Nigeria Content Online

Death is a debt that every one must pay. Though the how and when, unlike debts owed a bank or some magnanimous benefactor, we may not know. Yet, we still must pay. And the why, for sure, is different from one debtor to another. However, there can be nothing as dispiriting as knowing that you are going to die, as well as the manner and time of death.

For Kenule Saro Wiwa, the Nigerian writer, theatre producer, and environmentalist, it was a mixture of all, as re-enacted in Adinoyi Ojo Onukaba’s play ‘The Killing Swamp’, where the playwright, using his creative licence, digs dramatically into the final moments of the late Ogoni activist’s life.

The play, directed by Chidi Ukwu, was staged in Abuja on Saturday, November 13, by an Abuja-based theatre company, Arojah Royal Theatre. It was to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of that execution, spearheaded by the then military ruler, Sani Abacha, an act that was widely condemned by the international community.

Patrick Otoro is Ken Saro Wiwa

The audience in Abuja, largely populated by members of the international community, was held spellbound by the delivery and interpretation of Patrick Otoro, who played the role of Kenule.

“The performance was so real that I felt like I was witnessing the exact incident as it happened… Kenule is a very strong character and the actor succeeded in arresting the audience,” said Yoash, an Isreali in the audience.

He revealed that it was his first time watching a stage play since arriving Nigeria; and added that the lady sitting beside him was close to tears and murmuring repeatedly: “Did they really did that to him?”

Otoro, who endured the passing away of his father just days before, put up such a heart rendering performance. He could be described as a veteran of Adinoyi Onukaba’s plays, having at various times produced, directed, or acted in some of the playwright’s pieces. Among Otoro’s earlier involvement in Onukaba’s plays, are: ‘A Resting Place’, ‘Tower of Babel’, and ‘Her Majesty’s Visit’.

“It’s a great honour been given the responsibility of re-enacting the lifetime of such a great personality like Saro Wiwa. I am glad, however, that I did not disappoint. This will no doubt remain for me as one of the highest point of my active career as a theatre practitioner,” he said of playing the lead in ‘The Killing Swamp’.

Other players in the four-man cast play were: Jibrin Ahmed as Major; Ikponmwonsa Gold; Seun Odukoya; and Adetutu Adebambo, who played Asabe in the first and second performances respectively.

Gaming with death

Though a dramatic imagination of the playwright, the last moments of the late Ken Saro Wiwa, as depicted onstage, moved the audience to tears. Kenule engaged in what Major refers to in the play as ‘buying time’ with various demands.

The highpoint of the play was the late discovery by Kenule that his cousin is the Major who has been assigned to carry out his execution. This revelation was followed up by a long drawn argument about the real reasons behind his predicament, the foundation set up in the name of Bera’s father, and the possibility that money must have exchanged hands. Having failed to talk him out of avenging his father’s death, Kenule gave up his antics and orders Bera (Major) to carry out the execution, saying, “Go on, do what you are here to do.”

The play opens and ends at a clearing in the bush, where Kenule and the Ogoni eight are executed. It employs a flashback at some point to re-enact the meeting of Asabe and Kenule at an audition and then the court scene, which had both players switching roles. The same technique was employed in the court tribunal scene, where Major assumed the role of the judge.

‘The Killing Swamp’ offers fresh insight into the Niger Delta issue, especially as it relates to the intrigues behind the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa. The playwright, however, in his wisdom, employs humour in his treatment of some of the most salient issues in the play.

Commenting on the production, the playwright, Adinoyi Onukaba, praised the high quality of work put into the production by the actors and director.

“While it is right to say this is my play, what you have seen here today is beyond me. It is the interpretation of the director and his artists. You don’t always have much influence on how your play is produced. Once the book leaves your hand and goes into the hand of a director, he gives it whatever interpretation that suites him, and in this case, I must say that the director, Chidi Ukwu, is very good and has done a good job.”

The cultural
practices and beliefs of the people of Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State, will be
showcased when Aderinsoye Aladegbongbe’s solo exhibition titled ‘A
Visual Representation’ opens on Monday, November 29.

The exhibition,
comprising about 50 paintings and drawings, will open by 12 noon at the
Yusuf Grillo Art Gallery, School of Art and Design, Yaba College of
Technology, Yaba, Lagos. A chief of Ilara-Mokin, Abiye Ojo, will chair
the opening while traditional ruler of the town, Oba Aderemi
Adefehinti, will be the guest of honour.

Briefing reporters
on the show, Aladegbongbe disclosed that it emanated from his Masters
programme at the University of Benin where he decided to focus on his
hometown.

“I left there aged
11 but right now I’m about 46 years old. So, it’s a long time and I
felt that I should project their culture and some rites that are no
longer observed. Because they are not observed, this is a way we can
allow incoming generations to be aware of things that had happened in
the past.

“There is the
Ajalemogun rite that is no longer celebrated. Ajalemogun is a very
tall, lady figure, taller than a NEPA pole. Its normal hairdo is Suku
and during the celebration, ladies are not supposed to compete with the
gods so nobody wears Suku. They believe that it’s a god of
fruitfulness, so people looking for the fruit of the womb will come
from Ekiti and Osun States. Some come from as far as Benin City and
Ijebu. The radius of the bottom of that particular masquerade is like
about 15 to 25 feet. Hefty men carry it but it is decorated with
different shades of the palm fronds.”

He was able to
recapture the image of the Ajalemogun rite because he witnessed one as
a young boy. His late father and some elders of the town, he disclosed,
were very helpful in the course of the research.

Aladegbongbe
started making the paintings and mixed media that will be showcased in
‘A Visual Representation’ in 2006 when he started the Masters programme
in Fine Art. Though he also works with metal, none will be among the
exhibits.

“The exhibition I
had in 2006 included metal works, there was none last year but the
subsequent one after ‘A Visual Representation’ will show metal works.
There are some metal works I’m working on presently; masks and all what
not,” said the artist who has been holding annual exhibitions since
2006.

The artist and
lecturer also spoke on the noticeable dripping effect in his works. “I
graduated from Yabatech as a student in 1992. If you were present at
the exhibition I had last year, I exhibited some works that I did in
1992 as a graduating student and I discovered that I have been painting
like this because some of the paintings were actually like this. It was
in the late 1990s that the consciousness came. It’s really a
spontaneous reaction; it’s an impressionistic style of painting. It was
in the early 2000s and now in 2010 that the thing broke out in its full
revelation. I’ve been working like this even as a student and it is a
style I call Scraphito Dripping Technique.”

Asked what makes
the forthcoming exhibition unique from ‘Times of Life’ he had at the
same venue last year, Aladegbongbe said, “What you will discover is
that it is not a realistic painting. Yet by the time you look into it,
they are paintings that become suggestive, you begin to see things that
are not revealed.”

A Visual Representation opens on November 29 and is on till December 11 from 9am to 6pm daily.

Art lovers will get to see a new side to the acclaimed Demas Nwoko when the latest art auction by ArtHouse Contemporary is held in Lagos tomorrow. Two pieces by the artist who is better known as an architect will be going under the hammer for the first time anywhere in the world, and are set to generate excitement when bids open at the Civic Centre.

The auction house has pulled off the coup of acquiring what they describe as “two very representative works from his collection” – an oil painting and a wooden sculpture, ‘The Wise Man’. Speaking to journalists ahead of the auction, Director of ArtHouse Contemporary Kavita Chellaram said, “We wanted to create awareness for [Nwoko’s] artistic skill and contributions as they are tremendous and important in furthering our understanding of his Zaria contemporaries.”

The company had been in discussions with Nwoko, one of the famed Zaria Rebels, before securing his agreement to auction the works. “We really think Demas Nwoko is our feature,” said a pleased Chellaram. “What we are trying to say to people: here is a master. It’s really an awareness that he is a master. He is very much alive. The works are going to be very rare.”

This is the fifth auction in two years for ArtHouse Contemporary, founded by Kavita Chellaram in 2007. 188 lots of paintings, sculpture, mixed media works as well as prints and photography have been on view at the Civic Centre since Saturday; viewing continues today before the auction proceeds Monday.

Also included in the auction for the first time are works by Ghanaian artist Edmund Tetteh and the late self-taught painter, Akinola Lasekan. One of the pioneers of art in Nigeria, Lasekan was also the first newspaper cartoonist in the country, and his work featured in the West African Pilot. “He’s never been in auction anywhere. The history of Nigerian are is not complete without Lasekan,” said Nana Sonoiki, general manager of ArtHouse Contemporary.

Another eye-catching piece in the auction is an untitled metal sculpture of a woman’s head adorned with a patterned gele (headgear), by Sokari Douglas-Camp, the UK-based Kalabari artist. It is a smaller variation of the artist’s monumental ‘aso-ebi’ works. “She’s a sculptor who does everything completely with her own hands,” observed Aditya Chellaram, ArtHouse Contemporary director. His confidence is not misplaced as the piece is very likely to catch the eye of many a collector.

The company is hoping that these and many other pieces, including perennial favourites like Enwonwu (reputedly the best selling name in Nigerian art currently), are guaranteed to spell success when the bids come in. Works by living and dead artists are included in the exhibition; and nearly all of those featured are of West African heritage.

“There is a lot of interest. I think this is the best [auction] so far. We have established a secondary market with collectors coming in and putting up their works for auction,” said Kavita Chellaram.

“It is an emerging market, prices are better than on the international market. This is the time to buy,” she declared. The company is fast becoming a player on the international scene also, having put up 30 lots of West African art at auction at the Philips in New York and sold 50 percent, among other successes.

“The intention is to make African art more well known. We really want to take it global,” Chellaram declared. She argued that since the intervention of ArtHouse Contemporary in the market, there has been more transparency of pricing whereas two years ago, international collectors could not buy Nigerian art due to unreliable pricing.

“The company’s main purpose is to establish a regular venue for the sake of fine Nigerian and West African art. The public nature of the event allows for greater transparency of pricing and wider exposure of the art to a broad and global audience,” Chellarams said.

Asked why art patrons would come out once again to put in bids, she replied, “Talking as a collector, you always want to see new things. You want to get excited. Your eye keeps changing, your taste keeps changing. You don’t just buy one thing.” The art market in Nigeria is also changing, she noted, with expatriates and young business people starting to collect art. The variety available at Monday’s auction, she believes, will meet every taste.

Also in the exhibition for the first time is photography, with works by the like of George Osodi and Kelechi Amadi Obi up for grabs, as well as those by the octogenarian, J.D Okhai Ojeikere. “Now we feel a surge of photography all over the world, including Nigeria. So we feel it’s the right time.”

Among other artists featured, are: Soly Cisse (from Senegal), Kelani Abass, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ben Osawe, El Anatsui, Ben Osaghae and Peju Alatishe. In addition to the 118 lots, another five pieces donated by George Osodi, Kainebi Osahenye and Rom Isichei, will go to charity, benefitting the Calabar Women and Children Hospital.

The fifth ArtHouse Contemporary auction is on from 10am to 1pm at the Civic Centre, Lagos, on Monday, November 22.

(for Christopher Okigbo)

We wasted generation, smile at war

As we watch our nation slide

In the sinking grasps of self-seeking leaders

While our dreams are aborted in inept stillbirth

We call on war for her rescue

A rue smile of broken cheeks…seeking refuge

Rippling in supplications of frustration

Waiting helplessly where

History comes again in circles

Barging at the same imperatives in our brains

Across the hedgerow of trepidation

Those that skulk from the challenge and invitation

Still have her brought free to their threshold

But we youths…disillusioned

And discordant not out of will

Are both victims of times hard-headed whim

*Taken from ‘Cry Niger Delta… Cry Rape’, Vol II

There are days in America that wear the beauty of a well-tended garden, every image in its right place, days created the night after goddesses loved and rocked their lovers to blissful restful sleep. On those magical days, I always go for a walk. And my friends come with me, strong voices of Africa, spilling in song out of my iPod. Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Miriam Makeba, Sunny Ade, Osita Osadebe, Ebenezer Obey, Rex Lawson, Celestine Ukwu, Prince Nico Mbarga, Victor Uwaifo. They follow me, our ancestors’ son, wearing a blue suit and an attitude, trailing all these people staring at my weirdness.

The guttural sounds of the spirits of Lagos gush out of Fela, Abami Eda, the Weird One. My senses threaten to implode from the torrent gushing out the eaves of Fela’s motor mouth. Alagbon Close. I am the son of my ancestors dressed in the other’s blue suit. I am dancing, dancing, dancing, in my head as Amebo my iPhone shivers with delight. Listen to those drunken horns strutting high attitude. Fela is perched deep in the orchestra pit of the dispossessed, taunting privileged thieves. Hear the horns honking at thieves, mooning bastards:”Now listen now! Now listen now! I dey do my part, I be human being like you like you! I dey sing I dey dance, without me you nor go happy at all at all. Now listen!”

Roforofo Fight. At home, my laptop, Cecelia, is fueling her breasts with tomorrow’s juice cells. I am feasting on food, rice and designer stew, and Jumoke Verissimo’s book. I Am Memory. Hear Verissimo purr. I love this owner of words. Me, I am worshiping in temples where words dare not go. Oh, Fela. Fela is on a roll. Overtake Don Overtake Overtake. ODOO. Hear horns spreading attitude on the antiseptic fields of Babylon. And I miss my mother, Izuma of the stout bush that cannot be felled. I should be dancing with my mother under that canopy.

American morning. Air, crisp, freshly minted, eager to please, still nippy. Me, hands in winter jacket watching our sons. Soccer. Little boys bounding out of pods of infinite energy, going at soccer balls and dreams. Our teenage daughter, Ominira, snapping pictures that will die on Facebook. Fela rises out my iPod, sassy. Alu Jon Jon Ki Jon. Sweet delicious lunacy. Pure genius! Life is good today in Babylon, as Fela rides me to that magical place that grows hope out of the oven of defiance. Suffering and Smiling. In Babylon. Fela. Palm Wine Sound. Fela. We are stalking the mean streets of America’s neighborhood, speaking truth to power. Fela. Trumpets strutting denial, horns sobbing, strings snickering justice to injustice.

Fela. Priest, summoning spirits from termite mounds. Palm Wine Sound. Horns sobbing. Suffering and Smiling. Hear the guttural voice of Abami Eda calling the dispossessed from the latrines of despair. Come and dance. Come and dance. Alu Jon Jon Ki Jo. Lagos comes calling, with roasted plantain and groundnuts. And trumpets taunt the meek, loosening timid limbs under broken lamp posts. Tight. This is genius. Listen to that, just listen. Grab Fela and dance, just dance. Today. Who are you re? I say, who are you re?

Winter in America. Snow. White. Wet. Slippery. Me, sober; got the groceries, forgot the cognac. Me, lucid, bored. Fela, Weird One glares out our window, in his underwear, longs for sex & sax. Kalakuta Republic calls. Our sons and other cubs roll the snow brown, building igloos and dreams. In the white plains of America, Olokun cradles our sons, and hands the bigoted bifocals. We did not ask to be born; we will not beg to be saved by this narcissus. Fela, Abami Eda, where are you? Sango’s horn sobs thunder to Ogun’s flash of iron rage. Dance with me. Life is good.

Fela. Monday Morning in Lagos. Joy blares out of horns. Genius. Jazz. Smooth. Raw. Guttural. Words of the oracle chase the cowries of divination on the streets of Ajegunle. The arrangements are pure joy. Lagos lives amidst the horns and the shakara. Pure water. Pure genius. Life is good. Joy. Save me. Christmas Eve. Fela, sassy sax building Lagos brick by brick in our living room. Yellow Fever. My lover and I are busy building a bukateria in the kitchen. America. Exile. Home. Exile dulls her pain on cognac, now my tongue has fallen hard for plump American peaches. Nigeria. I miss Akara junction. I miss my little brother grinning at me as I spend his Naira on long-lost delicacies. Africa calls, but it is great to be home with my very own clan and Fela.

The seasons are changing. Make wherever you are home. In the beginning, Orunmila made Fela. Esu gave Fela big balls. Orunmila covered Fela’s balls in pants of fire, handed him a sax and said: Go forth and multiply. And Fela complied for once in his riotous life. Oh what joy. What a riot. Abami Eda is up there in the pantheon of imps, suffering and smiling. I miss you, Baba.

The BBC World Service and the British Council have invited entries for their 12th biennial international radio playwriting competition.

The competition open to only people outside Britain is in two categories. The first is for writers who use English as their first language while the other is for writers with English as their second language.

Winner of the first prize in each category will get £2,500 and a trip to London to see the play being recorded for broadcast on the BBC World Service.

American, Erin Browne, and Ghanaian, Efo Kodjo Mawugbe, won the 2010 edition of the competition with ‘Trying’ and ‘The Prison Graduates’ respectively. Browne’s ‘Trying’ is about sisters, Lena and Chels, who are awaiting the arrival of Chels’ baby before Lena falls in love with the girl in the bookshop.

Mawugbe’s ‘The Prison Graduates’ is about four ex-prisoners trying to start again after serving term. They explore different options but opted for a somewhat surprising one.

Those interested in the competition are required to write a 60-minute radio drama for up to six characters in English. Entries must be unpublished and should not have been previously produced in any medium.

Organisers say novel adaptations are not eligible. The competition which opened on October 16 will close on March 31, 2011.

Entries complete with a 400-word synopsis must get to London by the midnight of March 31 and can be submitted either by post or email. Entries by post should be sent to Room 823B, South East Wing, BBC Bush House, Strand, London WC2B 4 PH while they can also be mailed to radioplay@bbc.co.uk.

Manuscripts for submission must be a minimum of 50 pages of A4 paper and a maximum of 75 pages.

More information about the competition can be found on the BBC World service website.

War has provided creative artists over the ages with bumptious ecstatic inspirations in their creative enterprise. Many philosophies have sprung from the blood-nourished fields of war and thinkers have developed certain reasoning patterns from merely studying war. In war is the widening gyre of vibrations that play the chord of human sportiveness.

Added to this is the glaring verity that great men and women, great nations and empires all came to greatness in a chaotic war situation or outright from the threshold of war. Many arguments have been raised on the meaning, nature, and causes of war. Many have viewed it from deterministic and free will perspectives.

Many great writers have tackled the subject of war with depth and dexterity of mind. Homer used his Iliad and Odyssey to crack the kernel of war verbiage. English writers from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Pope to Shaw and Dickens deepened our understanding of war and human nature. Russian writers even brought great assiduity to the subject.

Their many experiences of revolutionary crisis and invasions perhaps animated their ragbag of perspectives; and from their pens, the world was further opened to the portentous and prodigious concussions of war. Human nature and history became focal points in understanding war, and war itself took a more dignified state in the works of these masters.

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky

Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’, for instance, not only chronicles the Napoleonic Wars, it explores the interconnectivity of war, history, religion, and human nature. To him, war and history are deterministic phenomena. Dostoyevsky was more concerned with the motivations of humans to war.

In his masterpiece, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, he comments on man’s inherent barbarity thus: “It is just their [weak men’s] defencelessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal that sets his vile blood on fire.

In every man, of course, a beast lies hidden – the beast of rage, the beast of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the beast of lawlessness let off the chain, the beast of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.”

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky made war a rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed damsel for us to woo, and for her sake engage ourselves in thorough cogitations as to her coquetry.

Hemingway and Crane

Ernest Hemingway and Steven Crane yet variously engaged the rosy-cheeked lady in ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ respectively. They punctured some of her narcissistic and capricious mien, leaving her in a state of apostolic simplicity. Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and Auden all had something lofty, something sensuously seductive and poetic to relate with in her. They all proved to be bold and men enough to manipulate the lofty lady.

Then came African writers and, apologetic enough, our own Nigerian war pundits. These writers displayed base timidity and pusillanimous shyness to the point of utter lack of ideas on how to engage the lady. After reading some wonderful works on war, one would have expected that anyone who was serious in the hallowed business of writing, especially one trying to engage certain themes, should have read up the masters who had attempted similar subjects before ever diving head on to the subject.

To make up for their deficiency, our own very writers raped this rosy-cheeked lady, and even at that, no orgiastic fancy was still achieved. Their war fictions reeked of abhorrent, dismal apoplexy. In our war literature, the great and celebrated pachydermatous queen of high thoughts and philosophies was invidiously disembodied, and with scattered wits, her beauty and classy purdour was furrowed.

Sunset at Dawn

Chuwkuemeka Ike’s ‘Sunset at Dawn’ and S. Mezu’s ‘Behind the Rising Sun’ are earlier chronicles of the Nigerian Civil War. Far from having intellectual depth, the works were mere attempts to document the events of the war and no exploration of matters beyond the surface. Aniebo’s ‘The Anonymity of Sacrifice’, Okpewho’s ‘The Last Duty’ and Iyayi’s ‘The Heroes’ would have been engaging enough to a lofty mind had it not been for the borrowed and touted ideological treatments of the subject and situation of war.

They have not managed to achieve the depth given by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy to the subject. In trying to be more Marxian than Marx, they created stereotypes instead of characters.

Measuring Time

One would think that the younger writers would cover the lapses, but alas. When one began reading Helon Habila’s ‘Measuring Time’, one would erroneously assume that a great war fiction was in the offing. The dismal fascination one had at the onset gradually evaporated at the dangled treatments of the many subjects that accompanied an epic: love, jealousy, violence, and so on.

The stupendous display of action scenes in the novel revealed that the writer was not unfamiliar with kiddies’ comic books and cartoons. The careless handling of the characters exposed the writer as an aborted poet’s attempts at leap-frogging. The work, of course, had its strengths in having an interesting story and good expressiveness. Beyond these, there’s no depth, no resonant idea that could engage the intellect in good verbiage.

And apart from the half-witted, mesmerised vapidity of ideas in the works of these writers, they still cannot be classified in the realm of war literature for their paucity of depth and good sophistry.

It is not enough to merely document a war and call it war literature, otherwise there won’t be any difference between literature and mere historical documentation.

Half of a Yellow Sun

Then came Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ and the celebration of emollient, flamboyant narrative that is lacking in living ideas. The novel festooned the grand subject of war, petted her, and never engaged her. The book is definitely not a war fiction; it is best a love and family tale told in a war situation.

Even the themes of love, sex, family ties, virtues and vices are ridiculously treated, albeit with fiery intrigues: interesting a story, impish and timorous in depth. In the novel, loftiness was ruffled and smeared with flamboyance.

In her appraisal of her work, Adichie said that she wrote the book to cover for the “uniformed and unimaginative ways” the Nigerian Civil War has been earlier treated. Add to this is the “emotional truth” that she believes the work contains. The twins, Olanna and Kainene, are simple female versions of Mamo and LeMamo in Habila’s ‘Measuring Time’. There’s no depth in her treatment of Olanna’s infidelity with Richard, with Olanna’s love for Baby, and worst of all, Kainene’s ambiguous character.

The novel would have been powerful for its great story; but the shallow treatment of character motivations and ideas renders it less engaging beyond an interesting read.

The evolution of Nigerian literature has progressed in regressive motion. There’s no lyrical excuse for our poor literature, except that writers have become lazy and hardly engage themselves in good research. Achebe, Soyinka, Okigbo, and Okri still remain the lofty, yet-to-be-surmounted, luminous images of our literary arts.

A word for young, perhaps aspiring, writers! To be a writer, one should immerse oneself in the living pools of history, of philosophy, of religion, politics, and sciences. Above all, one must be an astute reader and possess a nature for controversies and anger.

“Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers.” So says Naguib Mahfouz!