop and African styles that has won her acclaim across Europe and, lately, the US.

Nigerians have a long history of wittily disparaging leaders who have too often failed them but the authorities are not accustomed to such large-scale denunciations. As agents started to hassle her crew at the back of the stage, she finished the song and made a hasty exit.

Nneka Egbuna regards giving voice to her people’s anger – mainly in pidgin English, their lingua franca – as her calling. “Dem come fish our water empty / Dem come chop our oil plenty,” go the opening lyrics of “Niger Delta”, from her second album No Longer at Ease (her recent first release in the US, Concrete Jungle, combines tracks from her two albums released in Europe).

A 28-year-old who has spent much of her adult life abroad, Nneka’s readiness to sing the truth to power places her among a generation of Nigerians whose frustration at the mismanagement of their country is starting to bubble over into mobilisations ahead of next year’s elections.

But unlike many of the so-called “re-pats” who have returned from lucrative jobs and expensive educations in New York and London, Nneka’s path has been gruelling. Cleaning toilets in Hamburg while she worked on her music was a time of excitement compared with what had gone before.

The low point was when she fled her Nigerian father’s house in Warri, the delta’s second city, at the age of 19. She “had to get out of the madness at home”, she explains, without elaborating. Without a passport, she made it to Hamburg, home to her white German mother. It took a month in a grim detention centre to convince immigration officials of her German lineage (a previous effort three years earlier had ended in deportation).

“It was hell,” she says, but adds: “We always have this mentality as Nigerians: if you grow up tough here, you can make it happen anywhere.”

She spent the next three years in a house for women with nowhere else to go run by the Catholic church. She picked up German and made male friends who introduced her to hip-hop. She jammed.

“I was a bit shy ... scared to sing my thoughts.” Gradually, though, a powerful voice emerged from her elfin frame. One day she got word that a local producer was looking for a female vocalist to record in a makeshift studio. It was DJ Farhot. He introduced her to the work of politically charged American rappers Mos Def and Talib Kweli and would go on to be her closest musical collaborator. By 2005, Victim of Truth, her debut album, was ready.

“I tried to find an identity in music,” she says – and it shows. The lyrics are laden with race (to be explored), sex (to be enjoyed) and God (to be adored). She leaps between genres. The British trip-hop of Massive Attack sounds a strong influence. “Halfcast” from No Longer at Ease has echoes of Roni Size’s sophisticated drum ‘n’ bass. Other, softer songs have a flavour of Tracy Chapman’s plaintiveness. The voice by turn recalls Lauryn Hill or Nina Simone or Skin from 1990s UK rock group Skunk Anansie.

A recent show in Lagos (in Nigeria she plays with local musicians rather than her regular band for western tours) had a distinctly bluesy, improvised feel. “Heartbeat”, which reached number 20 in the UK charts in 2008, lays strings and rolling drums over a spare piano riff to create an infectious bounce.

If the styles are jumbled, they reflect Nneka’s roots. Even what she calls “the black side of me” is not straightforward. Her father was an Igbo, the main tribe of eastern Nigeria which has produced the novelists Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi-Adiche and whose attempted secession in 1967 sparked a horrific three-year civil war. But she was raised in Warri among the Urhobos, one of the Niger Delta’s patchwork of ethnic groups. She grew up only a few rungs above the poverty that is endemic in the delta despite its oil riches.

It was only after she ran from what she hints was a traumatic adolescence that her Nigerian identity came into focus. “Living in Germany Africanised me,” she says, reliving her anger at being called “nigger” for the first time on the streets of Hamburg. “I became more revolutionary.” She used her studies for an archaeology degree to probe Nigeria’s ancient history.

The western influence may be strong in her music but the Nigerian spirit is pervasive. “The music is like pidgin English – colonial and traditional together,” she says. “It’s half-caste music.”

“Vagabond in Power” borrows its title from Fela Kuti, father of Afrobeat and scourge of military dictators past. Many of Nneka’s lyrics share his subversive mischief. Fela’s abiding popularity is testimony as much to his genius as Nigeria’s failure to overcome the widespread corruption he attacked. Yet Nneka is not a keeper of the Afrobeat flame in the same mould as Fela’s sons, Femi and Seun Kuti. Neither, though, could she be classed with the emerging Nigerian rappers who rhyme about the cash and cars beloved of their superstar American counterparts. Perhaps the contemporary she most resembles is Paris-born Asa, Lagos’s folky singer-songwriter.

Critical adulation abroad was not instantly replicated at home. “For the first couple of years when I tried to push my music here, it was like: ‘Who is this oyinbo [white] person? It’s not Nigerian.’” Her popularity has grown since, although many still regard her as “niche”.

An urge to be acknowledged in Nigeria drove Nneka to move to Lagos two years ago after six years in Germany. Her next album, she suggests, will owe more to traditional music than to the sounds of the colonisers.

There is another reason to be around. From the stage in Port Harcourt, she says she sensed the fear of people who have known repression under the old generals and, more recently, during violent, rigged elections. That fear, coupled with a readiness of a highly religious country to entrust the future to God alone, has stifled public outrage, she believes.

That might be changing, as pro-democracy protests build anew. “People are becoming more conscious,” Nneka says. “It’s a silent revolution and it’s coming in camouflage – under music.”

Nneka appears at the Scala in London on April 28; www.scala-london.co.uk. Tour details from www.nnekaworld.com