Renowned playwright and lawyer Fred Agbeyegbe is 80. He joined the octogenarian club on July 22. At 80, Pa Agbeyegbe’s pen and mind remain as sharp as when he wrote his first play over 60 years ago at 14. But Agbeyegbe is not your regular playwright or journalist; his articles and plays remain pungent. Three years ago, his play was staged alongside Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and The Jewel at the London Olympics. He shares the same birthday month with the Nobel laureate. And, like Soyinka, he is also a social critic and activist. He is a roaring intellectual voice, clamouring for emancipation of the Niger Delta. Agbeyegbe marked his birthday with pomp and ceremony in Lagos. In this exclusive interview with EVELYN OSAGIE, he speaks on his encounter with Soyinka, his passion and regrets.
Part of being 80 I don’t like
My life has not changed significantly in any way from when I was 40 and now. I don’t remember anything that has been greater or lesser pleasure because I was getting on in years; my interest in life and things remain exactly the same. If anything, as I grew older, and saw that Nigeria is nowhere changing to becoming the Nigeria that I know and envisage in my youth; I am pained, not because I am older, more because I am not now thinking I am near where I am going to. And I am feeling that the change may not happen in my lifetime. Those are the regrets that I have.
Growing up in Niger Delta
We grew up in a free society where no one asked if one was from Itshekiri, Ijaw or Urhobo. Children played with each other; and the adults were always together. And people had their share of disagreements but their fights had nothing to do with land. They respected each other in the enclave that God put them, so they have no reason to fight over land. If all of us in Delta State put in a pool the proceeds from the resources gotten from the area and share it accordingly; it would be the Eldorado of this country. The resources would be more than enough for the population there. When I was Chairman of Warri Local Government, under NPN, I asked the Itshekiris, Ijaws and Urhobos to tell me the number of their abled-bodied men they had so that I’d worked it out as 100 per cent and would be able to create 101 jobs. The only reason for discrimination and fights is when there are not enough resources to meet the wants of the people. It is simple economics.
My thought on militancy
in the region
Militancy came up as a result of the deprivation in the Niger Delta. People feel deprived of what they see as their rights. There is a lot of disconnect between those who say they are governing for the benefit of the generality of country and the people they are governing. I come from Itsekiri, from one of the parts that should be the Eldorado of this country because every ethnic nationality there are all oil-producing. But what is the evidence that this people are so God-endowed? Nothing except fight! It suits some people that we should forget what Nigeria can do for you and focus on what you can do for Nigeria. They are milking us on a daily basis. They come from the so-called centre where they are running Nigeria from to deal with the nincompoops of the society, who don’t have education or antecedents where they are from. They pick and raise them up to situations they’d never hoped they’d get to in life; so they’d owe those who made them allegiance at the expense of the interest of their people. That is why you never get any of these communities sending their first-eleven to represent them anywhere. It is a deliberate policy. They’d pick up your resources, go there and share it, give the nincompoops part of it, which makes them very happy.
Adding my creative voice
to the struggle
There are those who think that my works have contributed to the struggle. And they publicly examinined how my works have contributed to it at the celebration of my 80th birthday last week. The colloquium was in the morning; it had G.G.Darah as keynote speaker. He delivered a lecture tagged: Drama and the Niger Delta Struggle: The Contributions of Fred Agbeyegbe. Other speakers examined The Socio-cultural Relevance of Fred Agbeyegbe Plays in Itshekiri Worldview; The Place of Fred Agbeyegbe Plays in the academia was presented by SONTA and a paper on The Place of Fred Agbeyegbe in Current Theatre Practice was presented by NANTAP. They spoke on how we can resolve this conflict called Nigeria. And my play, Conflict Resolution was chosen as the celebration’s play.
Besides creative works, I once wrote a book on the sovereign national conference: I printed 3000 copies and distributed them everywhere but did not sell a copy. It did not sell because those milking this country don’t like the truth. Look at what happened at the national conference last year. They brought market women, bricklayers, lawyers, and so on, because they wanted everybody to participate. That sounded nice but meant nothing because the people brought there were not the issues. But what is the basis for that Nigeria that you say must preoccupy our minds? Nothing. I am President of the Lower Niger Congress.
My passion for writing
At 80, I am still writing because writing is a way of life for me. Since an early age, I have been around so many books. In some of my law papers and books, you’d find poems and drawings that are meant to be sculpted. For me, the arts is a way of life. Writing comes to me naturally. Without boasting, I can write a play in 30 minutes: all I need to do is to pick up a subject and a play would be in place. Even at 80, I can’t stop writing.
I have four plays that are uncompleted and on-going; let me show you. (Reaches for his computer). Man Beast, Marital Bliss, Festival Child, The Abortionist are the on-going ones that I have been able to put down but there are several in my head. I’ve never stopped writing.
I wrote my first book at the age of 14, Tomb of West Minister over 60 years ago in 1949; and at the last count, I have written about 17 plays; some are not in print.
My first play was inspired by an Urhobo lady, who set out to discover talents in every boy in our boys’ club. It was staged during the club’s first anniversary. And since then I have been writing and producing plays. The King must Dance Naked, which I wrote while I was in England in the 70s studying Law, is my first play that was staged in Nigeria in 1983.
My highest point in over 60 years of writing and producing plays
I have several. First, it was when I wrote Woe unto Death. I used to travel a lot then. While I was returning from Warri with a West Indies girlfriend of mine, between 6 and 7 in the evening, after Ijebu Ode, a burial ground caught my attention and all I could see was a community of human beings. That is where Woe unto Death came from, the story of a young lady in love with death.
Having my play, The King Must Dance Naked staged at the 2012 Olympics was the crowning victory for me as a playwright at that level. And to be sharing the honours with Wole Soyinka was indeed a delight. Interestingly, in 1987 when the play won Play of the Year award in Ghana, NTA had announced it as a play written by Soyinka. (Laughs). And when I challenged them, the then Director at NTA Channel 10 said: “What right have you got to complain. Do you know what it means, in short, you should thank us.” (Laughs). So, Soyink and I have been coming parallel since a long time. I just hope that the people who gave him the title of Nobel laureate would remember me too. So that all these coming together cannot be in vain. (Laughs). But he is a wonderful person.
My encounters with Soyinka
Wole Soyinka is a fantastic human being. He is well-endowed; he is someone everybody would like to be like. The only irony about Soyinka is that it is the international community that had to identify him for what he is before we, Nigerians, realised we had such a person with us. And when eventually he had become a Nobel laureate and Nigeria gave him an award, he rejected as I would have done 10 times over. And the coincidences in our lives have been absolutely incredible.
My first encounter with Soyinka was in the 70s in England. I was the Chess master in London University and used to play chess with my professors. One of them was the Dean of Students. He and Soyinka went to the same university and were friends as students. One day, Soyinka visited my professor, his friend, and he told him about me that I was also a wonderful cook. The professor called and asked if I could host them and I was excited. I had heard about Soyinka but had never met him. During his visit to my place, the professor was full of praise for me and told him how in the middle of my PhD the Commonwealth Secretariat insisted that they must give me a job because the job specification was tailor-made for me. He also told him how someone in the Nigerian High Commission told them about me. On hearing that Soyinka said he was going to the toilet, which I showed him and went back to join the others. That was the last I saw of him. I did not know he had a problem with the Nigerian government then, perhaps immediately he knew that I was working with the Commonwealth Secretariat, he came to the conclusion that I must be a Nigerian diplomat; whereas I was the only person who was not a diplomat. That was our first meeting and it took so many years after I came back for us to meet again in 1984.
He was the special guest of honour at the first showing of Woe unto Death. He could not recognise me and I didn’t talk to him. At another show at the Pep Repertory Theatre, I confronted him and asked him why he deserted me and Prof Dennis in my house; and did not eat the dinner I cooked for him. He was in shock. He said when he heard my name at my show that he had thought it was not the first time he was hearing it.
The third time was when I won the Soyinka Prize for Literature in the late 80s. He was not a judge but he was one of those who presented the prize to me.
The fourth time was when we were plaintive in the Federal High Court in 2010.
The fifth encounter with him was during the 2012 Olympics in London when his play and mine were the Olympics plays. His was The Lion and the Jewel and mine was The King Must Dance Naked.
My journey into theatre arts
It is a sojourn into a mystical world and everything that gives joy. You’d see a lot of other things people don’t see when you look at something. The depth of thoughts is what really makes a person see through things. For instance, each time I look at Nigeria, the superficiality is all that I see. Like I’ve said I wrote my first play at age 14. But I didn’t face the challenges most theatre people faced because it was not my profession. My only profession is Law. I believe I have been successful because I am not dependent on writing as a source of livelihood; and I have other things that take care of all of those things that are problems to those practicing theatre arts and creative writing. When a publisher messed me up, I put my resources into publishing myself; that is why I may be those things that have been able to stop them have not stopped me. I am not waiting for a publisher to come and approve that my work is good enough for publishing. Some of the unpublished plays I talked about are over 10 years old. If it is my livelihood, it won’t be like that and it also means that the work may not have been so good because I would be rushing to make the market. So I am not a theatre person, because I didn’t live by it. Besides my plays and other creative works, I also write essays and articles published across diverse newspapers across the world; but I am not a journalist.
My journey into broadcasting/journalism
I came back from England as a lawyer and wrote for Daily Times, Sunday Times, The Guardian, Thisday, Vanguard, but people describe me as a journalist and broadcaster. I was never in broadcasting or in Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), the way people put it. Each time I watched Nigerian television stations in those days, they were not saying anything which I could identify and thought there must be a lot of people like me in this society. And later when a friend of mine was appointed Chairman of NTA by the then President Shehu Shagari, he drove to my house when he finished talking to Shagari and said: “Fred, you cannot just be talking theory you have to practicalise all you’ve been saying”. And before the end of the week that followed I already had a profile for having programmes on TV. I was made an ‘Honorary Editor’. Before the end of the month, I had worked out a programme on TV and was given a slot to air, Portrait of Nigerian Democracy. Chris Anyanwu, who is now a senator, was allotted to me to do the programme. So I was on TV every Monday evening: they gave me a room, which I furnished and designed to my taste. I took Chris and her cameraman to America to interview the older Bush, when he was Vice President. And later, I wrote a book for NTA.
My Ajo Productions
Ajo Productions is my ensemble. It is still on. Every now and then, we stage my plays. Penultimate week, I was at the National Theatre and we talked about old times. I and guy managing the place have agreed that in September, when it would be 36, Ajo and National Theatre would do something. He gave me a space at the theatre to hold my event, while insisting that I use Cinema Hall One that they have put so much money to make the place a state-of-the-art.
