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Tag: Odia Ofeimun

  • Are they imploding, are they collapsing, our private universities? – Postscript to a conversation at Ife

    It was Saturday evening, the day after I was conferred with the honorary D.Lit. degree at OAU-Ife. Nearly all the guests, the friends, the former students and the well-wishers had left. Only a few of us, former members of the Ibadan-Ife Group, were left: me, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Femi Osofisan and Odia Ofeimun. Ogaga Ifowodo was also there, but he hadn’t been a member of the group on account of the fact that he had been too young then and was still an undergraduate to have belonged to the group. Kole Omotoso, who had of course been a key member of the group, had left the previous day, the day of the ceremonies. We were at the Pro-Chancellor’s lodge as guests of Yemi, amongst all of us the closest to the enlightened, liberal fraction of the country’s social and political elite. I mention this fact because we often tease him about it, fully aware that he is never short of appropriately sharp and winning responses to our jibes at him. But that night, there were no jibes, no wisecracks, no queries and rebuttals; there was only the most engaged, soul-searching conversation about the crises of higher education in our country. And since Yemi occupies an institutionally influential place in the nation’s educational infrastructure, he became the axis point of the conversation.

    In my recollection, the very serious, almost alarmist dimension to the conversation began when Yemi startled all of us by declaring that private universities were failing and failing fast in the country, so much so, according to him, that we might soon end up where we started – higher education, university education almost entirely or squarely back as the primary responsibility of the state, as a bedrock of public service and social good. I immediately confessed that I was/am completely ignorant of this fact that was being so imperiously declared by Yemi. As a matter of fact, I went on to add an observation to my confession of ignorance of this putative fact of our private universities allegedly failing and failing relentlessly: in the early 1980s, I had done an interview with the late Ulli Beier in which I had predicted that private universities would never take off, let alone survive and last in Nigeria because we have no real venture capitalists who can wait for the decades that it would take for any private university to begin to yield high profit margins from the initial heavy capital investment. But it had seemed that my prediction had been rubbished by the very rapid mushrooming of private universities in our country, many of them seeming to be profitable in little of no time at all. But here was Yemi last Saturday night at Ife, indirectly confirming that early 1980s prediction of mine with his categorical declaration that the private universities were folding up and closing shop one by one by one!

    Is this a “secret” known to all but “hidden” from me because for several decades now I have only lived part of the time in the country, spending most of the months of every year abroad? Perhaps. I leave you, dear reader, to be the judge: how much informed are you personally about this hugely significant fact that private universities are not making it as either an extension and/or replacement of state or public universities? Yemi’s thesis, backed by Odia, Femi and Ogaga, is that no sooner do students flock to new private universities than they quickly discover that the “university” has no lecturers and professors for their courses, no facilities, equipment and services to augment or sustain their instruction and training and no general environment conducive to teaching, learning and research. There is more: salaries of faculty and staff are not be paid regularly; important or even major components of courses for graduation are left out completely; life for all students turn out to be very far from what they expected in their hopes and dreams for a modern university education, the kind their parents or grandparents had. And in the end, they leave, in an ironic version of the well-known electoral or protest tradition of “voting with the feet”.

    At this point in the discussion here, I should perhaps let it be known to the reader that I was and am not a keen supporter of private universities in Nigeria and, indeed, in the developing world. True, I am not as absolutely or irrevocably opposed to the idea as I was about a decade ago. But still, my view has always been and remains that in our country in particular and in the developing world more generally, at this stage of our encounter with modernity – both the one from other lands and the one that we create ourselves – education at all levels and especially at the tertiary level, should be the primary concern and obligation of the state, with private colleges and universities playing only a supplementary role to the primacy of public institutions. For this reason, it has been with great alarm, with even great despair that in the last two decades I have watched as private universities rapidly mushroomed, outnumbered government-funded universities and calamitously depressed the quality of the state or public institutions. If this is the case, do I therefore logically see Yemi’s declaration of the decline of private universities as good tidings?

    How I wish that things were that simple! Dear reader, wait until you read about Yemi’s further comments, further complications of the matter, greatly amplified by Femi, Odia and Ogaga. Here is Yemi’s “complication”: even as private universities are imploding and closing, the need for more universities, public and private, continues to rise exponentially. Yemi could not provide the statistics on the spot that night and neither can I do so now, about a week later, but it seems that far less than half of qualified applicants in our country would get admission if all the existing universities were filled to capacity. Thus, Yemi’s concern is: what happens to those millions of qualified applicants to universities and higher institutions for whom there are no places in the present (declining) number of institutions? Without in the least implying a disdain for the term, Yemi’s solution is “evolutionary” and it is this: the public, state-funded universities must have to become very creative in the matter of IGR – internally generated revenues. This would include fees and tuition increases, but not as the main sources. The main sources would be economic ventures and endowments into which would be built internal mechanisms to protect them those from hydra-headed banes of Nigerian capitalism – looting, waste and squandermania.

    Ogaga in particular, but Odia also, strongly suggested that ventures and enterprises that could or would create substantial IGR’s for public universities must follow the classic capitalist model of shareholder power and control to act as solid bulwarks against looting and waste. At that point, I felt as if I was back at Harvard – especially at the Harvard Business School – and was not in a starry night at the bucolic Pro-Chancellor’s Lodge at OAU-Ife! I even joked and teased Ogaga that ten years ago, I would have denounced him as a “capitalist lackey” for proposing share-market capitalism as the savior of the economic and institutional woes of our public universities. Ogaga laughed but wasn’t sure if my joke was playful or ideologically purist. At the time, I deliberately left him in the dark, but I can now assure him that I was being playful and not being ideologically inquisitorial. All the same, it was Femi that brought the conversation back or down to the level of basic issues of economic and social justice by posing a searing, poignant question: whether or not the universities have enough places for the millions of qualified students, where are the jobs for them, where is the employment for them when they do graduate from a university, any university, whether private or public?

    This question dramatically and precipitately brought the past of our group, the Ibadan-Ife Collective, to our present. But we had not met in more than two decades and a half; for a long time now, we have not had the kind of conversations, the kind of projects, the kinds of activism for which we were known then. This thought might have been behind a series of questions that I then posed in response to Femi’s question: Are the graduates we are producing now and that we will be producing in the future, are they being taught, being trained by academics and professionals who are themselves trained and good enough for a modern, technology and science driven capitalist economy? The private universities came and multiplied, beginning in the early 1980s and reaching a kind of preliminary high point in the first decade of the new century, but wasn’t their net effect on our universities as a whole a colossal deterioration of quality, standards and value? And which market-place of employment, capitalist or post-capitalist, can survive with this degree of devaluation of the quality of both the teacher and the student in higher education, together with the places of teaching and learning?

    I have said that Femi’s remark seemed to have brought our past as a group back into a dialogue with our present. I can now say that this was only momentarily. Femi’s question was too “big” for us and we couldn’t, didn’t take it up that night. And of course, neither did we take up my own expatiations of Femi’s question, leaving a hole, a gap in our conversation. In that lacuna, Yemi pressed ahead with carefully, perhaps even meticulously thought and planned scenarios for how and why our public, state-funded universities should embark on the pursuit of economic and financial solvency through ventures that will, finally, make IGR’s substantial enough for public and private universities to survive, to thrive. Perhaps he will prove his argument beyond any doubt or disputation by the success of his tenure as the Pro-Chancellor of the Governing Council of OAU-Ife. If his successes at other ventures provide us with a portent, then one must say that it is a good portent.

    1978, not 1984: an ironic erratum

    In last week’s column, I erroneously stated that Chinua Achebe was given the degree of D. Lit (Honoris Causa) at Ife and gave his famous Convocation Lecture, “The Truth of Fiction” in 1984 when, as a matter of fact, the events took place six years earlier, in 1978. Ah, the inscrutable ways of irony and negation! In the same column, I had drawn attention to the late Akin Isola “mistaken facts” in saying that he had come to Ife in 1974 to join his friends who, in fact and actuality, came to Ife after him. In other words, in the same article in which I was showing how Honestman misconstrued facts in the cause of larger truths, I was myself unknowingly doing exactly the same thing! 1978, not 1984! How did this error, this solecism come about? There is a small circumstantial explanation and it is this: before coming to Ife for the ceremonies, I had been told that I would not be speaking at all, that someone else would be giving the Convocation Lecture this year. This surprised me but any Nigerian who is surprised by surprise is not a true Nigerian! But then I arrived in Ife on Thursday and was then told that I would speaking after all – as I had previously expected. To make matters more fraught, I did not get the chance to begin thinking about and writing my acceptance speech until well past midnight on Thursday, finally going to bed around 4 a.m., all the while thinking of Femi (Osofisan) who was sleeping blissfully in the next bedroom! That, dear readers, is the context, the circumstance for the mistaken insertion of 1984 in place of 1978. If that satisfies you, I am pleased. But I must honestly admit that it doesn’t satisfy me. Why? Memory lapses have recently joined the list of my octogenarian ailments. Even if I had had a week to write that acceptance speech, I would probably still have written 1984, heavens help us!

    • Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Soyinka, Nieetzsche and Odia Ofeimun’s quest for Ogun (1)

    One of Nigeria’s pre-eminent and prolific poetical and literary voices as well as a consummate and often brutally frank public intellectual, Odia Ofeimun, never ceases to surprise with the range of his scholarship, the dazzling dexterity with which he handles a complex diversity of ideas from an array of disciplines and the freshness of his sometimes unorthodox perspectives in his numerous cerebral offerings. His book, ‘In Search of Ogun: Soyinka In Spite of Nietzsche’, published by Hornbill House, Lagos, in 2014, is another veritable, nourishing and provocative intellectual feast. The three essays that make up the 206-page book constitute a breath taking tour de force traversing diverse areas of specialisation ranging from literary theory, history, philosophy, traditional African religion, Nigerian and world history, arts and culture, political science, political theory, music, drama, theatre and much more.

    Students of Wole Soyinka’s works, ideas and politics will inevitably find this book irresistible and indispensable as the Nobel laureate features prominently in the three extended essays. The first two, ‘In search of Ogun – Soyinka, Nietzsche and the Edo century’ as well as ‘Wole Soyinka: The writer as cultural hero’, were delivered as The 2003 Egharevba Memorial Lecture in Benin and the 2004 70th birthday lecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, in commemoration of Soyinka’s 70th birthday, respectively. The third titled ‘The Beauty of Identity: Taking Naija-movies to the next level’, was a discourse on the Nigerian film industry delivered at the Best of the Best-TV event with the theme- The Arts and National Identity. Even then, Soyinka’s poetry, prose and drama offer the prism through which Ofeimun sheds light on his topic.

    The curious question evoked by the title of the first essay is what the author really means by the Edo century. Thus he understandably prequels his lecture with an intriguing excursion into the both heroic and tragic history of the people of his native Edo land. Ofeimun establishes a relation between Ogun Ewuare, king of the Edo Kingdom for 45 years in the 15th century, and Ogun, the fabled god of iron, war, roads and creativity in Yoruba and several other African cultures both on the continent and diaspora. In 1997, the Edo people decided to commemorate the centenary of the Benin massacre, which took place in 1887. In that incident, nine British war ships were deployed to crush and utterly decimate a people who had been deliberately provoked to act in ways to justify the criminal looting and arson unleashed on them. Benin City, the capital of the Edo Kingdom was set ablaze. The reigning monarch, Oba Overamwin, was sent into exile in Calabar marking the end of a dynasty that had lasted over 500 years.

    Ofeimun was aghast that the centenary commemorating what was a tragic moment in the otherwise glorious history of a proud people took the colour more of a celebration than the mourning he thought it ought properly to have been. Was this an approbation of the superiority of British colonial rule over the traditional system it overthrew as well as subsumption or incorporation of Edo land into the macro Nigerian ‘artificial’ entity that was the product of colonial imperialism? A pained Ofeimun writes: “Whether it was a marking or mourning, I found myself taking it very personal. The commemoration appeared to me like a celebration of the British defeat of the Edo people…what was there to ensure that if the colonisers returned today, there would be no routing of indigenous people as happened in 1897?”

    The writer’s angst is understandable. The Edo Kingdom had a pedigree that went back more than a thousand years. Yet, it suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of nine British war ships manned by thugs of foreign trading companies in a matter of days. Ofeimun metaphorically describes the period between the razing and destruction of Benin in 1897 and the centenary commemoration of 1997 as ‘The Edo Century’ just as historians narrate different phases of history as the European, American or Asian century. While he uses Edo as the anchor or peg for his analysis, Ofeimun has his sights really on the larger Nigerian entity arguing that “It makes no difference whether you are talking about the Edo people or the people of Nigeria. The implications of the Edo century are the same on either side of the flowing river of time. The Edo people are Nigerians or Nigerians are just Edo from the logic of a defeated people who have not overcome their defeat”.

    His fervent and rigorous search for Ogun can thus be interpreted at a deeper level as a quest for the rediscovery of indigenous cultural, spiritual and intellectual moorings or resources that will enable African nationals to regain their self- confidence as a basis for recovering psychologically from the humiliations of their colonial past while reviving and strengthening their capacity for genuinely autochthonous development. This is particularly because Ofeimun believes that the cultural and spiritual depredations suffered by African religions, traditions and social systems in their contact with invading religious and values was no less devastating than military and economic subjugation of the continent. In his words “Since the British overran our geographies, we have all failed, and woefully too, at putting up a liveable, countervailing strategy for dealing with, not just rampant imperialism but our own incapacities, our past and the need always to map the future”.

    Odia’s essay is an interdisciplinary voyage into history and myth not for its own sake but with the hope that “by enabling us to engage roots of development that were abandoned at some point in the past, it might tell us something about how to escape the morass of present tense” because “our self- knowledge and general development as a people have been compromised by the inadequacies of our responses to the challenges of western civilization”. In pursuit of this objective, Ofeimun deploys Ogun as his medium although he also exhaustively discusses Sango, Obatala and the indigenous but subverted knowledge systems of diverse African cultures. He undertakes his intellectual quest for Ogun through the works of Soyinka who has consciously and deliberately drawn inspiration from the fount of Ogun. For him, Soyinka “more than any other writer has plumbed deepest to the core issue of enriching an African world view from the defeat of yesterday and extracting such strategies of self-management from it which belongs to our traditional past and can still belong to our future”.

    In this panoramic survey of Soyinka’s literary corpus from the observatory of Ogun, Ofeimun not only gives insights into the Nobel laureate’s prodigious creative output, he also critically interrogates his several intellectual encounters with the dramatic aesthetics of a Femi Osofisan, the radical, Marxist perspectives of a Biodun Jeyifo, the modernist philosophical vision of the Ghanaian thinker, Akwasi Wiredu and the combative Afrocentric trio of Chinweizu, Onwucheka and Madubuike. He draws parallels between the German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche’s resort to the gods in Greek mythology to help re-orientate people away from moral distress in a chaotic and anarchic world in which he assumes the death of God, and Soyinka’s seeking a “return to the African gods as a means of healing the severance that had taken place between humankind and the original Oneness”.

    As Ofeimun puts it, “Just as Nietzsche felt free to bend Greek gods to his will Soyinka felt free to bend the Yoruba gods to his will as a way of engaging spheres of experience in which neither science nor Christianity had any explanatory force”. However, one cannot help but wonder at the practical utility of Soyinka’s intellectual experimentations with Ogun mythology when Ofeimun writes that “For Soyinka, Ogun had become a twentieth century deity, who superintended not only over iron foundries that gave rise to modern civilisation but other scientific pursuits, beyond Metallurgy, in electricity, electronics and related fields. In his metaphysics, Ogun is represented as the modal archetype; not a god of either/or but a force capable of either good or evil through whose feats civilisations may be explored, established or dissolved”. How do we contrast this ‘modernising’ conception of Ogun with the protracted technological and other forms of underdevelopment across Africa where the god is most widely worshipped?

  • Odia Ofeimun and the poetics of creative nationalism

    Odia Ofeimun and the poetics of creative nationalism

    In this tribute, Dr Tunji Olaopa writes on renowned poet and writer Odia Ofeimun’s love for Nigeria and his forthcoming books exhibition holding today in Lagos.

    I need to be clear from the beginning what this essay intends. It is a narrative of celebration of someone who has a unique relationship with Nigeria, and from a perspective that is often not recognised even in his own profession. I am talking of Odia Ofeimun the poet of Nigeria. To place this narrative in perspective, I need begin necessarily from a personal angle that details my relationship of envious longing that is devoid of any negativity. Ofeimun is my big brother or if you like my egbon, and so I am permitted to envy him. He has those outstanding sterling qualities that I desire, so I am permitted to covet them. But this is not just some vain covetousness my Bible warned me about; there is a significant context for it.

    There are two dimensions to my envious adulation of Odia Ofeimun. The first occurred in 1987. Shortly after I had commenced my doctoral programme at the department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, one of my esteemed teachers and mentor, Professor Femi Otubanjo, invited me to an interview for a job as a research assistant. It was later that I got the startling understanding that the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was looking for a replacement for his erstwhile personal political secretary, the inimitable Odia Ofeimun. I got the job but papa Awolowo passed on before I could take on the challenge of serving the sage though I managed with a word from the late Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade to have a pre-resumption seminar session with him before exit. Odia Ofeimun was at the height of his creativity when I replaced him, but with hindsight now, I just wonder what sort of replacement I could have been then. So, who wouldn’t become envious, or even annoyed, that you better occupied a position you weren’t given the opportunity to try out (even if trying it out would have showcased one’s inadequacy)? Of course I am envious: Odia occupied a position I would have given everything to take; and he has some significant qualities that would have ensured that I survived what I am certain would have been the rigorous requirements of Chief Awolowo. Unfortunately, I doubt if I had those qualities then, or even now.

    Odia’s book exhibition is the second reason for envy—how I wish I have the books Odia has! How I wish I could collect them all in their rich diversity and deep in their contents. I am a bibliophile, and I collect them as fast as I can, but it is clear to me that I have met more than my match in this person who has made it his lifelong pursuit to make his entire house one huge library. Martin Farquhar Tupper, the British writer, once noted that ‘A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.’ Odia definitely understands this better than I do. When I gave upon the greys on his head and his beards, they seem to inform about the experiences which both life and books have taken him through. That is something to be coveted!

    Odia Ofeimun is a rebellious nationalist who comes to the nationalist struggle for the soul of Nigeria from a unique perspective—poetry. Poetry is not a likeable genre, even for the literary profession. After all, if Brian Patten, the British poet, is to be believed, poetry is ‘the monster hiding in a child’s dark room; it is the scar on a beautiful person’s face.’ Who wants to publish a book of poetry when some other genres guarantee commercial success? And who reads a book of poetry about Nigeria when there are countless political essays and commentaries that we consider can do the job better? But Odia cannot be subdued; he combines the voluptuous sublimity and leanness of poetry with the critical directness of the political essay. These two become the deadly weapon that Ofeimun wields against those—leaders, politicians and even poets—who manipulate the society for their own selfish purposes. For him, the poet cannot lie; and neither can the politicians or anyone else who aspires to leadership.

    Odia Ofeimun writes politically charged poems. Of course, this character flows from his belief that a poet is necessarily a citizen; it is vain to attempt divorcing the two roles from each other. But I suspect that rather than being solely hinged to the political, Odia would rather align with Matthew Arnold understanding of poetry as ‘a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.’ I consider it a rather huge achievement to be able to enable a beautiful piece of poetry carry the burden of an engaged sensibility. Odia Ofeimun is such a poet. Poetry is a responsibility that goes beyond the mere architecture of words. W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet, captures this responsibility:

    A line will take us hours maybe; 

    Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

    Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

    Odia has carried Nigeria in the unfolding bowel of poetry for long. Odia’s muse must surely be a militant when confronted with the gross dysfunction that the Nigerian predicament presents. This predicament excites different reaction from all of us. For most people, the most immediate of these reactions is that of cynicism, the terrible pessimistic refusal to see anything good coming out of Nigeria. For some others, it is abject resignation to fate. The trajectory of my own life—personal and professional—has all the ingredients to lead me to profound pessimism. On the contrary, I chose optimism at the personal and institutional levels. And this is an optimism that strives actively to unfold dynamics of reforms and possibilities by which Nigeria can be reformulated. One recurrent methodological index of my optimism is the critical celebration of national heroes as people, from one generation to another, whose fate have been entwined with Nigeria’s, either by choice or by circumstance. There is no nation that does not need the cantankerous queries and effusive energies of the hero who is always at war with the nation because s/he wants that nation to transcend itself and its achievement. And Nigeria has many of these, dead or alive—Claude Ake, Billy Dudley, Obafemi Awolowo, Olusegun Obasanjo, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Tai Solarin, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Kolade, Gani Fawehinmi, Bala Usman, Bolanle Awe, and the younger upcoming role models Chimamanda Adiche, Bukola Elemide ‘Asa’, the list is endless.

    In a forthcoming book that ties all these heroes to the project of national integration and development in Nigeria, I had no difficulty in inviting Odia Ofeimun to write the foreword. That choice is inevitable: He shared the same heroic characteristics with all those I have celebrated. In his own words—in the foreword to my upcoming book—he said he is ‘an irredeemable partisan on the side of the Nigerian Project’ involved in ‘an almost occult pursuit of Nigeria the Beautiful.’

    Odia wields the cudgel of performance poetic that narrates the different dynamics of the Nigerian experience. In the poem ‘National Cakes,’Odia contrasts between the concepts of ‘vultures’ and ‘cakes’ to project a national metaphor that speaks to both the leadership and the followership:

    Vultures don’t bake their national cakes

     They just swoop on the ripe carcass

     of maybe, human cattle

     We too, hate to be bakers

     And so, we despoil the sunrise we seek

    His poetry and his essays speak with thunderous loudness that fears no controversies, and which no government can ever hope to escape. Odia Ofeimun is not just a political poet; I am sure he prefers being known as a revolutionary one; a true poet who, according to Wilfred Own, the British poet, must be truthful. He is a poet whose poetry oscillates between the beautiful and the severe. He drags our imagination about Nigeria into the very depth of the imaginable. I salute you my egbon!

  • Ovonramwen resurrects at Ofeimun’s drama fest

    Ovonramwen resurrects at Ofeimun’s drama fest

    Renowned poet and writer Odia Ofeimun’s latest showpiece drama, Because of 1914, revisits the 1897 Benin expedition and Nigeria’s 1914 amalgamation. Evelyn Osagie and Esther Chibueze write.

    The stage was set, the lightings on. Fifty-two colourful dancers dressed in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and Benin attires besieged the stage with electrifying dance steps, chanting traditional songs intermittently in various languages.

    Men and women also took turns on stage to recite rousing lines, recasting stories from 1914 – the year of the amalgamation of northern and the southern protectorate and Benin monarch Ovonramwen died.

    The audience’s eyes are glued to the stage with a sketch of Queen Idia’s head as backdrop. The set and the stirring performances drew applause.

    Call it a confluence of nationalities, a festival of a nation’s heritage, a centenary celebration or reminiscent piece, renowned poet and writer Odia Ofeimun latest showpiece drama Because of 1914, was those and more. The centenary piece was inspired by the poet’s mother, Mrs Onomonresoa Ofeimun and was first previewed last July at the Ambrose Alli University (AAU) at Ekpoma in Edo State as part of activities marking Odia’s mother burial ceremony. The performance, which was staged 72-man cast, at the MUSON Centre Onikan, Lagos, added spectacle and energy.

    He said: “She was so impressed by Lord Fredrick Lugard that during my baptism, she named me Fredrick. Even though the Reverend Father said it was not a Christian name, she insisted that I be named Fredrick in honour of Lugard.”

    It was as if  Ovonramwen resurrected or spoke from the grave, while revisiting the agony of Nigerians in pre-colonial times, the drama focuses, on the story the Benin monarch and happenings in Benin in 1897. In attempt to answer the question: “Why 1914 “, the playwright uses poetry, music, dance to highlight socio-cultural and political issues, especially focusing on Ovonramwen.

    In his play, Ofeimun builds a Nigeria where there was no language barrier; in fact, the differences in language helped united the people because the people took turns to celebrate each group’s history, including language and culture. The songs have a circular nature in which one song entered into another, emphasising that Nigerians should go beyond the differences in language or culture to what unites them.

    While showcasing dancers and dances that represent Nigeria’s cultural diversity, one could see that Ofeimun is corroborating the popular slogan “unity in diversity”.

    “I have always wanted to write about Nigeria. Before this drama, I did Nigeria The Beautiful, which was an attempt to look at all the icons of our nationalities in Nigeria’s history. This one was actually a centenary piece, simply to say: “for those who do not want the centenary to be celebrated that there are questions we need to answer. It is not about celebration: celebration is not only a matter of just enjoying yourself; it is also about asking and answering difficult questions. And the difficult question which the Ovonramwen character consistently talks about is a simple one: “We were conquered, how much of the knowledge with which we were conquered have we acquired so that if they return, we will not be worst of”. And it is a question which requires us to acquire knowledge so that we can be independent of those who may have been our masters. That we in the state we are in, is simply because we have not learnt to defend ourselves, properly speaking,” he said.

    According to him, when a people are struggling over how to consume in the society, it creates a problem. He said: “I believe a common morality among different nationalities is possible not only in Nigeria and anywhere in the world. If we are struggling about how to produce, we will break the backbone of many of the things that they complain about.”

    The main character, Ovonramwen, which was played by different persons, revisited Benin Empire before and after 1885, displaying how the Benin monarch was overthrown, his family and people’s agony, their courage, the amalgamation and the cry for freedom. Through his eyes, the audience were taken back to the colonial times, showing how Nigerians were turned into slaves, made childless, forced under the authority of the British. He called for a national conference where Nigerians would share narratives of past experience; and go beyond nepotism or lording over one another. Hence, Ofeimun’s Ovonramwen says: “We have a reason to stand together because of 1914.”

    “The Ovonranwen character says we desecrated our city where different parts produced different things, and we abandoned all that and went into slavery. So, we  created the basis for fear and distrust that made it very easy for those who invaded to take over. You no longer needed to talk about uniting because our people were already distrustful of each other to even unit against the foreigners.

    “We are still in that state; we are following the patterns of the old where violence erupts everywhere and then foreigners use it as an excuse for intervening. If every governor who comes to power starts by saying “I want before I leave power to produce all the things consumed in my state and if I cannot do it alone, I would join with my neighbours, we won’t have problems ever,”Ofeimun noted.

    Choosing Ovonramwen as the key character from the Midwest was deliberate, he said.  “They declared the amalgamation in January and in February, Ovonranwen died. So, he needed to say his piece and what her just done is to say his piece for him.”

    And on Tuesday, September 30, Ofeimun is taking his dance drama, directed by Felix Okolo, the director for Ofeimun’s dance pieces, to the Civic Centre, Abuja.

  • All for 1914

    In Because of 1914, Odia Ofeimun, renowned poet and writer, presents a society fused together by external forces, that today all indices of differences still stare the people in the face.  Edozie Udeze who watched the premiere of the stage dance-drama, which is infused with poetry and music, reports that the issues involved in the 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria will never peter out so long as all the socio-political, religious and economic dichotomies embedded in the system persist

    With poetry, dance and drama, Odia Ofeimun’s latest offering, Because of 1914,  which was premiered at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, last weekend has ushered Nigerians into an era when the people need to re-think reasons why they have to continue to stay together or make the project called Nigeria drift apart.  The title of the dance-drama is derived from the 1914 amalgamation of the nation in which the Northern and the Southern protectorates were fused into one by the British government to have Nigeria as we have it today.

    But for the beauty of total theatre, Ofeimun used the elements of poetry, music, remarkable events, cultural issues, political differences and social cohesion of the different tribes and ethnic groups in Nigeria to make the story into theatre.  The people were represented and dressed in their usual local costumes and native dresses to make the show complete.  The writer who is also a renowned poet has always devised new methods to put myriad of Nigerian socio-political issues into the stage.  The idea, he has always maintained, is to enable the people come closer to the issues that have shaped the nation’s political terrain over the years.

    Odia Ofeimun had in his two previous experiments of this nature, captioned The Return and Nigeria, The Beautiful, showcased both Africa and Nigeria as places where people could find peace and solace if the indices of leadership and followership are properly defined.  However, in Because of 1914, the poet took his time to bring out all the problems that defined the amalgamation and what the people did not do right to make the union work.

    Today, Nigeria is a nation walking on its tethers where mutual suspicion, fear, tribal sentiments, economic dominion and hatred for what is good have been the order of the day.

    The play opened with the playing of the drums, in a solemn but evocative form.  The solemnity of the drums was to usher in a society where the people have found themselves at the crossroads of confusion and poverty.  The drummers, dressed, in the national colours of green-white green with native caps to match played the drums to sychronise with the pitiable conditions of the people.

    The songs, which were composed by Felix Okolo, the director of the drama, were meant to soothe the stories.  The poetic lines were done to explain away most of the knotty and terrible situations that have been of grave concern to the entire nation.

    In the beginning, the tribes existed as indivisible entities, each cohabiting harmoniously with their neighbours.  The idea of coming together never crossed their minds.  They were happy being who they were and doing what suited them.  Every tribe held their cultural values in high esteem and so the idea of forcing them to lose their identity or being some other persons did not arise.

    Therefore, the respect for the other person was there.  For the exchange of goods and others, people had to travel from their places of origin to the next, to have exchange of ideas and engage in trade.  Life, generally, was good and totally in order.  Yet, when the British came, they took their time to understudy all these issues.  In truth, they saw these differences, they knew they were quite irreconcilable differences that would not make for a total cohesion or unity.   Yet, they ignored them all to give the nation its new name called Nigeria.  From that moment in time till today Nigeria has been tottering between existence and life, between what is good and what is bad and so the whole experiment seems to be on the backward slide.

    Then oil was not yet the binding factor.  The binding factor was to use the palm oil of the East and the Kola nuts of the West to unite the entities into one.  The groundnuts pyrami of the North was also an issue.  Yet their inability to catch up in terms of education was used as a yardstick to fuse them with the South.  This total new approach was indeed to the benefit of the North who were supposed to use the educational advancement of the South to their own advantage.

    As each of these segments of dichotomy was introduced on stage, the artistes used both poetry and dance drama not only to explain them away,  but used stage mesmerisation to douse the weight of the message and then allow the entertainment aspect of it to speak to the audience.  Both the music and the costumes suited the era in question and people were seen nodding their heads and shuffling their legs to the rhythmical movements on stage.

    The narrator used powerful poetic lines to tell the people the stories.  There was a complete blend of the major and minor tribes to present a comprehensive scenario of a total nation.  A nation where the wishes of the Whiteman were allowed to decide the future and the fate of the local people, the owners of the land.

    So, why would 1914 be the main watershed in the national life of Nigeria as a nation?  Why would it be this bad where the people still find it difficult to trust one another?  Why is it that people are yet to come to terms with religious, political, social and economic differences and then use all these to their own advantage?  It is just that some people have decided that sowing the embers of discord and hatred is their own hallmark.  They benefit from the chaotic situation in order to perpetually keep the people in the background.

    The dances therefore told the stories on stage.  The dancers were trained to perform in conformity with the annals of historical factors that shaped the era.  Each dance truly dramatised Nigeria and brought out the total element of Nigeria and why 1914 will continue to remain an issue.

    It was the arrogant posture of Lord Lugard that finally pissed people off.  Appearing on the stage like a colossus, he told the people of how her majesty was the lord of the manor, how she has gone round Europe and now Africa to plant the seed of colonialism.  And therefore, no one could stop her, could make her halt until the whole of humanity embraced the British culture.  It was a task that must be accomplished so that Africa would know that Britain is a great Kingdom indeed.

    As he spoke, the arena wore a solemn look.  The ambiance was sombre; people listened with rapt attention; not even in a hurry to discountenance or counter his utterances.  In the meantime the drums played, other instruments pelted away to ensure that the dance drama itself was complete to make for total theatre.  Then Lugard went on:  “We have taken over Africa, from the Arab world all through the deserts.  Europe does not sleep because her majesty is on the throne.  We’ll take over all the nooks and crannies of this continent and other places.  We’re imperialists, great custodians of great empires.  We take and overcome.  We build empires in the deserts to suit our whims and caprices.  These are to help investments for we ourselves do not invest.  We build railways from mangrove to the hills, to the savanna.  We know the future better than the people themselves.

    “We do not teach people how to be free or how to ask for it.  We will continue to dominate until they know how to fight for themselves and be free.  That is the ideology of the Great Britain.”  But soon after, some leaders with conscience, with unbridled courage, focus and commitment began to appear on stage.  Their mission was to dislodge the colonial masters from the helm of affairs.  “We will have schools, we need sound and productive education to be able to liberate ourselves, the entire kingdom from the furnace of hegemony…”  And so the struggle began and the internal differences that have since kept the people divided began to rear their heads.  But the people needed to be free first.

    Amid poverty, amid misery, in the presence of abundant resources, the nation therefore tried to exist.  The level of hopelessness; the distrust and endless struggle to live, all came together to give a complete blend to Because of 1914.  Ofeimun said one has to watch the story on stage to really appreciate the issues involved.

  • Nigeria The Beautiful at Osun Osogbo festival

    Nigeria The Beautiful at Osun Osogbo festival

    It was a festival within a festival when Odia Ofeimun’s travelling theatre mounted the stage during the Osun Osogbo festival. Tourists got a dose of Nigeria’s cultural diversity, reports Evelyn Osagie.

    Members of the audience were enthralled. There were music, dance and poetry. Indeed, there was Nigeria The Beautiful at the recently concluded Osun Osogbo Festival.

    It was a unique blend of creativity, business and festival. It was a night before the festival’s grand finale with all the trappings of festivity in addition to the finest stage performances that Nigeria could offer the world.

    The night gave credence to its rich cultural heritage that springs from its unique ethnic diversities. And what better way to celebrate that richness than showcasing The dance-piece drama featured Nigeria’s political history from pre-colonial era to the present. From Sir Ahmadu Bello to President Goodluck Jonathan, it calls attention to the pitfalls and lessons in each.

    Before Ofeimun’s travelling came on stage, the enchanting voice Jemiriye Adeniyi took guests through the English and Yoruba version of the national anthem.

    Then, the folk-music sensation, all-female group, Adunni and Nefretiti, prepared them for the night of performances. They sang to the health of the Yoruba race, visitors and to the goddess of Osun. Their songs took the audience into the richness of African traditional songs and a preamble of a sort to the night’s highlight – a performance by Odia Ofeimun’s travelling theatre.

    And the calibre of guests from within and outside the country added spice to the event. In attendance were the Osun State Governor Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and some members of his cabinet, Consul General of France in Lagos, Francois Sastourne; Dutch Ambassador to Nigeria, Bert J. Rowhaar; delegates from Oyo Tunji, a Yoruba town in the United States, Brazil and the Caribbean, Prof Christopher, Point Park University; Prof Richard Wukich (retired), Potters Water action Group and Victoria Scott Santafe, USA, among others.

    The event was meant to appreciate the diplomats, expatriates, investors, scholars, cultural promoters and tourists from across the world that participating at the Trade Investment and Cultural Conference and Osun Osogbo Festival.

    Guests had the pleasure of meeting with popular Nigeria’s creative celebrities like the founder of Nike Gallery, Chief Nike Okundaye; bead painting exponent, Chief Buraimoh; the queen of the stage popularly called Moremi, Chief Abiodun Duro-Ladipo and her son Adewale.

    It also had screen faces like Brainard, Faithia Balogun, Saheed Balogun, among others. Adunni and Nefretiti traditional tunes ignited the audience appetite for the night’s highlight that featured with energetic displays from across the country and eloquent poetic lines. Laced with lots of paradox and satire, for about two hours, guests were taken through Nigeria’s political struggles (from pre-colonial era to the present), ethnic diversities and the lessons thereof. The paradox is seen in scene that features Fela with soldiers singing his praises, which is a historical oxymoron of a sort and a anti-climax.

    According to the poet, the title “is a deliberate reversal of received opinion”, adding that the piece is meant to pinpoint the need for “a grand accommodation of differences and an inexorable recognition of a needful coalescence of wills towards a share future.”

    But for the poor delivery of lines by one or two of the casts made obvious by an uncooperative sound system, it was evident that the play succeeded in selling its playwright’s thoughts to its audience as seen in their response.

    In fact, unless one had witnessed the performance more than once, one would not even notice the flaws. Not minding that the play which was supposed to start at twilight started way into the night and dovetailed into the wee hours, the very expressive audience sat through it all, showing they were indeed captivated.

    But is Nigeria The Beautiful? The play and its theme, Governor Aregbesola said, are apt for the season, adding that it behoves on all the responsibility to make the country truly beautiful. However, he added: “How I wish we can realise and agree that Nigeria is truly beautiful, which is the function of our dream and expectation.”

  • My civil war story, by Odia Ofeimun

    My civil war story, by Odia Ofeimun

    For Odia Ofeimun, the muti-talented poet, it was a three-in-one event. The staging of his play, Nigeira The Beautiful; the unveiling of his book, When does a civil war come to an end? and journal, Lagos Review of Books and Society. Evelyn Osagie writes.

    The trouble with Nigeria is not just bad leadership. It is about the values a people uphold. And when you reduce it to simply a question of leadership, it means that it is only the protagonists, the entrepreneurs who are allowed to have power and authority. You tend, when you overplay the role of the leader, to deprive the rest of us of the responsibilities we owe in whatever we do in our various ways of living to be the moulders and the defenders of our society.”

    This quote, from Odia Ofeimun’s latest book entitled When does a Civil War come to an end? welcomed guests into the Agip Hall of the MUSON Centre, Onikan, last Friday. it also prepared them for an evening of controversies.

    Ace poet Ofeimun was at it again, brewing what he does best – controversy.

    There have been heated debates on historical accounts of the Civil War in recent times, especially with the publication of Prof. Chinua Achebe’s book There was a country. Not one to be left out on budding national discourse, Ofeimun responded with the play – Nigeria The Beautiful – and a prose When does a Civil War come to an end?

    Spectacle, electrifying theatrical and dance performances heralded Ofeimun’s submission on the need for unity while satirising Nigeria’s political history, hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of its leaders and more. The event also featured the presentation of When does a Civil War come to an end? a somewhat response to There was a country, even though the poet denied it, saying: “the book was written a long time before Achebe’s was published” His journal, Lagos Review of Books and Society was also unveiled. And the air was charged for the evening.

    Before the main performance, interestingly, a prologue of sort took place at the reception which further amplified the already charged evening. There, two writers Kunle Ajibade, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, a civil rights crusader, Dr. Sylvester Akhaine, and the celebrator engaged in a sad reminiscence of the nation’s political voyage and of dreams shattered. Like a pre-planned script of a gory dramatic memoir, the discourse highlighted the predicament of its heroes of democracy, particularly that of a fallen one, Ken Beeson Saro Wiwa (October 10, 1941 to November 10, 1995).

    “Everywhere one looks in this country, you see the hypocrisy of many. But we know those who really paid the price for democracy: people like you, Kunle. For democracy sake, you went to prison,” began Uzoatu.

    Ajibade: “Look at what they did to Saro Wiwa.”

    Maxim: “Look at what they did to a great writer in his own country. Ken is gone!”

    Akhaine: “When I heard he was killed, my psychology changed. He had a meeting at Beko’s place before he met his death.”

    Ofeimun: “But you know Ken was crazy. Ken drove me out of his office the day Abacha came to power. He said Abacha was a good man and that was the man who killed him.”

    Maxim: “They were friends and their kids grew up together. So when Ken was killed I did not know what to make of it.”

    Ajibade: “It is one image I can’t put away from my mind. It is unfortunate… this is a country that eats its own.”

    Maxim: “Why is this country standing? That was how the Civil War was began.”

    Ofeimun: “Why shouldn’t this country stand? The war has not changed anything; and subsequent wars will still not change anything. Let’s go up, the show is about to start.”

    In the play, Ofeimun tells the story of Nigeria from colonial era till date, bringing up age-long arguments of various ethnic groups on the platform of national discourse. It celebrates prominent actors in Nigeria’s political history such as the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late Mallam Aminu Kano, the late Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and her son, the late Fela, the late Adaka Boro, military administrators, among others. He concludes by calling on leaders and Nigerians to harness the aspects of each group that would lead to unity.

    The play, he said, stems from his belief in ‘project Nigeria.’ “I believe we know Nigeria’s story. What we have not decided on is how to make Nigeria live for each and of us. It is not only the fighting wars. This is an eminently safable country that can also save Africa. And we have the means to safe Nigeria; we only need to employ it. The differences we talk about are really no differences. I want to live in a county with only one song, one creed, only one dance. Let us build Nigeria The Beautiful. It is a duty we owe ourselves to build Nigeria The Beautiful and unite the world. The Lagos Review of Books and Society is one in which we want to redefine the world,” Ofeimun said.

    The cast held the audience spellbound as they acted Nigeria’s voyage: their line delivery and actions helped guests grasp the depth of the message. The performance of Ogun Mawuyon was particularly captivating.

    According to him, the connecting thread between the play and his book. When does a Civil War come to an end? is thrust on the need for Nigerians to do away with ethnic stereotypes. He said the book is not a deliberate response to Achebe’s book, but offers an alternative way of seeing what happened before, during and after the Civil.

    He said: “From the moment we started debating Achebe’s book; many people thought I was deliberately running away from my responsibilities by not publishing essays I wrote long ago. I needed to bring out this book so that people will not be asking me about questions they could just find in a book. If I say I have an alternative history, it is important to come out with book like When does a Civil War come to an end? What this book tried to do is to show how right Awolowo was in relation to his harshest critics.”

    So when does the war end, he was asked. “In my view a civil war comes to an end when the falsehood that divided the people and the stereotypes that ruins people has been displaced by a harsher verdict – the truth. I have followed Chief Awolowo’s career very closely. In my view, he provides the finest example of how to solve Nigeria’s problem. A man who was so much lied against but never for once behaved in a manner that showed he was worried for himself. He was always more worried for others,” he said.

    For the solicitor and critic who reviewed Achebe’s There was a country in The News, Tade Ipadeola, it is high time the civil war propaganda is rested. Ofeimun book, according to him, is timely in putting to rest such cant. He said: “In response to Achebe, Ofeimun has come up with a closure in When does a Civil War come to an end? which is a challenge to us as Africans. His argument is that the Civil War should come to end at some point. And we must ask ourselves at what point? I was born after the war and I have often wondered why should our world be always fore-grounded by the war.”