Category: Biodun Jeyifo

To thy tents, O Israel!
The Christian Bible, 1 Kings, 12:16

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”

For starters, because of the title of this piece, let me reassure the readers of this column that I have not been thinking of ending the column in the near future. But having said that, I must state that I belong to the group of columnists who believe that once a column, like any other thing in life, has outlived its pertinence or usefulness, its tenure ought not to be unduly prolonged. For there are ways of sensing or intuiting the moment when that happens. Here are some of them: it becomes more and more burdensome to write the column; the joy and/or excitement wears off; where topics for discussion were once uncountable, they become more and more difficult to find; more and more and more, old columns are republished to make up for the increasing difficulty of meeting the weekly deadline. None of this has happened in my experience of writing this column, now in its eleventh year if we factor in its beginnings in The Guardian before its migration to its present location in The Nation. If that is the case, why then the title of this piece? Permit me to give a rather extensive elaboration of the answer to this question.

Since I work in the United States (at least until my phased voluntary retirement becomes effective in the first half of next year, 2019) and live both in the US and Nigeria, Donald Trump and Muhammadu Buhari, as president respectively of each of these two countries, could be said to be the presiding spirits of the despair indicated in the title of this piece. I have not misspoken; I mean exactly what I am saying here: unlucky are Americans and Nigerians to have each of these men as their country’s president at this moment in history! This is all the more disturbing given the fact that the imperial nature of the Nigerian presidency is closely modeled on both the style and the substance of the presidency of the Americans.

I admit that it is somewhat unfair to compare Buhari with Trump, even if Buhari is, as the saying goes, dying to meet Trump in the White House at the end of this month. Indeed, with the possible exception of the mercurial, brutal and bloody-minded President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, it is unfair to compare any other ruler in the world with the current American president. Trump is innately evil; Buhari is not. Trump is completely devoid of normal human decency and moral and psychological self-restraint; Buhari is not. However, like Trump, Buhari is a terrifying force of nation-wrecking divisiveness in the national body politic. On this all-important point, the only difference between the two men lies in the fact that for all of his adult life, Trump’s blatant, ignorant and aggressive political tribalism was never hidden while Buhari did everything to mask the same tendencies in himself. That is until, after three unsuccessful attempts to become an elected president, he finally succeeded in his fourth attempt in 2015 and then promptly began to reveal his hidden self or selves.

But I digress. The presidencies of Trump and Buhari are not the central or even major points of departure for this piece. Trump and Buhari did not invent or initiate bitter, tragic and destructive divisiveness in the nations and regions of the contemporary world; they are symptoms of a malaise, a crisis that is really world-historical. Call it internationalism, globalism or cultural and/or religious ecumenism, the important thing to note is that until about a decade and half ago, the general trend in world affairs was to emphasize the things that unite us as members of the human community with a common or shared destiny. On our own continent, Pan Africanism waxed and waned, wax and waned but on the whole managed to survive the terrible reverses of the hopes of independence from colonialism and imperialism.

However, at the present time, virtually all these traditions, legacies and experiences consolidating and celebrating the unity and solidarity of all the peoples and communities of our continent and our world lie smoldering in ruins while anti-globalist, irredentist and revanchist movements of both the Right and the Left (but mostly of the Right) are increasingly predominant in virtually all regions of the world. That is the heart of the matter and Buhari and Trump are embodiments, indeed avatars of this development, this negative dialectic. The difference between the two rulers on this score being Trump’s open and unapologetic embrace of the trend in comparison with Buhari’s devious, bad-faith incarnation of it.  How could I stop writing this column in the wake of this development that is at the heart not only of the political economy of the two countries in which I work and live but of most of the countries of the whole world?

A “confession” is perhaps necessary at this point in the discussion. I came of age, biologically and ideologically, as an intellectual and political leftist. This was about five decades or half a century ago. In that period, to be a leftist was not only to be an internationalist, it was also to be to be a universalist. This was more necessarily the case if you were also a strong and determined partisan and supporter of the workers’ movement, as were virtually all the Leftists and progressives of my generation. But in the intervening years and decades, universalism in particular but also internationalism and ecumenism have come under devasting critiques from both the Left (poststructuralism and postmodernism) and the Right (the “culture wars” and the rejection of multiculturalism). As a result, instead of correcting and transforming the things that were reified and wrongheaded about abstract universalism, many Leftists and progressives abandoned it completely. I did not join – and have never joined – this group of former fellow-travelers. But I do “confess” that I did become somewhat defensive about my universalism, my internationalism. But not anymore, not in the age of Trump and Buhari! And this is why I will continue to write this column. Let me express this point in very concrete, very unmistakable terms, terms which, precisely because of their “universality” can be easily taken for granted, indeed are taken for granted a lot.

Thus, if you say you care about the exploited of your own ethnic group, your own religion or your own region of the country, you cannot but care also about the exploited and downtrodden of all other groups of the country. And if you are a woman or man that has travelled across our continent and our world, you are a strange defender and champion of workers, the poor and the marginalized of your own group if you do not see connections between the conditions and aspirations of the working and non-working poor of diverse nations and regions of the world. This is because, like the value chain that links production with consumption and supply with demand, exploitation does not stop at the borders of ethnic groups, religious communities and regional economic and political aggregations; rather, it connects entire communities in chains that can be broken only if the links are identified and challenged. But the age of Trump and Buhari is here and these common truths are being buried in paroxysms of both aggressive and defensive irredentism. From both personal experience and historical circumstances, let me illustrate the point I am making here about this age of Trump in the countries of the global North and Buhari in the global South.

Millions of IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons) and refugees in all the continents and regions of the world, these are two of the most telling expressions of the world-historical malaise or crisis that I identify as the instigator of this piece. Since the horribly inhuman conditions that virtually all the IDP’s and refuges of the world endure are well-known, there is no reason for me to go over them in this discussion. But then, dear reader, think of the following proposition: outside of the officially declared refugee camps and temporary shelters for IDP’s, there are uncountable areas and spaces of our world that are like refugee camps and temporary shelters without the minimum of infrastructures and amenities necessary for dignified human habitation. Permit me to give an illustration of this point from direct personal experience.

When I am in Nigeria (about four months in the year) I live in Oke-Bola, Ibadan. It would be stretching the figure of speech that we know as analogy to call my section of Oke-Bola a refugee camp, but all the same, the overcrowding of human beings; dwelling houses, bars and churches; working and permanently abandoned motor cars; and dozens of shops into a space that is much too small for all makes Oke-Bola seem and feel like a refugee camp. Quite often, it is through a trial of resolve and patience that I navigate my car into and out of the neighborhood. I have not done a statistical survey of the neighborhood, but my guess is that income per capita for the neighborhood is well under the official poverty line of 2 dollars per day.

Apart from providing a personal dimension to the observations and reflections in this essay, Oke-Bola also serves as a sort of historic bellwether for the deeper ramifications of this piece. This is because, together with Oke-Ado, also in the city of Ibadan, it is perhaps unequaled in the successful integration of “indigenes” and “settlers” in the old Western Region of Nigeria, perhaps even in the whole of the country itself. Unquestionably, this historic fact ought to be celebrated. But alas, what does celebration alone provide to alleviate or reduce the suffering, the looted lives of the poor and the dispossessed of the neighborhood that constitute the overwhelming majority of its denizens? We are, it seems, caught on the horns of a dilemma: what is “integration” without jobs, without basic amenities and without security of life and possessions? You cannot complete the circle or the chain of the dilemma without also asking the following question: can we afford to so quickly and easily dismiss the claims, the necessity of “integration” given the fact that diversity exists at every single level of nature and sociality? Isn’t it the case that both biodiversity and social and political diversity exist at the smallest units of nature and society?

To thy tents, O Israel! Devolution to the smallest units of patrilineal descent in a period of grave doubt and uncertainty indicated in this biblical quote sounds like an echo chamber throughout the contemporary world. The slogans, the manifestos are not always as stark and uncompromising as this biblical blueprint, but the emotion, the enunciative force is unmistakable. Progressive and sustaining diversity and multiculturalism must be won and protected from the ideological and systematic depredations of the Trumps and the Buharis of this world. But not at the expense of the universal truths of the values of truth and justice that characterize our species being as truly human and humanizing. I will continue to write this column as long as this proves to be a necessary task of the age we live in now. Can anyone who can see the end of this age step forward to tell us when it will come about?

 

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

I admit it: it is a very hard thing for any thinking Nigerian not to be, openly or secretly, knowingly or unknowingly, a Malthusian. And who or what is a Malthusian? Anyone who thinks or believes that the more population growth gets out of hand, the more poverty, unemployment, insecurity, war and disease we find in the given society. But that is only putting it at a grand, abstract scale. At the scale of ordinariness or “normality”, you’re a Malthusian if every time you pay attention to how your neighborhood seems all the time to be exploding with more and more people, the majority of them young, unemployed now and with little or no prospects for employment in the near or even distant future. More grimly, you’re a Malthusian if you blame and scapegoat the multitudes of the poor, the young who are unemployed, restless and driven to acts of criminality. You may also blame the “government”, the politicians, but deep down, your greatest worries and fears are reserved for the victims of the seemingly unending explosions in population growth, explosions that are not matched with expansion of physical infrastructures and social amenities. Dear readers, with this profile in mind, I ask you: how many covert or even overt “Malthusians” do you personally know? Are you perhaps one yourself?

It is not difficult for me to reveal the thing that prompted these musings, these questions. This is because nearly everyone knows that this past week, the Chairman of our National Population Commission (NPC), Chief Eze Duruiheoma, broke the news that Nigeria’s population, at 198 million, was just 2 million shy of 200 million. What I do have to explain is why that breaking demographic news immediately sparked both Malthusian and Anti-Malthusian vistas in my mind. For this explanation, my basic observation is that without ever directly invoking either classical Malthusianism or any of its Neo-Malthusian reformulations, Chief Duruiheoma’s announcement was steeped through and through with Malthusian ideas and themes. This is what I wish to discuss in this piece. But first of all, what is Malthusianism?

Simply put, Malthusianism in its classical form posited two propositions. Let’s take each of these propositions one at a time. The first proposition posits that throughout history, population growth tends to be geometrical or exponential while, in sharp contrast, expansion of food supply and social amenities tends to be arithmetical. Expressed more expansively, this contrast between “arithmetical” and “geometrical” growth ratios means that the die is cast against the expansion that is “arithmetical” since there is no way in the world that it can ever catch up with expansion that is “geometrical”. In plain language, Malthusianism holds that there will always be far more of us than we can ever hope to feed, clothe, shelter, employ and protect.

The second proposition is equally grim, if not more so than the first proposition. Let me put it as succinctly as I can: with the “geometrical” ratios of population growth always and forever outflanking the “arithmetical” growth of food supplies and social amenities, war, famines, epidemic diseases, natural disasters and other man-made or natural calamities step in to level the gap between the “geometrical” and the “arithmetical”. In other words, as soon as human societies reach and exceed the optimum in population growth that the existing stock of food and amenities can support, all those calamities caused by nature and by humankind step in to wipe out the “excess population” and restore a balance between growth in population and growth in supplies and amenities.

In fairness to Malthusians, we must of course acknowledge that they do not say that since, in their theory of population growth, far more people will always and forever tend to be born than existing food supplies and amenities can support, we should just fold our hands and accept things as the unchangeable effects of nature. No, they have proposed measures to alleviate the tragedy and pathos of Malthusianism. As a matter of fact, Thomas Robert Malthus, the English economist for whom Malthusianism was named, was also a minister of the Church of England. Thus, his economic and demographic ideas had deep roots in moral philosophy and quasi-religious sensibilities. For instance, he believed that sexual restraint and financial thriftiness matched with societal control of population growth could substantially blunt the dire prospects of Malthusianism. As a matter of fact, since 1798 when the first edition of the monograph that established his fame (or notoriety), An Essay on the Principle of Population, was published, Malthusian ideas have undergone many revisions and reformulations. At the most malignant level, Malthusianism has led to racist and xenophobic ideas about differentiation of human populations between those deemed fit and those deemed unfit for reproduction and/or immigration. And in its more benign reformulations, Malthusianism has led to ideas and practices of birth control, family planning and so-called zero population growth.

It is no secret that since his appointment in 2014 as the Chairman of the NPC, Mr. Duruiheoma has been campaigning vigorously for family planning as a tool for population control. Now, I do not know whether or not the National Population Commission boss sees himself as a Malthusian. Definitely, he is neither an economist nor a professional demographer; by profession he is a lawyer and an administrator. Which is why it is with this caveat in mind that I call him a Malthusian of the more benign tradition. All the same, it is remarkable how, in the speech earlier this week in which he declared in New York that Nigeria’s population is now 198 million, the first and second propositions of Malthusianism jockeyed with each other for pride of place. Which parts of his speech belonged to the first proposition and which to the second proposition respectively?

Dear readers, don’t take my word for it but go and look for the speech itself and judge for yourselves. [It was very well reported and published in virtually all of our major newspapers in both their print and online editions] On the one hand, there are the details of the galloping nature of population growth in our country: currently, we are the most populous nation on the African continent; we are currently the seventh most populous country in the world; by the year 2050, we are projected to become the third most populous nation on the planet! And along the way, by that same year 2050, 70% of all Nigerians will live in cities or urban conurbations. That is on one hand.

On the other hand, the speech is also grim with specters of severe lack or shortage of virtually all the physical infrastructures and amenities needed to sustain the indicated levels of population growth in our country, now and in the years and decades ahead. And the NPC boss does not leave out mention of the wars, the insurgencies, the massive displacements of populations plaguing Nigeria. Thus, the Malthusian vision is unmistakable. Indeed, I confess that if I had not been aware of the long tradition of demographic nihilism from which this vision came, I would have, quietly but gratefully, thanked providence that by that year of 2050, I would have been long gone and would thus be spared of the looming Malthusian doomsday. The third most populous nation in the world in which the cities, indeed the entire country, are/is overrun by calamities caused by the chasm between the “arithmetical” and the “geometric”!

Of course, the National Population Commission boss did not in his speech completely give way to despair. Far from it, he in fact seemed to silently relish the fact that we have already become and are consolidating our status as one of the largest countries in the world – in terms of population. The “giant of Africa” seems poised to become a “giant of the world”. More precisely, Mr. Duruiheoma ended his speech on an unmistakable tone of hope, resolve and optimism. Hear him in his own words:

“Nigeria continues to commit to solving the challenges of insurgents in the Northeast, which has (sic) induced a high number of internally displaced persons. We acknowledge that women, children and particularly the girl child are often the most vulnerable in these displacements, and in this regard, we remain focused on the wellbeing of these vulnerable parts of our population. We are committed to providing adequate health care services, reducing maternal mortality, rebuilding safe schools and empowering our women, ensuring no one is left behind in terms of achieving sustainable development.”

But nothing in the speech provides justification for this tone. It is as if before a foreign or international audience in, of all places, New York, the NPC boss had to assure his audience that the government that he represents has not completely relinquished or abdicated its obligations and responsibilities to its present and future populations. Note that he is not himself a member of the inner circles of those in power. Certainly, as the boss of the commission for conducting censuses for Nigeria, he is potentially a very consequential public official. But beyond that, the NPC boss has little chance of influencing governmental policy. What he could do, what is within the horizon of possibility is for him to articulate a vision of demographic and political-economic change in Nigeria that goes well beyond benign Malthusianism. This observation leads to my concluding remarks in this piece.

The galloping explosion of population growth in our country is a real, pressing problem that is already close to crisis proportions. Malthusianism provides a useful perspective or lens through which to frame and engage the crisis. As a matter of fact, I suggest that it would be useful to see Malthusianism in its benign, commonsensical dimension as the sort of advice that one gives to relatives or neighbours that do no family planning at all, indeed that count their blessings from God in the number of children they have, regardless of their penurious economic or employment realities. But Malthusian ideas and attitudes, especially in the realm of governmental policies and actions are far more negatively portentous than that!

When the boss of our National Population Commission gives a speech to the country and the world and makes an either conscious or unconscious linkage between, on the one hand, galloping population growth and lack or insufficiency of infrastructures and amenities and, on the other hand, wars, insurrections and insecurity of life, property and possessions, then we must point out as vigorously as possible that there are no necessary or inevitable connections between the two. Let me put this claim as simply and as concretely as possible: population growth is not the cause of shortages of amenities, wars, insurrections and insecurity in our country, even though it may contribute to the problem. Saying so or even implying it is Malthusian humbug or claptrap!

Permit me to end on a note that no Nigerian could possibly misunderstand. It would be the height of insult, of great umbrage, for Muhammadu Buhari to give a Malthusian explanation for why the herdsmen and farmer’s standoff, or the Boko Haram insurgency, each has killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Nigerians, most of them poor and vulnerable to the thieving, barawo capitalism that the APC, like the PDP before it, is imposing on our country. But it is not enough to make this ringing verbal declaration, even if it is palpably true. What is needed is Anti-Malthusianism to be activist: thieving, barawo nation-wrecking capitalism is the foundation of the problems and crises buffeting our country; those who embody and perpetuate it must be confronted with unrelenting critique and peaceful but resolute oppositional movements.

 

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

 

 

 

 

 

Ko si ede ti olorun ko gbo [There is no language that is unintelligible to God]
A Yoruba adage fashioned out of a radical metaphysics of language

Besides being one of the all-time greats among writers in the Yoruba language, Akin Isola was arguably one of the most ardent promoters of the use of the language. He was the ultimate mother-tongue nationalist and activist: in passion and dedication, he was second, in all of Africa, only to Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya. But Isola was also a radical advocate of multilingualism, of exchanges and conversations between languages, on our continent and in the world at large. Thus, while he wrote primarily in the Yoruba language, he also wrote original texts in English and translated many works from English into Yoruba, the most important of which is Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. Indeed, in some of his scholarly essays – nearly all of which are in English – Isola intriguingly teased out a connection, a dialectic between the bio-diversity that is everywhere evident in nature and the linguistic and cultural diversity that is so pervasive as a dominant feature of social life in our world, most especially in our continent.

There is a link between these two quite distinctive aspects of Isola as a writer and thinker and it is this: he loved the Yoruba language and he loved life, all of life. In other words, the great delight in the Yoruba language that is everywhere in evidence in his works is closely linked with his delight in the joys, the challenges and the mystery of life itself. This is the reason why to him, the threats to the survival of the Yoruba language were indissociable from the threats to life in our country, our continent and our world. This is the main line of my exploration of Isola’s works in this tribute, this connection between linguistic and socio-economic disempowerment in his thought and works. Needless to say, this is such a big subject that it can be explored only in a rather summative manner in this tribute. Bearing this in mind, we turn, first, to Isola as a mother-tongue nationalist, a culture and language activist.

In the year 2013, Isola delivered the Convocation Lecture for the year at the Adekunle Ajasin University (formerly Ondo State University) at Akungba, Ondo State. He delivered it in Yoruba, the first time anywhere on the African continent that an indigenous African language was used as the medium of a university convocation lecture. Now, what is a convocation lecture? It is a very special public and ceremonial lecture that serves as a sort of climactic end to the school year linking the academic and social dimensions of the modern university. Thus, at a convocation lecture, the audience comprises lecturers and professors themselves and the general public, typically over-represented by dignitaries and elites decked out in all their normal and pretentious fineries. For these reasons, both the convocation lecturer and the university authorities that invite her or him are always anxious that everything should go right. But on that occasion in Akungba in 2013, how could anyone be sure that everything would go right since that was the first time in history that a university convocation lecture was being given in Yoruba, indeed in any African language?

Since I was present at the event, I can report that Isola was more confident than the university authorities that things would work out well. However, to put the Vice Chancellor and his officers at ease, Isola provided an English translation of the text of his lecture and this was simultaneously projected on a wide screen as the lecture was verbally delivered. With this arrangement in place, members of the audience that so wished could ignore the Yoruba text and follow the lecture in its English version. Unobserved but observing, I watched keenly what proportion of the audience preferred the English version of the lecture and I came to the conclusion that this was more than two-thirds of the audience.

Did I say that Isola was confident that everything would go well? Permit me to revise that report a bit. This is because for morale boosting and solidarity, Isola had invited Femi Osofisan, myself and a few other scholar-friends of his to accompany him to Akungba for the occasion. This had the effect of making all of us accomplices in Isola’s “crime” of giving a convocation lecture in an African language in an African university! Of course, the lecture was both very well delivered and warmly, even pridefully received by the audience.

The essential point that I wish to make about the lecture is best captured in its title: “Kin ni a fee maa fi ede Yoruba se?” Here is Isola’s own English translation of this title: “What really do we want with the Yoruba language?” Before writing and delivering this lecture in 2013, Isola had been writing novels, plays, poems and film scripts in Yoruba for nearly a half century. And he had garnered considerable critical and popular acclaim for these works. Yet, there he was in that convocation lecture feeling, as the title clearly indicates, very exasperated, very unsure about the fate of the Yoruba language.

What is the basis of this disjuncture between, on the one hand, the tremendous artistic and critical success of Isola himself and, on the other hand, the great exasperation and discouragement about the state of the Yoruba language among the populace at large? I suggest that there is a factor about this disjuncture that arises from Isola’s acute sense that his individual, personal success in Yoruba-language writing was barely reflected, if at all, in the general population and the general zeitgeist. In other words, with his own success in Yoruba-language writing in mind, Isola looked around him and much of what he saw was not advancement and consolidation but retrogression and crisis for Yoruba as a language with more than adequate resources for literature and the arts and, more generally, for modern life.

In essence, this is what Isola saw in contradistinction to his personal successes as a writer in the Yoruba language: the elites and their children were abandoning Yoruba for English; the reading of Yoruba-language texts was at an all-time low; and the ethical and spiritual heritage of Yoruba was crumbling. The sense of disjuncture, the angst that arose from this contradiction between his own immense success in Yoruba writing and the general state of the language and the culture haunts virtually all of Isola’s works in Yoruba, not as a closure, a limit case but as a challenge, an inspiration for action. This is the driving leitmotif in the stories and the dramas of virtually all of Isola’s writing in Yoruba. Permit me to explain what I mean by this with a brief discussion of relevant themes and expressions from his works.

The most obvious, indeed the most clamant expression of this feature in Isola’s Yoruba-language texts is the extent to which he always goes to make use of every single opportunity that arises in the course of a novel, a play or a film script to teach a moral lesson or explain a custom or a practice whose basis is no longer clear or understood with the help of corrective gems from the storehouse of what we might describe as “deep Yoruba”. The texts that best illustrate this point in Isola’s oeuvre are the two films, Saworo Ide and Agogo Eewo. But all his texts in Yoruba have this feature and they have it plentifully. In almost all instances, Isola is skillful enough as a writer or a dramatist to make this didactic element in his writings aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating. But there are a few occasions in which this essential didacticism, this pedagogical and moral imperative seems obtrusive or even heavy-handed. Thankfully, this is so rare as to be almost unnoticeable.

Speaking of this categorical moral and pedagogical imperative, its most successful instantiations in Isola’s works pertain, in my professional judgment, to the considerable artistic skill with which he deals with the centrality of the Yoruba Orisa religious and metaphysical order in his works. What does this mean? Simply stated, babalawos and their worldview, their wisdom, their claims of prophesy deliverance are at the emotional and ethical core of many of Isola’s texts, so much so that anyone familiar with ancient Greek tragedy would see echoes or resonances of that classical Western tradition in Isola’s works, especially the films, “Saworo Ide”, “Agogo Eewo” and “Ofin Ga” (in my view the best Yoruba-language film barring no other film). However, unlike the ancient Greek writers for whom the Delphic divinatory order had to be tested against the then rising and imperious claims of Rationalism with a capital R, no skeptical counterforce confronts divination and prophecy in Isola’s works. But all the same, Isola was a firm and passionate believer in human freedom and agency. And this is why, in all his works, divination and prophecy are astutely balanced against the wisdom or, as the case may be, the folly of human individuals and communities.

I know no other way of putting this towering accomplishment of Isola’s thought and works across than in converting it to this simple proposition: in his imaginative universe, the sacred and the metaphysical are not vehicles of superstition and intellectual doltishness as they are or have become in the faddish tradition of Nollywood Ifa priests, Moslem clerics and Christian evangels. Yes, the babalawos, the ancestors and the deities are given respect, veneration and even neo-romantic mysticism in Isola’s works. But his devotion to human agency and freedom were unswerving. Above all, neither the gods nor the expressions and manifestations of human agency were abstractions or reified presences for Isola; he was far too much concerned by actual social and cultural upheavals around him and around the dialectic of servitude and freedom. This observation leads us to the second aspect of Isola’s thought and works, this being his multilingualism and multiculturalism, his devotion to conversations and exchanges between languages and cultures, his revolutionary commitment to social justice for all in our country, in Africa and in our world.

At the most basic level, this dimension of Isola as writer and thinker is clearly indicated by the fact that he was a citizen-of-the-world cosmopolite who also wrote in English, spoke French fluently and actually did write essays on the subject of the necessity for diversity and multiculturalism in our world. On one occasion when, as a representative of Nigeria, officially an English-speaking country, he had to address a UNESCO international conference, he chose to speak in French to demonstrate his belief that we were not, as an African country, rigidly and uncritically Anglophone! Moreover, Isola was a translator of works from English to Yoruba whose interest in the dialogue among and between languages may have its roots in his childhood experiences in learning English, a theme that runs through some of the stories in his memoir, Ogun Omode that has been translated into English and published as Treasury of Childhood Memories.

Apart from Isola’s scholarly essays in English, the best work in which to explore his multilingualism and multiculturalism is perhaps the film, “The Campus Queen”, a work in which interculturalism works at many levels. In tis film, the dialogue is mostly or mainly in English, but it is English in its many Nigerian varieties and inflections. And as a musical that draws on an incredible range and diversity of idioms from Fela to Afro-American Hip hop, and from Yoruba Fuji to funky, in-your-face youth Afropop, the linguistic and imaginative universe of this film is so far from that of “Saworo Ide” and “Agogo Eewo” that one might be forgiven if one thought that they are not, or could not be, the works of the same author. Indeed, every time that I have watched this film again, I am struck by a sense, an intuition that Kako Farioro of Isola’s youth wrote it. And of course, he did, except that this was nearly a half century later. To the end, Isola remained young at heart and in spirit. I do not forget that he went into the Shade as an old, senescent man. But in my memory of him, by the side of that departed octogenarian will always be the image of Kako Farioro. Sun re o, Honestman!

 

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

 

 

Ile lati n k’eso r’ode [The treasures that we gift to the world come from our hearth]
– A Yoruba adage

I solemnly swear that I had no of premonition of his death at all. And yet when I called Femi Osofisan a day after our last visit to Akinwumi Isola to unburden my mind concerning some deeply saddening intimations I was having, our conversation was dominated by echoes of my time with Abiola Irele on his last day, indeed his last hours and minutes. As I wrote in my tribute to him, in his last days, all cognition had left Irele, thanks to the massive stroke that took him away from us. What is life without cognition and what is Abiola Irele without his vast gift and stock of cognition and knowledge? In our last visit to Isola, we discovered to our great sorrow that speech and language had largely left him, that the only full sentence he could formulate and utter was the full version of his cognomen – “the only Honestman in the whole world!” Everything else came out as half sentences, incomplete phrases or disconnected expressions. He was not rambling; and he was not speaking out of turn. But he was not remotely close to the richness, the élan of his usual conversation. The supreme master of words, of speech and language, was almost completely bereft of those building blocks of his being, his unique identity. For the first time, I came to a profound appreciation of Martin Heidegger’s famous description of language as the house of Being.

All the same, unlike Irele in his last hours, when we had that unbeknownst final encounter with Isola, apart from the matter of speech and language he was in all other ways present to us. He made eye contact with everyone; he laughed; and he seemed to appreciate the jokes that we cracked. Indeed, at one moment that seemed epiphanic, his whole face lit up as he said the words “oree mi!” (my dear friend) to Femi. With a mix of envy and gratitude, I saw and heard this incredible affirmation of comradeship and without knowing it at the time, I pinned all my hopes on it – the man and friend we knew was not gone from us; the time had not yet come when his tales, his fables, his riddles, his songs and jests would have become memories, mere shadows of the incomparable raconteur that Isola was. This was what I emphasized above all else in my conversation with Femi the day after that fateful visit to Isola: yes, the uncanny similarities with the last days and hours of Irele were there, but Isola would be here with us for a long time yet. My hopes, my prayers were wrong; alas, my intimations were right; he was gone within a week.

But the last word or laugh does not belong to death! Apart from the treasured memories, Isola left a vast and distinguished body of works that will be appreciated and studied for as long as the human community survives. In this tribute, I will deal primarily with the works, but first, permit me to deal briefly with the memories. There are of course so many memories to choose from that I can write about only a few, especially those that I consider defining of who and what Isola was in uniqueness and essence.

Paradoxically, the earliest memory comes from a time, an experience, when I was yet to meet him in person. As Isola had graduated from UI before I arrived there for my undergraduate studies in 1967, it had not been my privilege to know and come in contact with “Kako Farioro” in person. Who and what was “Kako Farioro”? That was his moniker as a member of the Pyrates Confraternity. Kako is of curse derived from the name of the leader and the most fascinating character among the band of the seven hunter-warriors that serve as the collective protagonists of D.O. Fagunwa’s classic Yoruba-language hunters’ saga, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale. And Farioro? Roughly, it can be translated as “He-Who-Shaves-Oro’s-Head-Clean”. “Oro” is of course the term for emanations of terror and dread in the universe, emanations that constantly have to be ritually appeased. Joined together, the two words in this “pyratical” moniker meant “Kako, the Vanquisher of the Dreaded Oro”. But enough of these emendations on the moniker; the point is that the “pyrate” whose cognomen it was apparently lived up to the fabulous, suggestive resonances of his “name”.

How so? Well, we who came into the Confraternity after Isola/Kako had left heard stories, indeed legends, of his “exploits”, all indicating that he had been regarded as a pyrate among pyrates. But who or what was a pyrate? To be a pyrate, you invented a name different from the one that your mother and your father gave you and you then built a persona, a ludic and expressive doppelganger around it that, on the sails of songs, tales and yarns, took you on imaginary voyages around both the known and the unknown oceans and worlds. Yes, a lot of it was silly, juvenile stuff, but it was also incredibly liberating of the mind, the imagination and the spirit. Any wonder that the Pyrates Confraternity in our day – and the days before us – was reputed to have attracted to its fraternal order some of the brightest and most gifted students that would go on to succeed in many areas of life, from the arts to the sciences, from the professions to self-employed, self-made entrepreneurs, and from socialists to venture capitalists. [Parenthetically, I might add here that Kako Farioro did not go on to become a capitalist, venture or non-venture; he was an independent, undeclared socialist, a man of the Left]

I admit that in this tribute, I am thinking from the Akin Isola that I eventually came to know back to the Kako Farioro whom I encountered only through the tales, the fables, the jests and the songs attributed to him in his days in the Confraternity. But it is noteworthy that it was in the “Kako Farioro period” as an undergraduate at U.I. and a pyrate that Isola wrote his first work, the acclaimed Efunsetan Aniwura; and when he got married not too long after his years at U.I., the Confraternity formed an honour guard for himself and his bride as they left the grounds of the church where the marriage vows were consecrated.

So, yes, I am making much of the ease with which, in my imagination, “Kako Farioro” melded into “Akin Isola” when I finally met him in person. In my memory of him, this is crucial, this blurring of the lines between the real and the imaginary and between the facts of life and the promptings of the imagination. In the Confraternity, my generation of pyrates had been told that no one told stories, “fabus”, “yappies” and jests like Kako Farioro; that no one could create gripping narratives out of physical objects, animal characters, the phenomena of nature and all manner of experiences big and small like he did; and no one contributed more songs than he had done to the musical repertoire of the Confrat. This was exactly the fabulous spinner of yarns that I met in Isola when I finally met him when we were colleagues at the University of Ife. Often combining the comic with the serious, trivia with gravitas, and absurdity with epiphany, Isola’s endless stock of stories delighted and astonished. Let me retell one of these stories, knowing fully that I can never match the panache with which he told it.

One day, a “hot” argument erupted between the goat and the monkey. Of all places in the world, this took place right in the front of the king’s palace. What was the argument about? Each one claimed to have more children and therefore a more numerous family than the other. Eventually, the noise disturbed the king and he ordered the disputants brought before him. When he heard what the dispute was about, the king laughed and ordered goat and monkey bring their respective families for verification of their number the following day.

The goat arrived first with her husband and her children, all four of them. Next came the monkey, with her husband and a troop of twenty-three children, making a family of twenty-five. The sight of the monkeys in their numerical strength was impressive and everyone, including the king, felt that the contest had been won by the monkey even before it had started. All the same, the king ordered the “contest” to be formally started.

The goat went first. “Thank you very much, Your Highness. Permit me to introduce the members of my family. First, this is my husband, Mr. Obuko”. Obuko saluted the king smartly and everyone clapped for him. “This is me”, the goat continued, “I am Madam Ake, the mother of these four children”. She curtsied to the king as she said this and received an applause from the crowd. Then she continued: “By the way, Ake is the name given to the fattest goats and is the type preferred by priests, babalawos, for sacrificial rituals. Such priests have many akes in their backyards tied to pegs or trees in readiness for sacrifice as the need may arise. This is why babalawos have the nickname ojakenide fisebo which means he who cuts the rope to release ake for sacrifice. It is from this nickname of babalawos that the name Jakande arose”. The king and the crowd applauded the goat for this display of deep knowledge.

“This is my first child”, the goat continued after acknowledging the applause. “His name is Layewu.” Layewu, the hairy one, bowed in greeting to the king and the crowd and he, too, received an applause. “This is my second child, Miss Ideregbe.” She too bowed and received an ovation. “Her sister, my third child, goes by the name of Asinrin.” She too curtsied to the king and was given her own applause. “Finally, Your Highness”, the goat said, “here is my last child, the baby of the family, whom we call Larondo.” Larondo bounded three times, bowed, saluted smartly and was given a wild ovation. Then the goat yielded the floor to the monkey.

The monkey’s testimony or evidence was brief and unceremonious. “Your Highness”, she said to the king, “I am Mrs. Monkey, and this is my husband, Mr. Obo or Monkey. Here is the eldest of our twenty-three children and he too is also called obo, monkey. This is his brother, also called obo. His sister, my third child, is also called obo. And our fourth child” … “is also called obo!”, the king and the crowd completed the sentence for the monkey, roaring with laughter. The decision of the king and the crowd was unanimous: the goat had won the contest even though she had only a family of six compared with twenty-five for the monkey and her family. End of story.

Yes, basically this is a simple and uncomplicated tale about names and naming as indices of cultural identity. But like nearly all of Isola’s fables, it contains much deeper and wider cultural and philosophical meanings and implications. Thus, beyond the obvious indication that names and naming matter for cultural identity, pride and dignity for peoples and nations that have historically been the objects of devastating deracination and primitivization, the tale contains the additional implication of diversity and heterogeneity as powerful countercurrents to the forces of global homogenization and reification. Additionally, the tale suggests that culture and meaning are as much about depths as they are also about surfaces, that what seems obvious and uncomplicated at first sight may in fact contain stories and codes that will yield their treasures only with the hard but endlessly rewarding work of hermeneutic interpretation.

In Nigerian letters of the 20th century, in my estimation, Isola ranks with only Chinua Achebe, as two masters with the great gift of the ease and facility with which they combined simplicity with profundity, together with the deployment of a consummate mastery of the art of storytelling as a vehicle for progressive, humanistic causes with implications for our survival as a nation, a society, a civilization. Achebe wrote only in the English language, with a few poems in Igbo. Isola wrote primarily in Yoruba but also in English though he did not invest a great deal of his creative endeavors in English as a medium of expression. This idea leads us from memories of Isola the man and the friend to consideration of his legacy as writer, scholar and translator of published, staged and filmed works.

 

• To be continued.

 

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu