By Isaac Ogezi

The last time she experienced this eerie feeling of doom was almost two decades ago. It was a past she could stake her present life to hinder from being exhumed. Like the spilt gall-bladder of a chicken, which, if not handled with circumspection, could soil the rest of the meat.
The rainstorm had abated with the insurgents’ cannon in the skies, which was gradually receding. The deep darkness that enveloped the earth which had been on the receiving end of the rage of the elements, was intermittently sheared by streaks of lightning to reveal a mother earth drenched in her own tears. This was the auspicious time Olege had been waiting for, to sneak her lifeless child into the night. The bargain had not been right for the endless nausea that came with conception right up to parturition, culminating in this coup de grace.
After two years of eking out an existence with her flesh, her lithe body bearing different weights of drunken Mabuchi-habitués with nothing to show for it, Olege was not averse to her friend Queen’s idea when it was sown, that it was about time she gave thought to supplying goods to morbid customers. What was a few months of nausea to an opportunity that could change her life forever? Besides, the goods would still be in a state of sinlessness, untainted by the world’s iniquities, their end, being pounded in a ritual mortar, could not damn their souls.    The important customer Queen introduced her to a fortnight later appeared aloft, uninterested in her skimpily-clad nudity as they haggled over the price. No, his thoughts were unto something more lofty, the hallowed service to his people, whom if, blindfolded, they would re-elect him into office in the next general elections.
“You can do better than that, Honourable,” she’d challenged, after extracting the stick of London cigarette from her lips, then lifting her head slightly to expel a plume of smoke which spiralled  above their heads like clouds, dissolving into the hazy air in the rat-hole of a room.
“That’s the highest I can afford to pay,” came a reply that brooked no contradiction. Face creased in deep thought, he clasped and unclasped his hands. “However, should the sex be female, I’ll add fifty thousand naira to it. Is that ok?”
She nodded and the contract was sealed. Verbally sealed. When he left, she rushed to her bank, clutching the polythene bag that contained half of the agreed fee. Crisp banknotes that could keep poverty at bay for a few months. Tonight she’d be unprotected when any of her customers who looked healthy and plump enough came calling.
After a few attempts, dotted with false hope, days coalesced into weeks and weeks into months and before long it was harvest-time, stillbirth-free and miscarriage-proof. The seed begotten to keep the wolf from its mother’s door pealed its arrival from toothless gums, piercing the silent Maternity Ward of the hospital.
“Your goods are ready, Honourable!” she shouted excitedly into her Samsung cell phone. She didn’t know it could be this nerve-racking, these near-death rites of motherhood, the seemingly endless visits to the hospital for pre-natal check-ups, the different body changes and mood swings she had experienced, but finally, it was going to pay off.
“What did we have?” came the anxious voice from the other end. Does it matter? she thought to herself. Hadn’t she fulfilled her part of the bargain?
“A boy?” he asked. She could distil the obvious disappointment in the question. Alas, she now understood why one of her colleagues, Agnes, was gruesomely murdered by a rich customer in a nondescript rendezvous, her body badly mutilated. Breasts slashed off, eyes gouged out and her vagina neatly scooped out.
“Yes, a boy. Come and collect your goods. When you’re coming, please don’t forget to bring my balance.” There was a slight pause on the other end and when the voice came, it was apologetic.
“Erm … things are pretty difficult for me at the moment. So I don’t know if you could accept half of it.”
That was all Olege needed to trigger off her petulance. And she gave it to him in full measure.
“Eh, what are you saying, you wicked man? Was that what you and I agreed?”
“Of course not, Miss Jatau. That’s why I’m apologising to you. That’s how far I can go for now. If only it were a girl. I mean …”
“Nonsense! My God will punish you. I won’t ever forgive you for this, I swear,” she cursed under her breath.
“Once again, I’m sorry. Are you sure I shouldn’t bring what I’m offering and collect the goods? I could make do with it.”
“No, don’t bother,” she said curtly. “I know what I’ll do,” she added with an air of finality and disconnected him. Her mind was made up. It was by far better she did what she thought of doing, than to collect that pittance after her travails.
In her dim lantern-lit stuffy, low-ceilinged room, Olege tried to rationalise her decision. The child lying on the bed could not be said to be unplanned, but how would she take care of it all alone? Living the life of a single mother was completely out of the question. What about giving it to an orphanage? She killed the idea as quickly as it had reared its ugly head. No. She couldn’t imagine a part of her growing up among little strangers with similar unfortunate past who’d crouch before a pot-bellied philanthropist to sing the beggarly chorus of appreciation. What was worse, he wouldn’t amount to anything in life, what with a puritanical society that would always remind him of his place like the rootless child who drove a keen sword into his mother’s soft belly for failing to show him his biological father. No, she couldn’t bring up her nemesis who would kill her later in life. She had to do something to save him from this harsh world that flowered luxuriantly in its sanctimoniousness.
The cherubic smile on the child’s face couldn’t thaw her resolute heart. She had to save it from itself. She quickly reached for the pillow under her head and thrust it on its head with some mild violence. A krrr sound announced the success of the smother.
A peal of thunder rumbled over her head, tailed by a flash of lightning which momentarily brightened the rubbish dump she’d come to with the little bundle in a transparent polythene bag. Face hooded in a head-gear, she had on a jacket with her two feet shod in wellington boots. These measures notwithstanding, the weather was still bitingly cold. With all her strength, she flung the bundle to the extreme end of the dump and came away to the warmth of her airless room. In the distance, the skies were still raging, rent by peals of thunder and lightning.
Since her husband, Agole, had returned home from the elders’ meeting at the palace of the Osakyo, this uncanny feeling reminiscent of that fateful night at Mabuchi had persisted like the sediment on a sea-bed. She prayed silently that this night might not witness the radical diversion of the course of her life’s river. She mumbled a prayer to Azhili, the god of her people, to guard her against this night laced with the auguries of evil. And for Azhili to wade into and end this unending bloodbath between her husband’s people and her people. All that she knew about the genesis of the  internecine strife were scraps of rumours pieced together from men and women of her ethnic extraction in Kosassia market where she had a stall.
It had all begun with the creation of the new state where her people constituted the single most populated ethnic group, in fact, more than one-third of the over forty other nationalities in the fledgling state combined. Unfortunately, this numerical advantage did not have a corresponding reflection of the number of her people at the helm of affairs in the state. As if this was not enough, the most coveted, number-one elective post of the Governor had always eluded them, no thanks to the massive rigging of the general elections by the ethnic minorities. Then came the now defunct redeployment, “back-to-your-land” policy where the government, in conspiracy with their detractors, clamped down on them, de-indigenized many of their people from the land of their forebears. Hounded out of the land of their ancestors, marginalized and balkanised in the scheme of things in the state, they had to arise with one voice to categorically say no to it, enough was enough; for the time had come to take their rightful place, to resist this pogrom against their people. Their enemies might say, pushed to the wall of their extremity they had turned diabolical, but does it matter? Azhili had been with them right from the beginning of time, with their primal ancestor. Ombatse! Indeed it is time. Ombalamo!
In a world steeped in political imbroglios, ethnic militancy and palpable insecurity, Olege at this stage of her life, wondered if she had made the right choice of not marrying someone from among her people. Had she been blessed with children, her male ones would now be ousted from taking the rites of ri’ashim which forbade the lust of the flesh, witchcraft, cultism, alcoholism, stealing and all other kindred vices that were at variance with Azhili, the intercessor of her people. Azhili disapproved any man not sired by a male member of her people from being a member of the Ombatse prayer group. As the would-be initiates lined up, the chief priest of Azhili deity, the one-eyed, hoary-haired Baba Yokala stood at the head of it, solemnly administering the oath of ri’ashim. A short, benign-faced, wiry and unassuming old man, Baba Yokala had a low whispering voice which carried so much power, not because of its sinister nature but owing to the myths spun about his person which could only be rivalled by the fearsome deity, Azhili. Stories had it that he carried the manifest essence of the deity in his slight build. Always with a small hand-woven raffia bag hung over his left shoulder, a bag reputed to contain the secret of his disappearing acts anytime he perceived imminent danger to his life or when in a hostile territory.
Agole could feel his wife’s unsettling gaze stripping him naked after he turned his back on her. She seemed obviously dissatisfied with his explanation as to what the elders had deliberated on at the Osakyo’s palace. More was in the offing, undivulged, she suspected. He bent sharply in time to avoid ramming his face into the low brittle reed eaves of his hut. For the first time since she came into his life, he was self-conscious in her presence.
Could love, unrequited, birth this smouldering fire of hatred? Agole wondered, racking his brains in order to fathom this poser that would perhaps unlock the window to the inscrutable heart of man. Or how could a man wait for almost two decades before he exacted his revenge on a woman whom he couldn’t win in the heyday of puppy love?
Inarigu was not a man given to impassioned and skilful speeches but not on this day that his hatred nudged him to his feet to deploy hitherto unknown tricks of a demagogue. In retrospect, Agole couldn’t believe how he was able to restrain himself from asking him to shut up if he had nothing to say; there was more to it than met the eye. Inarigu just couldn’t stomach the fact that he, Agole, had triumphed over him in the game of love. Were furtive glances still not cast towards his house at any mention of Olege’s barrenness because many suspected his hands were not clean? Cowardly men were known to turn to witchcraft to extract their pound of flesh from women who turned them down.
“They’re the saboteurs, these sisters of Ombatse militants pretending to be our wives. Or how can one explain that before we attacked them in a reprisal, it was always leaked to them?” he asked rhetorically. “Until this crisis started, little did we know that we had been sleeping with our enemies!” He went on to move the hearts of his audience on the need to leave behind any of their wives that was of the same ethnic extraction as the Ombatse militants in the planned midnight evacuation. When he took his seat, there was a tense silence, akin to that of a graveyard in the Osakyo’s inner chambers where the top security meeting was being held.
A couple of glances were cast in Agole’s direction, for not a few of them were ignorant of the no-love-lost relationship that subsisted between him and Inarigu like co-wives. He had to stand up for his wife before it was too late.
“If we leave them behind,” he’d begun after saluting the gathering in the order of their titles, “these women who’d left the whole world to marry us, despite the fact that they saw equally young men among their people, yet settled for us, of what benefit would that be?’ He paused to let that sink in first before continuing. “I don’t know what some people like Inarigu who have not married across the ethnic divide believe, but as for me, when a woman is married, her loyalty is to her new home – to her husband and children,” he said, visibly pleased with himself for the frontal stab at his rival.
“As if we don’t know that some of them are just eating our food since it has ceased to be with them in the manner of women!” retorted Inarigu rather bluntly. The innuendo struck most of the men as being too banal. The Osakyo had to quickly intervene to forestall the meeting from degenerating into pandemonium and pleaded with Agole to carry on with his speech. The unanimity of reprimand of Inarigu’s snide remark somewhat appeased Agole and he continued.
“To whom shall we leave these women behind for? To their Ombatse brothers who may have seen them as traitors by marrying us? I want to please beg that we tread carefully on this issue before we do the unspeakable. I’m not ignorant of the holocaust this Ombatse militia has wrought on our land, what with the mindless carnage and blood-chilling horror they have unleashed in broad daylight. But should we allow this grief push us precipitately to commit an unheard-of taboo? Will history acquit us of such despicable action? I say no further, Your Eminence.”
Inarigu may have his way, but I have the last laugh, Agole thought, his face breaking into ripples, as he beamed a smile of victory. He gloated about his conquest over his adversary, years after he had married Olege. He remembered with nostalgia how Olege had rebuffed the overtures of Inarigu and all other men from among her people and agreed to marry him. He was thus impervious to the elders’ resolution at the Osakyo’s palace.
Before Olege had appeared on the scene of his life, Inarigu was no more than a mere acquaintance whom he had known since childhood in Kosassia. The usual youth meetings at the major town hall, communal labour and countless festivals had inexorably brought them together. And in all these encounters, it was not more than an exchange of cordialities. Unfortunately, all this was to come to an end when Inarigu tried to bully Olege into succumbing to his burning lust.
He was not more than a boy when he got to know Olege. Her widowed mother’s land was bounded by their family’s land towards the south-eastern end and he could recall the number of times her mother her came to meet his father for some words of advice on farming activities. As usual, as if choreographed, the daughter would be in the mother’s tow like a chick after its mother in forage for food. He bided his time until luck came his way during the planting season when he saw the daughter alone, planting grains of maize. One thing led to another and, not long after their passion, set ablaze the tinder-box of emotions. Only the banana plantation bore witness to the tremulous cries of their first mating.
It was a tug of war between him and her mother when she got wind of the budding affair. As the only child of her mother, the latter would not hear of any relationship with an outsider other than someone from their ethnic group. The stem that was broken mid-life must bud again, albeit through its youngling. She was the only hope of her deceased father and hers was the heavy burden to continue with his lineage within the ethnic tree. Beset with this conundrum, Agole didn’t also find it easy to stave off Inarigu’s amorous advances to Olege. How could a man in love stop other men from making passes at a woman he had not married? Confront them in a duel? This was the dilemma Agole often found himself in anytime Olege cried to him.
“I know what you’re passing through, Olege,” Agole had begun uncertainly. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it. You’ve got to keep avoiding him. It’s the place of the woman to handle with tact overtures from the opposite sex. Or would you rather I challenged him to a fight in the public or set upon him in the night unawares with a sharp machete?”
“No, Agole. It has not come to that.”
“All right, I know what I’ll do then if it is the shedding of blood that you’re afraid of. I’ll make his death appear like an accident. A little tampering with the brakes of his father’s Suzuki motorcycle which he likes riding, and he’ll meet with his death or be maimed for life!” he offered.
“I can see that you’re making light of my feelings, Agole,” she said crossly. ‘Otherwise, you wouldn’t have ignored my advice.”
“That we should elope and get married, right?”
“Yes. I cannot see any other way out. I’m sick and tired of always facing my mother’s endless bickering and the threats that she’ll give me out as a gift to her maternal uncle’s son Ovey to marry. Can you imagine?” she paused briefly to allow Agole absorb the shock.  “I can deal with Inarigu’s animal lust but what about my mother’s threats?’ she cried, her helplessness etched on her young, beautiful face.
Perhaps if there was one single regret in Agole’s life, it was not heeding Olege’s advice, for when the next day broke, she was nowhere to be found. He felt like a coward who couldn’t take sides with his love against an unfeeling world that thrived on hatred and violence. Years later he heard that she was seen in the capital city living as an independent woman and never cared a hoot to know how her mother was faring until the poor woman passed on. It was during the funeral ceremony that their paths crossed again when she came home, a much-changed woman. But who would have believed that the cold ashes in the hearth could still ignite a smouldering conflagration?
Agole turned the logs in the tripod-stand fire as his mind reminisced about the past. He told her that in her absence, he’d married a woman from among his people, and asked if she would come in as the second wife of which she consented. Now this union which had gone through the crucible of trials over time was at the brink of collapsing. Could he afford another parting from her? Of course, recent events in the state had worsened, pitching her people against his people, with both sides clamouring for the last, definitive fight. The state was yet to recover from the shock of the over seventy security operatives who died in one fell swoop on the night of May 7, which is as apocalyptic to the chequered history of the young state as September 11 to the US. The manner of their annihilation in Yokala still remains a great mystery to the world till date.
No doubt the action of the government was well-intentioned. This scourge of Ombatse was getting out of hand. In fact, it was fingered for all acts of violence and atrocity in the state. To stamp out this menace, this infamy on the face of the earth, the order was clear and unambiguous: go get Baba Yokala, the chief priest of the Azhili deity and leader of Ombatse cult, cleanly sever his head from the neck and serve it on a platter like John the Baptist’s at the behest of Herodias’ daughter, and give it to the ruler of the land. With yelping police search-dogs and all the paraphernalia of war, the over seventy security operatives set out in nine Toyota Hilux vehicles to kill the lynchpin of the proscribed militia at the most likely hour he could be found resting his feet at home, shrouded away from prying eyes by the gathering darkness.
However, the unspeakable happened just a few minutes to the outskirts of Yokala village. The first sign of foreboding was triggered off by the search-dogs, which, as if on cue, began to bark at the forbidding darkness, straining violently against their leashes. Sandwiched on both sides by thick forests, there was an eerie silence save for the frantic barking of the dogs, as if the team was entering a deserted village. Could it be the grotesque forms of trees flitting past as the vehicles sped along the dirt road that played some pranks on them or some prognosis of doom or apparitions which only their sixth animal sense could pick? They didn’t have to wait for so long before the object of the dogs’ barking manifested itself to them. It first appeared like a shooting star in the skies but as it made its descent to the earth, it morphed into a red ball of raging fire hovering above their heads, accompanied with the almost inaudible droning sound of an aircraft. Crashes of thunder from the sterile skies followed with a flash of lightning which momentarily revealed an old, hoary-haired man flying on wings. In the infinitesimal brilliance of the lightning, the old, feathered man’s features looked like their quarry whom they’d come to decapitate, however endowed with wings.
“Welcome to the land of no return,” said the old man, airborne, his wings outstretched to their full elasticity like bats’.
“Fire!” barked the leader of the team after shaking off his stupefaction at the unbelieving sight before them. Sounds of guns being hurriedly cocked and then the impotent kra-kra-kra of non-fire. By this time the terrified dogs with tails tucked behind their forelegs, bereft of the power of their vocal cavities, snuggled behind their masters for protection.
“Ha! ha! ha!” came the mocking laughter of the old man with wings, reverberating into the night. The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun. “Azhili, manifest your power to these upstarts!”
Instantaneously there came the rain of orange-like objects from the skies, pelting the world-under. They fell on the men’s heads, shoulders, and legs and ran into the available spaces in the vehicles. Oranges or hand-grenades? The men wondered and before they could switch on their torches to find out, it was too late. There was an ear-splitting roar and the nine vehicles exploded into flames, leaving the charred remains of the entire team.
“I noticed since you returned from the elders’ meeting at the palace of the Osakyo, you’ve been avoiding me like a plague. Or have I done anything wrong that my lord cannot tell me or could it have to do with my people, the Ombatse group?’ she asked.
“Well, not exactly,” he replied evasively. He was really in great pain. How was he to explain to her the resolution of the elders at the Osakyo’s palace?  Somehow he could now see reason why her mother had insisted her daughter take a husband from their ethnic stock. Recent outbreak of violence in the state had vindicated her, for in a world so ethnically dichotomized, marrying beyond the divide was truly foolhardy, if not suicidal.
“Go to bed, Olege. I’ll soon join you,” he assured her dismissively.
Without a word, she walked away, her footfalls gradually dying away. He waited for her to get to her room before dousing the fire with water, got to his feet and stretched to his full height to get rid of cramps that had developed as a result of sitting for so long in one place and made for her room. In the half-dark room, he didn’t bother to turn up the wick of the lantern but felt his way to the bed. His mildly cold fingers came in contact with her warm, supple flesh which yielded in its own accord.
“Have you come, my lord?” asked she in a drowsy voice.
“Yes,” he answered laconically. She shifted for him and he joined her on the bed after shedding himself of excess garments.
The few hours’ sleep before midnight proved more futile than Agole had thought possible. It was not until he lay supine on the bed that the full impact of the elders’ resolution at the palace of the Osakyo dawned on him like a splash of cold water on a sleep-bleary face. Could he bear to betray her again? A tip-off had gotten to them from a reliable source that the Ombatse militants would be storming their little town of Kosassia in the wee hours of the morning, which precipitated the emergency meeting at the place of the Osakyo. If betraying her had only meant deserting her, it wouldn’t have been so guilt-ridden as leaving her at the mercy of those beasts. What would be her fate in the hands of the Ombatse warlords? Would they be magnanimous enough to spare one of their own who had unwittingly found herself in the camp of the enemy? Lately eye-witness’ reports of their bestiality had not conferred on them that quality of mercy. No, he shuddered at the horrifying images his mind’s eye threw before him. The Ombatse militia was rather gaining notoriety for its ruthless and horrendous violence like the Islamic extremist sect, Boko Haram, who revelled in the gruesomeness of their wanton butchery.  Was it not enough to kill a heavily pregnant woman by driving a rod into her birth-canal, why, in the name of all that was decent, would they dissect her in order to bring out the blood-covered dead child in her womb? The dead were not allowed to rest on the bosom of nothingness, no, their remains on this side of paradise must be roundly humiliated by these ravenous ticks hell-bent to bore into the bowels of humanity.
Again and again, he shook his head vigorously. No. If he must be a party to this midnight flight without his wife Olege, his mind must be absolved that he had entrusted her in safer hands, beyond the reach of those blood-revelling morons. Man has irredeemably debased himself to the level of a carnivorous animal who now revels at butchering his fellow man without a stab of conscience, and has consequently ceased to occupy his self-proclaimed place of being a higher primate. No, he wouldn’t trust these Ombatse baying bloodhounds to spare his wife even though she was of their ethnic extraction. They’d rather kill her as a traitor like the gothic execution of an Islamic apostate who dared to marry an infidel, stoned to death with her disembowelled entrails left for birds of prey to peck at with venom.
“Are you still awake, dear?” she asked sleepily. Oh God, what had he done to wake her up again and perhaps bungle his resolution? He thought guiltily.
“Go to sleep, Olege,” he said cooingly as a mother would to a child she was serenading to sleep.
“Is it still about the elders’ meeting at the palace of the Osakyo that is making you not sleep?” she probed.
“No,” he replied in a voice harsher than it was necessary. What a woman! She always had a way of reading his mind perfectly like a book.
“I’m sorry,” she said placatingly. Presently, they heard loud strokes of metal against an iron gong from the distant market-place. They kept count of the strokes – eleven. It was an hour to midnight and there he was still entangled in the vortex of indecision.
“Go to sleep, Olege,” he said rather impatiently.
“Good night, dear,” she answered and turned her back to him. Not long after he could hear her slight snore.
And yet these oppressive, nightmarish images would not leave him alone but they came crowding his mind like the restless dead, doomed to walk the night. Not on his life, he vowed. Ombatse would not find his wife a ready sacrificial prey to put to a gory end. He’d have to save her first from such a hideous death in the hands of those subhuman savages thereby sparing himself of the nagging self-guilt of another betrayal. Overcome by waves of uncontrollable love, he took the pillow under him with his left hand and with the right hand, he reached for her. She yielded readily to his caressing touch as he turned her to lie face up, as he was wont anytime he was hard and trembling to go into her. The last, split-second thing she remembered was the little, albeit momentary shock when she felt the weight of the pillow on her face, stifling her of breath. With gritted teeth, he exerted his strength on the pillow against the mild resistance of her struggling hands, with her legs thrashing about on the bed. Gradually, he could feel the cessation of life, ebbing out of her simultaneously with the subsiding of her twitching legs.
“Good night, Olege,” he muttered. The night looked on, impassive.

By Hameed Lawal

When I got the message at short notice that Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Oyo and Osun chapters will be travelling by rail to Abeokuta for the first ever meeting of south-west ANA that comprise Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti and Lagos states, christened “Jamboree”, I looked forward to the trip with excitement. The excitement arose from the fact that the trip would afford me the opportunity of first train ride.
Though the sight of a train is not strange to me. As a kid at Kaduna, I remembered vividly the childhood adventure of going to hunt for grasshoppers in the bushes beside the train track. I could also recall that, on few occassions the sight of railway on motion crossing the road with its booming horn at Ibaan and Lagos but I have never travelled by train before until this memorable day.
To meet the call time of 4 pm, I left Oyo town as early as 2 pm, and arrived railway station Ibadan, the take off point at 3:00pm. While awaiting the train at the railway terminus, Ibadan, the sight of abandoned passenger and cargo coaches, aging structure housng the offices elicited memories of train services in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and early 90s it went comatose and the recent attempts to revive by the federal government. While some of us who had boarded train in these golden years recalled that the long wait for the train was a characteristic trait of train services, first timers reasoned that, if transportation by train is revived and modernised with efficient service, it has the potentials of being an alternative to road transport for passengers and goods. An added advantage is that of releaving Nigerian roads of heavy duty vehicles.
After about three hours waiting, the train arrived Ibadan terminus at 6 30 pm. As the train zoomed off at snail speed towards Abeokuta, it was a jolly ride. Though the journey (usually about one hour, 30 minutes by road) took us about two hours, 30 minutes, there was no dull moment. As the train moved swerving left and right, the long journey to Abeokuta turned a memorable one with readings, riddles and jokes from ANA members. While this was on, the curiousness and inquisitiveness in me made me to stroll to other sections of the moving train.
The seats were as comfortable as that of luxurious buses and plane, with two toilets, bar and restraunt to give the passengers the hospitality of an hotel while ona long journey. However, with the door to one of the toilets yanked off or removed for repairs, the odour of urine assailed the nose of passers by and passenges sitting near to the toilet.
We arrived Abeokuta terminus at about 9 pm, disembaked and the train and continued its onward journey to Lagos. Two buses arranged by the host chapter, Ogun picked us from the terminus to the secretariat of Nigerian Union of Journalist (NUJ) Abeokuta (Ile Iwe Irohin). At Ile Iwe Irohin, we were given a worm reception by the chairman and his Secretary. After a welcome address by the chairman and information on the programme line up for the meeting we were treated to sumptous dinner of Ofada rice which is a major agricultural product of Ogun State. Other programmes lined up for the following day September, 1, 2016 are the visits to Professor Wole Soyinka’s residence and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidential library. We later retired to Moshood Abiola Polytechnic Guest House to pass the night.
Programme began the following day, 1st September, 2016 with the zonal meeting at the NUJ Secretariat (Ile Iwe Irohin). It was revealed to us that the meeting was the initiative of the Chairman, Oyo State Chapter, Dr. Solomon Iguare. It was resolved that, the zonal meeting should be sustained to strengthen interface of creative writings and creative writers in the south-west. Subsequently, a committee was constituted to suggest the modalities of reviving moribund Ekiti State Chapter. After our break fast of yam, bread, fried egg and tea, we left Ile Iwe Irohin in a convoy of two buses to tourist sites of Professor Soyinka’s residence and Chief Obasanjo’s library. The plan to visit Fela’s family house and Olumo Rock was suspended due to logistic problems and time.
Our first port of call was the nobel laurete’s residence at Kenta Idi Aba. Though he was not around to receive us, his domestic servants ushered us into the compound. The house which occuped large expanse of land was built mostly of burnt bricks. As we could not access the interior part of the building, we proceeded to the amphi theatre within the residence. We took group photographs and had a reading season before leaving the enviroinemnt enveloped with green vegetation for presidential library.
At the presidential library Kobapo Road, Oke Mosan, we marvelled at the large expense of land housing the library, a five star hotel, a mini zoo and a rocky bar, which were tourists delight. A stroll round the library environment reveals that, it only occupies a small portion of the land with the relaxation spots of the hotel, mini-zoo and the interior and the exterior rocky bar occupying large portion. The jamboree cum field trip ended with this visit which leaft us with sweet memories of these tourist sites in ancient city of Abeokuta. We thereafter left the library for the park to charter a commercial buse back to Ibadan. Unlike the train, the journey by road from Abeokuta to Ibadan lasted one hour, 30 minutes.

By ISIDORE DIALA

I am particularly grateful to the Denja Abdulahi-led executive committee of the Association of Nigerian Authors for the invitation to present this paper. But I have not lost a wink wondering why I was chosen. Anyone who seeks an answer to that now knows whom to contact. I face my own responsibility and that is daunting enough.
I attempt to do three main things in this presentation. The first is to highlight what I refer to as the Nigerian tradition of writing which I locate in the postulations of the hegemonic faction of the first generation of Nigerian writers. In this regard, I highlight Chinua Achebe’s and Wole Soyinka’s conception of the writer’s responsibility to his/her society and very briefly remark on how Christopher Okigbo’s “Path of Thunder” is the demonstrable signal foundational Nigerian text of poetic dissidence. I draw on my previous reflections on this matteras several of the relevant writings are not yet in the public domain. Next, I note some trends in current Nigerian writing. Finally, I meditate on Achebe’s reflection on the corporeality of the writer, that is, the writer’s body, as well as a body of writers, in his ANA inauguration speech and attempt to show how that links with the two other concerns of my presentation.
As the aesthetic structuring of words to create and underscore meaning and value and to stimulate pleasure, literature in most societies has a depth of significance set in relief both by the ascription of the powers of the artist to divine inspiration and the traditional emblematic equation of the work of literary art with oracular discourse. The privileging of one of these functions of literature over the other is of course determined partly by the genre or type or simply by the writer’s own temperament or ideological disposition. But it is equally determined too by cultural expectations or even more crucially by national traditions. I speak in awareness of the theoretical objections of the “post-nationalist” school of scholars and critics to the deployment of nation-states and national traditions as a basic framework for literary and cultural studies, that is, in recognition that all nations and national traditions in the modern world are embedded in currents and circuits of cultural production, reception and exchange so intricately interwoven to interrogate any uncomplicated notion of time and (political) space.
Vilashini Cooppan contends that nations are “spaces of flows and movement,” (9) and traces “a politics of relationality within which the national and the global are tandem ideas, twinned identifications, and doubled dreams” (4). Drawing productively on Cooppan in his examination of Nigerian literature, Hamish Dalley argues that the reliance on spatio-temporal constructs to categorise authors into generations fails to account for the complexity of the texts it classifies. He notes how the spatio-temporal imaginary of the postcolonial novel is typically multiple, accumulative and ambivalent and shows how “recent Nigerian novels are shaped around ambivalent spatio-temporal imaginaries that exceed the national-generational framework” (15). This insight is potentially of extended implication. Literature, unlike other texts, is protean; even when of particular relevance to its time and place, it is not fixed to its age, but adapts to other times and places. The Nigerian accentuation of this signal insight can easily be discerned even in a fleeting attention to the crucial contributions of Nigeria’s preeminent pioneer writers—Achebe, Soyinka, and Okigbo—to the enunciation of the canons of the Nigerian writer’s vocation early at its formative stage. This clearly justifies the deployment of nations and national traditions as powerful and engaging contexts and frameworks for literary and cultural studies and equally highlights the necessary imaginative reworking of the topical that renders it new. In this conception, the poet’s social responsibility as that of a visionary, has the implication that he/she is not only committed to imaging contemporary issues in his/her poetry, but that he/she does so as a “prophet,” that is, envisions present events and their future consequences in images that appear to have been invoked from dreams.
Speaking at the Afro-Scandinavian Writers’ Conference, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1967, Soyinka had sternly denounced the divorce between the artistic preoccupations of many African writers and the realities of their societies. Identifying the preeminent role of the African writer “as the voice of vision” and the conscience of the society, Soyinka cautioned: “When the writer in his own society can no longer function as conscience, he must recognize that his choice lies between denying himself totally or withdrawing to the position of chronicler and post-mortem surgeon” (20). Similarly, in a talk titled “The African Writer and the Biafran Cause”  delivered at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda in 1968 with the Nigeria-Biafra war raging, Achebe pronounced the absolute proverbial irrelevance of so-called African literature divorced from crucial political issues: “It is clear to me that an African creative writer who tries to avoid the big social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up being completely irrelevant – like that absurd man in the proverb who leaves his burning house to pursue a rat fleeing from the flames” (78). Appraising very highly the impact of Soyinka and Achebe’s positions in the two papers referred to above, SuleEgya observes that they have provided an ideological connection among different generations of Nigerian writers (425).
On the other hand, Okigbo’s contribution to the debate can only be discerned in his work as his reflections on the writer’s role in society in interviews often entailed outright renunciation. In a 1965 interview granted to Robert Serumaga, Okigbo virtually denied being concerned with communicating meanings: “Personally, I don’t think that I have ever set out to communicatea meaning. It is enough that I try to communicate experience which I consider significant” (114). Yet Okigbo’s response to the topical political issues of his time completely transformed the form of Nigerian poetry, and his innovations continue to resonate in the practice of many current Nigerian poets. Ben Obumselu argues that the basic inspiration for that transformation was the deepening political crises of the 1960s and remarks on how the turbulent events of that period“changed not only Wole Soyinka and Okigbo, but Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Okara, KenuleTsaro-Wiwa, Okogbule Wonodi, and ElechiAmadi from mandarins into militants” (3). Okigbo’s self-image in his final sequence “Path of Thunder” as town-crier, speaking truth to power in a public idiom, and thus a potential martyr, is a recurring image of the committed poet in contemporary Nigerian poetry:

If I don’t learn to shut up my mouth I’ll soon go to hell,
I, Okigbo, town-crier, together with my iron bell. (Labyrinth 67).

Dan Izevbaye remarks on “the dismantling of the barrier of anonymity that separates author and hero” in Okigbo’s earlier sequences in “Path of Thunder” (19), and discerns in that final sequence of the poet a demonstration of “the practice of art and commitment that the sixties held out as its ideal” (22). Where the attention paid to the topical is invariably in tandem with social commitment, topicality is the subject of the media. On the other hand, literature works with imaginative material or medium, constantly breaking down the boredom of worn or overused materials and clichés. Originality is its mantra.1
Expectedly, writers’ individual talents and their ideological persuasions regulate their response to any prevailing literary tradition and could possibly interrogate or reinvent it. Typically, then, the compact between the literary imagination and the historical process, just like the medium of its expression, remains focal in many Nigerian writers’ “manifesto works.” When Osundare declared in Songs of the Marketplace that “Poetry is / not the esoteric whisper / of an excluding tongue” aimed at mystifying a “wondering audience” (3), he was evidently embarked on a poetic revolution that would redefine both the scope and language of poetry, placing the folk and the underprivileged at the heart of the poet’s compassion while equally drawing on the resources of their oral arts and privileging an accessible idiom of expression. Yet, like Soyinka and Okigbo, he apprehended the topical in visionary terms and remained committed to the craft of poetry. Moreover, given the demonstrable correspondence between Osundare’s aesthetics with William Wordsworth’s “revolutionary” poetry in Lyrical Ballads which aimed to use “the real language of men” (184) and to focus on the “humble and rustic life” (187), it is indeed remarkable how the apparent renunciation of a convention could well mean the revivification of another. But then theOsundare example is well known and has received considerable critical attention. Thus, I am inclined to pay some brief attention to two younger poets whose interrogation of traditionI consider utterly fascinating, the first Esiaba Irobiand the other Abubukar Othman.
“Handgrenade” is a representative poem of Irobi’s art at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, when he flaunted his iconoclasm; it incarnates the basic aims and form of the poetry that Irobi aspired to, at least in that period of his career. It is a monologue addressed to the speaker’s second-year teacher of poetry. It reappraises and interrogates all that the speaker (in the course of the poem identified as Irobi himself) has learnt about poetry, beginning from the Greeks, in the context of the urgent challenges of his chosen activism. Rejecting the “rusty theories” and “mossy touchstones” associated with elitist poetry, the poet chooses as kindred artists the blacksmith, the carpenter, and the carver, in a symbolic demolition of delusions of poetic grandeur that apparently separated the poet from the grey realities of the common life and so inhibited the social relevance of his productions. Locating the poet then in the fraternity of artisans, Irobi appraises poetry as an art form that serves society a crucial utilitarian purpose as a means of combating injustice and tyranny. His deployment of military motifs reveals his absorption with the military further foregrounded in his self-image in this poem as “a soldier of diction” (21). His toils aim to transform his similes into “shrapnel,” his images into “bayonets” and his symbols into “hand grenades.” Irobi’s ideal poet apparently envies the blood lust which Irobi contends typifies the military, given that that poet’s deepest longing is to “slash the heads of heady Heads of State” and that he adores the glint of “bayonets planted between the ribs of tyrants” (21). The poet-speaker, called by Irobi’s first name “Esiaba,” acknowledges the manifold approaches to the door of poetry but privileges the militant: “I was on the other side. And / Poetry is this child crying in my hands / Crying only as a child would cry, shovelling / Everything into its starving mouth, including / Bread, ballots, bullets, bayonets and blood” (Inflorescence 21).The poet’s “other side” is the obverse side of power and privilege as the famished child epitomises the location of social periphery, Lear’s poor naked wretches, whom the poet chooses above the socially powerful.However, even in his exaltation of the utilitarian value of poetry, especially the annexation of art as a weapon of the revolution advocated, Irobi remains an artist. Through his principle models—the rigorous blacksmith, the painstaking carpenter, the crafty carver—he revalidates the traditional concept of the making of art as a meticulous labour of love. He is only seeking to modify a tradition.
For Abubukar Othman, on the other hand, it is not the poet’s craft even under the tempest of pain that counts; it is instead the use of words as weapons and the inscription of pain that define poetry:

When words drop from your pen
Like arrows from the quiver
Does it matter how they fall on paper
It is the pain they paint
That creates the emotion for poetry. (8)

But surely one can counter by citing the opinion of another writer with much greater experience and, moreover, with a personal history of state persecution: “A book cannot begin to fight against a sword on a battlefield. If the book does indeed in the end win, it is precisely because [the writer] refuses to take up the same weapons as his opponent [. . .] Even anger can be distilled to something lasting” (117). Moreover, going by Othman’s metaphor, the archer who does not merely let his arrows drop but (as the careful poet devotedly sifts through the dross of language for pearls) is painstaking in taking an aim is likelier to hit his target. Posturing quite apart, the paradox of the activist-artist’s situation is that to the extent that he desires to intervene in history through poetry rather than suicide bombing, for instance, he is dependent on words, and that is both a boon and a limitation; a boon given the discursive powers of words, their capacity to create and recreate the world, to outpace and outlast the bullet; but a limitation, nonetheless, as words often typically fail even to convey the mysterious untranslatable reality of experience or phenomenon let alone become action itself. A presiding sub-theme in some of the world’s greatest literature significantly is the anguish of the poet in search of the word.
In any case, the core of Nigerian literature, the various artistic modes of expression quite apart, is the lived experience of the people and thus the indispensable social commitment of the writers is the filter through which their peculiar image of the human situation is represented. The kind of literature developed around each important historical moment is determined by what I could refer to as the heroic resonance of such a moment. The civil war undoubtedly has been the epicentre of Nigerian history. It raises fundamental questions about human freedom that are of political, philosophical, and even aesthetic consequence and has resonances with epic, tragic and mythic dimensions. Continuing debates and recent writing on the civil war evidently demonstrate its enduring grip on the national imagination and consciousness. For younger writers, it remains topical and significant fictional accounts of the war continue to be published. Among the most recent include: Lilian Uchenna Amah’s Dreams of Yesterday, Abigail Anaba’s Sector 1V, and Sam Omatseye’s My Name is Okoro. Indeed in a recent propagandist appropriation of the conflict, it is transformed into an arena for staging transgressive lesbian relationships. Literature certainly remains a vehicle through which the West strives to impose its values on African traditions and identity, that is, a theatre of neo-colonial extensions. Debunking the Bible, the Koran, and African traditions as so much cant in the bid to espouse a permissive notion of sexual freedom is to extend the moral battlefields of the West to Nigeria/Africa. This temptation, with an obvious political dimension, is a major burden that contemporary Nigerian/African authors will increasingly face. By its nature a literary text is a seed that other writers could fertilize so that it blossoms and becomes a source of literary imitation and influences and could thus grow into a movement or even a tradition. The artist thus necessarily assumes a moral responsibility towards the traditions and socio-cultural goals of his/her people, while remaining committed to positive change. Artistry impressed in the service of a controversial moral standpoint is prostitution of art.
Military despotism for similar reasons caught the imagination of the Nigerian writer. Indeed, the militarisation of the psyche of the Nigerian public and even of the Nigerian artist may well be one of the greatest exploits of the Nigerian army. Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide, and Femi Osofisan, regarded as some of the most distinguished voices of the “second generation” of Nigerian poets, are all renowned for the talent with which they have consistently spoken truth to power even when it also required great courage. It may seem intriguing then that the end of military rule brought new challenges to the Nigerian writer. J.M.Coetzee’s signal insight is that caught up in the dynamic of blaming, the bond between the tyrannous state and the writer committed to truth is virtually one of indissoluble fatal fascination. The final paradox of this paranoid dynamic is that the writer unable to do without the state in the eventuality of its demise is both exultant and despondent, slayer and bereaved. Helon Habila’s acknowledgement of the use of the dictatorship to literature is a reaffirmation of Coetzee’s position: “[I]n a way, the dictatorship was good for literature because it supplied some of us our subject matter, and also while it lasted, gave us an education in politics that we couldn’t have acquired at school or anywhere else. We saw pro-democracy activists being killed or arrested or exiled—unfortunate for the victims but great stuff for writing” (55).
The common fare of current Nigerian writing is typically the representation of a gamut of burning contemporary issues: corruption, political intrigues, inter-ethnic strife, gay rights, the dysfunctional family, cultism, kidnapping, violence in its varying forms—domestic, political, religious— terrorism, espionage,  migration and exile, drug trafficking, prostitution, and the like. Appraising current Nigerian writing in 2012, Dan Izevbaye had observed that it was mostly hewn out of less momentous subjects, unlike the work of preceding generations located at historical and cultural turning points and so with resonances beyond the nation. Fraud, power failure, impeachment, and loose morals among the youths, which are staple subjects for current writing, he noted, were more suited for satire, as they lacked the immediate tragic dimensions of the more spectacular historical issues of earlier generations. On the other hand, Izevbaye considers the unrest in the Niger Delta the only potentially epic-scale subject grappled with by contemporary Nigerian writers. Ebi Yeibo, g’ebinyo Ogbowei, Ibiwari Ikiriko, and many other Nigerian poets, especially from the Niger Delta, are focal voices here as they explore the despoliation of the environment and the expected sacrifices and criminalities at the heart of a struggle for both survival and the redistribution of wealth.
The Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria understandably has equally gripped the imagination of contemporary Nigerian writers. Ironically, the preponderance of the thriller, especially in the form of crime, detective, and war fiction, in contemporary Nigerian writing can be traced to the Boko Haram insurgency and the militancy in the Niger Delta. This form, however, is hardly uniquely placed to meditate on the ethical, theological, political and intellectual questions that these conflicts evoke. Among the more serious and sophisticated attempts to examine the true human implications of the Boko Haram question, Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday and Abubukar Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossom are peerless. John’s Born on a Tuesday tells the sober story of a young man’s sensual and religious awakening. Told in the first person narrative, the novel exploits both the protagonist’s own naivety and his genuine groping to understand a complex world of religious and political violence for both humour and moral illumination. The novel’s most profound and possibly controversial core may well be seen in its tracing of religious extremism to the proliferation of contending religious sects which at best are linked to human egoism and at worst are only a convenient expression of blood lust; and in its appraisal of al-majiris as excitable young adolescents virtually abandoned by their families and easily exploited by ruthless teachers and politicians. However, John’s signal message is also inscribed in his exaltation of his protagonist, Dantala’s, discovery through privation that the good life is an acceptance of the austerity of human nature. Dantala’s experience, involving virtual symbolic death and resurrection, counters the tumultuous life of the ego driven by unregenerate human energy.
On the other hand, Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossom offers a factual survey of contemporary Nigerian history, especially the history of religious and political bigotry and violence as well as cultural repression in northern Nigeria. However, in Ibrahim’s compelling narrative, the past is the implacable shadow that haunts the present, illuminating its tensions and cross purposes. The novel’s true strength thus lies in its exploration of the deepest recesses of the human mind as the crucial background of the motivation of action and choices. Exploring the manifold forms of the profound impact of trauma, it casts a lurid lighton human relationships and even national politics. Between these two exceptional novels, the writer’s power to transform especially tragic historical experiences into timeless works of art is clearly demonstrated.
I also wish to draw attention to the growing corpus of Nigerian fiction literally fixated on a clinical examination of the human body. Typically exploring terminal disease ssuch as cancer, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, sickle cell anaemia, epidemics or simply mysterious wasting diseases, the novels in this subgenre evoke the image of a frail and wasted human figure struggling against death. Yejide Kilanko’s Daughters Who Walk This Path, Aramide Segun’s Enitan: Daughter of Destiny, Maryam Awaisu’s Burning Bright, Ogochukwu Promise’s Sorrow’s Joy, Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi’s On the Bank of the River and Ifeoma Okoye’s The Fourth World: each has a character whose potentially terminal ailment is central in the scheme of the various novels. In John’s Born on a Tuesday cholera epidemic recurs and corpses are abiding presences in the death camp while in Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossoms the pervasive human stench of a dying elderly man is specifically aimed at evoking intimations of mortality.
The possible link between this theme and that of terrorism is strong. Terrorism, like torture, exploits the vulnerabilities of the body to make a political statement. By its celebration of carnage, terrorism sets the flesh in all its corporeality in sombre relief. The grisly spectacle of skulls smashed, bones broken and crushed, limbs severed, the innocent and the guilty, the young and the old, men and women arbitrarily bound together in a bizarreorgy of hatred has the distinction of foregrounding the human body in its infinite precariousness. Ahmed Yerima’s critique of violence in the Niger Delta conflict in Hard Ground derives its strength from this insight. The adolescent militant leader’s account of the gruesome murders at the shrine reveals the terrorist’s careful attention to the hungers of the body as well as its burdens; it equally underscores the frenzied blood lust beside which even the sense of the sacred pales into significance:

We did not want to kill them in the shrine. We drove them until they ran in, after two days they got hungry, and one sneaked out to look for food. The boys caught him, and hacked him to death, removing his head from behind as he sped. In the wildness, my boys ran into the shrine, pulled out the second man [. . .] a stick was pushed through his anus until it came out in his bowels. We then dragged them back into the shrine, and burnt them. It seemed the best way to dispose of their bodies at the time. (47-48)

Yet the body in this literature that I refer to as “clinical” for want of a better name is not restricted to the body mangled by the terrorist’s lethal embrace. It is thus possibly a reflection on the broader national condition. A period of economic depression is characterised by a general decline in the quality of the people’s life, and this is especially manifest in health care and medical resources. Many of the novels in this group indeed pay particular attention to the quality of health care in Nigerian hospitals. Yet I think that the fixation on the body of characters suffering from terminal diseases is a concern with the oldest theme of literature: human corporeality, a sober awareness of humans’ trenchant mortality, the human condition. This, incidentally, is the theme of Achebe’s ANA inauguration speech, with particular reference to the writer.

To be continued in next edition

Being keynote address presented by Professor Isidore Diala of the Department of English, Imo State University, Owerri, at the 35th ANA Convention in Abuja on Saturday,  October 30, 2016

By HENRY AKUBUIRO

The sprawling edifice of Afri Hotel, Central Area, Abuja, was unusually busy last Friday. Hundreds of writers arrived the hotel from all parts of Nigeria. Most of them hadn’t seen each other after the last convention in Kaduna. They embraced each other amiably, and conversations were enkindled on every corner.
The Thought Pyramid Centre, Abuja, which hosted the soiree called Festival of Life, was used to welcome the usual participants who had journeyed from the length and breadth of Nigeria to participate in the annual convention. Poems were read by poets, and the students of Nasawara State University capped it up with a drama presentation.
If that venue was small and overcrowded, the Women Development Centre, Central Area, Abuja, where the opening ceremony held on Saturday morning, was quite spacious and conducive. And there were a number of big writers and dignitaries in the hall.
Renowned playwright, Professor Femi Osofisan, was a sight for sore eyes. Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo returned to the convention after missing out in Kaduna. Former ANA President and Minister of State for Education, Professor Jerry Agada, was present, as well as former parliamentarian and one-time ANA President, Dr. Wale Okediran.
Others were the playwright, Senator Shehu Sani; poet and wife of the Imo State governor, Mrs Nneoma Okorocha; a representative of the Ghana Association of Writers, Kofi Sunday; the cerebral scholar, Professor Isidore Diala; SONTA President, Prof. Sonny Ododo; veteran writer, Prof. Idris Amali; ANA Vice President, Camillus Ukah; and Dr. Lizzy Iheanacho, who representative of the DG, National Council for Arts and Culture, Abuja, Other notable writers in Abuja included the poets, Chiedu Ezeanah, Ikeogu Oke and B.M. Dzukogi, to mention a few.
A minute silence was observed for late Ken Saro-Wawa Jnr., the son of late ANA President, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who died recently, as well as deceased iconic writer, Elechi Amadi, who will be buried in December.
The president of the association, Mallam Denja Abdullahi, in his address of welcome, said, ANA, “at this period of reflection and with a full sense of accomplishment in the service of self and our dear nation this 35 years, must, however, re-examine itself critically to recalibrate its operations in order to run better and achieve greater goals in tune with the demands of our contemporary world.
“The Executive Council, elected into office last year, he said, had taken it upon itself to “birth a new, dynamic, systemic and highly mobile association that will be a pride to the founding fathers, some of who are here with us today, and to the little starry-eyed teen immersed in the world of the imagination.”
Lest we forget, it was Senator Shehu Sani, who initiated the move for the writers’ convention to be held in Abuja. When he took to the podium to address the gathering of writers after Abdullahi’s speech, he praised the doggedness of the Mallam Abdullahi-led executive council for overcoming the odds to organise the convention, especially in this time of recession.
“ANA has become a household name, the mind and conscience of all Nigerians,” he said, even as he believed the gathering would contribute to the national discourse on a more prosperous Nigeria.  The senator, who felt deeply troubled about the fading interest in literature among the Nigerian populace, enjoined writers to take the bull by the horn.
“One of the basic problems we have today is the declining level and potency of our national discourse. When politicians have libraries in their houses, they simply become part of the architecture of their houses. Politicians will write and launch books, but, if you call them to discuss the books, they don’t fancy that,” he said. Therefore, he called on members of the association to make an impact with it, and to keep alive the spirit of ANA.
Prof. Sonny Ododo, who chaired the ANA Strategic Plan Development Committee, presented the published blueprint to the president of the association, Denja Abdullahi. He commended Prof. Femi Osofisan for winning the 2016 Talia Award, the first African to win it.
Students of Nasarawa State University made sure there was no dull moment at the convention, as they spiced the occasion with choral renditions. Students of the Hilltop Arts Centre, Minna, Niger State, also engaged the audience with a brief total theatre presentation.
The Ghana Association of Writers, represented by Kofi Sunday, added to the international hue of the convention. Many Ghanaian writers, he said, grew up reading classics by Nigerian authors, such as Cyprian Ekwensi, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, and were influenced to be writers. He emphasised on encouraging readers to read, because, if there were no readers, they would be no writers. He subsequently presented books to the ANA president, on behalf of the association.
The wife of Imo State Governor, Mrs Nneoma Okorocha, in her goodwill message, said African literature had come a long way, and we should keep the flame burning. She thrilled the crowd with three scintillating poems of hers.
The keynote speech, entitled “A Writers’ Body and the Burdens of Current Nigerian Writing”, was presented by Professor Isidore Diala of the Department of English, Imo State University, Owerri.
He specified that the “core of Nigerian literature, the various artistic modes of expression quite apart, is the lived experience of the people and thus the indispensable social commitment of the writers is the filter through which their peculiar image of the human situation is represented”, and that the “kind of literature developed around each important historical moment is determined by what I could refer to as the heroic resonance of such a moment.”
The opening ceremony was preceded by a tour to the book fair by participants, who purchased their favourite books. The train subsequently moved to the ANA land located in Mampe, Abuja, for sightseeing and readings.
The second and concluding day of the convention began with a master class workshop and the annual AGM of the association at the National University Commission auditorium, climaxing with the conferment of fellowships on a select group of distinguished members –late Elechi Amadi, Professor Jerry Agada and Dr. Wale Okediran –and the announcement of prize winners.
Winners of the literary prizes included: Franklin Finecountry, author of Avenger of Blood (ANA Prose Fiction Prize); Fela Omoyele, author of Kosoko King of Eko (ANA Drama Prize); Obari Gomba, author of Thunder Protocol (ANA Poetry Prize); Peter Ofodile, author of From Sin to Splendour (ANA/Abubakar Gimba Prize for Short Stories); and Philip Begho, author of Water-Carrier Millionaire (ANA/ Ngozi Chuma Udeh Prize for Chidren’s Literature).

Lola Shoneyin, who attended the renowned Iowa International Writers Programme, Iowa, USA, in 1999, set out as a poet and a short story writer before making a name as a novelist.  Her first volume of poetry, So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg, was published by Ovalonion House, Nigeria, in 1998. Her second volume of poetry, Song of a Riverbird, was published in Nigeria (Ovalonion House) in 2002. Her novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010), won international acclaims. Cassava Republic Press, Nigeria, published Shoneyin’s third poetry collection, For the Love of Flight, in February 2010 the same year Mayowa and the Masquerades, a children’s book, was also published by it. In April 2014, she was named on the Hay Festival’s Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature.  She is the director of the annual Aké Arts and Book Festival. Henry Akubuiro spoke to her on her writings.

You are a poet, a children’s literature author and a novelist. What’s the secret of writing effectively across genre?
Poetry was my first love, the genre that comes most naturally to me. In the 1990s, there were so many poets around to learn from and share your work with. I miss that. I find fiction to be much more involved, more demanding. Writing for children comes with its own complexities but the delight on the faces of children makes it worthwhile. I say all this, because I am not sure there’s a secret. I read what I like and I write what I like, when I like. That kind of freedom is very important to me.
Your first three published works were poetry offerings, So All the Time on an Egg (1998) and Song of a River Bird (2002), and For the Love of Flight (2010).

What has happened to the poet in you as fiction seems to have taken over given the poetic lull for six year running?
The poet in me is alive and well, although not getting as much attention as I would like. I still write poetry but not often enough. I have been working on my fourth collection, Feather in Nest, for years. The thing is: I am not just one thing. I am not only a writer. There are several other aspects of my life that require my attention, motherhood being one. I negotiate this multi-layered nature of my every day life by prioritising. And if, in the process, writing is relegated, I just accept it as temporary. I don’t sweat over it.

Mayowa and the Masquerades earned you the 2011 ANA/Atiku Abubakar Prize for Children’s Literature. What fascinated you about masquerade, given that its many secrets are shielded from women in traditional African society?
That book was very much about nostalgia, the things about my childhood that I miss, and the things that I fear my children will never experience. Apart from being a story, Mayowa and the Masquerade is a time capsule. Children often ask how adults used to entertain themselves before the Internet, in the days when you had to wait until dusk before TV stations started broadcasting. That children’s book is my answer to such questions. When I was a kid, I loved the flamboyance of Remo masquerades. They were an important element of festive seasons which my family spent in Ilisan-Remo. I was always jealous of my brothers, because I couldn’t participate in the way that they did.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives has just been translated to French…
Yes, it has. It’s wonderful when a creative work is exposed to new audiences. It is both exhilarating and exhausting when you have to keep talking about the same book, but I am extremely excited at the thought of going to France to promote it.

In The Secret Wives of Baba Segi, a book longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize, you utilised the first-person and third-person narrative techniques. What informed the deployment of both techniques?
I had a canvass of characters who were all critical to the telling of the story, so I felt it was important to reveal their back stories. Who better to do this than the characters themselves, in their own words? I used the third person narrative voice whenever the story was taking place in the present, to give the reader a glimpse into their home life, and how Baba Segi and his wives interacted.

Attempts by Bolanle’s co-wives to poison her boomeranged. How sympathetic were you to Bolanle at this juncture with this twist in narrative?
I adore Bolanle and always imagine how different her life might have been if she hadn’t been sexually abused. Bolanle in the The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is based on the life of young woman I met eleven years ago. She had been horribly violated at sixteen years old and the family’s position was to keep it quiet and never talk about it, so as not to ruin her prospects of finding a good husband. This woman suffered incredible psychological trauma and she never recovered from the experience. This sort of thing happens too often in our country. Victims of sexual abuse are expected to be silent while their abusers go on with their lives and rarely have to confront the consequences of their actions. For this reason alone, Bolanle had my sympathy throughout the writing of the novel. I never for a moment lost sight of how she was feeling or what she was thinking.

You are both the founder of Book Buzz Foundation and the Ake Arts & Book Festival. What has the experience been like?
It has been hugely fulfilling. I love that, along with a team of incredibly talented people, we have been able to create a cultural hub. It’s been a case of “if you build it, they will come”. We are delighted that it has become a space where creatives and consumers of culture troop to every year. One of the ways we know how much the festival has grown is that we, the organisers, have no idea who 90% of the attendees are. I really want to thank you to those who come to Abeokuta for cultural immersion. They are the MVPs.

I am tickled by your biography which listed four dogs alongside four children among your possessions. How priceless are these dogs and how did you come to love dogs?
Possessions? I have never thought of my children as my possessions. Nobody can truly claim to own another human being. The same way it is naïve for one human being to feel they can say where another belongs. I grew up with dogs. We always had them around the house as guard dogs but mostly as pets. We grew to love them, to talk to them, to be able to read their expressions and understand their personalities. Sadly, we’ve lost all our dogs in the space of two years, mainly due to old age. I was heartbroken with the passing of each one of them. Figuring out how to break the sad news to my children gave me sleepless nights, because I knew they would be devastated.

You admitted loving Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Ntosake Shange, et al. What’s the connecting point between you and these writers?
And Anne Sexton! I love their writings for different reasons. Sometimes, it the sense of adventure and their delight at self-discovery. Poets like Plath and Sexton articulate melancholy effortlessly whilst also capturing the inexplicable nature of it.  This is something I admire.
You were disappointed when UK publishers rejected your second novel, Harlot. Is there any physiological impact that trails such rejections? How did you handle it?
It was same disappointment that led to the birth of Baba Segi. I cried sometimes when it was a publisher I really admired. If the reason was tokenistic or patronising, I would whine to my agent. The writing world is very competitive, and there are hundreds of fine writers whose works don’t get anywhere near the praise they deserve. In the West, a lot of it is down to marketing. I guess that’s what is so important about Ake Festival. I love that people come to discover and listen to new and established authors from different African countries.

Your next novel will be published soon. What is this work of fiction all about?
It is set in Lagos in the 2000s. It is a domestic, but very different to The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. It explores disappointment, the social media age, perception, the desperation approval. The working title is ‘Comfort’ which, in the story, is both a name and a desire.

Wole Oguntola is a poet with two awards in both poetry and short stories. A satirist and an activitist, whose poetry has been published home and abroad, he is currently the HOD of Art, at Excellent Comprehensive Model International Schools, Osogbo, Osun State.

The downcast and dwellers

Two intolerable inhabitants

Have taken oath to team together;

the downcast and dwellers

They settle among sharps

and stings of sorrow

Of ill-gotten days

And, see them through cracked defence

Both communing together

But of different worlds

As dwellers keep hoping

In the twists and turns

of time-

Downcast keeps building

the dreams in the castle of air

and grandeur

of melting sun

They’ve come in tangle of wrists

In trap of traitors

And through rhythm of wars

Of hope derailing land

Where wailings do echo

Silent range of laughter

Of defence of disintegration

It seems sometimes is

a traversed truth

Dwellers are compelled

To unknown spells

And of embroidered world

From where meadow of mysteries

Rises its voice upon the land

Patriot-bearers, learn to jubilate!

A time coming

Waving and rejuvenating

To revive the land

Among sharps of sorrow

And stings of ill-gotten days.

I’ve carved all to this effigy.

Where sane sun, too, is shooting bright.

I’ve carved it to him;
Who has sanctioned

prodigies in Paradise.

He, whose voice has echoed through time

I have chosen between two Lords;

Between Henry and right to foolery.

And as you know, man can not serve two masters

this is a stone of believe.

I have chosen him of a penstorm;

of the pillar of wit and the plateau of hope.

I have gone to where grain of grace

formed a pyramid, and piled up liturgy of literature.

Where abundance of acronyms have defined the earth.

A road in Europe

(to Henry Wole Akintola)

To one who sojourns
On a terrain
Whose head is raised
Above the earth matrixes
Like morning sunflower
Above stodgy flood
To plateau of New Jersey
Where every good road
Meet in Europe
And where spreading grass greener
In marble of shooting sun

Must is your colourful dreams
Sparking in city night
Where your noble will
Is strolling in marble mall

I’ve fallen asleep
And lost in its full scenery

And awakening by the clash of steels
And gently rubbed my palms
Like a too-serious praying- mantis
Demanding for acceptance
Of a life of flight.

Effigy 

(For Henry Akubuiro)

Osita Igbo is a poet, novelist, playwright, scriptwriter and an Igbo scholar. He is the founder of the movie company, Kings and Queens, which produces his plays. He is currently working on a book on Igbo origin and history, as well as a television programme for the reconstruction of Igbo culture. He has just embarked on further studies at UNN.

Asu Rock

Fossilised grey over abyss cactus, effervescence tide-swept shards of rainbow,

whirled malignant harmattan for the dew earth-towels you, Sir!    phucomophones metamorphic as the sun crowns you for light of emerald, to leaven visions of sapphire.

Tassel of pines plunge to incoming fibre,

Lingered possessions of your fissures and outcrops,

To ride in rhythmic saddle of cosmic steed

Must I to you roll out as the crusted carpet before you!

Silhouette in fold of your bare coarse skin. Mirage is all,

Secret passageways for self-nook, sift sand-dune forth of pollens of the azure ring, rock-fingers crack sunlight cone to void of a brown vessel; past fingers as vultures praying for days decaying.

I know the scarlet on your sole

Relics the peregrination beyond earth’s core

To bear the antre of the boundless,

Overflow bank your own with ashes of earth!

Not the yellow beams that spring the vermin, but the soot

Of broken lamp. A millet of the millets in the barn of loot can

Replete multitude’s need. Skeined radiance of lapis lazuli for regeneration,

Yet crouching naked for yellow moon, faceless faces faces.

What shall I say?

The fall of earth

The endless meetings of Nightsteads

Embrace you and I!

Opal-flare stir germ at the market-place. Bolts to seam with whiteness the crevice of skin and

peridot are echoed in chasm. Feet that stamp in fir garden are clogged by the weeds of your outcrops  wind of light, for drought of cell,

For dearth of the moon

Let none long for justice here:

Justice is the blight that blights

The harvest of their malversation,

Vast mites on fleshed dare ribbon!

Pluralism linger whirl smoke, pluck fray forth from the seam, obsidian,

Crag we cannot clutch, scarlet fever of sick days, hearth-abyss,

Ramble in riddling vault of their woodwinds; THREE-LEAVES STALK

Arise subservience of feeble nerve of one

New earth tassel

Mane-bridge beyond peat raven

Wisp of dew fibre, ether cliff,

Mine jasper cavern!

Dew in subsidence after moonquake, mantle sward ran to bare of palm, sun of the stubbed and mangled hills and valleys, but those days are resilient. The root was dipped in earth wetness for rust

Rust is womb for twilight grains.

Title: You Are Too Gifted to be Poor

Author: Hilton Etakoh

Publisher: Toesth Global Services

Year: 2016

Pages: 210

Reviewer:  Henry Akubuiro

Hilton Etakoh’s You Are Too Gifted to be Poor prides itself as “the ultimate guide to discovering and maximising your infinite gift”. If you are the type easily put off by how-to-become-rich offerings, don’t sound dismissive yet. The author tells us his book is different. Is it really? Let’s take a jolly ride.

Introducing the book, Etakoh informs us that it was inspired by the high level of poverty, unemployment and mediocrity in our society. Hence, his gravitation to write a book that will provoke and stir the reader up into taking deliberate action that will move him in the direction of his dream.

Part 1 of the book, entitled “Road to Discovery”, begins with a chapter on gift. Despite having so much greatness in us, the author laments that many of us still wallow in mediocrity. He writes: “… we were endowed at birth with priceless gifts, talents, and special abilities, yet we cry daily of poverty and joblessness. Riches which we never imagined are right within out grasp, yet they seem so far…” (p.30). He restates that every individual born into the world has gifts, waiting to be explored.

The power of a man’s gift, writes the author in the second chapter, holds the key to his future. Through Etakoh, we learn that gifts are specifically given to us to enable us fulfill our purpose, for a man’s gift makes room for him. Among others, a man’s gift is capable of creating work for you and making him rich and famous. How does one discover his talent? Etakoh’s book deals with this in the third chapter.

In the second part of the book entitled “Mindshift: A New Perspective”, the author cautions against resorting to what he terms the six common excuses of poor people: circumstance of birth, lack of formal education, environmental limitation, disability, opposition from external forces, and lack of capital.

However, Etakoh is categorical that nobody is responsible for anybody’s inability to get ahead in life, advising all to take responsibility for whatever they become in life: “It is not what befalls a man that determines his eventual end, but how he chooses to react to what has befallen him. Your choice of response (reaction) makes all the difference,” he writes (p.89).

The fifth chapter opens our eyes to the seven actual reasons people are poor. These include not creating and adding value, ignorance of what they have, inability to appreciate the importance of skill-set development, and ignorance of how to access information and partners. Others have to do with lack of courage to risk their money and lack of wisdom.

You Are Too Gifted to be Poor makes also to realise that your gift is never enough. Some gifted people are more successful than others, writes the author, “not necessarily because they are more gifted but because there are certain principles/factors they observe that their less successful peers do” (p.138).

One thing you will take away from this chapter is that is not so much difficult to break into the limelight –talent can put you in the spotlight –but character determines how long you stay there. Hence, he declares: “Talent without character doesn’t go far.” The core values of a man, we are told, determines how he lives. These principles are discussed on the subsequent pages.

The concluding part of the book, “Now or Never”, contains three chapters.  The first of the chapters is meant to rouse us from lethargic contentment. The point of emphasis here is: It’s never too late to start. You have to reset your life, writes Etakoh, and think big.

We have to also take cognisance of the fact that we have to start now or die waiting. The latter option is what nobody would wish for his enemy. The author echoes: “Life is too short to waste it sitting around and waiting for something to happen before you act. Time’s not on your side, in fact, you are daily running out of time, so you must hurry” (p.173).

In his note to parents in chapter 9, Etakoh makes them realise that they have a big role to play in helping their kids discover and develop their potentials, for childhood years are the formative years of a person’s life. He writes: “Encourage them to try things out. Don’t be one of those parents who shield their children from taking risks because they fear they might suffer certain consequences if things don’t go as expected” (p.185).

In the concluding chapter, Etakoh reminds the reader of the cardinal message of the book: making enduring impact on your world. This is the only way you can be remembered. It encourages us to set goals and develop goals chart.

Special features of the book include Action Points at the end of each chapter (a set of questions drawn from the chapter), SWOT analysis exercise, complacency text, etcetera. If you are in doubt as to what your gift is, try You Are Too Gifted to be Poor.

Title:  Of Rusts and Gold: Snippets of History

Author: Femi Kehinde

Year: 2016

Reviewer: Festus Adedayo

If you didn’t know the gravity of the offence committed by those who decreed history out of the Nigerian educational curriculum, when you read Femi Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold: Snippets of History, you will agree that they deserve to be arraigned by the public square and forced to drink a more poisonous variant of the Socratic hemlock. Indeed, they deserve ample pages in national book of dishonour. They are enemies of our past and enemies of our future.

Historians are concerned with the quest for an interpretation of the past as a vehicle for an explanation of the future. Historians can thus be likened to a smog-covered old man in the smithy who is labouring relentlessly to forge a true discourse of the past, as he deploys narratives and analyses of past events and occurrences to define the future.

The 249-paged book is a historical nugget which tells you that the knowledge of the past is an invaluable chunk of a tripod of yesterday, today and tomorrow. For instance, with traditional tales by the moonlight having gone into extinction, and the youth of today believing that the apogee of existence is wealth and political power, it is necessary to acquaint them with the story of those who traversed this land with such mundane and warped reasoning but ended their lives tragically.

For example, in any equation where wealth for personal aggrandizement and wealth for communal exhortation are in issue, the story of the duo of Ibadanland’s Sanusi Adebisi Giwa, also known as Adebisi Idi Ikan, an exceptionally wealthy man in the early 20th century, and Salami Agbaje would serve some didactic lessons. While the former’s wealth held a conspicuous benefaction to the community – borrowing from the author’s language – the latter’s wealth was circumscribed round the narrow confine of self and immediate community. This provoked the refrain in the folklore, Ile Adebisi lati je malu tawo tawo, awa o je dodo nile Salami. You will find the details in Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold.

Of particular importance in the book as a historical work and at the same time a didactic piece of art is its retelling of the Agbekoya uprising story. The Agbekoya had held the Western Region government to ransom, in the mould of how the famous Funmilayo Ransom-Kuti – Fela’s mother – held the town of Abeokuta spellbound with almost 20,000 women, in protest against the perceived conspiratorial collaboration between the Alake of Egba, Oba Gbadebo and the white supremacists of the time in exploiting the natives through high taxation.

Broken into different chapters that dwell on topics, Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold is an ‘unputdownable’ piece of historical research that will keep anyone interested in the strides of our recent forebears glued to it, until the last page is exhausted.

For instance, how many people know that right here on this soil of Ibadanland; indeed, right here at the University of Ibadan, many spousal engagements which resulted in famous marriages and renowned children, were sired? For instance, Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold reveals that Laide and Wole Soyinka’s marriage; those of Ayo and Adetoun Ogunseye; Ojetunji and Bimpe Aboyade; Chinua and Christy Achebe; Olumuyiwa and Bolanle Awe; Christopher Okigbo and Judith Sefinat Attah; Olusegun and Funke Agagu, and many more, had their spousal broths cooked right here on the soil of the University of Ibadan. It is one of the nuggets of history that you will encounter in the book.

In Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold, you will encounter an Amazon like Alhaja Humoani Alaga, who single-handedly established the Isabatudeen Grammar School in Ibadan in 1964.

The author’s retelling of the story of the Olowo of Owo, Oba Olateru Olagbegi II, who was Oba twice in the ancient town of Owo, is particularly interesting. One of the most interesting historical renditions in the book is that of Oba Adeniran Adeyemi II, the father of the current Alaafin, Iku Baba Yeye, Oba. Lamidi Adeyemi III. Not dissimilar to that of Oba Olagbegi, the government of the Western Region had smelled his diametric opposition to its government, especially his perceived metaphysical entrapment and eventual death of one of his subjects, Bode Thomas, then Deputy Leader of the Action Group.

Two other historical renditions will attract the attention of the reader of Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold. They are the story of Reverend Timothy Fakunle and the author of Yoruba novels of magical realism, D. O. Fagunwa.

Kehinde’s Of Rusts and Gold is a historical compilation and worthy work of historiography which is unique and extraordinary. His remarkable affixation of dates to events is awesome and commendable. The book is indeed a journey into our recent history and a priceless book that every of our children must be made to read, written in fluid and accessible language.

Being an abridged version of book by Dr. Adedayo presented at the Trenchard Hall of the University of Ibadan on October 19, 2016.

Story by Simeon Mpamugoh

The National Troupe of Nigeria will on November 19 and 20, 2016, at the National Theatre, Lagos, stage one of Professor Wole Soyinka’s most performed plays, Death and the King’s Horseman. The play is being staged as part of the Troupe’s ongoing Nigeria’s independence celebration performances and in commemoration of Professor Wole Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel Prize feat.

Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Troupe, Mr. Akin Adejuwon, explained that the staging of the production is more propitious because it is thirty years this year since Africa and, indeed, the world joined Nigeria in celebrating Professor Wole Soyinka’s award of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“Recall that Professor Soyinka became the first African to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. This is a feat that is worth celebrating, and we have chosen one of his epic plays, which incidentally was written forty years ago to celebrate the literary icon. Indeed, we find the play which has been acknowledged as one of Africa’s best book of the twentieth century fitting to celebrate this living legend and icon,” the Artistic Director said.

Also, Mr. Adejuwon hinted that the November 19 performance will be a command performance that will be hosted by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. However, he stated that the play, which will be directed by Mike Anyanwu and performed by some guest artistes and artistes of the National Troupe, will open to a paying audience on November 20.

“We decided on the public performance and, indeed, to stage the production in line with the Honourable Minister’s drive for improved non-oil revenue generation through a wholly Nigerian cultural economy. The National Troupe hence showcases the play with a view to further fulfilling its mandate to promote and develop our culturally valuable performance products for both local and international markets,” he said.

The Artistic Director also disclosed that the Troupe would mount an exhibition in honour of Professor Wole Soyinka on the lobby leading to the performance venue, while there are plans to host a special stampede in collaboration with the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA) on the second day of the performance.

Continued from last edition

Established in 1981 with Chinua Achebe as the founding president, the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) has aims and objectives rooted in the promotion of Nigerian literature, written and oral; the enhancement of the wellbeing of Nigerian writers and protection of their rights; the stimulation and development of indigenous talents, skill and intellectual powers; and the promotion and development of the book culture. So passionate indeed was the promotion and development of the book culture in Africa to the founding father of ANA, Achebe, that he thought it pivotal for the development of African literature. Conceding that such foundational texts of Nigerian literature like The Palm-wine Drinkard and Things Fall Apart would probably never have been published but for Western publishers, Achebe thought of that as only the first stage in the history of African publishing and envisaged a pattern of development in which Africa would be central in its cultural production needs. He contended:

If you are going to have a genuine literary tradition, then the entire book business should have an indigenous base. Not just writers being here, but their publishers, editors, bookshops, printers…[Y]ou can’t really talk about African literature unless you have all these other aspects of the book trade in Africa. This is my stand.” (3)

Achebe had, of course, famously noted—virtually as an inviolable law of nature—that the African writer and his/her audience live in the same place! Achebe certainly understood that the subtle but fierce contest to control the institutions of production and canonization of texts is in reality a struggle for the power to determine and sanction authorised representations of both the self and the Other; it is thus an endeavour consistent with the struggle for economic and ideological dominance. He was aware that by placing itself uniquely to project and reward its preferred concept of African excellence by publication, distribution and award of prestigious prizes, the West exercises powers that have implications that go beyond the artistic. Derek Attridge contends that canonization means so much more than the recognition of an author’s invaluable contribution to literature by publishers and scholars of literature. He draws attention to the cultural and historical contingency of the canon and links it with wider processes of legitimation within the body of culturally recognized narratives. But this form of cultural validation neutralises and absorbs oppositionality: “All canons rest on exclusion; the voice they give to some can be heard only by virtue of the silence they impose on others. But it is just not a silencing by exclusion; it is a silencing by inclusion as well: any voice we can hear is by that very fact purged of its uniqueness and alterity” (226).

Commenting on Achebe’s location of the African writer and his/her audience in the same environment, Biodun Jeyifo notes the deterritorialisation of the relationship between the African writer and his/her audience. Tracing this process paradoxically to the two decades since 1986, Jeyifo contends that given this “phenomenon of worldwide dimensions, a seismic, tectonic migration of persons, projects, ideas and movements around the globe” overwhelmingly detrimental to the developing world, “the production, dissemination and teaching of African literature have suffered unprecedented reversals” (7). Tanure Ojaide equally notes the growing number of African writers involved in the world-wide phenomena of migration and globalisation, and remarked on the impact of that experience on their writings: “Migration, globalisation, and the related phenomena of exile, transnationality, and multilocality have their bearing on the cultural identity, aesthetics, content, and form of literary production of Africans abroad” (43). In Ojaide’s own later poetry as in Irobi’s and his drama Cemetery Road just as in Chimamanda Adiche’s Americanah, the experience of exile itself becomes the focal preoccupation. The virtually suicidal adventure of many talented young Nigerians across perilous border posts indeed has in itself become a recurring concern of current Nigeria fiction. Such novels create the powerful image of Nigeria as a veritable hell in which escape is the only rational option.

Writing on the mass migration of senior Nigerian scholars and writers to the West in their later years, Adebayo Williams is deeply elegiac about the impact of this “autumnal exile,” given the loss of the institutional validation which their presence could have lent to the Nigerian university system (5). But Nigeria currently faces the critical crises of having most of the prominent members of even its younger generation of writers and critics already ensconced in institutions in the West. With the most important journals devoted to African literature based in the West, with the migration of most renowned African (especially Nigerian) scholars of that literature to Western institutions, with the consequent impoverishment of the teaching and discourse of that literature in Nigerian/African universities and newspapers, Nigerian writers and scholars, much like Nigerian sportsmen and women, meditate on their careers in the country as a preparation for the international market. This is especially so given the many outlets for error-free productions in the West, the fortune-transforming literary prizes and the inspiring conditions and incentives for productive and responsible scholarship.

ANA self-consciously strives to enhance the prospects of creative writing in Nigeria. With branches in nearly the thirty-six states of the country and Abuja, its constant presence is felt by writers in the country through monthly readings and workshops, various publications, and state chapter annual conventions. It also introduces especially young writers to a large audience through the publication of anthologies, the work of individual writers, and the annual journal, ANA Review. ANA equally meditates on its administration of a handful of prizes as a crucial aspect of its formalization of a literary culture. And certainly quiet apart from the ANA conventions and occasional conferences, some international in scope, in which the state of writing and the political and social environment in which that writing is done are discussed, ANA’s position on the quality of writing in the country is made through its prizes. In 1998, at the peak of the decline in the publishing industry already in a crisis in the 1980s, the ANA judges’ report is for example remarkable in its thorough appreciation of the situation of the contemporary Nigerian writer publishing in the country and its recommendation of additional talents and responsibilities to Nigerian writers:

Because of the limited number of publishing outlets, most of the texts submitted in the various categories this year, excluding most of those published abroad, would more accurately be called printed rather than published works. Although one understands the authors’ determination to reach the public, even when self-publishing seems necessary, this places responsibilities on the writer which are normally the duty of publishers. These responsibilities include critical reading and editing, and quality presentation. Authors must make it their responsibility to monitor every aspect in producing their book, from layout, to the cover design, to editing and proof-reading, bringing in expertise from other sources when necessary.

The judges were certainly being euphemistic in reporting on the aberrations of “cash and carry” publishing. Jeyifo’s focus on a critical aspect of this heritage, the inherent linguistic and cultural crisis in the normalisation of pervasive misuse and abuse of language which is itself a reflection and reproduction of social contradictions and alienations, is more explicitly articulated. He draws attention to “a gross misuse of language that is part and parcel of a catastrophic decline in the quality of spoken and written language that itself is a product of system-wide malfunctioning of primary, secondary and tertiary education. All forms of writing today confront this grim fact, or rather interlocking sets of facts. And perhaps no modes of language use are more threatened by these facts of pervasive linguistic malaise than those associated with creative writing and critical discourse” (9). The scrutiny of editors and careful attention of the many other professionals of the book industry ensure the emergence of a more attractive and therefore acceptable and marketable product capable of enhancing the book trade. Self-publishing dispenses with all these facilities. Graham Huggan has cited Bourdieu to identify literary prizes as legitimising mechanisms that set in relief both the symbolic and material effects of the process of literary evaluation:

As Bourdieu suggests, prizes reflect as much upon the donors as their recipients; part of a wider struggle over the authority to consecrate particular works or writers, they are powerful indicators of the social forces underlying what we might call the politics of literary recognition. Far from offering tributes to an untrammeled literary excellence, prizes bring the ideological character of evaluation to the fore. (118).

With Western institutions of interpretation bent on privileging their own pronouncements on Nigerian/African literature, the ANA Prizes are indispensable measures of literary value in Nigeria. Thus, the diminishing number of these Prizes for what the current President of the Association refers to euphemistically as “sponsor’s fatigue” is worrisome.

Achebe’s  body

In his ANA inauguration speech, Achebe intriguingly, but certainly not gratuitously, begins his address with a meditation on the mortality of a writer: Abubakar Imam. He returns to that theme at the close of his address and accounts for the reference by remarking on the significance of Imam as a “powerful and venerable indication of a new emphasis on, or even awareness of, literature in indigenous Nigerian languages”. But the invocation of Imam’s memory is of greater importance than just that because Achebe also acknowledges the presence of other writers with equal significance. Achebe’s presiding theme in all of that speech is the corporeality of the artist, his mortality, as contrasted with the potential immortality of his work. It is Achebe’s contention that the responsible writer lives in diametrical opposition to the state and that this invariably is hazardous to the writer. He regards writers’ scepticism of government, even when government brings gifts, “healthy and appropriate”. Achebe observes that writers constitute “a countervailing tradition of enlightened criticism and dissent”. His apprehension of the precariousness of the lone artist pitted in a mortal battle with the state is sobering.

To be continued

By HENRY AKUBUIRO

Deploying subtle criticism in their fiction, Nigerian writers criticise political failings and advance social causes without earning reprimands. But the orbit of a creative writer is limitless. He can also function as the conscience of a nation, risking a double whammy. This is usually the forte of an elect circle of writers who don’t despair to dare.  Hitherto, the trenchant voices of Professors Wole Soyinka and late Chinua Achebe were the loudest of Nigerian writers as social critics, interrogating colonialism, military despotism, civilian misrule, and social maladies through public speaking aside their writings. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (39), novelist, short story writer and nonfiction writer, has joined the fray.

The writer announced herself in the Nigerian and world literary scene with the publication of her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (2005). Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), set before and during the Nigerian Civil War, received the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. It was also adapted into a film by Biyi Bandele in 2014. 

Her third book, The Thing around Your Neck (2009), a collection of twelve dazzling stories exploring the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States, was published in 2009.  A year later, she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker′s “20 Under 40” Fiction Issue. Her third novel, Americanah (2013), an exploration of a young Nigerian encountering race in America, was selected by the New York Times as one of The 10 Best Books of 2013.

Adichie sees herself more of a storyteller, but she wouldn’t mind at all if someone were to think of her as a feminist writer. “I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that worldview must somehow be part of my work,” she once said in an interview.

Her feminist view was soon to echo in the Beyonce Knowles’ chart-topping track “Flawless” (2013: “We teach girls to shrink themselves/To make themselves/ smaller/ We say to girls, “You can have ambition/But not too much/You should aim to be successful/But not too successful/Otherwise you will threaten the man.”/Because I am female/ I am expected to aspire to marriage/I am expected to make my life choices/Always keeping in mind that/Marriage is the most important/Now marriage can be a source of Joy and love and mutual support/But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage/And we don’t teach boys the same?/We raise girls to see each other as competitors/Not for jobs or for accomplishments/Which I think can be a good thing/But for the attention of men/We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings/In the way that boys are./Feminist: the person who believes in the social/Political, and economic equality of the sexes.

Gradually, the decibels of Adichie’s voice are reverberating across the world like Soyinka’s, which explains why she is much sorted after by the international media and word bodies to speak on African and world issues. Also, each time Adichie writes an open letter or column on issues pertaining to Nigeria, it instantly becomes a major talking point.

For instance, writing on “Why Can’t He Just be like Everyone Else?”, Adichie, in February 2014, challenged the passing of anti-gay law in Nigeria, describing it as a failure of our democracy, because the mark of a true democracy was not in the rule of its majority but in the protection of its minority – otherwise mob justice would be considered democratic.

“The law is also unconstitutional, ambiguous, and a strange priority in a country with so many real problems. Above all else, however, it is unjust. Even if this was not a country of abysmal electricity supply where university graduates are barely literate and people die of easily-treatable causes and Boko Haram commits casual mass murders, this law would still be unjust. We cannot be a just society unless we are able to accommodate benign difference, accept benign difference, live and let live. We may not understand homosexuality, we may find it personally abhorrent but our response cannot be to criminalise it,” she wrote.

The writer was disturbed that the supporters of the law wanted a certain semblance of human homogeneity, which she wouldn’t subscribe to: “But we cannot legislate into existence a world that does not exist: the truth of our human condition is that we are a diverse, multi-faceted species. The measure of our humanity lies, in part, in how we think of those different from us.We cannot – should not – have empathy only for people who are like us.”

She ended her piece by describing the law as unjust and should be repealed. “Throughout history,” she wrote, “many inhumane laws have been passed, and have subsequently been repealed. Barack Obama, for example, would not be here today had his parents obeyed American laws that criminalised marriage between blacks and whites.”

Adichie was largely chastised by Nigerians, who thought she overstepped her bounds in a conservative African society, and never got her wish; but she swayed some Nigerians to her side who were vocal on social media in fighting the gay cause.

Against the backdrop of the global migrant crisis rocking the western world, the UN deemed it fit to invite her to speak on “Nobody is Ever Just a Refugee” at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York on Friday, August 19, 2016.

Predicated on the theme of “One Humanity”, Adichie called on the international community to rethink the refugee crisis. “Nobody is ever just a refugee,” she said, stressing, “Nobody is ever just a single thing. And yet, in the public discourse today, we often speak of people as a single a thing. Refugee. Immigrant.”

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than a quarter of the world’s refugee population, with about eighteen million people fleeing conflict in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere.

Adichie, whose parents were displaced during the Nigeria-Biafra war, and lived as refugees for three years in eastern Nigeria, voted for a new paradigm in dealing with the refugee issue. She said: “In my language, Igbo, the word for ‘love’ is ‘ifunanya’ and its literal translation is, ‘to see.’ So, I would like to suggest today that this is a time for a new narrative, a narrative in which we truly see those about whom we speak.

“Let us tell a different story. Let us remember that the movement of human beings on earth is not new. Human history is a history of movement and mingling. Let us remember that we are not just bones and flesh. We are emotional beings. We all share a desire to be valued, a desire to matter. Let us remember that dignity is as important as food.”

Writing on “Nigeria’s Failed Promises”, published in New York Times of October 18, 2016, Adichie criticised the current state of Nigeria under the watch of President Muhammed Buhari, describing his economic policies as “outdated” and his view of Nigerians “infantile”.

Though she had reservations on the first coming of Buhari as a military dictator, Adichie noted that she welcomed his election as a democratically elected president, because “for the first time, Nigerians had voted out an incumbent in an election that was largely free and fair. Because Mr. Buhari had sold himself as a near-ascetic reformer, as a man so personally aboveboard that he would wipe out Nigeria’s decades-long corruption. He represented a form of hope.”

Adichie, who acknowledged that Nigeria is difficult to govern as Africa’s most populous country with regional complexities, a scarred history and a patronage-based political culture, said the president had squandered the goodwill he rode to power: “He had an opportunity to make real reforms early on, to boldly reshape Nigeria’s path. He wasted it:”

She lampooned the president’s choice of many recycled figures with whom Nigerians were disenchanted as ministers. She equally queried his adoption of a policy of “defending” the naira, Nigeria’s. While the official exchange rate was kept artificially low, on the black market, the exchange rate ballooned. Thus: “Prices for everything rose: rice, bread, cooking oil. Fruit sellers and car sellers blamed ‘the price of dollars.’ Complaints of hardship cut across class. Some businesses fired employees; others folded.

She wrote: “The government decided who would have access to the central bank’s now-reduced foreign currency reserves, and drew up an arbitrary list of worthy and unworthy goods — importers of toothpicks cannot, for example, but importers of oil can. Predictably, this policy spawned corruption: The exclusive few who were able to buy dollars at official rates could sell them on the black market and earn large, riskless profits — transactions that contribute nothing to the economy.

“Mr. Buhari has spoken of his ‘good reasons’ for ignoring the many economists who warned about the danger of his policies. He believes, rightly, that Nigeria needs to produce more of what it consumes, and he wants to spur local production. But local production cannot be willed into existence if the supporting infrastructure is absent, and banning goods has historically led not to local production but to a thriving shadow market.

“His intentions, good as they well might be, are rooted in an outdated economic model and an infantile view of Nigerians. For him, it seems, patriotism is not a voluntary and flexible thing, with room for dissent, but a martial enterprise: to obey without questioning. Nationalism is not negotiated, but enforced.

“The president seems comfortable with conditions that make an economy uncomfortable — uncertainty and disillusion. But the economy is not the only reason for Nigerians’ declining hope.”

Another worrisome issue she pointed out in that article was the rampaging Fulani herders: “Since Mr. Buhari came to power, villages in the middle-belt and southern regions have been raided, the inhabitants killed, their farmlands sacked. Those attacked believe the Fulani herdsmen want to forcibly take over their lands for cattle grazing.

“It would be unfair to blame Mr. Buhari for these killings, which are in part a result of complex interactions between climate change and land use. But leadership is as much about perception as it is about action, and Mr. Buhari has appeared disengaged. It took him months, and much criticism from civil society, to finally issue a statement “condemning” the killings. His aloofness feels, at worst, like a tacit enabling of murder and, at best, an absence of sensitive leadership.

“Most important, his behaviour suggests he is tone-deaf to the widely held belief among southern Nigerians that he promotes a northern Sunni Muslim agenda. He was no less opaque when the Nigerian Army murdered hundreds of members of a Shiite Muslim group in December, burying them in hastily dug graves. Or when soldiers killed members of the small secessionist pro-Biafran movement who were protesting the arrest of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, a little-known figure whose continued incarceration has elevated him to a minor martyr.

“Nigerians who expected a fair and sweeping cleanup of corruption have been disappointed. Arrests have tended to be selective, targeting mostly those opposed to Mr. Buhari’s government. The anti-corruption agencies are perceived not only as partisan but as brazenly flouting the rule of law: The Department of State Security recently barged into the homes of various judges at midnight, harassing and threatening them and arresting a number of them, because the judges’ lifestyles ‘suggested’ that they were corrupt.

“There is an ad hoc air to the government that does not inspire that vital ingredient for a stable economy: confidence. There is, at all levels of government, a relentless blaming of previous administrations and a refusal to acknowledge mistakes. And there are eerie signs of the past’s repeating itself — Mr. Buhari’s tone and demeanor are reminiscent of 1984, and his military-era War Against Indiscipline programme is being reintroduced.”

She concluded by advising the government to “prioritise infrastructure, create a business-friendly environment and communicate to a populace mired in disappointment as there are no easy answers to Nigeria’s malaise.”

Given the criticism that Nigeria writers are getting too close to the powers-that-be, leading to a growing disinterest in vocal interrogation of the system, the emergence of Chimamanda as a new social critic from the Nigerian literary community can only burst the socio-political bubble.

By HENRY AKUBUIRO

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka, has nominated prolific author and the President of Nigerian Folklore Society, Dr. Bukar Usman, for the Award for Ethical and Value-Oriented Leadership.
In a letter dated 1st November, 2016, Dr Ani Casimir Kingston Chukwunoyelum,
Director, Directorate of Strategic Contacts, Ethics and Publications, University of Nigeria Nsukka, said the award, courtesy of the Vice Chancellor, Professor Benjamin Ozumba, was in recognition of his personal and institutional appreciation of the national strategic need to embed core values in the educational system to achieve technological and ethical innovation in our tertiary institutions to achieve the goals of sustainable development in the country.
The letter reads: “We are happy to inform you that the Inter-University Committee of the Conference made up of the Federal Ministry of Education, Foreign affairs, Globethics Geneva, Enugu State University of Science and Technology and Bishop Godfrey Okoye University have also decided that the transformative roles you have played and still playing in your life bring about societal and individual transformation with core values content for our present and future ethical project.”
The opening ceremony of the three-day conference on Ethics, Governance and Higher Education, to be declared open by the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, takes place on Wednesday, November 23, 2016, at the Princess Alexandria Auditorium, University of Nigeria, Nsukka campus.
In a chat with The Sun Literary Review, Dr. Usman said it was a pleasant surprise to be nominated for the award: “The news of this award came to me as a surprise like the other previous awards, in that I had not met in person those who were privy to the decision.”
Asked whether it was his leadership of the Nigerian Folklore Society that earned him the award, he said: “It could well be that my leadership of the Nigerian Folklore Society had given me some exposure. However, those who had been following my education and working career would have known that I held leadership positions at the secondary school and in the public service. I would say that the decision makers know best what motivated them.”
His idea of value-oriented leadership is for a person in leadership position to be aware and uphold such values. A former permanent secretary in the presidency, Usman has made the most of his retirement, writing and publishing books, as well as steering the Nigerian Folklore Society along a new path. Where does the motivation come from?
The author A History of Biu tripped memory lane: “Arising from my participation in the Nigerian Folklore Society Conference at Bayero University, Kano in 2013, there was a challenge on the need to revive the society which had been somewhat inactive for some years prior to that time. The conference decided to saddle me with the responsibility of heading the revival steering committee. The committee presented its report to the society’s annual conference, the following year at which I was elected the President of the society, a position I still hold until the next election.”
He admitted that he was motivated by the enthusiasm of the conference participants on the revival of the oral tradition, which had been the first school of the child in nearly all societies. He recalled: “That tradition as was observed at the conference was dying under the threat of globalisation and civilisation, in spite of the numerous values derivable from folklore.
Aside from folklore on which he carried out research and written several books, he has also written other books motivated by his conviction that, “having spent over three decades in the public service, I have some ideas which I want to share with the general public. The feedback I got from the articles and books I published encouraged me to write more. I would, therefore, continue to write, so long as I am able, enjoy the confidence of the readership and I do not run out of ideas.”

By Ikeogu Oke

The German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, notably declared: “Unhappy the land in need of heroes.” And too much emphasis cannot be laid on the role of heroes in shaping the destiny of nations. Like Aeneas whom Virgil credits with founding the Roman nation The Aeneid, and Christopher Columbus credited with the discovery of America, and José Marti regarded as a founding father of the Cuban nation, and Kemal Ataturk recognised as the father of modern Turkey, heroes, in history and legend, have been known to play critical roles in establishing, shaping and reshaping nations, and infusing their peoples with pride as the offspring or descendants of remarkable ancestors or living men – and women. And any land without them should truly feel improvised, as Brecht suggests.

Heroes, incidentally, are not only those who impact nations and history in the political sphere and as founders of nations. Their impact can be felt in virtually all facets of life, generally as courageous pacesetters who produce ground-breaking work or lead in the radical modification or improvement of already existing work.

Copernicus’s risky declaration that the earth was round against the position of the inquisitorial church that it was flat was an act of heroism, demonstrating the courage of the liberal, scientific mind. It was also heroic that Chinua Achebe, then a man in his twenties, dared to write Things Fall Apart, a novel which essentially challenges the ill-motivated characterisation of Africa by European writers as a dark and chaotic continent and which, to both quote and paraphrase Achebe in Home and Exile, seeks to champion the establishment of “a balance of stories between Africa and the West.”

The authors of the Nigerian national anthem obviously had the importance of celebrating heroes and preserving their legacy in mind when they wrote: “The labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain.” Though the facts of today, emerging especially from the political sphere, would make some of us wonder if that lofty declaration was not mere wishful thinking.

That said, the literary labours of our heroes past and present still offer hope for perpetual fruitfulness, proving sometimes to be a quarry for inspiration when deservingly celebrated like Efuru in this fiftieth year of its publication.

Incidentally, it is reductionist to confine Efuru to the description of a feminist novel. Undoubtedly, there are strands of feminism in its thematic fabric, woven quite recognisably into the character of its heroine – a self-possessed, independent-minded, yet marriage- and family-oriented woman who finds meaning in complementing her husband.

Yet the liberalism that forms the foundation of her marriage and actuates her actions is a human value and not a feminist value. The feminism in the novel is subsumed in this liberalism, its leitmotif, for which it recommends itself not just as a feminist work and transcends the gender barrier.

Feminism, if we think critically of it, is a franchise of humanism devoted to the empowerment of women for the improvement of the human race. Efuru is a self-driven symbol of this empowerment who first seeks to free herself from such restrictions as social and cultural expectations that make the payment of bride price a condition for marriage.

A beautiful woman, she steps beyond the confines of such expectations to marry a man below her family status in a transaction dictated by affection, in which the non-payment of her pride price does not matter to her; and she respects and supports her husband with a sacrificial love.

Efuru is a metaphor of the strong lioness. As the narrative voice remarks in the novel: “Adizua” (her husband) “was not good at trading. It was Efuru who was the brain behind the business.” Though the sustenance of the pride depends more on her exertions compared to the lion – with her having to bring in the most kill – yet she willingly submits herself to him and does not engage in a struggle for equality, let alone dominance, with him in the name of “feminism”.  She is proof that one can be feminist and yet humble in a way that does not undermine one’s dignity or offend good sense.

Whereas her contributions to the family could have triggered pride and recalcitrance in some women, she makes herself a model of conjugal cooperation through her sacrificial support of her husband. “What bothers me now is a maid. I want a maid to help me look after Ogonim while I trade with my husband. …I want to help my husband. We have been losing much money,” she reveals to a confidant, underscoring her understanding of the need to balance two necessities: care for her child with Adizua and the growth of the family fortune through her contribution. And though her sacrifice can be said not to have paid the expected dividend, given that Adizua turns out to behave badly towards her, it does not detract from the fact that she had various positive character traits that are worthy of our independent reckoning.

In celebrating Efuru at 50 we identify with such positive values it obliquely canvasses: independence, liberality, love, the cultivation of family, etc. We also hold them up as behavioural beacons to our younger generation in the dark, in desperate need of a reliable compass of positive values in a nation rather adrift in tempestuous waters.

The celebration is therefore a mission of remembrance and inspiration – remembrance of the remarkable labour of one of our female heroes past as a springboard of inspiration for the living, especially the young.  And I feel immensely privileged to have been inducted as a member of the National Organising Committee of the historic event by its chairman, Dr. Wale Okediran, and Mr. Uzoma Nwakuche, Flora Nwapa’s son, whose train will traverse five major Nigerian cities – Lagos, Maiduguri, Abuja, Enugu and Owerri – from November 29 t0 December 9, 2016, drawing a glittering coach filled with literary events.

Also, Nwapa’s publication of Efuru in 1966 as the first novel by a female black African writer has historical significance, a notable venture in pacesetting. We hope this fact, for us also a cause for celebration besides the fact of the novel having become critically acclaimed and influential, will inspire others, especially the younger generation, to set the ploughs of their creativity to new fields, breaking new grounds like Nwapa, producing work that would equally be deserving of celebration by theirs or future generations, extending the chain of human productivity with strong new links.

Oke, an Abuja-based public affairs analyst, is a member of the National Organising Committee of the Efuru @ 50 Celebration. Email: ikeogu.oke@gmail.com.

Title: Buhari: A New Beginning

Author: Bayo Omoboriowo

Publisher: John Tripod Media

Year:  2016

Pages: 304

Reviewer:  Henry Akubuiro

In the wee hours of January 1, 1984, a metallic voice cut through the balmy New Year air. The military had struck, toppling the Shehu Shagari-led democratic government.  The coup was welcomed in many quarters because of ratcheting corruption, among other democratic misnomers. It was in that season of anomie that Buhari assumed the leadership of Nigeria. He was to worm himself into the hearts of many as a man of integrity and a great disciplinarian before he was removed by a counter coup. Hence, his return in 2015 as a democratically elected government was greeted with hurrahs.

Buhari: A New Beginning, a book by Bayo Omoboriowo, chronicles his journey, like no one has ever done, through life, from childhood to his military career and the presidency, with historical pictures that drive home the message

A photographer of repute, Omoboriowo’s glossy package serves more than the purpose of using pictures to tell an inspiring story of leadership; it also brings us to reality the busy world of a leader, whose schedules teem with numerous activities aimed at bettering the lives of the populace, who may be unaware of the sacrifices being made behind closed doors.

The emphasis of this book is Buhari’s second coming as a president, but Omoboriowo offers the reader snippets of his past life as a military leader. Thus, in the first chapter entitled “The Beginnings”, you get all the facts about the ramrod straight man from Daura, Katsina State, who rose from zero to hero.

The telltale sign of Buhari as a leader, narrates the author, was evident in Class 2 in primary school, where he became the school monitor, a house captain, a school prefect and the head boy of the school. In 1961, Buhari was awarded the sole Northern Region slot for an all-expenses-paid educational trip to the UK by Elder Demster, a shipping line.

“The Beginnings” contains many interesting pictures of Buhari as a soldier during a parade in the Nigerian Military Training College in 1962 and as a brigade commander kicking football in 1970) during the Nigerian Civil war. We also have pictures of him receiving a plague from the College Commandant at the United States Army College in 1980 following his graduation from the college.

In the 1970s, Buhari served in the governments of Generals Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo as the Federal Commissioner of Petroleum. Some highpoints of those moments were captured in vivid pictures, including visits to Poland, Philippines and the UK. His sojourn as a military head of state comes alive in detailed pictures, too.

His 2014/15 presidential campaign is chronicled in the second chapter. Having lost out to three former presidents –Obasanjo, Yar’ Adua and Goodluck Jonathan –Buhari returned for the fourth time stronger in 2015 to clinch the presidential election. The flavour and fervour of that epoch-making campaign are relived in fabulous pictures of a broom-waving Buhari and his supporters.

From the pictures taken at different campaign grounds across the nation, Omoboriowo’s book captures the colourful dresses of Nigerian ethnic groups, for, wherever the campaign train berthed in Nigeria, he identified and bonded with the people by wearing their traditional dresses.

The transition period after his victory in the election is equally captures in Buhari: A New Beginning. Omoboriowo writes: “The 2015 transition from the Goodluck Jonathan presidency to that of Muhammadu Buhari was remarkably smooth, making it an indelible testimony of Nigeria’s political maturity and progress in sustaining democracy.”

Some of the pictures on parade here include those of the president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, being received by the SGF, Senator Pius Anyim; him shaking hands with former presidents, Shehu Shagari and Ibrahim Babangida; and him taking his oat of office.

If you missed his inauguration speech on April 1, 2015, you have a second chance of reading it again in this book on pages 118-123. Among others, he said: “Today, history has been made, and change has finally come. Your votes have changed our national destiny for the good of all Nigerians.” In attendance was American Secretary of State, John Terry, seen in one of the pictures in this section, congratulating President Buhari, as the Ambassador of USA to Nigeria, James Entwistle, looks on.

While the fourth chapter shows a workaholic President Buhari engrossed in moments of decision making at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, and elsewhere in the country, we see him as a statesman in the fifth chapter working in concert with former Nigerian presidents and other eminent Nigerians from different walks of life for the betterment of the country. There are also interesting pictorial chronicles of him with other world leaders, including President Obama, Queen Elizabeth of England, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Paul Biya of Cameroon, among others, on the international stage. Omoboriowo’s Buhari: A New Beginning is history in colours.

War, juvenile delinquency and youthful exuberance 

Title:  Yesterday, my Worst Enemy

Author: Ugochukwu Asiegbu

Publisher: Seaburn Publishing Group, Nigeria

Year: 2016

Reviewer: Olamide Babatunde

For someone who studied biochemistry and management at Abia State University, Uturu, and Imo State University, Owerri, respectively, veering off into literature and producing a novel like Yesterday My Worst Enemy can be forgiven.

The book introduces us to a family, who, despite the father’s disciplinarian tendencies, has a last child, Sandra, who, in her prime, becomes the black sheep of the family when she gets initiated into the Red Bra cult in her university. Throwing caution to the winds, she becomes a lesbian, alcoholic, and embraced bad vice. Her reckless living has an adverse effect on her academic performance, which jolts her back to her senses for sometime. When she decides to renounce association with the evil sect it turns out the way she doesn’t expect and her life is almost cut short.

The plot thickens from this point, but it isn’t anything different from the usual.  It feels too much like something out of the old Nollywood scripts that can be predicted and so correctly from the beginning to the end. To have endeavoured to engage in such literariness, the author, though, deserves some credit. While the story isn’t actually breathtaking, it points at the anomalies in a war-ravaged country, the burdens of a single parent, peer pressure and its attendant effects.

Readers are treated to a detailed account of the Biafran war beginning from the counter coup of 1966 to the assassination of Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi. Determined to jog the reader’s memory and keep the up to date, Asiegbu goes on with history and finally kills it with the lieutenant-Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu’s speech termed Ahiara Declaration.

Thoughts then move to Chief Daniels’s second son who is featured to probably cue in other characters. As soon as the heroine – Sandra is successfully brought into the picture fully (Leonard) fades out for the most part leaving the story to revolve around her. Along the way, there are scenarios that aren’t totally necessary like Joseph and Leonard’s quarrel, Leonard getting inaebriated and being rescued by his father’s friend.

By the time Sandra realises she in too deep, she plots for freedom. Narrowly, she misses getting lynched by other members of the deadly female sect. Fortunately, she graduates with a second-class lower division and manages to secure a job.

The publication is marred by series of abrupt stops and pagination errors. On page 66, there is an incomplete sentence trying to describe Leonard’s actions when he is jolted back to life from his terrifying dream. The pagination discord is noticeable from page 58 after which the next page is numbered 75. A repeat occurs on other pages, which means the reader has to go back and forth trying to fit the pieces of the story back together.

As expected, Sandra‘s life takes a slide when Nduka, the man she loves dumps her just after a mad woman give her a chase down the road. Actions that ripple through afterwards and the reasons behind it are left to the reader’s imagination.

Juvenile delinquency and youthful exuberance in this book are explored in layers of unrelenting shortcomings, vengeful thirst and blinding passion.  For instance:

The lights glimmered. The ceiling fans whirred speedily. 

The young people were dancing and having fun. Sandra saw a lady Smoking a cigarette and her eyes widened in surprise. 

“Is that lady smoking? She asked Chioma.

“It is not strange, Chioma responded. Don’t look so surprised. I smoke cigarettes sometimes. I will teach you hoe to smoke.” (p. 73).

This isn’t too difficult for anyone to relate with who has seen a lot of Nigerian scripts acted out. At the beginning, there is a meeting and, at the end, there is a bigger meeting; but it is not certain if the reader’s desire to read through this story will be met.

By Simeon Mpamugoh

This year’s Lagos Books and Arts Festival (LABAF) has come and gone, but the segment on “New Nigerian Fiction: Status Update” will always be remembered for its cerebral hallmark, as it featured readings and conversation around new novels by Nigerian authors.

On the issue of critiquing and reviewing authors’ work, and whether there was a sense of loss as not having enough critics and reviews for authors’ work, Obinna Udenwe, the author of the title Satans and Shaitan deduced “I read reviews, but it does not matter to me. The reviews I get during the production process are what matters to me. If I have a book and my editors say, ‘One doesn’t add up on the work’, that’s enough for me. But, when I publish it, and people read it and point one thing or another, it doesn’t matter to me, because the next book I’m going to write would be different from what I have done.”

Sam Omatsheye, the author of the title; My Name is Okoro, feels different; he said “From my own point of view, it is good to have the books reviewed, but what is more important to me is that it is read. Reviews like prizes are opinions of few people and one cannot legislate the quality of work because of one man’s opinion or panels of decision. So, people have to realise that when one writes, one writes for the general audience or specific audience. I actually appreciate when one has read my work and speaks to me one-on-one, ‘This is what I think about your book’. Those things are more important to me than reviews.

Toni Kan, the author Carnivorous City, did not hold back when he lambasted those who are indifferent about reviews when he said: “It is quite lazy and illiterate of authors to say, ‘We don’t need reviews.’

Obanya, whose work is titled Ijambody, approached it from language perspective: “My psyche gets provoked because we are writing in another language. All these processes are geared towards writing in colonial language, which is English. I wish we could use all the energies in promoting our indigenous languages. There is no society that had made progress utilising other people’s language.

It was an opportunity for the authors to put the art in perspective as well as read excerpts from their works when Henry Akubuiro, author of  Prodigals in Paradise intoned:  “Basically when I write, it is to express myself and also communicate with my reader, as well as expect them to enjoy my book, learn one or two things, form their own opinions and equally be entertained aside imparting one or two things to the reader,” he said, adding,  “No one tells a writer what to write; a writer chooses what he/she wants to write.”

For Sam Omasheye, “Writing to me is very personal and when you want to get your work out, you’re trying to say things of yourself to the world. When I wrote my novel, I was trying to challenge the Nigerian readership and the torpor of our conclusion that tends to see the narrative of the civil war as just an Igbo experience.”

Professor Femi Osifisan, whose seventieth anniversary this year’s event, entitled “The Terror of Knowledge”, was anchored said: “Although we may not realise it, but something definitely exciting is happening in the world of Nigerian literature. And I’m very excited to see so many of these generation of writers who are writing and dong it so well. And reading through their publications, the standards are quite high, and the imaginative range is quite wide.

“However, it is important we write in the indigenous language, but this should not be a discouragement to writers, because every writer should write in the language he or she masters well –the language the writer commands while we also encourage those who can handle the indigenous language to continue.”

 …As Soyinka’s Death and the King Horseman grips the stage 

Forty years after it made its stage debut, Professor Wole Soyinka’s play, Death and the King’s Horseman, staged a comeback at the National Theatre, Lagos, courtesy of the National Troupe of Nigeria, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the playwright’s feat as the first African Nobel laureate.

It was the climax of a three-pronged celebration to commemorate the anniversary, the others being a concurrent art exhibition by the troupe coordinated by Olu Ajayi and an art stampede organised in conjuncction with CORA (Committee for Relevant Art).

Set in Oyo Kingdom in colonial Southwest Nigeria during the Second World War in the 1940s, the props reflected that unique vista and a tenor of discourse characterised by declamations by both parties. The play shows Soyinka’s intricate handling of the historic intercourse between European civilisation and its clanging clash with African culture.

Indeed, so much industry and ingenuity was brought to bear in this particular dramatisation. Among the props was an elevation serving as upstairs from where the colonial masters deliberated on the fate of Africans; in the background was a big screen showing constant silhouetted figures dancing in slow motion to faint classics; there was a cage where freedom of the Africans was manacled. Above all, the cast and ensemble depicted the era in their outmoded costumes.

Central to the plot is the travails of the King’s Horseman (Elesin Oba). As tradition demands, Elesin Oba must commit suicide before the Oba will be buried to enable the Elesin’s spirit precede and clear the way for the king’s spirit.

For the British, it is an ancient tradition that must no longer be tolerated: the heathen should be ridden of that uncivilised practice. Thus, Mr Pilkings, the British Colonial Administrator, moves to intervene. Meanwhile, the talking drums thump the air intermittently as the Elesin Oba talks in riddles, full of arrogant wisdom, often surrounded by groveling and sometimes bewildered harem.

The buildup to the desecration of the rites of passage begins with a brazen contempt shown to the Egungun masquerade and an attempt by a group of African policemen to invade the area –a move thwarted by resilient Oyo women, who not only taunt the minions of the law but overpower them. This scene provides a laughing bout that eases frayed nerves.

Mr. Pilkins, however, is resolute to stop the Elesin Oba’s imminent self-immolation. With superior force, he gets his bidding done as Elesin Oba is arrested at the highest point of rites of passage. It is an abomination that sets the tone for the dislocated fabric and fatalities in the Oyo Kingdom. Meanwhile, Olunde, Elesin’s first son and a medical student, has returned from England to bury his father according to tradition.

But, if the British expect him to dance to their tune, they are wrong, for Olunde, despite his cultural straddle, is a young man steeped in culture, who abhors the contemptuous treatment of things Africa by the whites, and engages the powers-that-be in a counter argument. But he possesses little power to prevent the coming damnation.

A disappointed Olunde, on seeing his father in captivity, shrieks: “I have no father,” storming away. Even in captivity, Elesin talks tough. He is evidently crestfallen that he is unable to complete the rites of passage. Though his life has been saved by the British, life has lost its meaning to him; he wants to die.

Dirges of mourners suddenly fill the air. Women dressed in white, file onto the stage, with a group of men bearing the corpse of Olunde –of course, he has taken his own life to fill the void left by Elesin’s detention or inaction. It becomes double tragedy as Elesin also takes his own life.

“The play seeks to explore the tragic consequences associated with diminished sensibility and understanding of intercultural behaviours, communication and tolerance, especially during the British Colonial ear in Nigeria,” explains the stage director, Mike Anyanwu, in his note.

Some of those who contributed to the realisation of the play included Josephine Igberaese (Assistant Director), Hilary Elemi (Technical Director), Zmirage (Set Design/Lighting), Abifarin Bayode (Stage Manager), Winifred Akunne (Costumier), Dapo Omideyi and Emmanuel Adejumo (Music Director), Husseini Shaibu (Public Relations), among others.

On hand to witness the grand enactment were Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture; Mr. Akin Adejuwon, Artistic Director, National Troupe of Nigeria; Odia Ofeimun, renowned poet and playwright; Oba Gbenga Sonuga and Larry William, veteran actor, and a host of other dignitaries.

Earlier in his speech, the artistic director had apologised for Soyinka’s absence at the event, for he was away in the US. He commended the desire of the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Mohammed, to have the play staged, and capping it with his presence at the Cinema Hall II, National Theatre, also describing him as a seasoned artist.

Speaking thereafter, the minister recalled that, thirty years ago, Nigeria was inducted into the literary hall of fame when Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in Literature. A playwright after his heart, he praised his role in drama as legendary.

Alhaji Mohammed restated the resolve of his ministry to continue supporting the quest for the development of the creative industry, pointing out that, in the Western world and parts of Africa, the creative industry had morphed into a creative economy, which wasn’t the case yet in Nigeria.

He also berated the attitude of ordinary Nigerians towards the creative industry as part of the reason why the industry has been in stagnation. For instance, he blamed the flourishing of pirated works on Nigerians, who willingly patronise the sellers. He said piracy was worse than armed robbery.

By HENRY AKUBUIRO

Abeokuta spoke in many tongues for a reason: the world had come another romance with the city. From the West, Africa and far-flung places, enthusiasts converged on the Ogun State capital for a combo of arts and literature pizza. It was the fourth the Ake Arts & Book Festival.

The organisers had no easy time putting up the festival. Nigeria was in economic recession, and many partners weren’t keen on releasing much-needed funds. But, Lola Shoneyin, the Festival Director, wasn’t dispirited. Against the odds, she pulled off a stunning show. The visitors were happy.

Unusually, it was a hectic time getting into Abeokuta from the Lagos axis through which majority of the international guests and many visitors passed through: the federal highway was in repairs. Hence, a journey of 78 kilometres took a half day to complete, leaving many faces raddled on getting to town eventually. But the mirthless faces shone brightly hours later when the opening ceremony got underway on Thursday November 16, 2016, at the June 12 Cultural Centre, Abeokuta.

It was a festival headlined by Africa’s most celebrated living novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The Kenyan wasn’t an isolated super star, though. From the younger generation came the Nigerians –Okey Ndibe, Helon Habila, Teju Cole, Chinelo Okparanta and Toni Kan – The Zimbabweans, Noviolent Bulawayo and Sarah Mayinka; the Congolese, Alain Mabanckou; the South Africans, Zukiswer Waner and Lebo Mashile; Ghanaian, Nana Darko, to mention a few.

The menu of Ake Arts & Book Festival echoed interesting events, ranging from writing workshops, book chats, panel discussions, film and conversation, stage plays and art exhibitions. It also featured a concert, interview session, poetry night and a city tour.

Opening ceremony

Guests for this year’s festival came from fifteen African countries, and, in addition to the teeming crowd of Nigerians, there was no single seat left as the official opening ceremony kicked off at the Cinema Hall on Thursday November 17. Let we forget, events at the festival got underway two days earlier.

Goodwill messages came from His Royal Highness Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebu, the Alake of Egbaland; Michael Kell of Windell Campbell Poetry Prize; Mathilda Edwards, Secretary, Miller Morland Foundation; Geoff Ryman and Chinelo Onwuala of Nomma Award in Africa; Ehis Ogiemwanye, Eric Maydieu, MD, Peugeot Nigeria; Michael Arrion, EU Ambassador to Nigeria and Ecowas; Diran Olope, Vice President, FCMB

Ify Mbanugwo, Admin Manager, Ake Arts & Book Festival, presented the latest edition of Ake Review, the official Ake Arts and Book Festival journal, with Ngugi wa Thiong’o on the cover; just as Lola Shoneyin, the Festival Director, welcomed participants to the festival, emphasising on the triumph of the willpower which made it possible to organize this year’s festival amid economic recession being experienced by Nigerians.

The longlist for the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Literature in Africa was announced by the Chief Judge, Helon Habila. The following authors made the list: Julie Iromuanya (Nigerian) — Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, USA); Mohale Mashigo  (South Africa) — The Yearning (PanMacmillan, South Africa); Nakhane Toure (South Africa) — Piggy Boy’s Blues (Blackbird Books imprint of Jacana Media, SA); Jen Thorpe (South Africa) — The Peculiars (Penguin Random House, USA); Elnathan John (Nigeria) —  Born on a Tuesday (Cassava Republic, Nigeria); Jowhor Ile (Nigeria) — And After Many Days  (Farafina an imprint of Kachifo Limited, Nigeria); Andrew Miller (South Africa)— Dub Steps  (Jacana Media, South Africa);  Jacqui L’Ange (South Africa) — The Seed Thief (Umuzi Publishers, South Africa); and Unathi Magubeni (South Africa) — Nwezelenga: The Star Child (Black Bird Books Imprint of Jacana Media, South Africa).

Sessions that held manyspellbound

The festival’s book chat was kick-started by two Nigerian novelists, Jowhor Ile, the author of After Many Days, and Odafe Atogun, the author of Taduno’s Song, moderated by Dami Ajayi. Jowor admitted that he deployed real-life characters depicting “the life we have already lived”. For Atogun, the narrative technique he deployed was informed by the voice that “will work for the story”.

The award winning Nigerian author, Chinelo Okparanta, was involved in more than one session at the festival, but her first was with Panashe Chigumadzi –a session moderated by Ayodele Morocco Clarke.

Okparanta, who has received knocks from some Nigerians for being sympathetic to lesbians and gays in her writings, said she was never influenced by anybody on the subject she wrote on: “I don’t write because people tell me what to write but I have a need to express myself. The responses from the western world and Africa were different. In Africa, the response I got was like ‘Don’t bring that western disease to us; don’t be brainwashed by the west.”

The Zimbabwean writer, Chijumandzi, likened coming to Nigeria to going to America, for it provided an opportunity to confirm stereotypes, or, as he put it, “to confirm what is being read or seen on TV. Nigeria looms larger. There is this huge cultural imperialism of Nigeria through home videos and music.

One of the most electrifying sessions involved two of Nigeria’s most famous writers at the moment –Teju Cole and Helon Habila –authors of Known and Strange Things and The Chibok Girls. Moderated by Kadaria Ahmed, the book chat interrogated the two writers on their works which centre on the kidnapped Chibok girls by Boko Haram insurgents.

Cole said he stepped out to write on the subject after seeing some misinformed Americans becoming experts on Nigeria following the abduction of Chibok girls; therefore, choosing to write an anti-essay. “I wanted to say that, of all the activities going on, the one place we could go into was these girls’ experience, but we can’t be there,” he said.

Habila’s The Chibok Girls was the first non-fiction written by him. Convinced that fiction wouldn’t do justice to the story, he decided to write a non-fiction. While in Germany in 2013-14 on a fellowship to write a work of fiction, he was paralysed by the news coming of Nigeria, and couldn’t write the fiction again.

Cole would like religion to stop “engaging with us”. Majority of the mass murders of religion, he said, had to do with politics. Likewise, Habila said, before the advent of Boko Haram, Nigeria was not just to suicide bombers: “Nigeria before and after Boko Haram are different.”

Cole, who admitted that the abundance of stupid elements in the world, said effort should be placed on stopping them from having a multiple effect. Habila, in addition, said America got it wrong by exporting democracy wholesale to Africa without considering the peculiarities of each people.

Alain Mabanckou, the author of Lights of Point-Noire and Okey Ndibe, the author of the new non-fiction, Never Look an American in the Eyes, thrilled the audience in a book chat moderated by Kola Tobosun. Ndibe, who said it took him eleven months to write the book, noted that it was a personal story that wasn’t as bleak as his previous works of fiction.

For Mabanckou: “Each time I try to write, I will like to see my neighbourhood and my country talk. I need to find my own voice. My voice comes from the people, the street and the bar. I listen to the novel first before writing it. I write on paper, and not the computer.”

Ndibe admitted that late Chinua Achebe was his first major influence as a writer. He commended Achebe for being profound in his use of language such that he never used any word out of context, and his laconic style was treasured.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Kunle Ajibade got the audience shell-shocked by the horrors of prison life as both writers tripped memory lane in a session moderated by Molara Wood to recount their ordeals after being imprisoned for their writings. While Ngugi was arrested in 1977 for the play he wrote working with ordinary people in Gikuyu –“I woke up in a prison without a name or number on me” –Ajibade, the author of Jailed for Life, was imprisoned by late Nigerian maximum ruler, General Sani Abachi, for his biting sarcasm of his leadership.

The poets, Dike Chukwumerije, Titilope Sonuga, Ogaga Ifowodo, Lebo Mashile, among others, brought down the house on Saturday evening with poetic renditions as the audience sipped palm wine. Professor Femi Osofisan added icing to the cake with a short story that made everybody sing along to intermittent refrains. The Festival Director, Shoneyin, gave an impassioned speech to close the festival, leaving participants to dance into the night and wrapping a memorable festival.

By HENRY AKUBUIRO

From cradle to stardom: Pathways of a quintessential giant

Late Elechi Amadi was born on May 12, 1934, in Omuokachi, Mbodo Village, in Aluu, an Ikwerrre clan in Rivers State, to the family of Wonuchukwu Daniel Amadi, a great farmer and hunter, whose economic interest extended to trading. A man with the largest farm in the community, Elechi’s father married eleven wives, of which Elenchi’s father was the third. Elechi became the first son of his father to survive the endemic malaria, others having died in infancy.

Being the first surviving son of the family was a privilege for young Elechi, and his parents pampered him. He was breastfed longer than his peers, who started jeering him. However, his father didn’t compromise with discipline, selling his ideals and philosophy of life to him. He took him along on hunting expeditions, taught him how to set traps and how to farm. They were to prove useful later in life.

Though he wasn’t educated, Wonuchukwu Amadi encouraged his son to go to school. Thus, Elechi proceeded to the Episcopal School, Mbodo, in 1940, for Standard One and later to Cental School, Igwurunta and Central School, Isiokpo, for his elementary education and Standard 5 & 6 respectively, before returning to Aluu to assist his father in the farm.

Amadi’s journey into the famous Government School, Umuahia, began when, one day, his former Headmaster at Isiokpo, Mr. PK Briggs, sent a messenger on a bicycle to announce that the Entrance Examination into Government College, Umuahia, would take place in two days’ time. Amadi was successful, and travelled by train to Umuahia, the first time he had boarded a train.

Umuahia played a major role in the emergence of Amadi as an intellectual. His teacher, P.J. Johnson, instilled in him the habit of studying English language. He was also made to read good novels. Each student was expected to read at least two novels per week, which enabled him to have a good command of English. He never knew the foundation for greater things was being laid.

His academic pursuit continued in the University College, Ibadan, where he studied Science and Physics. As a professional surveyor, which he practiced briefly after his secondary education in Umuahia, he reasoned the course would help him advance in the practice of surveying, which he hoped to continue in the future. Yet he didn’t allow his interest in the arts to wane.

On graduation from Ibadan, Amadi returned to his surveying job in Enugu. Gradually, he lost interest in the job, having realised now he was more intellectually inclined than being a technician. Thus, he resigned his job to take a teaching job at Oba near Onitsha, and it turned out to be a better paid job than his surveying job. From there, he moved over to Anglican Mission School, Ahoada, as a vice principal. It was a posting that led to the flowering of his talent in creative writing. First, he began writing short stories for pleasure before one of them morphed into the classic, The Concubine.

Life as a soldier 

In 1962, the restless Amadi applied to join the Nigerian Army, and passed to proceed to the Nigerian Military Training School, Kaduna, and, on graduation, posted to the Military School, Zaria, before joining the mainstream corps of the Nigerian Army.

In the Nigerian Army, he taught Physics and Mathematics for three years. Some of his outstanding students who rose to become distinguished Nigerians, included Brigadier-General David Mark, Brigadier-General Tunde Ogbeha, Commander Amadi Ikwechegh –who were made state governors during the military era in Nigerian politics.

From the Nigerian Army, he returned to teaching after resigning yet again. Few weeks after he took over as the principal of Asa Grammar School, it was invaded by soldiers and the premises converted for military training. In his new biography, Elechi Amadi: A Quintessential Giant (released early this week), edited by Obinna Nwodim, Uzo Nwamara and Priye Iyalla-Amadi, the authors recounted that Amadi became a major suspect alongside some of his tribesmen who did not believe in the Biafran cause.

Besides: “His case was worse because, as an ex-military officer with no sympathy for the cause, he was seen as a great risk to the cause, and so there was a manhunt for him. There was the fear that he was training some fighters against the Biafran state; so, on a number of occasions, soldiers made attempts to pick him up at his residence in Asa. Each time they went for him, he was always lucky to escape. For Elechi,life during the war was an experience of living under constant threat. He was to suffer many reports and detentions, and later rejoined the Nigerian Army on the invitation of Colonel Benjamin Adekunle.”

As a civil and public servant 

At the end of the civil war, Amadi joined the civil service on the request of the military governor of Rivers State at the time, Commander Alfred Diete-Spiff. He was posted to the Ministry of Information as Acting Permanent Secretary. His era in the Rivers State Civil Service took him to the ministries of education, commerce and industry, finance, establishments, and military administrator. Honesty, integrity and fairness were his distinctive qualities in the civil service.

At the Rivers State Ministry of Information, he was credited for setting up many media organisations, such as Rivers State TV, Rivers State Broadcasting Corporation (Radio Rivers) and Rivers Newspapers Corporation. He also brought other far-reaching innovation at other ministries where he worked.

In 1987, Colonel Anthony Ukpo became the Military Administrator of Rivers State, and invited Amadi to serve the state, but he preferred his job at the Rivers State College of Education. He eventually yielded to the governor, and became the state commissioner for education. He was instrumental to the establishment of the Rivers State Polytechnic, Bori. Two years after, he was appointed the commissioner of lands and housing.

Amadi returned to his teaching job at the Rivers State College of Education. So many friends and family members were disappointed that he was unable to enrich himself as a political appointee, because soon after leaving office as a two-time commissioner, his financial state became parlous, making it difficult for him to pay his children’s school fees or service his car; sometimes he had to ride on a commercial motorcycle to get to his next destination. His friends and family members were embarrassed seeing him on okada.

In order to help budding writers develop their talents, Amadi established the Elechi Amadi School of Creative Writing, Port Harcourt. In that post-retirement period, it helped to keep him busy intellectually. So, he only charged token school fees from the students, which made the students love him the more.

Amadi’s impact was also felt in community service. After the civil war, his Aluu community was in shambles, which made him mobilise other prominent sons of the community to form a social organisation called Ogbakor Aluu. He also served as the President-General of Ogbakor Ikwerre in 2001, taking its leadership to a new high.

In 2008, he was appointed the Chairman of Rivers State Scholarship Board by the then Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi. In addition to providing 154 overseas scholarships and 2,000 local scholarships, the board also made bursary payments to 37,000 students of Rivers State origin. On January 5, 2009, he was sadly kidnapped for ransom, and spent 24 harrowing hours with the kidnappers.

His literary career

As a child, Amadi loved listening to tales by month light. In primary school, he read his Reader over and over, and had the habit of memorising all the stories inside, -he was always ahead of the students and the teachers. The presence of a well-equipped library at Government College, Umuahia, made him a more voracious reader. By the time he left secondary school, he had gradually become a critic of novels, and was sure he could writer stories. Hence, he would scribble stories and read aloud to his wife.

It was this love for short story that led to the birth of his famous novel, The Concubine. The short story, which he began, writing in 1962 when he was the Principal of Ahaoda Country High School, refused to end as he began writing it, and he eventually finished it when he got enlisted in the Nigerian Army. It was to be published by Heinemann African Writers Series.

Encouraged by that breakthrough, Amadi began the next story, which culminated in The Great Pond, in 1969, a book predicated on inter-tribal war, informed by his stint in the army. Amadi was stunned by the popularity of his first two offerings. His fame had spread across Africa. To complete the trilogy rooted in African traditional life, he came up with The Slave.  His fourth novel, Estrangement, took a departure from previous works, as it had a modern setting.

At the dawn of his writing career, Amadi decided to draw his stories from African traditional way of life, because the western authors were stepped in their own settings. His belief was that African fiction set on the continent would go a long way in telling the story of Africans and projecting their way of life.

Amadi’s writings were not propangadist in nature; rather, he elected to entertain his readers, which put him in the other side of the literary divide, with his contemporaries, like Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe moving for committed literature.

However, he had never underplayed the role of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in inspiring him to write. The publication of the novel set the tone for a new paradigm in African literature. The confidence of Amadi, like many other African writers on the fringe then, was boosted, though he didn’t like the introduction of white characters in Achebe’s works, which made him exclude them in his own novels, because Africans were not given prominence in western fiction.

Also a playwright, his first play, Isiburu, was produced in 1967 as a school principal at Asa Grammar School. But he didn’t stage it till 1970 when the war ended, in collaboration with the Rivers State Council for Arts and Culture. The popularity of the stage premiere motivated the then military president, General Yakubu Gowon, to commission the playwright to stage it for his maiden visit to Rivers State in 1971.

He did not stop at that. The Director of the Rivers State Council for Arts and Culture, Mr. Uriel Paul Worika, impressed on him to write more plays to keep the council busy. He responded with Pepper soup, The Road to Ibadan (1977), Dancer of Calabar (1978) and The Woman of Calabar.

Non-fiction, as well, formed part of Amadi’s oeuvre. Three years after the end of the Nigerian Civil War, haunted by the memories of the war, he published his first nonfiction, Sunset in Biafra. His second nonfiction was Ethics in Nigerian Culture, a scholarly intervention x-raying the behaviour of different Nigerian ethnic groups from the pre-colonial period, against the background of the campaign against corruption by the Second Republic government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari.

In 2003, Amadi published Speaking and Singing, a book of essays. While the essays were a product of his lectures and papers presented at different intellectual for a, the poems were collected from manuscripts he had kept since 1953.

Other works of his include The Beggar’s Story and Other Tales (2011), a product of his School of Creative Writing workshop, and the two works of science fiction, When God Came and Song of the Vanquished (2013).

State burial for Amadi

Late Amadi is survived by four wives (Dorathy Nwonne Amadi, Hilary Rouse-Amadi, Worlu Rose Amadi and Priye-Iyalla-Amadi), sixteen children, thirteen grand-children, and one great-grand child.

In realisation of Amadi’s contributions to the development of Rivers State and his towering personality as a literary Houdini respected the world over, the Rivers State Government, led by Governor  Unisom Wake, approved a 6-day state, which started on Monday, November , 27, culminating today, December 3. It is the first time any indigene of the state has enjoyed such privilege.

Details of the 6-daycelebration of the life and times of the deceased literary giant will be available in our next edition.

itle: Nigeria: The Case for Peaceful and Friendly Dissolution

Author: Adedapo Adeniran Esquire

Publisher: Arymson Publicity

Year: 2012

Reviewer:  Simeon Mpamugoh

The mass media has been replete lately with calls for the restructuring of the country, but what is not clear is the way of the restructuring.  In 170 pages, a legal practitioner and author of the book Nigeria: The Case for Peaceful and Friendly Dissolution, Adedapo Adeniran took a hard look on Nigeria and declared: “It is more than about time that the people of Nigeria go deeply and objectively and, indeed, intelligently to the history of the country and its politics and decide for themselves on rational basis what sort or form of future they want for themselves; whether to remain as one entity on engage in dismemberment of the country.”

The author goes into time to divulge in the first chapter how the British imperialist George Dashwood Goldie Taubman, who later became Sir George Goldie, alongside Frederick Lugard and others, established its trade under British Royal Charter in the scramble for Africa to a point Nigeria was almost christened after him “Goldesia”.

He identifies “Divide and Rule” as the principles of all the endeavours of the colonial powers anywhere they have been adding “that is the legacy that the British colonialists left for Nigeria though the former colonial power tries to impress upon their erstwhile colonies the virtues of democracy. And to talk glibly of one Nigeria is one thing, the actualization of it is another – an uphill and intractable goal – no more than wishful thinking.”

He cites Sir Frederick Lugard and the 1914 amalgamation and notes, “The British Administration manifested its unfairness to the Southern Protectorate in the basic fact the division of the protectorate and the Northern protectorate was very uneven with the later taking a larger share of the land mass without careful thought of ethnicity.”

In Chapter two, the author revisits the 15th January first Coup d’etat in 1966 by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and its subsequent reverberations in what he titles “Military Incursion”, and berated Major General Aguiyi Ironsi, an old Soldier of the old School. “Ironsi had no experience of Coup de’tat and so did not know how to deal with it in the aftermath of the cataclysm, he asserts.

He reveals in the chapter that “Ironsi was assassinated because his programme of concentration of power in the centre was not acceptable to the North, but, soon after, the North discovered that his programme was juicy and could be exploited hence it was adopted and this has landed the country in the situation where the North calls the shots.”

He scribbles that military incursion in Nigeria political landscape has, through the years, resulted in the mismanagement of the economy adding, “The situation persisted such that the Judiciary became slaves of the executive and abuses of the system, breakdown of law and order and infrastructure decay.”

The third chapter highlights the “Fulani Jihad” and the inhabitants of the area known as Northern Nigeria who were the Hausas, Fulanis, Nupes and others largely pagans and Christians, and zeros it in on the star character of the chapter, Shehu Uthmandan Fodio, a Senegalese who led the Fulanis and Arabs in Jihad war against unbelievers in Islam.

It discuses horse-trading between Shehu Uthmandan Fodio,  Afonja – Aare Onakakanfo – the Senior Military Commander who was sent by the Alafin of Oyo to Ilorin,  Opele, the Baale of Gbogun,  Fulah Moslem and  Priest Alimi,  and how the Jihad (religious war) began in the Yoruba country. It notes that from time immemorial Ilorin has always been a Yoruba land in terms of language, custom, culture and habits.

“Movement Towards Disintegration” is the thrust of the fourth chapter. In it, the author posits, “Nigeria is too large and unwieldy for any one power to govern as a single entity with contradictions of language, custom, culture, religion, habits, ethnicity, outlook and vision.

“Dismantling the Amalgamation” in chapter 5 is a swipe on the former Governor of Central Bank Of Nigeria Sanusi Lamido Sanusi whose interview in Al Jazeera with David Frost in January 2012 the author cites as a goof when he said that “Boko Haram was just an organisation and so not Islamic”. He quizzes, “How does he explain the organisation’s burning of a Christian church on a charismas day in the North and others thereafter, not only destroying the church but also killing several worshipers whilst no single mosque has ever been attacked without Sanusi expressing any condemnation.

“Spoil of Politics and Cult of the Personality” takes center stage in sixth chapter. The author, here, identifies a crop of irresponsible and larger than size politicians to whom it does not occur that they are from time to time accountable to their constituencies that voted them into power.

Adedapo Adeniran’s Nigeria: The Case for Peaceful and Friendly Dissolution is a good case study on how well to go about the issue of self-determination. Apart from the snag on the poor application of coma, colon, semicolon and period, the book will be of immense read to historians and knowledge seekers on self-government.