There were drumming, singing and chanting, dancing, masqueraders and more when the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo in the Osun State capital, began the new year. It was more than a celebration of Africa’s rich heritage as the late African icon Nelson Mandela “resurrected” at the centre, reports Evelyn Osagie.
•CBCIU unveils tallest drum as emblem
My sheer coincidence, the authorities of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), headed by the Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka, chose to reanimate the centre on a day Nigeria was remembering its fallen heroes – men who gave their lives while serving the country.
As part of activities marking its reopening, months after the death of the late icon, Nelson Mandela, they not only revisited his legacies and achievements but also resurrected his spirit, as culture advocates put it, in the centre at Osogbo Osun State’s capital.
The day began with bata drumming renting the air and displays of African prints and art works. Not minding the heat of the morning sun, guests made their way to the white canopy in front of the Ulli Beier’s Hall of CBCIU. The symbolic tallest drum, which measures 11 feet in height and six feet in circumference, was also unveiled as the emblem of the centre along with other cultural and artistic activities such as an exhibition by Osogbo artists led by Chief Muraina Oyelami and Chief Jimoh Buraimoh, the Tie and Dye exhibition by Nike Art Gallery and other artists, performances and displays. However, the high point of the event was the unveiling of the Egungun Mandela.
“In recognition of Mandela’s place in African history and culture, the centre, under Soyinka who is its new Board Chairman, with the state government, created a masquerader in his honour called the Egungun Mandela, in commemoration of this great African liberator, now an ancestor,” CBCIU Board member Dr Olu Wale-Adeniran said.
Celebrating Mandela on the Armed Forces Remembrance Day, a few days after Nigeria witnessed an “assault on democracy”, as some critics put it, in which the police allegedly attacked a group rally in Rivers State, was not deliberate,
Soyinka described it as a “troubling coincidence” that was both “ironic” and “singularly appropriate”.
At a time when the nation is facomg one of the most perilous phases of its history, tormented by an enemy that seeks to choke all aspects of cultural and artistic preoccupations that do not conform with their beliefs, the Nobel laureate named culture as “an unquantifiable asset, a weapon that answers that consistent yearning of humanity which, I believe, can be summed up in one word: Peace”.
“It is a depressing coincidence that while we are opening this place with the celebration of Mandela and what he meant to the African continent, we have in another part of the country what I might call a travesty of what I call the Mandela Principle: a complete and shameful travesty of what I like to refer to as the Mandelan Example, not just principle. People have principle but don’t lead by example.
“If Mandela had been at the head of this nation, that psychopath called Mbu would be in jail by now, commissioner or no commissioner, Inspector-General of Police or no Inspector-General of Police.”
Culture, he said, is a timeless and dynamic process that offers both spiritual and intellectual liberation. He added that it is “an additional ingredient in the intellectual armoury on which youths are weaned and adult experience extended, a new fodder for ingestion and a prism for viewing both historic and contemporary human phenomena”, adding that failure to recognise this is the fatal problem that besets fundamentalists.
He urged Nigerians to stand up against those who see books, learning, art and aesthetics as violations of a divine order.
Soyinka said: “In critical times such as ours, culture provides a bedrock resilience to the front-line targets and casualties of the onslaught of the mindless, atavistic hordes of extreme religionists. It expresses solidarity with those victims who, so far, have borne the brunt, who daily bear the brunt of a demented minority with their psychopathic hatred of the historic, indeed organic modes of existence of human society. Building on this imperishable bequest from those who came before us, we are enabled to reach out beyond our immediate confines, across national borders, to make common cause with all who also seek merely to bring their wares to the open market of human creativity.”
He urged Nigerians to emulate the late Mandela, who knew when to fight for what he believed in, and when to make peace. This, he said, is what the centre seeks to promote.
“We cannot, therefore, claim to be more virtuous than today’s ancestral Guest of Honour whose transitional masquerade – his egungun – showers this gathering with both honour and blessings. That universal avatar, Nelson Mandela, knew when it was time to take up arms, and when it was time to become a paraclete of the Culture of Peace. We, therefore, salute and honour our armed forces.
“While they play their part with a self-sacrificing commitment that responds to assaults on the integrity of society and its physical survival, we, on our part, must deploy that weaponry of which we are capable – culture – as our means to the same survival ends – but in the spiritual domain. Across religion, gender, profession, class or race, culture calls to the spiritual in every one of us.
“These constitute the transformative agenda of the centre. The aim of the Centre, after all, as its title indicates, is to promote mutual understanding both internally and externally, to extend the social deductions and humanistic aspirations of a people’s experience onto the international arena, and vice versa. The celebration and enhancement of the banquet of life that surrounds us, and the extension of their extracts to the global arena of human discourse, leading to an understanding that can only promote the eternal quest of human interaction. That quest – if Christians will kindly permit my variation on their theological phrasing – that quest is not so much a ‘Peace that passeth all Unders2tanding’ but, a Peace that comes with – Understanding,” Soyinka said.
Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola said politicians should lead by example and emulate the qualities of the late Madiba for which he is being celebrated. He said his administration is committed to the promotion of the arts, culture and tourism.
Mandela’s Masquarader appears
Dressed in a traditional attire, the Egungun Mandela appeared accompanied by his three other comrades who died in the course of the struggle – Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu.
Along with Mandela, In explaining the significant of having Mandela’s masquerader in Osun, culture advocate and artist, Chief Muraina Oyelami said: “In Yorubaland, the egungun is celebrated to honour the dead and to assure them a space among the living. It is the period of re-enactment of moral and ethical codes of the past generation among the living. The egungun ritual is also meant to cleanse the land and bless the living. Beyond the annual celebration, egungun is invoked in Yorubaland during the funeral ritual.”
Former Dean Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Prof Dipo Salami urged African leaders to emulate the character of the late Mandela, saying in Yoruba cosmology great men of iwa (character) are honoured by funeral rites where his egungun will be celebrated.
He said: “We are celebrating Mandela today because of his ‘iwa’. Mandela was an olooto (truthful personality) and that was why he did not die in prison even in the face of the machinations of his enemies. Truth is eternal and cannot die… The returning ancestor, who is symbolised by the egungun, is believed to be able to convey messages to heaven because he has become a ‘four-eyed person’ who can see both worlds and he is also considered capable of discerning the concerns of the living and the capabilities of the ancestors/living-dead.
“For a great person like Mandela, whose egungun is processing at this celebration, may be asked to inform the ancestors that if and when they wish to send another personality to replace him on earth, the ancestors should send a soul personality of character like Mandela. In the alternative, they may request that if Mandela himself wishes to come back, that is reincarnate, he would be very much welcome back to Africa, particularly Osun.”
