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  • Duke, others seek better deal for Bakassi

    Duke, others seek better deal for Bakassi

    When eminent Nigerians gathered in Ikoyi,Lagos last week for the 60th Birthday Lecture of retire Justice Charles Archibong (rtd) of the Federal High Court Appeal, the plight of the displaced people of Bakassi in Cross River State was the focus.

    Speakers included former governor of Cross River State Mr Donald Duke; Dr. Joseph Nwobike(SAN); Mrs. Nella Andem Rabana (SAN); Dr. K.U.K. Ekwueme, and Chief Felix Fagbohungbe (SAN).

    The lecture was chaired by  former Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Roseline Ukeje. Justice Aminat Augie moderated the discussions.

    The lecture titled: The Judgment of International Court of Justice on sovereignty over Bakassi: Aftermath, lessons and the legal option of self-determination, was delivered by Dr. Eni Eja Alobo, the Head of Public and International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Calabar.

    The speakers pleaded with the Federal Government to galvanise international support and sponsor the agitation of the people of Bakassi for self-determination. government, they said, should make a case at the United Nations for self-determination by the Bakassi people.

    Dr. Alobo urged the government to organise a plebiscite for the people to decide whether they want to go with Cameroon or not. He said it was insensitive to have ceded Bakassi without a say by the people.

    “Nigeria should immediately press for a United Nation supervised plebiscite or referendum with a view to determining the wishes of the inhabitants of the affected area,”he said.

    According to the lecturer, though a plebiscite may not reverse the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on sovereignty over Bakassi, it will help to facilitate the protection and resettlement of the Bakassi people.

    Alobo noted that the plight of the Bakassi people share that leaders have failed in their duty. He said Nigeria has not had the opportunity of being governed by a truly, proactive, responsible and visionary leadership.

    While  pointing  out that the ICJ verdict was a travesty and a brutal re-enactment of colonial injustice, Alobo  said it was a sad reminder that the case arose in the first instance as a direct consequence of the buccaneer activities of the imperial powers of Europe, who, having earlier traded in Africa’s virile peoples, sought at the close of the 19th century to balkanise the continent during in the scramble for Africa.

    He said: “A worrisome perspective in the ICJ judgment, which is a major critique, the neglect of the true intentions and wishes of the indigenous people of Bakassi to remain with their extended kith and kin in Nigeria.

    “The court preoccupied itself with what the British thought of the 1884 Treaty, but unfortunately and quite regrettably, failed to consider what the kings and chiefs of Old Calabar had in mind when the Treaty was entered into, even when the intention of parties was unambiguously demonstrated in the Treaty.”

    According to Alobo, the intimidation and terrorising of Nigerians in the peninsula constitute a breach of fundamental human rights, eliciting the calls for the exercise of the right to self-determination by the Bakassi people. “The challenges facing the Bakassi people must be addressed urgently, vigorously, committed and with determined consistency,” he said.

    Duke gave insight into why Nigeria was unable to get the support of Britain and America on the issue.

    He said, during a tour with former President Obasanjo,they met with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told them that they should not waste their time.

    Blair, according to him, told them that Britain would be setting a dangerous precedence across Africa if it supported Nigeria as other African countries would start agitating for boundary adjustment.

    American, he said, told them that it would support Britain on the matter.

    Duke queried: “What is Bakassi? Bakassi peninsula was like a fishing point to all sorts of people. People come as far as Ondo to fish in the area. And it was not until 1994 that Nigeria moved in there to start establishing its authority. So, it is always difficult to identify those who are true indigenes or native of the place. It appears to me those who claim indigeneship of the place are mostly politicians.”

    Nwobike said Bakassi people had a choice whether to be part of Cameroon, lamenting that the government neglected their interest while fighting for Bakassi land and the minerals therein. He said if their government had placed the Bakassi people first, the situation would have been different today.

    Mrs Rabana described the ICJ judgment as bizarre, saying: “For the quest of the people for self-determination to be a reality, they should start cataloguing their oppression in the hands of the Cameronians, establish a channel for communicating those atrocities meted out to them by the Camerounians and create a platform to make the government to act on their quest.“

    Justice Augie, who spoke on behalf of the Class 78 of the Nigerian Law School, said the lecture has a lot  to tell Nigerians about Justice Archibong and this, she said, was that he still has a lot to contribute to Nigeria and is ready to forge ahead.

    Justice Archibong described his stay on the bench as rewarding. “I will continue to cherish those years that I served  under Justice Ukeje. For us, the most important thing is family and friends and submission to the will of God,” he said.

     

  • Of theatre and our Duke

    Of theatre and our Duke

    Last week, the Department of Theatre at the University of Ibadan (UI) celebrated 50 years of theatre in the African academy. The celebrations marked 50 years of formal theatre training in Africa with UI being the first of such on the continent. In those years, graduates of the department provided high value leaderships in theatre, music, advertising, film, radio and television, print journalism, politics, business, civil service, international diplomacy, academics and even institutional religion.  They have served both country and the world with vision and distinction, wielding major global influence.  Earlier in the year, Professor Wole Soyinka – Africa’s first Noble Prize winner in Literature and an early head of the University of Ibadan School of Drama had opened the celebrations with a public lecture.  Now as the events of the week kicked off, Professor Abiola Irele – a one time actor on the Ibadan stage, who then went on to become a Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, headlined the events with a key note address.  As an alumnus of the UI department, I have often bragged the pedigree of my alma maters – University of Ibadan (my African Ivy league in theater) and Yale University (my American Ivy League in Drama).  The combined depth and quality of Ibadan’s training continue to ring loud and strong on the global stages we have found ourselves!  Yet on this same week, we are reminded of one of the most unnerving ironies of being Nigerians.  This great irony rests on the fact that our country is one where the potential for greatness is humongous but greatly dimmed by our government’s propensity for mediocrity, cronyism, corruption, violence and greed.  Amidst the pomp of what is tagged the ‘Homecoming’ at Ibadan this week, one hopes that there are new  and pragmatic strategies for resolving the combative challenges that our art, our professional calling and our cultural accounts, demand of us!

    Nigerian theater suffers from what I call “Neo-malice’.  Malice is the expressed and actualised desire for evil, where evil is not religion specific, but a cultural and political affliction.  Theatre as we must emphasise, is defiant of normative constructs.  Instead of patterns of order, which other fields observes, theatre distinguishes itself by its core fascination with explorations of entropy and disorder.  African performance, says Kenyan writer and activist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, was the first to be assaulted by the cultural forces of colonialism, to give space for the construction of a colonised being.  That was the first ‘malice’.  Initially our immediate post-colonial response in Nigeria led the rest of African Theatre with an added urgency.  Wole Soyinka, Hubert Ogunde, Femi Osofisan, Ola Rotimi, Zulu Sofola, Bode Osanyin, Ben Tomoloju and many first runners of Nigerian theatre proved this, not only through their plays, but also to the extent of their activist roles as our collective social conscience.  As dreamers we seek to create utopias.  But their fervor, the commitment of the sixties, seventies and eighties has dimmed, our dreams atrophied as our apologetic generation stumbles along in stupor!  Our lungs, our dreams are clogged with gluttonous portions of self-centeredness, sycophancy and cowardice.  We are now so afraid to speak the truth to ourselves, much so to anyone we deem to be in some form of power.  So, we are doubly colonised and we perpetuate this evil upon our art, our profession.

    Wa Thiong’o concludes his observation on a darker note, identifying the origins of the neo-malice in African, and more specifically Nigerian theatre.  “The same colonized being”, he says, has “mutated into a neo-colonial dictator, who sees theater as a threat, and he often sends theater practitioners into prisons (Ogunde, Soyinka), exile (Soyinka/Sowande et al), impoverishment or even death in some cases (Ken Saro Wiwa).  These colonised beings mutating into dictators and politicians have progressively brought our Theatre academies and Theater practitioners to their begging knees, dazed and comatose!  But Theatre thrives.  It cannot be killed either as text or practice.  Theater constructs our human encounters between knowing and unknowing participants, generating a spatial and experiential energy that is simultaneously catalytic and cathartic.  It is not dissimilar to the basic run of life – inhaling and exhaling.  We must breathe to stay alive, as our society must “theater” to live.

    Why is it that our appointed government officials and the artistic community they are called to serve, never meet for open, frank and deliberative collaborations?  Why?  In a sector of human engagement, where creativity and innovative thinking are the marks of the stakeholders, why is idiocy often foisted upon the artist of the theater and upon the nation by uncivilised civil servants and miscast ministers, who hop from one poorly conceived ‘rebranding’ project to another!  Carnivals, that self-inflicted minstrelsy from our Caribbean cousins, have suddenly become the obsessions of money gobbling administrations; their new tool for the cannibalisation of our traditional festivals, dances, masquerades and of our rich pantheon.  They seem content with turning the performance of theatre and the transmission of our culture into these shallow and inconsequential expressions of irrational spectacles.  We on our part have dispersed into related fields and sometimes do no even want to be known as theatre artists!

    Edem Duke, the Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation is called to speak on the issue of whether the National Theatre is being sold or not.  The question is simply to find out what our government’s clear agenda for the development of Theatre in Nigeria will be, going forward.  It is not as if the government and its officials are permanently and completely bereft of ideas.  It just seems that the moments of visionary clarity are far in between the preponderance of mediocrity and blatant corruption.

    Duke is in error when he assumes that he and his private sector friends know best. He is in error when he believes he alone can survive the political rings being woven around him, without taking his constituency along.  His attempt at some intentional conflation of the problems will not suffice.  In one breath he agrees with us when he says the culture community does not have any other iconic infrastructural asset other than the National theatre.  Yet in a fit of neo-malice, he declares that

    ”the National theatre would translate into a leisure and entertainment centre, the first leisure and entertainment duty-free zone in West Africa”.  What is a leisure and entertainment centre?  How is this so-called “leisure and entertainment centre” different than a casino?  How is this leisure and entertainment centre the same as a National Theatre, like the National Theatre of Great Britain in London or the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC?  There is a good reason American mogul Donald Trump builds Casinos – leisure and entertainment centres – instead of theatres.  There is a reason American pornography business lord Flynt builds strip clubs and bars, never theatres.  It is disingenuous to lump theatre in the same wool.  We get it but does he?

    I want to believe Duke does get it and he is indeed working hard to ensure the revitalisation of theatre in Nigeria.  What we want, therefore, what we know will work best for him, is to call for an open forum with theatre artists in Lagos, Abuja or both, where he can explain the details of his plans and answer the questions the artists have.  Just a simple and sincere collaborative gesture, an expression of mutual respect, not condescension, will do.  He just might be surprised to know the number of Theatre artists who are on his side and who will defend his agenda, if they are truly in the best interest of the sector. Fifty years after Ibadan, 36 years after the World Black Arts festival FESTAC, two decades and more after the establishment of the National Troupe of Nigeria, wasting our hard earned national legacy of Theatre has to stop.

    Finally, our Academics and Theatre artists for most part can no longer remain safely segregated, each on their own side of the continually widening gap between theory and practice, between reflection and creation.  The Homecoming at Ibadan should be the rebirth of Theatre in Nigeria.

     

    •Ojewuyi is an alumnus, University of Ibadan Theatre and currently teaches at the Southern Illinois University, USA.

  • Duke Udi charges 3SC

    Duke Udi charges 3SC

    Ex-Shooting Stars FC influential midfielder, Duke Udi has identified with Shooting Stars Football Club at this trying time believing that the club has the potentials to turn around its fortunes. Udi told the club website:

    “I have watched some of their matches with good displays and quality players, they are not supposed to be in this position”.

    He said people may not understand what the club is passing through that affects their league runs but prays they get over it soonest. He,then advised the coaches to enforce discipline in the team ‘as this is the only key to success and I hope the team can still finish in the top four, he concluded.

    Duke Udi was a member of 3SC double champions team (League and FA) in 1995\96 football seasons before he left for Switzerland for greener pastures. He also had brief spells in the national teams.

  • Atiku, Duke, Saraki others visit Tinubu

    Prominent politicians, traditional rulers and members of the diplomatic corps yesterday visited the Ikoyi, Lagos residence of the National Leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, over the demise of his mother, Alhaja Habibat Mogaji.

    The early callers included: former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, former Cross River State Governor Donald Duke, his Kwara State counterpart Senator Bukola Saraki, former Lagos Town Council Secretary Senator Habeeb Fashinro and Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) General Evangelist Pastor S. A. Abiara. The members of the Lagos State House of Assembly led by Speaker Adeyemi Ikuforiji also paid the family a condolence visit.

    Commiserating with him, Atiku urged Tinubu to take solace in the fact that the late President-General of the Market Women and Men Association of Nigeria lived a fulfilled life.

    He said: “On behalf of those who have accompanied me here, we have come to condole and commiserate with the rest of the family. It is painful she left, we cannot replace her but then we give gratitude to God for a life well spent.”

    He described the late Alhaja Mogaji as a patriotic mother, who ensured during her life time the resources at her disposal were used for the good of the ordinary people in the society.

    Atiku said the only way those loving memories could be appreciated is for those she left behind to emulate her virtues and live a good life. He later requested for prayers for the repose of the soul of the late Mogaji.

    The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar, who equally sent his condolence message through Ambassador Hamzat Ahmadu, said Magaji’s legacies would not be forgotten in a hurry because of her contribution to the development of the country.

    Hamza said: “Personally, I interacted with her in my younger age. That was when I was the secretary to the late General Aguyi Ironsi. The former Head of State sent me to her to appeal to her to reduce the price of food stuff, which she did.

    “She did not leave it at that. She called me and said my son, I have done my part. What about the General? I said he will do his part. I want to use this occasion to appeal to all concerned to embrace peace so that the country can move forward.”

    Senator Annie Okonkwo described the death as a great loss.

    He said: “She was a woman who stabililised Nigeria. She catered for the needy, poor and the less-privileged people. Today, the whole country is celebrating her.

    “The good thing today is that she has a lot of children who are doing very well. I still believe that many people will toe her footsteps. We believe this is a time the country should come together for a better Nigeria. “

    Senator Saraki said her passage was a celebration of life, which all must glorify. “We hope others should learn from her exemplary life. May the almighty Allah continue to perfect his rest and protect all she left behind, “ Saraki said.

    Prophet Abiara commended the late market leader for her liberal attitude to life.

    The cleric said: “ She has a liberal mind and contributed to organisations there has no Islamic affiliation. She donated Bibles to churches and many times supported what the church was doing. It takes the grace of God for someone to follow this exemplary path.”

    The leader of the Chinese community in Lagos Mr. Jackson Sun Guoping said they have ordered all Chinese markets in Lagos to observe a holiday in memory of her.

    He said: “Our people have closed their shops today to remember the Iyaloja-General. She always support our activities in Lagos and without mincing word she has been a big pillar to the Chinese community and was always present when we mark our calendar year.”

    Among those who have visited the ACN leader are: former governor of Bauchi State, Adamu Ma’azu , deputy national chairman of the ACN, Mr. Boss Mustapha, Lagos Ikuforoji, who led other state lawmakers, former Sports and Youth Development Commissioner in Lagos, Prince Adeniji Adele, Senator Ganiyu Solomon, Chief Ebenezer Obey, former military administrator of Lagos State, Commodore Ndubuisi Kanu (rtd), former Cross River State GovernorDonald Duke, Mr Ayo Opadokun, Hajia Abba Folawiyo, Chief Bisi Abiola, Chief Chris Ekwilo and wives as well as the former Lagos Commissioner for Finance, Mr Olawale Edun.