Many will look back
at 1930 and say, “It was a very good year.” That year, renowned
children’s author, Mabel Segun, was born months before another Nigerian
literary great, Chinua Achebe. Eighty years on, fans, friends and
family gathered to celebrate Mabel Segun on March 2.
Described as the
mother of children’s literature in Nigeria, the award-winning writer’s
children organised a birthday celebration for her at Terra Kulture in
Lagos. Amongst those gathered in her honour were students, writers and
fellow octogenarians.
Performance tributes
Businessman and
arts patron, Rasheed Gbadamosi, was chairman of the occasion. “Femi
Segun has a way of ambushing me,” Gbadamosi said, referring to the MC
and son of the celebrant. The renowned author’s son had chosen
Gbadamosi because “he is also a writer.”
“It’s very difficult for me to say no to him, especially if it has something to do with our mother, Mabel Segun.
“Mama has done very
well for feminism, for literary activism, for plays, for poetry, for
essays. The task you (referring to the students) face is that you
emulate her and try to surpass her.”
He had nothing but
praise for the Aig Imoukhede family, which the celebrant was born into.
Hailing the intellect of Frank Aig-Imoukhede, also a writer and Segun’s
brother, “Who would not want to belong to that family with all their
achievements?” asked Gbadamosi.
A series of
readings and performances followed the chairman’s address. Poet, Jumoke
Verissimo, read a poem titled ‘Mama’ by Akeem Lasisi, a poem she found
“very appropriate because it catches what exactly I feel in my mind,”
considering how privileged she was to be at the event. The poem was
about the rarity of a good mother and the joy felt when such is found.
Also, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo read her poem, ‘Ode to the successful
Woman Writer’ from her collection ‘Heartsongs.’
The poem, in which
she refers to the woman writer as “queen of letters”, was dedicated to
Mabel Segun, joint winner with Adimora-Ezeigbo of the NLNG Prize for
Children’s literature in 2007. She also said it was an honour to
celebrate a woman she had admired for many years. She called her a role
model, a mentor and a symbol of women’s empowerment. “I want to thank
her for being my friend. I will always see her as a role model and the
kind of woman that we need in this country. She’s strong, she’s
accomplished, she’s successful, she’s articulate, she’s everything,”
Adimora-Ezeigbo said.
The Crown Troupe of
Africa staged, ‘Our Area’ a dance performance chronicling the history
of Nigeria and the constant problems that affect it, probably because
its citizens refuse to think. And even when they do think, things just
do not seem to be able to work, the performance suggested.
They ended their performance with a special rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ in honour of Mabel Segun.
The students of
Methodist Girls High School performed ‘Moremi’, one of Segun’s earlier
plays. They serenaded the celebrant with the cultural song ‘Iya ni
Wura.’ It was a befitting tribute to Segun’s dedication to promoting
culture amongst the youth through her writing.
Fellow writer,
Mobolaji Adenubi, also paid tribute to Segun in a humorous anecdote
that involved her father. “When I went to school in 1963 in Ibadan, my
father mentioned that there was a writer and a sports woman (there) and
I think he thought that just breathing the air of Ibadan with her would
make me like her.” She said of when she convinced her father that she
had indeed met and worked with Segun, “He had this opinion of her and
did not think it was fair for me and her to be working in the same
place. Now, I think you will agree that it is fair for us to be
celebrating her today.”
It runs in the family
Omowunmi Segun,
also a poet and daughter of the celebrant, read her mother’s poem
titled ‘The Bride Price.’ Verissimo accompanied the younger Segun in
reading the dual voices of the poem — a humorous piece on evaluating a
bride’s value based on her education, her skills or her ‘quality.’ It
ends on the question of a possible refund considering that the goods
might have been damaged before purchase.
Nine-year-old
Oluwafikemi Segun, granddaughter to the celebrant and daughter to Femi
Segun, overcame cold feet before reading her ode to her grandma titled,
‘Lovely Grandma.’ Someone could not help quipping, “It runs in the
family.” Femi Segun called her “a chip off the old block off the old
block.”
His comic attempt
at reciting Wole Soyinka’s ‘Abiku’, however, got hooked midway
considering he was trying to recall it from his secondary school days.
This is your life
A short film on
Mabel Segun’s life followed Oluwafikemi’s reading. The film ‘This is
Your Life at 80: An Exquisite Tapestry’ was a biography of Mabel Segun,
from birth till date. True to the words of Oluwafikemi’s poem, her hair
was never a mess. The film traced the older Segun’s early days as a
writer, sportswoman, ambassador, administrator and academic, and
followed her across various continents. Apparently, the celebrant had
had a penchant for collecting dolls from every country she’d visited.
The tributes
weren’t done yet. Odia Ofeimun read ‘Pidgin Soup’, a poem he said was
“given” to him by Segun’s brother, Frank Aig-Imoukhede, renowned for
writing in Pidgin English. Ofeimun said, “Mabel Segun may be 80, but
she ought to know that we won’t stop quarrelling with her because of
that. If we are no longer able to quarrel with Mabel Segun and she’s no
longer able to quarrel with us, what kind of Mabel Segun would that be?
One great thing about this great woman is that she picked the way she
was going to live and she was not afraid to stand by it.”
He advised women
writers to overcome any challenge in the way of their creativity, be it
their children, their husbands or “a stupid society.”
It was time for the
matriarch herself to speak. She read the first from her personalized
cookery book, which took 18 years to write. The author described the
recently-published cookery book as ‘Rhapsody: A celebration of Nigerian
cooking and food culture’, as one depicting “many aspects of Nigerian
cooking culture” such as “food taboos, food proverbs, food festivals,
food chants and so on.”
Denouncing the dull
marketing skills of some food vendors, Segun broke into a sonorous
chant heralding the advent of the moin-moin seller. She read a poem she
had written about boiled corn, before engaging pupils from Meadow Hall
School in performing a musical sketch about life in the riverine areas
from her ‘Readers’ Theatre’ collection.
The students,
thereafter, presented the author with birthday greetings, and gathered
round her for pictures before the cutting of the cake which was
supervised by fellow octogenarian, Bimbola Silva, an 84-year-old
medical consultant and mother to popular actress Joke Silva.
Both were in the
audience which also included Kunle Ajibade of The News Publications,
members of the Aig-Imoukhede family, female lawyer Hairat Balogun, Yeni
Kuti, former Presidential adviser Modupe Sasore, advertising guru Bruce
Ovbiagele and his wife, Helen, who is also a writer, and Paul
Adefarasin of the House on The Rock Church.
Commenting on the
celebration, Adenubi said, “It is important that we hear all these
beautiful things they say about us before we die. When we die, they say
all these things but we have no ears to hear. I congratulate her
children (for) making it possible for her to hear all of these good
things in her lifetime. May she live long to celebrate this life.”
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