Dear fellow citizens,
It has long been obvious that Nigeria as a nation has no respect for those of our compatriots who have chosen to dedicate their lives to creating works of art: In fact, Nigeria is a country with no cultural policies, in which no serious attempt has ever been made to support the arts since our supposed emergence as an independent nation half a century ago!
In recent times, a situation has been reached where misguided individuals who occupy positions astop officials of various telephone companies regularly make purported annual awards said to be worth N40 million (forty million naira!) to karaoke vocalists and hopelessly amateur over-hyped ‘Nollywood’ actors and actresses to serve as so-called ‘brand Ambassadors’ (whatever this incomprehensible tag may mean)…
At the same time, the genuine Nigerian artists, painters, intellectuals, authors and film makers have been left to starve by the roadside, with no meaningful support from governmental authorities or even from members of the public.
Examples that Illustrate the sad fate of leading Nigerian artists make depressing reading: My very dear friend and brother Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (Abami Eda, Omo iya aje), who happens to have been the most extraordinary musical genius that Africa has produced in several centuries, died a poor and viciously persecuted man.
Fela’s illness was terminally aggravated as result of the wicked treatment he received at the hands of a semi-illiterate police official named Bamaiyi, who chained and paraded Fela in public like a common criminal within the premises of the NDLEA headquarters in Lagos, under the allegation that Fela was suspected of smoking marijuana (African natural grassaccording to Fela!), the smoking of which has now ironically been decriminalised in many parts of the world…
In the final period of his life, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (who generously and selflessly helped so many poverty stricken fellow Nigerians during his lifetime) was penniless and virtually destitute, leading to a situation where the hospital bill that covered the treatment he received before he died had to be paid by our mutual friend Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi, an outstanding Nigerian patriot and patron of the arts.
The list of other gifted Nigerian musicians who were left to die in penury in recent times is so long that it might fill several pages: To save time and space, I will simply restrict myself to recalling the sad fate of immensely talented Nigerian musicians who never received the material support or national awards that they so richly deserved, while a host of incompetent nincompoops have regularly been presented with bogus national awards annually for several decades now, including the much touted decoration known in my circle of friends as “Commander of Lake Chad fishes and crocodiles”…
In addition to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, even an abbreviated list throws up the names of wonderful folks like Bobby Benson, Baby Face Paul, Charles Iwegbue, E.C. Arinze, Rex Lawson, Chief Bill Friday, Zeal Onyia, Mamman Shata, I.K. Dairo, Hubert Ogunde, Bala Miller, Stephen OsitaOsadebe, Nico Mbarga, Fatai Rolling Dollar etc, all of blessed memory…
To the best of my knowledge, no State Government or Federal Ministry or agency or telephone company ever provided any form of tangible support to any of these immensely talented musicians and artistic heroes,apart from a feeble and belated attempt by the Lagos State Government to allocate a flat in a far off suburb of Lagos to the great Fatai Rolling Dollar…
Coming to the field of film production, my dear brother and colleague Francis Oladele passed away unlamented in Oyo close to a year ago, with no serious attempt to immortalise his work. When the late Jab Adu travelled to meet his ancestors about a month ago, hardly any befitting tribute was paid to his stellar performances as a stage actor and film actor over the years. I didn’t ever get to hear that Jab had passed away until I happened to make a brief visit to Nigeria ten days ago!
Should we talk about the shabby treatment that has been meted out to past giants of Nigerian plastic arts and literature, such as Ben Enwonwu, Erhabor Emokpae, Cyprian Ekwensi and a host of other illustrious representatives of the Nigerian artistic community, whose extraordinary talent and hard work has helped to spread Nigeria’s fame all over the world?
What percentage of the current generation of ‘yankified’ and thoroughly deluded Nigerians who spend most of their time watching English football matches on television and endlessly visiting a multiplicity of internet sites and gossiping endlessly via web chat devices has ever heard of any of the names enumerated above, listened to their music or seen or read any of their works? Probably not up to 5%!
What a shame!
In my own case, how come that I can be openly scorned and castigated by the kind of cowardly journalist who found nothing better to do than to sit down and write a mostly untruthful account and terribly biased account of a confrontation that he or she claimed to have witnessed between me and a young woman whose contribution to a discussion that followed the screening of one of my documentary films led to my walking away from the so-called Freedom Park on the evening of May 9th, so as to avoid the stress of having to listen to meaningless rants by a young woman who appeared to me to be mentally unbalanced, as far as I could judge?
To my immense surprise and disappointment, only two self-proclaimed young film makers showed up at the Freedom Park on the evening of Monday, May 9th 2016 to watch the screening of a documentary film entitled “The magic of Nigeria” on Nigerian art and culture, which I wrote and directed over thirty years ago.(As a result of misguided zeal, I had intended this screening to serve as a basis for a workshop that would enable me to explain some of the practical aspects of professional film making to any aspiring film makers willing to learn from me).
To begin with, I was quite taken aback to observe that the event was scantily attended, notwithstanding the fact that notice of the screening was widely circulated though the auspices of Freedom Park itself and of the Goethe (German Cultural) Institute.
Without wishing to be immodest. I think it would also be pertinent at this stage to mention that this particular film has been shown to wide acclaim in many parts of the world over the past three decades, including at the New York museum of Modern Arts. (Incidentally, the management of Freedom Park did not offer to pay me a single kobo for the screening of my film on this occasion, and I even had to pay for my own drinks and snacks, notwithstanding the fact that I had selflessly volunteered to show the film at personal cost and inconvenience to myself as a means of reaching out to young Nigerian film makers!)
How can it be my fault if most young Nigerians prefer to be watching English Premiere league football endlessly and listening and dancing to the kind of cacophonic sounds that pass for disco music these days, rather than watch films that I and a host of film makers from Nigeria and other African countries have laboured to make over the years? Can anyone protect misguided folks who are determined to remain ignorant from their own self-imposed ignorance?
When I was asked to share my thoughts about my documentary film on Nigerian art and culture on the fateful night that it was screened at Freedom Park to an audience that included folks like my senior colleague Tam Fiofori and other distinguished members of the Nigerian artistic community like Miguel Enwerem, Jahman Anikulapo and others, I believed that I was being helpful to young film makers by pointing out that film making is a profession in the same way as carpentry or architecture, and that those who wish to excel in this field therefore have to make an effort to watch and study the works of accomplished film makers from all over the world, as well endeavour to serve practical apprenticeships under the guidance of leading Nigerian film professionals, as has been the norm for many centuries now in most professions all over the world…
I went further to point out that even if the new generation of aspiring film makers might claim not to have access to the films that were made by my own generation of film makers, they could learn by paying close attention to the work of accomplished contemporary film makers like Tade Ogidan and Tunde Kelani, as well as from the professionalism of Liz Benson, Osuofia and Mercy Johnson in the field of acting….
When the floor was subsequently thrown open for general discussion at Freedom Park on the night of May 9th, a shocking development ensued when the only two individuals in the audience who defined themselves as young film makers got up to make largely irrelevant comments.
The first to speak was a young man who asked me why I haven’t posted my films on Youtube for him and his colleagues to watch on the internet. As gently as I could, I explained in response that it would be sheer madness for me to do so, as this would only lead to large scale pirating of my work.
To illustrate the point I was making, I gave the example of the musical soundtrack of my award winning film “Black Goddess”, which I made the mistake of authorising a British company to market, only for the music of my film to end up being widely circulated and sold world-wide via the internet by a variety of unknown companies and individual who have never paid me one cent of royalties…
(I forgot to add that prior to that, I had the unfortunate experience of falling victim to large scale piracy of some of my documentary films in the U.S. after I made the mistake of entering into an agreement with an unscrupulous Jewish enterprise to distribute the said documentaries on University campuses!)
However, worse was to follow in the subsequent course of the supposed question and answer session.
This was when a young lady who belongs to the generation of my grandchildren, and whom I had never seen before or heard of in all my life, stood up and castigated me in shrill tones for allegedly “rubbishing” her work, following which she declared that she never wanted to know me or hear from me about anything.
I frankly confess that as I listened to her rant, I was at a total loss to understand if this young lady was in her right senses, or if she had smoked some substances that leads to delirium before standing up to speak.
The said young woman (whose identity is unknown to me) then went on to boast that she held a Master’s degree in film production from an American University, and that she had nothing to learn from Ola Balogun or from any other Nigerian or African film maker.
It was at this point that I rose and walked out of the venue, leaving her to continue unimpeded with her nonsensical utterances… I rest my case!
In conclusion, I crave the indulgence of my fellow Nigerian citizens to point out what an utter shame it is that there are no cinema clubs of film viewing centres where young Nigerians can watch good quality films from all over the world, as opposed to the popcorn-dispensing air-conditioned venues where childish US made films are regularly screened in major Nigerian cities these days…
If I may say so, the much touted Freedom Park located on Broad street in Lagos has largely failed to fulfil its mission as a Nigerian cultural centre so far.
In terms of projection facilities, Freedom Park has nothing comparable to what can be found in most secondary schools in Europe or the U.S.
On the night in question, my documentary film was screened on an improvised screen that appeared to consist of a not-too-clean bed sheet! The projector itself could only throw a dim light on this improvised screen, while a persistent hum interfered continuously with the sound, no doubt as a result of poor sound equipment…
If we wish to be frank with ourselves, the Freedom Parkhas largely failed to fulfil the objective of providing a space for vibrant artistic and intellectual activities in Lagos, given the fact that most of the time, artists who wish to perform at the Freedom Park are required to pay stiff rental fees for use of the amphitheatre and open air stages, allegedly on the orders of the Lagos State Government…
In addition, the use to which the entire available space has been used is open to question: Instead of one continuous arena that would have been capable of hosting large scale musical shows and theatrical performances, the space that was freed up by the demolition of the former Broad Street Prison has been broken up into three or four separate performance areas that are not actually contiguous with each other.
Quite inexplicably, the central part of Freedom Park consists of a food court that is flanked by three or four fast food kitchens, while a whole section of the Park consists of an office block in which office space is said to have been allegedly allocated to my distinguished senior Professor Wole Soyinka, who I believe is perfectly capable of fending for himself without benefitting from free office space supposedly placed at his disposal free of charge in the Freedom Park by the Lagos State government…
The shame of the present situation is that there are at present virtually NO Nigerian or African cultural centres in the whole of Nigeria, while we find that there are foreign cultural centres like the Insitut Francais (French Cultural Centre), the Italian Cultural Centre, the Goethe (German) Cultural Centre, all busy in major Nigerian cities spreading the language and culture of their respective countries and indoctrinating and brainwashing our youths to consider African culture to be inferior to western culture…
By great good luck, the fire incident to which I fell victim at my former residence in Yaba a year ago destroyed virtually all my belongings, books, musical collections and film equipment, leaving me penniless and homeless, and forcing me to relocate to Cotonou in Benin Republic to try and eke out a living as best as I could…
I define this devastating fire (which I believe was probably deliberately set to my residence by some evil folks) as a divinely ordained piece of luck, in the sense the universal genius William Shakespeare taught the whole of mankind when he coined the immortal phrase: “Great are the uses of adversity”…
I am happy to testify that even though I arrived in Cotonou virtually destitute a year ago after narrowly escaping death in the inferno that swept through my residence in Lagos, I have managed to build a new life for myself after enduring several months of great suffering, hunger and loneliness, culminating in a harrowing period during which I ate no food whatsoever for one entire month due to extreme poverty, barley surviving on occasional sips of tap water…
Fortunately, like the legendary phoenix, I survived it all, discovering amazing depths of resilience and fortitude in the process within my inner self!
In the aftermath of this cleansing period of intense hardship, I have been born again as an artist and am currently experiencing an amazing degree of heightened creativity and productivity…
Let the ancestors be praised for all I have learnt during the wonderful experience of suffering I have been through!
GREAT ARE THE USES OF ADVERSITY!
I am also immensely happy to be able to testify that here in my new abode in Cotonou (every part of black Africa is my homeland!) I have been working in collaboration with a wonderful beninois architect to design and build an African cultural centre that has been conceived to serve the needs of the entire African continent.
This amazingly gifted gentleman and I have now completed the preliminary drawings of the envisaged African Cultural Centre, and I am hoping to be able to buy enough land to host the actual building from my current earnings within the next few months, in the fond hope that I will somehow manage to live long enough to see this dream come true for the greater benefit of the entire youths of black Africa, in obedience to the teachings our great contemporary African heroes Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Steve Biko, who willingly gave their lives so that Africa wouldrise to be great again in the not too distant future…
With so much work that I am racing to complete before I m obliged to take my final bow before stepping off from the stage of life, who can honestly blame me for not having time to sit down and listen to the idle rants of a self-proclaimed immodest “Americana” agarachalost soul who claims to be making films that the immense majority of Nigerians are yet to see or know about?
I definitely do not need to listen to sit down anywhere listening to the idle boasts of this kind of young person, who appeared to have derived immense pleasure from spouting totally unfounded allegations that a man old enough to be her grandfather has been criticizing and rubbishing films she claims to have produced, whereas I have never in my whole life heard of this confused girl or known anything about her existence!Na wa o!
However, there is no wahala! The young lady should go ahead and produce the films that she claims she knows how to make for the people of Nigeria and of the entire world to watch and admire… Ewo lo kaneminbe? Wetin concern Ola Balogun with bogus ‘Americana’ Masters degree holder? Please I beg you all you fellow Nigerians, let it be noted and accepted that all I am asking for at this stage of my life is to be left in peace to continue to dream and work as best as I can.
Surely, at the age of seventy one, I deserve better from Nigeria than to be exposed to the kind of untruthful and malicious attack… published in “The Vanguard” of Saturday May 14th 2016?
Following this ugly experience, I have now decided to henceforth restrict my visits to Nigeria to the barest minimum in the coming months and years.
And of course I will never again be so foolish as to want to waste any of my time attempting to explain anything about film making to young aspiring Nigerian film makers. Let them all go and learn their craft in American Universities if the U.S. authorities are willing to issue them with visas!
Also, let the misguided legions of youths of Nigeria youths who are lost to Africa continue wasting their time attending bogus night prayer vigils and watching English football, hailing the exploits of Messia nd boasting about the achievements of “their” dearly beloved Manchester United and Arsenal clubs, and turning a blind eye while incompetent leaders work hard to embezzle the nation’s wealth on a scale unprecedented in recent history…
WHO CARES?
