Obasanjo’s My Watch and other stories

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s three-volume memoir, My Watch, presented to the public on Tuesday, 09 December, 2014, has elicited so much reaction, much like Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. That is expected. That is the stuff history books are made of. For those who do not know, history is not shy of controversy. Indeed, history is a controversial subject that thrives in controversy – essentially because there is no shortcut to historical explanation, and “we remember differently”, to quote Chimamanda Adichie’s apt title to her tribute to Achebe at 82. As I wrote in “The Achebe phenomenon” at the peak of the controversy generated by There was a Country, quoting P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, emeritus professor of History at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, “Historical interpretations most times are based on a fraction of the evidence, a part of the whole, but so far as the arguments follow where the available material leads, they are valid. The often seemingly divergent conclusions in historical accounts are due to the different angles from which various historians approached the same episode.”

 

And so, given that various historians [read writers] are wont to approach the same episode from different angles, it presupposes that all major actors in a particular historical event are expected, as a matter of moral obligation and for the benefit of posterity, to document their own versions of the episode detailing, even if from their narrow perspectives, the part they and other actors around them played in the specific event at issue.

That was what Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu partly did in Because I am Involved; that was what Adewale Ademoyega did in Why We Struck: The Story of the First Nigerian Coup; that was what Fola Oyewole did in The Reluctant Rebel; that was what Achebe did in There was a Country; that was what innumerable other Nigerians who have been part of the making of the history of this nation and who have documented their accounts have tried to do; and this is what Obasanjo has also done.

 

Nor has he ever been found wanting in this regard. At intervals Obasanjo has been known to give an account of the roles he played at critical points in Nigeria’s history. To his credit are such personal historical accounts as My Command (1980), Nzeogwu (1987), and Not My Will (1990). Whether these books present the true accounts of the events as they happened or simply represent the veiled antics of a megalomaniac desperately struggling to exonerate himself is for historians to determine. The professional historian, when he eventually goes to work, will find these different accounts useful raw materials. Applying the tools of historiography, he is then able to study, analyse, synthesise, compare notes, filter, interpret, reinterpret and check these materials against other available sources in order, ultimately, to present what comes close to objective history.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago, taking a cue from Robert Skidelsky’s article “Philosopher kings versus philosopher presidents”, I highlighted the benefits that may accrue from the fact of a leader being a reader – and a writer as well. As if to accentuate that point, just few days ago I came upon a new book by Martin Udogie, How to Read More, in which he points to the reading habits of some world leaders – “from Rudi Giulani, who, as New York Mayor during 9-11, finally arrived home at past 2 a.m. on the night of that fateful day and still picked up a book to read, to Barack Obama, who went on a one-week vacation in 2010 with over 2,300 pages of reading, to George W. Bush, whose formula for reading was to enter into a reading contest with his top presidential aide, Karl Rove”.

While voracious reading does not necessarily translate to quality leadership, there is no gainsaying the fact that the leader who reads widely – especially in this knowledge-based economy – will be better placed than the leader who does not. When a leader reads, he assimilates knowledge and wisdom so that when he speaks, he also speaks from the position of knowledge, not ignorance. Then we will eliminate the possibility of having a sitting president allegedly saying on national television that he believes the price of cement in the country will go down “because Dangote said so”, or a presidential candidate saying he would stabilise the price of crude oil in the international market if elected president – when even OPEC has lost market power, with only 30 percent contribution to global oil supply.

And so, any leader who wants to lead well must as a matter of necessity avail himself of the knowledge stored up in books – for how will a leader sidestep his predecessors’ pitfalls if he hadn’t even read about them? How will he avoid repeating the mistakes of history if he doesn’t even know history?

In the heat of the debate generated by There was a Country, Adebayo Kareem, a respected lawyer, wrote an article where he urged Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s wartime military head of state, to write his own memoir in order to present his own personal account of the Nigeria/Biafra Civil War and “put the accounts straight”. And why not? There are too many issues around that war that need explaining. We need to know, for instance, why Gowon would go to Aburi-Ghana and reach certain agreements only to return to Nigeria and sing a different song. And there may be a lot to learn from his 3Rs post-war policy.

In concluding his review of My Watch presented at the launch on December 09, Patrick O. Okigbo III, principal partner at Nextier, wrote: “In all, and most importantly, we must be thankful to President Olusegun Obasanjo for the discipline and commitment it took to put this history on paper. At least, we now have one side of the story. And that side is vicious enough that it should prompt a response from many quarters.”

 

My Watch is as voluminous as they come, at 1,572 pages, a nightmare for a set of people not given to plenty reading. Yet, we expect all those that the former president has accused of wrongdoing – Atiku Abubakar, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Tony Anenih, Nasir El-Rufai, Muhammadu Buhari and the host of them – to not only sit down and do a cover-to-cover reading of the book, but also render their own accounts. Metro 97.7 FM Lagos, Radio Nigeria's first star channel, has a Sunday-Sunday programme it calls “Talk your own”. In my view, Obasanjo has talked his own; let those who feel aggrieved talk their own as well. As Okigbo finely puts it in the review, “This anticipated exchange will help Nigerians connect the dots, see the true picture of what has transpired, and learn whatever lessons there may be from these earlier mistakes.” For El-Rufai, perhaps it is time to write Accidental Public Servant II. Over to you!

Leaders, readers, writers

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Robert Skidelsky, professor emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University, member of the British House of Lords and author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, in a recent article ‘Philosopher kings versus philosopher presidents’, shares how, during his recent meeting with Irish President Michael Higgins, he was struck by Higgins’ devotion to thought. Higgins had connected his newly launched “ethics initiative” to a book Skidelsky co-authored with his son, How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life.

“Indeed, engaging with ideas is a passion for Ireland’s poet-president – one that more heads of states should take up,” writes Skidelsky.

He goes on to narrate how, in May, Higgins had told economics students at the University of Chicago that they were studying a deformed discipline, torn from its ethical and philosophical roots. Higgins, as quoted by Skidelsky, had said that “the recent economic and financial upheavals have thrown a glaring light on the shortcomings of the intellectual tools provided by mainstream economics and its key assumptions regarding the sustainability of self-regulating markets”, especially “largely unregulated global financial markets”, and had proposed a “critical examination of some of the core assumptions that underpin economics as it is currently taught in university departments across the world”.

“What other head of state,” asks Skidelsky, “would be able to pinpoint the deficiencies of economics so accurately, buttressing his arguments with quotations not just from Adam Smith, but also from Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen, and Jürgen Habermas?”

We can easily domesticate Skidelsky’s observation – and we can extrapolate it beyond just the head of state to include also state governors and all who present themselves as leaders of the people in today’s Nigeria. If we critically and sincerely answer the questions that arise, it will be clear why Nigerian is down on all fours and why it might continue to crawl on its underbelly for a long time to come – except a fundamental change occurs at the level of leadership. Leadership in Nigeria is mostly bereft of ideas, largely because our leaders don’t read. In the present dispensation, for instance, not a few Nigerians have had cause to ask the economic model the country has. On one occasion, someone answered, “Go ask your president.” To which some mischievous fellow retorted, “Does he know?”

In terms of ideas-driven leadership, Nigeria has never had it this bad. This country once produced, at various levels of leadership, globally acclaimed and respected thinkers and men of ideas of the stature of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo. All you needed to do was pick any of the various papers or books written by them or listen to them speak and you would get a clear picture of their thought pattern, ideology, and leadership direction.

Here’s what we mean. “As I watched Obama form his economic team, I drew some inference about his ideology. Obama is an all-American, non-doctrinaire, pragmatist,” writes Chidi G. Osuagwu in a recent article ‘Obamanomics and economics beyond Cambridge’. How many Nigerian political leaders of today can we say the same about? I can count on my fingers.

Nigeria’s politics today is virtually all raw power and no brain. Today’s politician has bartered his thinking cap and, rather than rely on sound strategy and ideas to win him followership, he thinks of how to buy votes and pay thugs to steal ballot boxes. There are hardly any words on marble, even if they are not well-intentioned. Political parties have no clearly-defined ideologies; manifestoes are for the most part totally absent, and where they exist, they are sketchy, lack depth and rigour and are often adaptations of the immediate post-independence party manifestoes; instead of issue-based debates among aspirants to political offices, all we have are mudslinging, name-calling, thuggery, etc – in short, everything is tending towards blind men leading fellow blind men, and the country totters on the edge of a huge chasm.

“Higgins’ experience as an academic and his status as an acclaimed poet,” Skidelsky further writes, “undoubtedly give him an advantage over other heads of state, enabling him to hold his own with top thinkers in a way that few others can. More important, however, is his recognition that a political leader should also be a leader of thought and culture for his or her country – and the world.”

He refers to Ecclesiasticus 44:4, which says: “Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent are their instructions.” “This is particularly important today, when public discourse in democracies is relentlessly demotic and academic work is increasingly specialized,” he adds.

In order to ascend to the plane of “philosopher leader”, therefore, in order to become, in the words of Skidelsky, “open-minded, culturally literate, and ideas-oriented”, a political leader must necessarily be an avid reader, for unquantifiable is the knowledge that is buried deep in books. And some go ahead to become writers – in order, as is desirable, to translate their ideas in black and white and leave a legacy for oncoming generations.

A handful of political leaders in the country have shown how ahead of peers an ideas-oriented leader can be. In the past seven-and-a-half years of his stewardship in Lagos, for instance, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola’s high intellectual acumen has reflected in the kind of leadership that he has provided in managing a complex socio-economic environment like Lagos. His broad exposure to issues beyond the narrow prism of his legal profession is evident everywhere in his clear understanding of leadership issues and his pattern of administration – and in his numerous paper presentations, especially his budget speeches since 2007. But it has not been all words and no do – pious pronouncements have often been backed by positive actions.

Similarly, as governor of Imo State from 2007-2011, Ikedi Godson Ohakim’s public speeches, whether they were written or ex tempore, showed a man who has been exposed to the world of thought and ideas through wide reading. He would eventually, in 2009, publish three books – Pushing the Limits, which describes his personal career and political philosophy; and The Courage to Challenge and Challenging New Frontiers, which are collections of speeches. He had earlier in 1994, a year after he served as commissioner for commerce, industry and tourism in Imo State under Governor Evan Enwerem (1992-1993), published The Marketing Imperative for Rural Industrialization. Why this broad exposure did not translate into better leadership for Imo State is a topic for another day.

In the meantime, as the 2015 general elections draw closer, and as Nigerians elect their leaders at the various levels of government, the concluding words of Skidelsky must provide a guide: “Democratic countries need symbols of the extraordinary if they are not to sink into permanent mediocrity.”

The labours of our heroes past...

CHUKS OLUIGBO

This is Our Chance by James Ene Henshaw was the first ever book of literature by a Nigerian that I encountered as a schoolboy. It was one of the recommended texts in my Junior Secondary School. I don’t know what obtains now, but at that time Literature was properly separated from English Language – in my school at least – and the guy who was brought in to take us, a young man named Evuleocha, made the subject very interesting.

Subsequently, we would read such other recommended works as Eze Goes to School by Onuora Nzekwu and Michael Crowther, One Week, One Trouble by Anezi Okoro, Without A Silver Spoon by Eddie Iroh, The Bottled Leopard by Chukwuemeka Ike, Wedlock of the Gods and The Wizard of Law by Nigeria’s first female playwright, Zulu Sofola, The Incorruptible Judge by D. Olu Olagoke, An African Night’s Entertainment and The Rainmaker and Other Stories by Cyprian Ekwensi, Unoma at College by Teresa Meniru, among others.

There is an unforgettable quote I took away from Henshaw’s This is Our Chance, by a character named Bambulu who likes to speak big, big grammar: “This is the child of my brain, the product of my endeavour, and the materialisation of my inventive genius. It is an anti-snake-bite vaccine. Western science has not succeeded in producing anything so potent. But I, Bambulu, have, without laboratories, without any help, produced this medicine from the herbs of this village.”

In the realm of poetry, West African Verse, an anthology of poems selected and annotated by Donatus I. Nwoga, brought us into contact with some earliest Nigerian poets, such as Dennis Chukude Osadebay, but it was in A Selection of African Poetry edited by K. E. Senanu and T. Vincent that one really discovered great minds like Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Gabriel Okara and the host of them.

The interest had developed. And when, in JSS 3, I was appointed assistant school librarian, I descended on the other titles and with gusto began to devour as many as the little time I squeezed out of other school activities permitted. That was when I discovered The Pacesetters Series. Crossfire by Kalu Okpi, Evbu My Love by Helen Ovbiagele, Bloodbath at Lobster Close by Dickson Ighavini, Desert Storm by Hope Dube, Director by Agbo Areo, Something to Hide by Rosina Umelo, The Betrayer by Sam A. Adewoye, The Black Temple by Mohamed T. Garba, and The Extortionist by Chuma Nwokolo are a few of the titles I still recall. It was then that I also read Twilight and the Tortoise by Kunle Akinsemoyin, and many other titles that I do not readily recall their authors.

In the Senior Secondary School, I discovered African Writers Series, especially the works of Chinua Achebe, John Munonye and Elechi Amadi. Then I came in contact with Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel and The Jero Plays (The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis) and other works such as Zainab Alkali’s The Stillborn.

But it was in the university – in the introductory courses on fiction, poetry, and drama and theatre, as well as in the follow-up courses like African Poetry, African Fiction, African Drama, Studies in Poetry, Studies in Fiction, Studies in Drama, Modern Comedy: Moliere to Soyinka, among others – that the floodgates were thrown open and I beheld Nigerian literary giants in their majesty. There were Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-wine Drinkard; Wole Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists, Death and the King’s Horseman, Kongi’s Harvest, The Strong Breed, The Interpreters, etc; JP Clark’s Song of A Goat; Efuru and Iduu by Flora Nwapa, Nigeria’s first female novelist; Second Class Citizen and The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta; Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, and the collection of poems Beware, Soul Brother by Chinua Achebe; The Voice by Gabriel Okara; Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame; Zulu Sofola’s Old Wines Are Tasty; John Munonye’s The Only Son, Obi, The Oil Man of Obange, A Wreath for the Maidens, and A Dancer of Fortunes, and so many others. And the poems of Okigbo, Soyinka, Okara, Clark, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Ossie Enekwe, Pol Ndu, Nnamdi Olebara, Mamman Vatsa, etc.

There were also other early authors whose works were not on the curriculum at the time. They included T. M. Aluko (One Man, One Wife, Chief the Honourable Minister, Wrong Ones in the Dock, One Man, One Machete, etc), Onuora Nzekwu (Wand of Noble Wood and Blade Among the Boys), INC Aniebo (Anonymity of Sacrifice, The Journey Within, Of Wives, Talismans and the Dead, and Rearguard Actions), Chukwuemeka Ike (Toads for Supper and Naked Gods), and, of course, Ken Saro Wiwa. The list is by no means exhaustive.

The works of these great minds were a bottomless fountain from which I and those of my generation and later generations who cared drank freely, and they helped to shape our minds for the better. But as I write this, one question lingers on my mind: what happened to these literary greats of yonder days? Apart from a few that we know their whereabouts, the rest might as well have gone into oblivion – unsung, uncelebrated, unremembered. Apart from the Wole Soyinka Centre, an annual poetry prize and an investigative journalism prize in honour of Soyinka, I doubt if there is much else. Cyprian Ekwensi has an arts and culture centre in Garki, Abuja named after him. Achebe, Tutuola, Aluko, Munonye, Enekwe, Nwapa, Henshaw and others who have joined their ancestors, what about them? These heroes and heroines of literature may have brought more fame and good image to this country than all the politicians we’ve had since independence put together. Unfortunately, they do not have the powers and the wherewithal to name streets and national monuments after themselves.

It was heartening to discover, recently, that there is a foundation set up in honour of James Ene Henshaw, who died in 2007. Henshaw also wrote Enough Is Enough, Children of the Goddess, Jewels of the Shrine, A Man of Character, among others. In its mission statement, which I found online, the foundation says it is “a charitable organisation set up to maintain and promote the literary legacy of James Ene Henshaw, a pioneer and one of the foremost playwrights to have emerged from the African continent”. Part of what it has elected to do in order to keep Henshaw’s legacy alive include to promote the understanding of African culture through literature and drama, encourage inter-cultural dialogue and literary debate, promote emerging African writers, and initiate, and support projects where young people can engage in creative activities.

That’s the way to go. If the government cannot honour these giants, it behoves us, as beneficiaries of their creative ingenuity, to begin to do something, however little, to immortalise them. It’s only then we can beat our chest and say, truly, the labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain.

 

Keeping hope alive for younger Nigerian writers

CHUKS OLUIGBO

The road to the top of the writing career in Nigeria is fraught with a lot of challenges. Sometimes it is a mix of high and low moments, sadness and joy, disappointments and successes; and at other times it is just one straight sad story. But with hard work, diligence, patience, perseverance, perspicacity, and sometimes an element of luck, one can still make a success of it.

The problem is that many younger Nigerian writers, those who are based in Nigeria, seem too impatient. They are often in a haste to publish and in the process make a lot of regrettable mistakes. The other problem is that once they fail in that first attempt, they begin to think the door is permanently shut; that there is absolutely no hope for them to even raise their heads above the level where they are. They blame the harsh Nigerian environment; and they conclude that they won’t succeed unless they travel overseas. Then they justify their stance with ready names of writers who, according to them, wouldn’t have succeeded if they hadn’t travelled to Oyibo man’s country.

Well, there may be some merit in the argument about one environment being more conducive than the other. However, it doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell us, for instance, that while for a number of Nigerian writers we only heard about them when they found themselves outside the country, the general rule is that many others started here, made a success of their writing career here, and won international laurels while still here. Thereafter, some relocated overseas while others stayed back, keeping the fire alive. It doesn’t also tell us that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which has today been translated into over 50 world languages, was written right here in Nigeria; nor does it say that that masterpiece was actually rejected a number of times before Heinemann eventually reluctantly accepted to publish it. And it doesn’t tell us that Helon Habila, author of the award-winning Waiting for an Angel (Commonwealth Writers Prize for New Writing) and Measuring Time (the Caine Prize), began his writing career here.

A little about Helon Habila. Born in Kaltungo, present-day Gombe State, Helon first worked as a teacher in Bauchi before moving over to Lagos, where he first wrote for Hints Magazine, and then Vanguard. Interestingly, Helon wrote Waiting for an Angel while in Nigeria and won the Commonwealth Prize from here, before proceeding to the UK for a fellowship, then a PhD, and then to the United States as the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College.

In a brief chat with him in Abuja during the 2010 Fidelity Creative Writing Workshop which he facilitated, and in which I happened to be one of the about 20 participants, Helon told me that, in his reckoning, up-and-coming Nigerian writers have better chances of making it today than he had when he was an aspiring writer.

“We have a democracy now, even though it is not where we want it to be. But basically, things are freer now. There are actually indigenous publishing companies that publish, places like Cassava Republic and Farafina. There weren’t any when I was trying to get published in 1999/2000. So, it was bleaker. Plus there was a dictatorship then; you couldn’t think; you had no freedom; you couldn’t do what you wanted to do. But now I think it’s much better,” Helon said in that interview.

“Now they have models. There are people like Chimamanda Adichie who have done it. And if you want to look at men, there are people like me who have done it, people like Bi Bandele, and so on. So, they can actually not say that they can’t do it because it’s not been done, or because it’s impossible. They have exemplars, they have people who have done it, and we started from here. It’s not as if I was born in America or London, no; or I wrote my book there, no. Actually, I lived here and I wrote it here and I got it published here. People like Tricia Nwaubani are even living here now and they’ve won Commonwealth prizes. So, I think things are better than they were, and any other person who wants to do this has no excuse not to achieve, or not to go as far as the skies, if that is what you want,” he added.

Very reassuring words for the conscientious aspiring writer! And you can add a list of other Nigerian writers who live here and are making a success of their career right here in Nigeria. You can also add that the NLNG-sponsored Nigeria Prize for Literature has over the years virtually been won by home-based writers, with the foreign league occasionally strolling in. That’s a big statement. So, unless you decide to kill the spirit, just know that you can get to where you want to, no matter your location, if you work hard at it.

One more thing: don’t be discouraged if publishers do not readily accept to publish your work. And don’t abuse them. Don’t complain that they only accept works from known writers. Just try to understand with them. Think of it, these publishing companies are in business; they are taking on writers that can guarantee quick return on their investment. If you were in their shoes you’d probably do the same. Just keep writing, and keep using online platforms to push out your works. Someday, if you work hard enough, and if you stand out, publishers will be falling over themselves to publish your book.

In concluding, the words of Akachi Ezeigbo, accomplished writer and professor of English at the University of Lagos, in a recent interview I had with her, come in handy: “You see, writing is not all about producing a manuscript and rushing to the publisher or the printing press to print it out. There is a kind of programme that any work must pass through for it to come out well. That’s why there are publishers. Overseas they have literary agents and editors before the publisher comes in. A book really has to go through these processes if it has to come out well. But when you just produce a manuscript this year, and you are in too much of a hurry, three months you go and print it, no matter how talented you are, that book will suffer some disadvantages. Many people may be having this problem because they are too impatient; not because they are not writing well, but because they are not following due process. There is due process in writing too. There are trained editors, and you need to let them see your work. There are publishing houses in Nigeria which have good editors, and if they publish you, they are not in a hurry. So, I think the writer should be more patient and tarry a while to edit and re-edit before publishing.”

I rest my pen!

Seriously, writing is serious business

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Never mind that we like to treat it like some piece of bullshit in these parts, creative writing is serious business. And never mind that we live in a part of the world where someone asks you what you do and you say you’re a writer and the person insists, “I know you write, but what do you do for a living?” All this happens because big organisations here don’t always like to put money down when it comes to intellectually-enriching projects, but they like to invest so much money in projects that do not necessarily edify society. A young writer friend of mine has asked me several times over what lessons young people like him are supposed to learn from all the trending ‘Big Brother’ reality TV shows – that you can bathe naked in front of the camera and win a huge amount at the end of the day? I’m still at a loss regarding what to answer him.

Meanwhile, just the other day I came across the following on a friend’s Facebook wall: “MTN Project Fame: N7.5 million + SUV; Etisalat Nigerian Idol: N5 million; Glo Naija Sings: N5 million + SUV; Gulder Ultimate Search: N10 million + SUV; Maltina Dance All: N10 million + SUV; Cowbell Mathematics Competition: N100,000; Lagos State Spelling Bee competition: N50,000; Schools' scrabble: N25,000; Cool FM spelling game: a goodie bag filled with Amila drink – and you're asking why there's so much failure in WAEC?”

Funny as the above may sound, it’s nonetheless true. I’m not saying it is bad behaviour to sponsor music contests that eventually discover new talents, but why can’t literature get a share of the big dough? Don’t creative writers deserve big money too? In September this year, my good friend Chidozie Chukwubuike, chairman of the Imo State branch of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), organised a state convention themed ‘When poets speak truth to power’. In a chat with him prior to the event, Chukwubuike told me all the efforts he had put in and how difficult it had been for him to get any corporate organisation, government or individual to commit to the funding of the programme. “It is very unfortunate that not many individuals or organisations are eager to commit money to the promotion of literature,” he lamented. “I wish our people can realise that literature is the surest instrument for the attainment of immortality and no investment in it can be too much.”

So, why do we not often like to fund literary activities in this country? Do we think that Nigerian youths will not appreciate well-organised poetry performances or short story readings or drama presentations? We lie. It is because we have not bothered. Do you know how many Nigerian youths that apply for the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop facilitated by Chimamanda Adichie or the Fidelity Bank Creative Writing Workshop facilitated by Helon Habila on a yearly basis? Thousands. And that the maiden edition of the Etisalat Prize for Flash Fiction last year drew over 400 entries speaks to that fact that Nigerians are indeed lovers of literature.

I repeat, creative writing is serious business and must be seen as such. Those who know this know. And I’m not talking about Wole Soyinka or Chinua Achebe or Ben Okri or Helon Habila or even Chimamanda Adichie. Virtually every year in the last decade or so, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has made some Nigerian writers richer by a few millions (in naira, of course) through the Nigeria Prize for Literature, so far considered the largest African literary prize and one of the richest literary prizes in the world. Since it was instituted in 2004, the prize has produced the following winners: Gabriel Okara (The Dreamer: His Vision) and Ezenwa Ohaeto (Chants of a Minstrel) in 2005; Ahmed Yerima (Hard Ground) in 2006; Mabel Segun (Reader’s Theatre) and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (My Cousin Sammy) in 2007; Kaine Agary (Yellow, Yellow) in 2008; Esiaba Irobi (Cemetery Road) in 2010; Mai Nasara (The Missing Clock) in 2011; Chika Unigwe (On Black Sisters' Street) in 2012; Tade Ipadeola (The Sahara Testaments) in 2013; and Sam Ukala (Iredi War) in 2014. At inception, the prize was $20,000. It was increased to $30,000 in 2006, $50,000 in 2008, and $100,000 in 2011.

Etisalat has keyed in through the Etisalat Prize for Literature instituted in 2013, though the prize is Africa-wide. ANA national has over the years struggled to sustain its annual literary prizes, though the cash prizes have remained meagre and the number of awards seems to be whittling down due largely to non-redemption of prizes by most sponsors. And there are pockets of smaller literary prizes springing up here and there.

But beyond these, individual Nigerians who know that writing is serious business have taken the bull by the horns. Come December 6, for instance, Joy Isi Bewaji, author, publicist and media entrepreneur, who had earlier hosted a workshop she tagged ‘The Business of Writing’, would be staging a literati concert tagged #‎ThisArtIsEnough at Terra Kulture in Lagos. The concert, which promises to bring on stage about 50 authors, poets, afro/soul singers, spoken word artistes, stage performers, flash fiction writers and art lovers, will feature flash fiction, book readings, poetry, drama, alternate music, recitals, short stories, spoken word and arty performances. Uche Peter Umez, Toni Kan, Wana Udobang, Onyeka Nwelue, among other writers are expected to feature at the event, which will afford writers an opportunity to meet their audience, build their fan base, and sell their work.

“Because we need these alternatives beyond AY comedy shows or Rhythm Unplugged or Trace Music concert,” writes Bewaji on her Facebook wall, “I ask the question: what about me? A writer who is tired of recycled jokes, who isn’t interested in walking through the Atlantic sand to listen to Dbanj sing ‘Why me?’ What about me – defined under ‘new writing’, in love with fashion, good men, dark movies, and involved in cheeky easy reads, working out new methods of getting my voice beyond just a few dreadlocked clan? I create what I want. So I created ‪#‎ThisArtIsEnough.”

Kudos to Joy Isi Bewaji for the initiative. We truly need these alternatives to the regular “sound and fury” that often signify nothing. Just imagine what #‎ThisArtIsEnough would turn out to be if any of the telcos that are harvesting huge profits in this country – or any other big business for that matter – agrees to inject a few millions into it and make it an annual event! Just imagine!

Lagos as the Mother City: A Review of Olasupo Shasore’s Possessed – A History of Law and Justice in the Crown Colony of Lagos, 1861-1906

By CHUKS OLUIGBO

When you have read Olasupo Shasore’s Possessed – A History of Law and Justice in the Crown Colony of Lagos, 1861-1906, you would no longer be in doubt regarding the special status of Lagos within the Nigerian context. While it has never been in question that the Kingdom of Lagos by far predates modern-day Nigeria, it has perhaps never before come out so glaringly that Lagos was indeed an independent, sovereign nation-state before the British invasion and bombardment of 1851, more than half a century before the term Nigeria was coined by Flora Shaw.

 

To do justice to the subject matter, the author divides the book into eight chapters, namely, The Lagos Kingdom in the Law Courts, 26 Upper King Street – Legal and Traditional Settings, Bombardment and War on Lagos 1851, The 19^th Century Treaties, To Do Justice to this Place – Legal History, Challenge To Authority – The Eleko, Land and Property Ownership, and The Sun Sets on The Colony of Lagos. He goes further to add an ‘Afterword’ and ‘Appendices’ as well as reproduce pictures and documents that not only embellish the work but also aid the reader’s understanding of facts.

The beauty of Shasore’s account lies essentially in its close attention to detail – no detail is too minute to escape the thorough researcher in him. The author records that by 1850, Lagos had an estimated population of 30,000 people who predominantly spoke the Oyo dialect of what was to be later widely referred to as Yoruba. The small port city-state was a monarchy ruled by the Ologun (or possibly Eleko or later Oba), and its political power structure rested on this dynastic line, a line that had by this time been in continuous rule for over 200 years. And so, Lagos is not a ‘no man’s land’, and to continue to bandy such falsehood reflects “poor learning, ignorance and mischief”.

The contribution of Lagos to the making of modern Nigeria comes out clearly in Possessed. Having severed itself from the Benin Kingdom and asserted its independence by discontinuing the payment of tributes to the Oba at Benin, and having by this time acquired great prominence and wealth, Lagos proved too powerful to be challenged by any local authority. It took only the superior naval power of Britain to subdue Lagos, but not without stiff resistance from the Lagos Africans. The British bombarded Lagos in 1851, and in 1861 took active possession of the island city-state with the fraud called the Treaty of Cession of 1861. With the establishment of formal authority, it became, effectively, The Crown Colony of Lagos, “with a flag, its own constitution, government and subjects, some 53 years before the establishment of Nigeria”. The need to harness the resources of Lagos would in 1906 lead to its forced amalgamation with the Southern Protectorate, and in 1914, the absence of funds to run the Northern Protectorate necessitated the creation of Nigeria through amalgamation in order, it would appear, to run the whole country with resources from Lagos.

So, whether in the pre-colonial, colonial or post-colonial era, Lagos played – and continues to play – “a prominent, inevitable, eminent role” in West African trade and society as well as in the making of modern Nigeria. As Shasore argues, “Without Lagos and the events that led to intervention in its internal affairs, the entire atmosphere for amalgamation may not have been contrived. In some ways, Lagos is the mother city. This is no less than Lagos deserves, for it endured its own tribulations in the constituent formation of Nigeria” (p.22).    

As he says elsewhere in the book, had there not been first the Lagos Consulate and then the first imperial colony established by the British in the Gulf of Guinea area in 1861, there may not have been, in all likelihood, the country which some 50 years later was to be known as Nigeria, at least as we now know it.

Again, Possessed throws up an alternative narrative regarding the true reason behind British ‘possession’ of Lagos (for, indeed, Lagos was a British possession from 1861). And contrary to what Eurocentric historians would have us believe, the author argues, with evidence-backed facts, that Lagos was never ceded to the British (for cession implies a voluntary handover of territory), but that it was taken possession of by armed force, and that the people of Lagos resisted this possession vehemently. The method of taking possession of Lagos was itself fraught with a lot of bloodshed, a fact that was hitherto un-narrated in books on colonial Lagos.

As the author mentions in the Preface, “The British-controlled narrative of the justification for the bombardment and related events has consistently been the taking over of a slave haven; deposing a usurper king and the saving grace of the British invaders. That narrative is not without some self-serving interest. In any event, we do however see an alternative narrative, that is, a dynastic struggle and legitimate claim for the throne, an imperial quest for an important developing economic harbour and the determined, resistant people of Lagos” (p.6). He goes on to show, through records, especially the minute records of Lord Palmerston, then prime minister and former secretary of state for foreign affairs, that the actual overwhelming British objective in Lagos was trade.

The nomenclature ‘Lagos Africans’ comes out very glaringly, for the first time ever, to refer to people who lived within the territory of Lagos at the time. Of course, it couldn’t have been otherwise for to talk about Nigeria before 1914 is to sound anachronistic. In fact, as the author highlights, names such as Goldesia (in honour of George Goldie) and Negrettia were considered, until Flora Shaw, Lugard’s girlfriend, came up with the name Nigeria.

The author does not mince words in condemning colonialism, which he rightly equates to apartheid. “Colonialism and apartheid are kindred,” he writes in page 273 of the book. “Apartheid’s racial segregation was an obnoxious and abhorrent system; colonialism – the legal establishment, exploitation, acquisition and possession of a territory by foreign power – is no less pernicious. Racial segregation and colonialism are inextricable. It manifested in colonial (white) hospitals, European recreation clubs and racial residential segregation.”

Shasore’s passion for Lagos runs through the eight chapters and 313 pages of Possessed, but this passion does not becloud his sense of judgment or lead him to unduly romanticise the subject matter. But like a thorough-bred scholar, and like the legal luminary (being a Senior Advocate of Nigeria) that he is, he rigorously searches out for evidence, in form of records, body of laws, treaties, legal instruments, decided judicial cases, public inquiries, parliamentary hearings, and other legal material hitherto available in different sources. These records turn out to be “priceless in giving real insight into the motives and motivations of the principal persons that brought about and sustained the colony during its existence” (p.7). This medley of legal stories also has the added advantage, in the author’s words, of offering “an unassailable record from which there can only be a dispute as to interpretation but not on facts, a view that a pure historical analysis may not provide” (p.24). After all, it is not accidental that the book is subtitled A History of Law and Justice.

If the whole essence of scholarship is to add to existing body of knowledge, share new information, and illuminate hitherto dark corners, then Possessed has succeeded as a great work of scholarship. But it has also achieved much more. As Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos writes in the Foreword, “Not only does this book share new information, it assists us all with a clear picture of the special status of Lagos in the creation of our country. It sets the scene of a bitter battle fought by the people of Lagos to resist conquest by foreigners and presents a more accurate view of the infamous but false giving-away of Lagos by one of its rulers. It even gives us a sense of the lack of certainty in the mind of the colonisers as to how to execute the plan of possession.”

But no single work of research can claim to have said everything that there is to say about a particular subject matter. And so, Shasore admits to me in an interview, “There are a lot of things that I reflect now that perhaps I could have included, but the truth is that you have to draw the line, otherwise you will never be able to get to the end of this sort of exercise. I hope this is going to be the first in a three-part series, and I hope I will have the time to reflect on some of those things as I go along.”

All in all, Possessed is one great book that every Nigerian must endeavour to read.

The artist in Kaye Whiteman

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Kaye Whiteman, in a Q&A session published on the Africa Centre website dated February 1, 2012, was asked what he would say had inspired him to take up writing/in his writing career. “From very young an involvement with words,” he answered.

Anyone who encountered Kaye Whiteman in any of his works in all the years he lived as a journalist and a writer couldn’t agree more. Whiteman was a master of words. He did not just use words – he engaged with words. A firm believer in Alexander Pope’s maxim that “Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found”, he was very economical with words, picking them with much care and precision, the same way a conscientious painter would pick colours.

Kaye was indeed a wordsmith. His fascination with words was evident in all his writings. In one of his BusinessDay columns he entitled “Summits remembered”, this was how Whiteman describes the frustrations a journalist sometimes faces trying to cover one of those high-powered summits: “Memories of hours of boredom surge back – of ante-chambers, sofa-bestrewn lounges littered with a thousand coffee cups or corridors (and cooped up in the increasingly stifling confines of media centres), waiting for the inevitable release of a communiqué, or tight-lipped conferences. It sometimes conjures up semi-religious rituals – each organisation playing the role of a church, with secular cardinals, bishops and their minions releasing indulgences and other spiritual placebos to the wondering masses, in this case the motley media gang with their cameras and notebooks, now increasingly furnished with arrays of digital gadgets.”

Born into a family of journalists, Kaye began his journalism career in 1960 and was immersed in the world of writing for over 50 years. “I come from a family of journalists and I see no reason why I should not become one. But I did have two interludes, including international bureaucracy, which was a mystery to me and still remains a mystery. I was at the Commonwealth Secretariat with the former Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoku. It was a new dimension to me, but essentially, I am a writer,” he once told an audience.

And an excellent writer he was. In his masterpiece on Lagos, entitled Lagos: A Cultural and Historical Companion, Whiteman pays close attention to detail in a very striking, remarkable way. As I wrote in a review of the book titled ‘Inside Kaye Whiteman’s Lagos’, “The book is clearly the work of a thorough-bred historian and articulate, eagle-eyed researcher before whom nothing is lost and to whom no detail is considered of less importance. Whiteman puts the tools of his training in historiography to good use, combining primary and secondary sources in good measure, adopting a fusion of narrative, analytical and descriptive techniques, and presenting his findings in free-flowing prose that makes the work a reader’s delight. This free flow also has the consequence – perhaps unintended – of making the book racy, more like the fast-paced city that Lagos is.”

But his fascination went beyond involvement with words. He was an artist through and through. His interest spanned through all of the arts – history, journalism, culture, music, art, literature, film, theatre, etc. Much of this comes out glaringly in the book on Lagos, where Whiteman dedicates chapters to Lagos in literature, music, film, art, and, ultimately, to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti as “the archetypal Lagos boy”.

In exploring Lagos as a city of imagination, Whiteman x-rays the many representations of Lagos in works of literature across the generations, the journalist as a hero in Nigerian fiction and non-fiction, as well as the history and development of the media industry in Lagos, beginning from the 1860s with the “short-lived Anglo-African” owned by Jamaican immigrant Robert Campbell, through Iwe Irohin, a Yoruba-language paper produced in Abeokuta by missionaries from 1859-1867, Herbert Macaulay’s Lagos Daily News, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, among others.

On the representations of Lagos in works of fiction, particular mention is made of Cyprian Ekwensi’s early works, especially Iska, Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People, T. M. Aluko’s Kinsman and Foreman and Conduct Unbecoming, Flora Nwapa’s 1971 book of short stories, This is Lagos, Wole Soyinka’s Interpreters, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s play, The Transistor Radio, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain, Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel, etc.

In the chapter on ‘Music, Film, Art and the Havens in the Wilderness’, Kaye Whiteman showcases the art enthusiast in him, incorporating his personal adventures in the potpourri of music, literature, entertainment, art, culture, film and night life that is Lagos. He explores the origins of such music genres as Sakara, Asiko, Juju, Highlife, etc, citing generously the musicologist John Collins, Christopher Alan Waterman, Bobby Benson, among others. Such names as the mandolin-playing Tunde King, the guitarist Ayinde Bakare, the drummer Lamidi George, Isaiah Kehinde Dairo, King Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Victor Uwaifo, Nico Mbarga, Victor Olaiya, E. C. Arinze, Cardinal Rex Lawson, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lagbaja, Osita Osadebe, Roy Chicago, etc also prop up. Musical venues, art galleries (which the author refers to as “havens in the wilderness”), the bars, and the cinemas also come into perspective.

Particularly intriguing was the sub-chapter ‘The Night Club as Metaphor’, which also relates to Lagos nightclubs as represented in Nigerian fiction. Such works as Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (where there is a nightclub called “the Imperial”) and Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows (where we encounter “Champagne” nightclub) are mentioned. But in all, Maik Nwosu’s Alpha Song stands out. As the author admits, “The nightclub known as The Owl in Maik Nwosu’s Alpha Song is one of the most striking in all Nigerian fiction as it is a focus for all the alienation expressed by the novel’s hero, as if only in a nightclub can he find existential ease. This is where the role of the nightclub in Nigerian fiction becomes truly emblematic as a kind of symbol of the Nigerian condition, a place of shadowy ‘managers of the night’ who people the novel.”

But beyond the fictional nightclubs, Kaye was also captivated with the real-life ‘Kakadu nightclub’, dedicating a full page of the book to spirit and soul of ‘Kakadu’, which he describes as “a well-remembered icon among West African open-air night-clubs, the memory of which still deserves eulogy”.

In his column in BusinessDay, where he wrote about ‘Kakadu the Musical’ – an exciting, inspirational and moving musical play that takes its name from the famous Lagos nightclub of the 1960s, written by Uche Nwokedi, a prominent oil and gas lawyer – Whiteman recalls being taken to Kakadu the nightclub by Peter Enahoro, then editor of Daily Times. “It was October 1965 and I had just been in Ibadan covering the Western Nigerian election, and the tension still in the air formed a poignant background to the club’s enjoyment and its memorable highlife music plangent in the night air. I wasn’t to know then, but this was the Kakadu which, in Nwokedi’s idea, was a symbol of unity, indeed a ‘metaphor for Nigeria’ in its years of crisis and civil war which were already about to break,” he wrote.

Following the release of the book, he was in Lagos last year where he was hosted by the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA). The event held at Kongi’s Art Gallery, Freedom Park, and served as an occasion for conversations around the book on Lagos.

During that visit, Whiteman, then 77, told his audience, “I have found more fulfilment in finally being able to write the book that I have written. I have written so many articles in some publications but now that I have done this book, I feel able to do more. I can do two, three more books. I have my memoirs to do,” adding, “Just like a famous song, in my mind I feel 25. At some points I have been unwell. I did some surgery. I carry on doing what I am inspired to do. In the past 10 years I have concentrated in writing. When I was the editor-in-chief of West Africa, I was also writing books.”

He also had interest in poetry and even did a song. “I did a song and I have done poetry, which I hope to publish in future. There is a song I intend to perform with Tunde Kuboye. It is titled ‘Oyinbo where you dey go?’” he once said.

Beyond Lagos: A Cultural and Historical Companion, he also edited a book of extracts from the magazine, West Africa Over 75 Years, and co-edited The EU and Africa: From Eurafrique to Afro-Europa – a book of essays that confront the historical, political, socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of the European Union's relationship with Africa – with Adekeye Adebajo.

Kaye Whiteman arrived in Lagos in 1964 as a young journalist with influential West Africa magazine and began writing for Daily Times, during which period he covered the Nigerian Civil War. He worked as editor, then editor-in-chief, of West Africa. During this period, he developed expertise in West African affairs and subsequently wrote on the sub-region (particularly Nigeria) and Africa with much authority, understanding and affection that were rarely found among Western writers on Africa.

Kaye was head of Information for the old European Economic Community (EEC) which became the European Union (EU), as well as head of the Information and Public Affairs Division in the Commonwealth Secretariat, serving under Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku in the late 1990s.

Until his death on Saturday, May 17, 2014, aged 78, Whiteman was a weekly columnist in BusinessDay, Nigeria’s leading business and financial newspaper.