i be naija

On my taxicab ride from O’Hare today, the driver no sooner asked for my destination and bawled fluent Yoruba over his cell phone than inserted a Fela CD into the vehicle’s CD player.

While I have heard Fela’s indictment of Obasanjo, Nigeria’s two-time president, for killing (or at least having to do with the killing of) his mother during Obasanjo’s first presidency in the 70s, I (and I suspect many Nigerians in their characteristic complacency) have not really, and I mean truly, fully absorbed the import of Fela’s charge.

Perhaps I was roused by Fela’s lamentations of the murder of his mother by the fact that I only just finished reading Wole Soyinka’s childhood autobiography, Ake—in which he recounts Mrs. Kuti’s valiant headship of a women’s liberation movement in colonial (i.e., pre-independence) Western Nigeria, that rendered the Alake, the King of Egbaland, the white District Officer, and the at once feared and revered Ogboni, all summarily impotent.

Did Obasanjo kill this woman of whom Soyinka wrote? The one that dared lambaste (to my utter joy) the insolent white colonial D. O. with the riposte,

You may have been born, but you were not bred. Would you talk to your mother like that?

The one that inspired the march on, and siege of, the Aafin, the palace of the Alake? Did dark-hearted, cowards of men, on orders of President Obasanjo and his vice Yar’Adua, really throw Fela’s mother off a balcony onto her death?

Countries and cities vie to host global events like the Olympics, the World Cup, the Miss World pageant, etc., in hopes that the literal convergence of the world onto that geographic space will translate into some real contribution to the local economy, etc., etc.

It leaves one really, truly aghast then, when the argument purportedly advanced by “the spokesman for the Nigeria[n] Olympic Committee (NOC)” to support his country’s bid for hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014 is the need to:

… celebrate the centenary of the unification of its northern and southern protectorate[s].

This refers, but of course, to the British “amalgamation” of northern and southern Nigeria in 1914. BUT… What exactly are we celebrating? The invasion, violation, and exploitation of the peoples inhabiting the Nigerian space circa 1914? Or the arbitrary drawing and re-drawing of geo-political maps and interventions into those peoples’ collective fortunes?

What an absolute goon.

According to BBC News, Nigerian Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential contender, Umaru Yar’Adua (pictured) was flown to Germany last week after he collapsed at a campaign rally.

In other words, the man collapsed out of I’ll bet, no more than mere exhaustion, and had to be rushed—not down the street, or to the next town, or to a neighbouring country—but half way across the world, to an entirely different continent, to be attended to. What does this say about the state of Medicine (amongst a host of other things) in Nigeria? Or, does this reflect the Nigerian perception of local products and services relative to foreign ones? Perhaps it’s a combination of both and many other factors?

How much of an indictment is this of the Nigerian leadership?

Read the Poem, Abiku, by Charles O.

Background

To the uninitiated, Abiku can be a rather daunting piece. This is so because an understanding of the meaning and implications of the Abiku concept is necessary for a proper understanding of the poem.

If the belief in the supernatural is all-pervasive in traditional African culture, then the belief in the inimical and diabolic variant is even more insidiously ingrained in that tradition. Abiku (figuratively “born to die”) in Yoruba lore refers to one such malevolent spirit who appropriates and insinuates a woman’s womb to be born and re-born, for the singular purpose of unleashing recurring tumult on such a woman. The woman, then, conceives, carries the pregnancy to term, delivers, only for the child, Abiku, to die within the first few years of its birth.

In some cases though, the spirit-baby pities her mother and decides to stay permanently.

The poem Abiku explores the travails of a woman who has birthed several Abiku. Each conception brought her an unnerving admixture of “elation and despair”. Indeed, she inhabited, perpetually, the twilight between exaltation and grief: in one year she would conceive, in another, deliver, and in a few more yet, mourn the death of the child. The poem captures a moment when our protagonist, pregnant again, sits on her windowsill and gazes at the night sky. Crying silently, she prays the gods to have mercy on her, and have Abiku stay this time. As though in assurance of a new resolution, the child stirs within.

Imagery & Symbolism

“Death” and “rebirth,” “emergence” and “spiral … into abyssal depths,” “elation” and “despair,” “arrivals” and “departures,” are imageries at odds with each other. We sense antagonistic forces—life and death, emergence and downward spiral, et cetera—engaged in tense battles, as though for their very own continuity.

The “accentuation” of the protagonist’s belly by the night’s full moon provides another striking imagery. For one, both are round; for another, both are, literally, full. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, just as the full moon heralds the dawning of a new day, the woman’s full belly portends the impending arrival of a new being.

Message

Undoubtedly, there are as many interpretations of a poem as there are readers of it. One of the messages I take away from the poem though is that, just as the protagonist, who had suffered repeatedly at Abiku’s hands, clung obstinately to the hopes of having a child that would survive past infancy, we all must remain steadfast to our higher aspirations in spite of (or, even, because of) the odds. We must, indeed, never resign ourselves to the accident of chance, or worse, fate.

Even in the face of forces seemingly outside of her control, our protagonist expressed hope for an eventual breakthrough (“maybe she’ll stay”) this time.

*

Rewritten from the original piece of May 9, 2002.

I should have gone fishing or skinny-dipping or window-shopping for that matter. I should have broken my resolution to abstain from clubbing… in fact, I should have done anything but sit through Bruce Willis’ latest yarn of an action movie. The experience was exasperating in its milder parts, and revolting at its crudest. I should have been watching SNL reruns.

Tears of the Sun is another Hollywood attempt to nurture the notion held by more than a few Americans (and, even more largely, Westerners) that Africa is one huge jungle, where man and beast co-exist in close proximity, and whose people are incapable of conducting the business of government without resorting to wanton massacre. Of course, it’s largely a matter of capitalism: Hollywood churns out features that sell, and features that align themselves with romanticized notions happen to sell very well. It’s a matter of giving people what they want, what reaffirms their smug convictions, and whatever makes them declare in self-adulation, ‘there goes us but for the grace of God’.

In the approximately ninety-minute feature, an “African nation” represented as Nigeria is portrayed as a massive forest (which, coincidentally, fits snugly into the West’s notion of Africa). “Nigerian” politics is reduced to a primordial tribal bloodbath perpetuated by the “Fulanis” against the “Ibos.”

Supposedly, the “Ibo” President (who, it appears, holds a part time job as a “tribal king” of sorts) is murdered by “Fulani rebels.” His son, who is “heir” to “the throne,” suddenly becomes the burden of the U.S. Navy SEALS dispatched to extract an American doctor from the “hostile” region. The juxtaposition of “presidency” and “tribal kingship” in one single man is an anachronism at best, and an aberration at worst. The variant of tribal politics depicted would have been more appropriately ascribed to another time and place.

At the very least, the plot could have been based on a fictitious nation, like Coming to America’s “Zamunda”—although this approach does not altogether address the fundamental issue at hand. Because it arbitrarily uses “Nigeria” as a label for its pitiful contrivance, Tears of the Sun is abrasive, offensive, and insolent. Additionally, it betrays the ignorance of the writers. (There are no “kings”, per se, among the Ibos, for a start.)

The people in the movie were most assuredly not Nigerians, the “native” language spoken was decidedly not a Nigerian language (and I might contend was not even a real language at all), none of the sound tracks had the faintest connection to a Nigerian ethnic group, and the quixotic jungle location was, I’ll bet, not anywhere near the Nigerian geographical space. So the epistemological question, then, is: why ascribe such an obnoxious plot to Nigeria?

To have people represented as Nigerians clad in tattered rags, referred to as refugees, and benevolently offered bits of American soldier food made me feel like running to the front of the theatre to repudiate, on the spot, the movie’s premise. If not for the release of the exasperation caused by the assault on Nigeria, I would have at least disabused the minds of viewers of the assault on their collective intelligence and sensibilities.

In the end, we are left with the impression that, once again, the caucasoid demigod has succeeded in saving the confounded African negroid from himself, as the helicopters rise in messianic ascension into the clouds. Indeed, the scene was reminiscent of the very Christ ascending into heaven, after saving wretched man from eternal damnation.

Tears of the Sun does nothing but unleash a demeaning onslaught on an African nation, and an unflattering abuse on the minds of a generation of Americans, with misrepresentations of the social and political realities of today’s Nigeria.

And, oh, the movie, if I were to assume the role of movie critic for a moment, has no real morals, hinges on warped principles, and would be receiving a rather charitable assessment if it were compared to, say, Schwarzeneggar’s Commando (which, itself, was a bad movie). Tears of the Sun is, to put it as it is, a lie.

My only regret is that my $9 (price of movie ticket) goes towards enriching a band of lying connivers.

An unending cycle
of death and rebirth;
An emergence,
destined to spiral
swiftly,
disquietingly,
into abyssal depths.

*

Eyes red and tender
from years of incessant tears;
Years,
of alternating elation and despair,
ominous arrivals, and
torturous departures.

*

Seating on the windowsill;
Gazing at the stars with tear-filled eyes…
Her belly,
accentuated by the night’s full moon.
Abiku stirs within.
Maybe she’ll stay this time;
Maybe.

© by Charles O.

See a discussion of the poem.

Occasionally, I receive unsolicited e-mail messages that I find valuable. But seldom do I receive a message that at once infuriates and propels me to pull up a blank Microsoft Word document to hash out a riposte.

But first, a salient question:

Why was it the European that enslaved the African and not the other way around?

Here is my proposition.

(But before that, a quick foreword: I have deliberately chosen to simplify and generalize here; this isn’t intended to be a doctoral thesis. I realize, for example, that there are way more people on earth than the European and the African. Nonetheless, I feel confident that it is in order for me to take the risks of simplification and generalization here.)

So on to my proposition.

Let’s go back to any arbitrary time in the history of mankind… Shall we say, the middle ages? On any arbitrary day in the middle ages, we will find it to be true that the European was more inquisitive than the African. The European observed natural phenomena, and, intrigued by them, wondered why things were the way they were? He formulated hypotheses, tested them, and validated or repudiated them. Either way, he learned something each time he went through that cycle, and accumulated (and documented), over time an increasing body of knowledge.

The African on the other hand ascribed almost everything to the supernatural. He ascribed the rain and the sun to gods. If he had a bountiful harvest, the gods must have been pleased with his sacrifice of goat’s blood and yams from earlier in the year. If he had a poor harvest, the gods were undoubtedly aggrieved, and needed to be appeased. The forests had their gods, and so did the rivers, all animals, sickness and health, poverty and wealth, and gravity. (I doubt that someone actually thought to ascribe that last one to a god, though).

But what happens once you ascribe all observable phenomena to the supernatural? You slowly asphyxiate your natural imperative to inquire and investigate. You gradually become incapable of asking, as Newton did, why the apple (or banana, to be stereotypical) fell down, and not up. You, over time, lose all ability to engage your intellect… to wrap your mind around your living environment. When you see your brother’s ailment as a curse from the gods rather than as the manifestation of some physiological imbalance, your approach to searching for a solution leads to an altogether futile endeavor.

But back to the European.

So, the European came to Africa with his astronomical wizardry (and by astronomical, I mean, “of, or relating to astronomy”), navigational genius, and his rifle. He summarily herded the African back to his homeland to slave away in farms and fields. (I know, I know, the matter was way more complex; that doesn’t matter here).

What matters though, is that the European gave the African a new religion, pointing out the sheer backwardness of paganism. This new religion wore a cloak woven of the highest grade virtue. In comparison to the black, barbaric religion of the African, the new religion was the dazzling epitome of all things white and right. Indeed, the European came to Africa with the Bible, and said to the African, “Close your eyes, let us pray.” On “Amen,” the African had the European’s Bible, and the European had the African’s land—and, dare I say, the African, himself.

Even though almost all African “nations” had “gained” “independence” by the 1960s (in other words, the European has “returned” Africa to the African—at least, apparently), the African has not, till date, returned the Bible to its owner.

Boy, has the African clung to that Bible.

But more than just clinging to the Bible, in fact, the African has so infused the European’s religion with his own brand of eccentricities, that even if he were to return the Bible, its owners would neither recognize nor accept it.
 
(By the way, I have another hypothesis about why it was the European that enslaved the African and not the other way around, but I am not going to go there. Suffice it to say though that by engaging the European with a harsher living environment than the African, nature assured the European of certain advantages… But, like I said, I am not going to go there… That is almost entirely a separate issue.)

***

So back to the reason of this write-up: that e-mail I got from my buddy, Kunle. In it, an organization called “restore-Nigeria” (do a Google search for them, if you like, I refuse to boost their search rankings by linking to them) seems to think that all of Nigeria’s woes come from one single incident: Nigeria’s hosting of the Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977. According to them,

FESTAC ’77 took place in Nigeria some thirty years ago but the negative spiritual impact unleashed on our nation still haunts us today.

Here’s their smoking gun… an irrefutable, deductively-valid inference, if there ever was one:

FESTAC ‘77 took place from 15 January – 12 February 1977. The 10th year after that (1987) was meant to be an election year in the second republic but the election never took place. Instead, we had a coup d’etat. We suffered the same fate in 1997. Coincidentally, we have a major election coming up in 2007. These facts highlight the need for us to seek God’s mercy on our nation.

And here’s their call-to-action… their prescription for Nigeria’s redemption:

To cleanse our nation of the sin of idolatry that we committed in FESTAC ’77 and restore us to the true path of ‘Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress’, we need a national call for repentance. All Nigerians need to fast and pray to God for forgiveness and restoration.

And their rationale… the clincher:

God was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah , a city whose sin was exceedingly grave, for the lives of only ten righteous people (Genesis 18: 32). He indeed spared Nineveh , a wicked city, when its people repented of their evil ways (Jonah 3: 10). God is able, and will surely restore our nation if we cry unto him in genuine repentance.

These numbskulls (I really hate ad hominem attacks, but feel I am entitled to at least this one) continue to perpetuate the disabling worldview of their forefathers by ascribing the social, political, and economic anomalies of a country, Nigeria, to the supernatural.

I will not waste your time recounting Nigeria’s problem (every Nigerian that is 3 years or older can tell you what they are). I just wish these neo-middle-age Africans would wake up and see Nigeria’s problems for what they are. I’ll tell you what Nigeria’s problems are not though… They are NOT God’s continuing backlash at us for FESTAC ’77, thirty years later.

C. E. Oyibo, out.