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Ten years after
the death of playwright and critic Ola Rotimi, his family has launched
a foundation in Lagos to commemorate his passing and to build on his
legacy.

At the official
launch of the Ola Rotimi Foundation, performances by Malian Kora player
Mamadou Diabate and undergraduates of the Dramatic Arts department at
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, were scheduled to thrill the
audience. The August 20 launch fell two days after the date of the
playwright’s passing.

Gracing the launch
cum fundraiser were arts patron Rasheed Gbadamosi and his wife; and
National president of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts
Practitioners (NANTAP) Greg Odutayo.

With his wife,
Kamela and children also in the audience, the late Rotimi’s son and
chief organiser, Kole Heyward-Rotimi, took charge of the evening’s
proceedings. Despite the late professor’s calibre, attendance at the
event was unfortunately marred by heavy rainfall, amongst other
probable reasons.

The programme
however kicked off early at Terra Kulture with Grammy Award-winner
Diabate enthralling the audience with a string of songs played
skillfully on the kora. About the songs, Diabate, whose range includes
jazz, blues and traditional gospel, said afterwards, “The songs I
played today are traditional and some are my own compositions. One of
the songs I played is a good way to introduce people to the instrument
so they understand what the instrument sounds like.”

The audience
obviously liked what they heard and showed their appreciation by
rewarding the talented artist with rounds of applause.

Preserving African culture

Hailing Diabate’s
dexterity during the interlude, Kole Heyward-Rotimi said “the job of
the griot is to promote and preserve African culture,” a major focus of
the Ola Rotimi Foundation.

Diabate was
himself pleased with his audience, small though it was. He described
his visit to Nigeria as “a great experience out of places (visited) in
West Africa,” despite having being in the country only two days. He
constantly referred to Nigeria as home.

While looking
forward to future performances and collaborations in Nigeria, he
admitted to not having listened to Nigerian music since his arrival.
“Not yet, but since I was a little boy, I’ve known Fela Kuti. I got
(the chance) to see his son (Seun Kuti perform) in Mali in 2009.” He
listed Juju maestro King Sunny Ade and the late Babatunde ‘Baba’
Olatunji, acclaimed drummer and percussionist, as other favourite
Nigerian artists.

The kora is an
instrument passed down through generations, Diabate said; and his
musical prowess dates from his birth into a family where the kora has
been played for “thousands of years.” As he says, if his son does not
learn how to play it, there is always someone else in the family
itching to acquire the skills.

Diabate, who
started playing the kora aged five, also plays the xylophone, the gong
and the drums. “Everybody plays the drums,” he quipped, “but the kora
is my own instrument.” An undeniable statement when one watches Diabate
in performance. As someone in the audience observed, even though
Diabate was the only one twanging the 21-string instrument, the kora
gave off a mesh of sounds that seemed like a four-piece band was in
action.

Diabate put it
down to hours of practice, probably in line with the 10,000-hour rule
suggested in Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’ as a right start on the path
to genius.

“That’s a lot of
work you have to do (in terms of) practising,” the Malian musician
said. “You have to be part of your instrument. You have to love your
instrument. The way I receive my songs, that’s how I give (them) back
to the audience, so you will find out if I am real. This is what we
play: the song coming from the instrument. We love it. So, if we love
it, the people will love it too.”

He admitted to
forgetting about the audience whenever he played the Kora. “You’ve got
to get inside the spirit of the instrument. You have to make yourself
connected to the instrument. When I get the Kora, the audience is no
more; until I’m done till I see the audience. (The performance) is only
myself, my instrument and my spirit.”

Having lived in
the United States for 15 years, it was only natural that the country
would influence his music. He however maintains that his tradition and
the griot culture play a huge part in his music. “In the griot society,
we have the musician/storyteller, and the singer. There is a story
behind every song. There’s a voice singing the story behind every
song.” He described ‘The Kaira’, one of the songs he performed, as
preaching peace and happiness based on a cultural, pro-independence
movement that existed in colonial era-Mali in the 1940s.

Jungle justice

Following
Diabate’s act was the performance of Ola Rotimi’s ‘When Criminals Turn
Judges,’ directed by the younger Rotimi. A depiction of post-colonial
Nigeria in the throes of corruption, the play painted a grim picture
that contrasted heavily with Diabate’s song about peace and happiness.

The 50-minute
satire portrayed the erosion of values in our post-colonial society.
Bar Jesus (Lanre Ariyo), a corrupt vagrant preacher and two layabouts,
Akin (Muyiwa Betiku) and Jide (Olalekan Osani), plot to arrest Laguna
(Kehinde Ladeji), an affluent businessman. Laguna is marked for arrest
when the ‘criminals’ discover his plans for an illicit relationship
with the young, pretty Ebun (Precilia Omije) who is married to Abu
(Temitope Adesanya), a cripple.

When the trio
succeed in their mission, they go ahead to deliver judgment on Laguna
and Ebun whilst keeping the former’s clothing and bicycle as spoils of
war. Abu saves the day when he appears on the scene with a rifle which
he is not afraid to use. A well-executed performance by the young
students that proved true to Nigeria’s current position as a nation
filled with hypocrites, never mind that the play was written in the
late 1960s.

Commenting
afterwards on the event’s poor attendance, Heyward-Rotimi said they had
done all they possibly could in terms of publicity and had enough
assurances up till the morning of the event not to be worried about
people turning up. Speaking generally on logistics, he said, “We were
given commitments for dates, for venues and they all fell through,” he
said.

The eventual
programme, he said, was different from the initial plan which was a
series of events over a three-day period. This was to include one day
dedicated to the Diabate concert, another for cultural performances
from around the world and the last day for stage productions. Sensing
Heyward-Rotimi’s disappointment, a word of encouragement from the
audience suggested, “It’s not yours to abandon, it’s yours to be
finished.”

Heyward-Rotimi
requested the few present to continue to support the project and to
spread the gospel. “What you can do to help is to spread the word… this
is not the end.”

A remark, which many in the audience will have little cause to doubt.

‘The world and his
wife’ were heading to Abuja on Wednesday September 15. Getting a flight
to the Federal Capital Territory from Lagos was extremely difficult,
with all airlines fully booked. Those who eventually made it to Abuja,
discovered that hotels were similarly filled to capacity. And so it was
that several of us going to the opening ceremony of the massive
National Cultural/Historical Exhibition, arrived at the venue of the
Velodrome, National Stadium, Abuja, to find the event was over.

It was D-Day in
Abuja; former head of state, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, declared his
2011 presidential ambition at Eagle Square – the reason, many surmised,
for the full flights and hotels. The Babangida effect was compounded by
the fact that the ruling PDP held its National Executive Council
meeting on the same day in the same city. Given the significant
political diversions, therefore, it was a testament to the pulling
power of the exhibition that over 2000 people attended its opening
event.

However, the
president, Goodluck Jonathan, who was due to open the exhibition,
stayed away. Preoccupied perhaps with the political colourations of the
momentous day, he declared his own intention to run for the Presidency
in 2011, on Facebook. Jonathan was represented at the Velodrome by the
Minister for Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Abubakar Sadiq
Mohammed. Joining him were: Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed; and Minister for the Federal Capital
Territory, Bala Mohammed. At least 20 ambassadors attended in person.

In a speech
delivered on his behalf by the Culture Minister, President Jonathan
called the exhibition “a milestone” in the life of the Nigerian nation,
noting that it showcases a “splendid kaleidoscope of images that mirror
the state of our progress and achievement.” He added that Nigeria “has
been in the forefront of cultural renaissance and social regenerations
which gained momentum several decades ago when we hosted… FESTAC
’77.” He thanked all the artists and organisations that made the
exhibition possible, and said the works on display, spanning two
millennia of art production in Nigeria, would inspire stock-taking and
self-evaluation of where the country is, 50 years after independence
from the British.

The Velodrome

Though the opening
event crowds had gone home on the evening of September 15, the
Velodrome was beautifully lit up within Abuja’s National Stadium
complex, appropriately so, for a venue hosting the largest exhibition
ever held in Nigeria. Organisers hope young and old will come in their
thousands to see the exhibition. Also known as ‘The Journey Of Our
Independence’, the exhibition aims to tell the story of Nigeria through
the visual arts.

Visible from the
surrounding highways, the Velodrome is an easily located venue, but
better signage within the stadium complex could help visitors locate
the exhibition more easily. Once inside, however, the show is spacious
and easily navigable. Laid out for the appreciation of the viewer are
the very best of Nigerian arts. Waiting for us inside were the
exhibitions’ curators: artist Jerry Buhari of Ahmadu Bello University;
Uwa Usen (National President, Society of Nigerian Artists) and Director
of Museums, Nat Mayo Adediran. Chair of the Exhibition sub-committee
for Nigeria at 50, George Nkanta Ufot, praised the curators’ efforts in
bringing about the landmark show. “They have been tireless, they’ve
been wonderful, they haven’t slept. They were the think-tank of this
exhibition. They brought in an architect who [transformed the venue].
The Velodrome has been converted into a world class exhibition centre.”

Among the memorable
pieces on display are Cyril Nwokoli’s monumental ‘Okonkwo’, a wooden
sculpture of the tragic hero of Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’.
The 15 feet tall statue is an arresting piece, standing alone. Nearby
are more than a dozen wooden warriors by Nwokoli, a genial artist who
cracked jokes with us, making it hard to believe stories of his
self-sequestration in the bushes around Enugu, carving armies of wooden
figures.

All the greats are
here, including: Ben Osawe, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Nike Davies-Okundaiye
and Kolade Oshinowo. In a centre enclosure called ‘The Museum’,
Nigeria’s antiquities from artistic traditions like the Igbo Ukwu, the
Nok, Benin and Ife – are on display. That the museum is locked during
our somewhat ‘out of hours’ visit, shows the extra care taken with
these priceless pieces of Nigerian artistic heritage.

Queen Elizabeth in bronze

The statue of Queen
Elizabeth II, sculpted from sittings done for Ben Enwonwu by the British
monarch in 1957, promises to be one of the major talking points of the
exhibition. The bronze sculpture, which made Enwonwu the first African
to be commissioned to create an artistic likeness of the queen, has
been away from public view for decades. It was last exhibited in
Nigeria around 1957 and 1958, in the then Houses of Parliament in
Lagos; and has been shrouded in mystery during the intervening years.

Standing next to
the historic piece, Uwa Usen said, “This is only the second time this
work is being exhibited in Nigeria. In fact, there is a lot of mystery
and controversy [surrounding it]. The day we discussed the work, we did
not know we had a visitor who was listening – and we said: we’re
bringing this work. The person was running around saying: this work is
missing, is in England.

“This work has been
in the custody of the National Museum (Lagos) under lock and key –
tight. You need to see how this work was brought (to Abuja), under
heavy security; and they used codes to bring it. So, this is very
significant to us,” said Usen. He praised the Ben Enwonwu Foundation
for supporting the sculpture’s display at the Velodrome with photos and
British press clippings from the 50s, to provide historical context.

Melting pot

Usen said the show
is significant: “Because it is celebrating Nigeria at 50, we need to
ask questions, we need to probe into where we’re coming from, where
we’re going and where we think we are. We need to challenge ourselves
and [ask]: where has art taken us? We need to review these things.” The
exhibition, in his view, does all these, and more. He also spoke on the
challenges faced by the curators in the weeks running up to the
exhibition’s opening. “The challenge to me was converting this
Velodrome into an exhibition hall. It’s the biggest challenge I’ve ever
had,” he said, disclosing that the preparations started on June 5.

The layout of the
displays requires viewers to go straight to ‘Nigeria of Old’, to view
the antiquities in The Museum. From there, to the time around
independence as represented by Enwonwu’s Queen Elizabeth in Bronze, to
contemporary pieces by the likes of Ndidi Dike and Dennis Okon. Pieces
were sourced not from individuals or artists but institutions. These
included government parastatals: the National Gallery of Art, the
National Council for Arts and Culture; professional bodies like the
Society of Nigerian Artists; and educational institutions like the
Departments of Fine Arts at the University of Uyo and Ahmadu Bello
University. In all, up to 13 universities were involved in procuring
pieces for the mega show. Usen described the resulting exhibition as “a
melting pot”, adding that, “We looked at the history, the culture, the
various media, various styles, anything you want to see is here.

“Viewers should
note that Nigeria at 50 has been celebrated by Nigerians, locally. We
charged ourselves to try and get to the international standard, without
any assistance [from outside]. We have carefully chosen our venue,
which most people will never believe would have served as a venue – and
you know this is very apt – we have branded the whole venue in Nigerian
colours and it works for us. So, people should know that Nigerians can
do things for themselves. We are ripe. In my own mind I think we have
at least rang a bell to say: we are here. We are on board,” declared
Usen.

The SNA president
dismissed any suggestion of elitism, insisting that the show is for
everybody, including the disabled (wheelchair ramps are been
incorporated into the venue’s design).

As for George Ufot,
Director of Culture at the Federal Ministry, “This is the biggest
exhibition ever hosted in Nigeria. Even FESTAC was not as big as this.”
Asked how he moved Nwokoli’s giant sculpture of Okonkwo across states
to the Abuja Velodrome, Ufot replied cryptically, “By spending
government money wisely.”

The National/Cultural Historical Exhibition is at the Velodrome, National Stadium, Abuja, until October 31.

“For years and
years, I used to have two nightmares – you know, a bad dream,” Runoko
Rashidi says at the beginning of my conversation with him. We are at
the International Colloquium on Slavery, Slave Trade and Their
Consequences. I first heard Rashidi speak at the Global Conference of
Black Nationalities in Osogbo on August 23. The African American – the
world’s leading authority on the African Presence in Early Asia – had
declared on the podium, “You are not African because you are born in
Africa, you are African because Africa is born in you.”

Now Rashidi
discusses with me his Africa awakening, and it begins with a retelling
of “disturbing” dreams. “One of the dreams was: I would be somewhere
near my home, but I could never find my home. I would go down this
street, around this block, but I could never find my home. The other
dream was: I would go visit my family and they wouldn’t want me to be
there. They would laugh at me; they wouldn’t eat with me; they would
make me sleep on the floor when they had these nice beds. So, I started
travelling to Africa – first to Egypt – and then I started going to
so-called Sub-Saharan Africa, Black Africa.”

The first Black
African country he visited, was Namibia, followed by Zimbabwe, where he
did “a bunch of lectures, big lectures in front of a lot of people.”
Rashidi’s voice is breaking seriously and he is fighting back tears as
he recounts: “I would tell about those dreams in the middle of the
lecture. I would get emotional; I would almost start crying and I
realised those dreams had a much greater significance.

“Because we were
taken away from ‘home’, a lot of African Americans have a sense of
homelessness. We really don’t know where home is, because we were
separated from our families, there is a sense of rejection and
alienation. And [the African lecture audience] would say: ‘This is your
home, and we are your family!’ And I never had those dreams anymore.”

By the time
Rashidi, now a veteran of trips to “53 or 54” African countries has
finished narrating the dreams and the epiphany they inspired, a lady on
our table is in a flood of tears. “This is what slavery did to us: it
gave us a sense of homelessness and an absence of family,” he
reiterates. “So, coming back to Africa is very important to a lot of
us. Because when you come back, you feel connected again. You feel
like: I do have a home, I do have a family, and it makes a big
difference.” His voice is recovering its usual verve when as he
declares, “That’s the greatest thing about coming back to anywhere in
Africa; to know this is where your ancestors came from. And the moment
you set (your feet) down, aw, it makes a big difference.”

A concern for women

He describes the
process in terms of healing. “We are trying to heal again, we’re trying
to become whole again. And our ability to become whole, our ability to
heal, will directly affect the ultimate liberation of Africa,” says the
historian, who worries that Africa is not liberated. The colonisation
of the mind, external control of African economies and uncaring
leaders, are some of the problems he says bedevils the continent. He is
also concerned about the condition of the Nigerian woman. “Gentlemen of
the Press” – is one of the regular conference-speak that bother him
(“Men of the press – and yet, you are a journalist!, he tells me);
although he is conscious not to impose his African American values on
others.

But is the
condition of the African American woman as it should be? I ask. “No,
it’s not as it should be,” he concedes. “Much too often, the African
American woman is viewed as a sexual object; she is viewed as lesser
than a man. But at the same time in the United States, the Black man
has been castrated, his masculinity has been denied. And so the African
American woman has had to take on a greater burden, a greater role and
a greater responsibility.”

We talk about the
trend of African American men denigrating Black women, increasingly
shunning them for white females. Rashidi points to Tiger Woods, all of
whose women, from the wife to the countless mistresses, are white. He
says categorically, “I can only be with a Black woman, and the reason
for that is: I think of all those sisters who went through the
Transatlantic Slave Trade, all of my ancestors who were raped and who
were assaulted. And for me to be with anything other than a Black
woman, I think, would be disrespectful to my African ancestors. I have
a great respect for Black women… I view them as my equal at every
level.”

On naming

We talk about his
name, and he informs that, “Actually, my name is Runoko Rashidi Okello.
I got ‘Runoko Rashidi’ when I was a university student and I wanted to
reconnect with Africa and I wanted an African name. But I was told that
it would not be proper for me to name myself, that somebody had to give
me a name.” And so someone named him Runoko Rashidi; the first, a Shona
name from Zimbabwe and the second from Swahili. Okello was added about
three years ago. “I was in a war zone in Northern Uganda. I brought
some school supplies – just papers, pens and things – and gave them to
the school. They were so happy that they called me ‘Okello’: he who
brings [gifts].”

The name, he says,
is one way of reconnecting with his African roots. “I love Africa and I
don’t think of myself as an African American. I think of myself as an
African Living in America. What we want – I can speak for many brothers
and sisters – we just want to be embraced and loved by our brothers and sisters in
Africa (voice wavers with emotion again). We feel like Africans don’t
care about us,” he says. The “poor” relationship between African
Americans and their brethren on the mother continent may be due to
“some degree of resentment” that Africans sold them into slavery, he
suggests.

“And then we are
taught that Africa is the worst place in the world.” He asks his
American lecture audiences what they think of when they think of
Africa, and the answer, invariably, is: Wild Animals, Poverty and
Disease. “So, we have a very, very negative impression of Africa,
because that’s all of Africa that we see on television.” He suggests
that Africans who come to the United States don’t interact with African
Americans and so there is no sharing of stories. “And so, it’s very
important to me that African Americans or Africans Living in America
have a better impression of Africa. I think of myself as an ambassador.
I try to give a good impression of African Americans when I come [to
Africa] and I try to go back to the United States with a good
impression of people from the continent of Africa, because the
relationship is not a good one.”

It’s not an easy
task. He reels out some of the terribly ignorant questions he gets
asked about Africa when he returns to the US. “We have a very negative
image of Africa and that is deliberate. That is just designed by
Europeans to keep us separate from Africa because they know that when
Africans in the Africa and [those] across the water unite, we’d be
unstoppable. And so there is a deliberate effort to keep us ignorant of
our African heritage, and I’m trying to help change that.”

An ambassador

On how he became
this ‘ambassador’ between Africans in America and the continent, the
56-year-old says, “What started me was, I wanted to find out what
happened to those Africans who left Africa a long time ago.” His paper
at the Slavery Colloquium centred on Africa before Colonisation and
Enslavement, what Rashidi calls “The First Diaspora – Africans who left
Africa 100,000 years ago. I wanted to know what happened to them, where
they went. And so, that led me to begin to search for Africa… I’ve been
doing this since I was 18 years old and it’s been my mission in life.”

Yet he has not
always been this comfortable with his Africanness. “When I was a kid,
if you had called me ‘African’, we would have had a fight: that was an
insult! But now, if you call me an African, ohhhh, I’d do anything for
you.” The change started when the young Runoko began to learn about
Africa. “I began to read books and eventually I went to Africa itself.
I’m a lover of Africa. I cannot say enough good things about Africa. I
love Africa. I love Africa more than I love America,” he declares.

He has talked about
African Americans not feeling loved by Africans. But now I raise the
flipside: that of Africans not feeling loved by African Americans, who
racially denigrate those on the continent. “It is self hate. It works
both ways,” Rashidi says. “The problem is ignorance; and I think that
the major problem we’re fighting as a people is ignorance – a lack of
knowledge about our past.” He expresses the wish that every African
American would come to Africa at least once in their lifetimes,
especially the young generation. “Come and see it for yourself. See it
and touch it and smell it and eat the food; you’ll never be the same.
[It will] change everything.”

But is there a need
for African Americans to identify with an ancestral homeland in a world
that has seen the ascent of Obama? Rashidi says: yes. “We were talking
about a Post-racial America over a year ago: that now that we have a
Black President, everything was going to be different… But what we are
finding is that racism in America is uglier than it’s been in a long
time,” says the author and editor of more than 11 books. He loves
Barack and Michelle Obama but expresses disappointment that America’s
First Couple has not reached out to Africa more.

Long live Africa

Runoko Rashidi says
West Africa holds a special significance as a major departure point for
enslaved Africans who were taken to the New World. Visiting the
Ghanaian slave forts of Elmina and Cape Coast was a numbing experience
for him. “Then I went to the beach and had a libation ceremony and I
cried a little bit. And after that, I just fell in love with West
Africa. And as much as I like Ghana, I think I like Nigeria more. And
it’s important for me to like Nigeria, because Nigeria is the
powerhouse,” he says. Visiting the slave dungeons on Goree Island in
Senegal, was also harrowing. “It’s difficult but every African American
should go and see that, because it gives you a better appreciation of
what your ancestors went through.”

He longs for a bond
of kinship between African Americans and Africans. “In the US, you are
not allowed to say anything against the state of Israel, [no matter]
how badly the Israelis treat the Palestinians. If you’re a public
figure and you say something regarded as anti-Semitic, you lose
everything. My point is: you can say anything about Africa and nobody
will object.” African Americans are key to the desired change, he
suggests. “If African Americans felt a sense of bond or kinship with
Africa, we would be just like the Jews. We would be ferocious defenders
of Africa. And that’s what I want us to be. I want us to love Africa
with our dying breath. As God is my witness, I hope my last words on
earth are: Long Live Africa.”

Runoko Rashidi is
one of the speakers at the Conference on ‘Global Africans,
Pan-Africanism, Decolonisation and Integration of Africa – Past,
Present and Future’ – holding at the International Conference Centre,
Abuja, from September 21 to 24.

Theatre @ Terra has
commenced a re-staging of ‘The Ultimate face-off: Tarzan Monologues Vs
V Monologues’, first introduced in March 2010. Scheduled to be staged
in Nigeria and Ghana through the months of September and October, The
Ultimate Face-off brings to light the myriad perspectives of the male
and female gender concerning sexuality, social roles, culture dynamics,
and money among many other concerns.

The V Monologues
was introduced to Nigerian audiences in 2006 By the Kudirat Initiative
for Democracy (KIND), directed by Wole Oguntokun. Performed to
encourage women to speak out their woes; a male version, ‘Tarzan
Monologues’, was later adapted, with the notion that men have issues
too. Aspects of both plays were merged to make up the great gender
debate titled ‘The Ultimate Face-off’.

A September 12
performance of the monologues at Theatre @ Terra featured Bob Manuel,
Carol King, Iretiola Doyle, Lala Akindoju and other stage favourites in
a 12-member cast, in a two-and-half hour journey down rarely explored
gender paths, providing startling insights along the way.

Oguntokun had urged
audience members to open up their minds, promising that, “This will
touch you.” And he was true to his word, as the play had the audience
alternating between tears and raucous laughter, singing along and
shouting out responses to the actors’ lines.

Paul Alumona
elicited the first ruckus when he declared, “The undoing of many men is
that they try to understand their woman… a creature who thinks a man’s
feet is a good barometer for what lies hidden in unseen places can
simply not be understood.” He concluded, to the outrage of the females
in the audience that, “it is the moon that governs their cycles.”

Stirring acts

Lala Akindoju, in
one of the most stirring acts of the evening, narrated a female
circumcision ordeal: “An old woman came to us and told us to get ready
to be complete women. She told us to wash down there. How does this
make me a woman? The pain as they sliced with the knife. The pain that
makes me afraid to urinate, to drink water to quench my thirst,” she
asked these unnerving questions to the empathetic discomfort of the
crowd, while her voice wavered in a tearful performance.

Katherine Edoho’s
performance reflected the frustration of a mother to only female
children in Nigeria’s patriarchal society. “They asked how many
children I have,” she reminisced, “I told them I have five beautiful
daughters. They replied that they asked how many children, not how many
daughters. If I have ten daughters, the one who has one son is still
better than me.”.

In ‘The Little
Things’, a couple blame each other for forgetting the little things
that matter to them both. Kenneth Uphopho, in a litany of accusations,
charged his wife, “You no longer rub my head, or knead my feet. You
look and walk past, not saying a word of appreciation when you see that
I have washed the bathroom. Now you are starting to lie there like wood
when I hold you at night.” Akindoju responded derisively, “when you and
I met and loved, I had dreams and hopes. I would dance in the clubs in
Soho and walk the red light district of Amsterdam… but instead I am
here, watching you wash bathtubs in grey bathrooms. I miss my little
things too.”

Tunde Aladese
brought things to a head with ‘Revulva’. Here goes part of her
monologue: “Be reasonable, he said; hide your light under a bushel, lay
low, bow your head. But I shone the light on myself. My colour is red,
blood red.” Affecting a low growl, she continued, while undulating
suggestively, “Red is the colour of my tongue, the inside of my mouth,
and the colour of my other mouth. He raises his fist, but I too have a
weapon. My weapon is my re-vulva- it is the birthplace of queens and
cowards; the gateway to heaven.”

Man versus woman

Heralded by Kola
Ogunkoya’s ‘Pemiloruko’, Bimbo Manuel saunters onstage, as the
powerful, sexy grey, who attracts younger women with the magnetic pull
of his financial success. “I have never seen a woman pleased with a man
with a partner 20 years younger. Strangers would call it a lack of
confidence; borderline paedophilia. But these women who talk, were
their own minds unformed at 19?,” he asked.

When Iretiola Doyle
and Kunle Adeyoola take the stage later, the shoe is on the other foot;
and Ireti is the cougar (the older woman who dates younger men). Kunle,
her male paramour declared cockily, “Street credibility says every man
must at least date an older woman in his lifetime. I’m with you because
you are experienced where it matters; your body movements are fluid.
But don’t get this wrong, I’m here only for the experience.” Doyle
immediately deflated his ego thus: “You are my toy boy, my latest
accessory. What do you have to say where opinions really matter; when
the fates of nations are being decided? You are what I do when I don’t
feel like reading a book. Don’t bore me darling, not tonight. I have
salaries to pay; yours inclusive.”

Akindoju took the
audience through the agony of a semi educated girl taken to Italy for
prostitution; and the ecstasy of a Christian sister discovering for the
first time the joys of sex. Bob Manuel complained about the pressure of
living in a man’s world when it is the woman he sees “wearing black,
outliving the men”. Precious Anyanwu, lamented the loss of a childhood
sweetheart to the city where she lives, “Are you not Adijat whom I
climbed mango trees for? I have seen you pretend ignorance when our
eyes meet”. He also made a startling declaration, in his final
monologue, that the pressure to birth a male child is put on a woman by
her own gender: “They look at their own gender and tell her she must
try again. She is the one the doctor has warned against another
pregnancy; but she comes at you at night, devoid of passion and pleads,
‘Just once more’. A world that thinks the African man puts pressure on
a woman for a male heir knows very little about some things.”

More issues were
raised: from the need for a woman to be acquainted with her secret
places, to the pain and shame of erectile dysfunction, and the
deception when a pregnancy is foisted on a man who is “a confirmed
shooter of blanks.” Wife battering was also brought to the fore in a
poignant narrative by Katherine Edoho.

All the matters discussed were topics close to the heart of the audience. And this was confirmed by the reaction to the play.

Lala and the others

Lala Akindoju gave
perhaps the most impressive performance of the evening, in a star turn
that might have been tagged ‘Lala and Others’. She performed in no less
than six acts, giving impeccable deliveries, while other actresses
averaged only three. The play was also a bit skewed to cover more
female issues, but perhaps this was unavoidable. Despite the equality
that ‘The Ultimate Face-off’ seeks to achieve, women still do have more
gender related challenges, it appears.

The costumes were
beautiful, and although stage setting was very simplistic; the actors’
and actresses’ background participation in every act, more than made up
for this. Voice projection was top notch and the song accompaniments
were carefully chosen, spanning traditional music, contemporary
Nigerian tunes, and western pop.

Sadly, the turnout
was poor for a theatre production of the quality and calibre of ‘The
Ultimate Face-off’; seeming even less than the usual crowd for Terra
plays. Are Nigerians yet to cultivate adequate appreciation for
theatre? Or was the ticket price of 3,500 naira too steep to encourage
viewership? Theatre@ Terra could have stuck with the N1500 ticket price
for their regular Sunday performances. While the cast was made up
mostly of theatre big wigs, it does not seem very prudent to price
their performance out of the range of theatre enthusiasts.

Besides this though, one would not want a thing changed. Oguntokun’s
directing and the actors’ performances added up to an A-class
performance.

It is dark in the
morning. Our daughter is up and ready to go to the bus stop – she is in
high school. She steps into our bedroom and announces that she is going
to the bus stop. My wife says to her, “I will go with you, it is too
dark.” The seasons are changing and my wife says it is too dark for
children to go to the bus stop by themselves. In the darkness, I mumble
to my wife, “She will be fine, it is not too dark.” It cannot be as
dark as the mornings of my childhood in Nigeria, me scurrying around to
do my chores. But it is often futile to engage in these debates. The
unspoken communication: My wife wants me to see our daughter off to the
bus stop. I get up and I say to our daughter, “I shall go with you.”
Our daughter doesn’t like it, she argues with us, what kind of parents
escort their high school kids to the bus stop? What would the other
kids say, she grumbles? She resigns herself to the compromise. I will
escort her to the bend in the path to the bus stop where I can see the
lamp post that works. And we both agree: As soon as she says “goodbye
daddy!” I must return to bed.

In the kitchen, as
our daughter gets ready for school, she regales me with stories of her
yesterday. The stories are all American, of a culture and a way of life
that is alien to me even after all these years of my sojourn but the
names of her stories’ characters are delightfully United Nations –
dizzy pointers to the ancestry of those who fled strong opinions and
deadly force to come to this land of the allegedly free. Our daughter
laughs at her own stories and I laugh along with her. She is happy and
I admire and envy her. Who was the sage that said that we live through
our children?

We get to the bend
in the path and our daughter turns around and says “goodbye daddy!” I
stop and wish her a great day. In the dark I look around me. There are
shapes kneading themselves into human forms, benign spirits morphing
into students congregating at the bus stop. Out by the woods, sounds
warn of the mysteries and dangers of the dark and the known. All around
me the majesty of the moment overwhelms me and transports me to the
majesty of a past in Africa that will not leave me alone. Africa comes
calling again; the Africa that I remember despite her wars and issues.
Our Africa is a nurturing one – of caring clans, bountiful markets,
wondrous stories and heart breaking dances.

Why are we here?
Today, in America, we are riding shotgun in life’s SUV. Today we are
riding crouched low on the path of no resistance. Come dawn, we wanted
to stay in bed but today again slapped us awake and berated us to
turgid attention. The mirror shimmers with glee. It is not me that I
see in the sea of mirth but I cannot escape the mirror that forces me
to peer. We are out in the cold depths of America’s winter shivering in
dresses that were inspired by the searing heat of the land of my
ancestors. Why are we shivering when we could be clothed in the warmth
of the values of the new land? We are afraid to look our bullying
ancestors straight in the eyes and ask the question: Why?

America. This
journey is the same, has always been the same, from the beginning of
the earth. Nothing is new, it is the same journey and we have always
trudged on this same path. Yet, it is an abiding mystery, how it is
that each new traveler always gapes with awe and wonder at the changing
constants, this constant newness of this journey. It is the same big
fat bus filled with the same people, hustling, jostling, elbowing their
way out of somewhere to somewhere. Languages are dying; peoples are
dying; and dead customs litter the halls of bored museums, all
mummified by the happy pall-bearers of that cliché called change.

From Africa to America there is war everywhere, war fuels the
journey. Don’t look but our children are falling off the roofs of
trains, drowning in the waters of roiling seas that bloody the
relentless movement of warriors of color. Everyday history is made. But
their history is dead. They came kicking and screaming. They are still
kicking and screaming – at us. They don’t want us here. They say,
“Learn English! Speak English! You are in America!” they remind us,
speak English! Their eyes ask us to check multiple boxes – in English:
Who are you? Where are you coming from? Where are you going? When are
you going back home? We do not ask questions. We are happy to be here,
we tell them. We know the truth, that they know the truth. Welcome to
America.

According to
Musiliu Peregrino Brimah, Majek Fashek’s first outing was in Ghana
where he performed a series of concerts. While there, he won the
Nigerian Music Award. On his return he played concerts around Nigeria
and eventually left for the United States of America, where he signed
up with the InterScope Record label that also had Snoop Dog in its
stable.

Brimah picks up the
story. “Majek played at the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York
and, in the appreciative audience were Carlos Santana and other top
musicians. He was a big hit because they had never heard a band play
reggae with talking drums; his diminutive dancer, Pogo, who also played
shekere, thrilled the audience. The Jamaicans in particular, inventors
of reggae music, were shocked. Generally, Majek was well accepted on
the American music scene and he appeared on the famous David Letterman
Talk Show. He made a record in America which was favourably reviewed in
music journals as well as the upscale Esquire magazine. He was
described as the new voice of international reggae! When Fajek came
back to Nigeria, the first thing he did was to kiss the ground.

“I again advised
Majek to be closer to God. We went to a party in Ikeja where Sunny Ade
was playing and when Sunny saw Majek he started praising him in song.
Later, I told Majek I did not like the way he was behaving as he was
always restless and, that, if he had lost the key he should look for
that key that controls the mind. I asked him if he was taking drugs and
he said: no. Rather, he told me, he had read the spiritual book, ‘Seven
Books of Moses’ on the way to America. I have not seen Majek since
then. All I hear now are stories.”

The first Oxygen

Musiliu Peregrino
Brimah himself had to move on with his art. He designed the label for
the new Punch newspapers’ record company, Skylight Records. He designed
album covers for Ebenezer Obey, Orlando Owoh, Christie Essien-Igbokwe,
I.K.Dairo, Oriental Brothers, Kabaka, BLO, Manu Dibango, Tee Mac, Dele
Abiodun and Jonny Haastrup, amongst many others.

He delved further
into his passion for identifying and producing young talents. He worked
with a young group, Special Branch from Festac and, one of the members,
Tony, brought Paul Play Dairo. “I interviewed Paul Dairo,” Brimah
recalls, “and gave him an assignment to do the Johnny Cash song ‘I can
see clearly/now the rain is gone’; and sing it in the style of Seal. He
did the song and I was overwhelmed by [his] talent. So, I formed a
group which I called Oxygen, with Paul and Tony in 2002. Paul brought
in Slam and Bayo and, they all had talent. We were doing Hip Hop and
Hiplife; a mixture of highlife and hip-hop. We were doing fantastic
sounds and we were about to release our sound when Paul did ‘Mosorire’
for his father. I had already gotten Oxygen a record deal in America;
but Paul went to Kenny’s Music who released Moserire and it became a
big hit. That was the end of the first Oxygen.”

The second Oxygen

Brimah did not give
up! “I formed another Oxygen group,” he reminisces, “with Modog, Cool
Irie and, then a fellow producer told me he wanted me to meet a girl
called Asa who had talent. When I auditioned Asa and heard her voice I
was fascinated. With her in this new group called Oxygen Track 2, we
did a recording at Ayo Bankole’s Mainstream studio in Surulere. After
we shot the video, Asa told me she wasn’t too happy with the behaviour
of some of the other musicians so she decided to go solo. I continued
working with young musicians and, I worked with OJB who later produced
the hit ‘African Queen’ for Tuface Idibia.”

Brimah’s Peregrino
Music has continued to produce cutting-edge innovative popular music in
Nigeria and Ghana. Two of such products currently in the market and
making waves are ‘Ekute Oyingbo’ by Kaduna-based King Suleiman and
‘Ikebe’ by Katsina Rankies, based in Nima, Accra, Ghana. The lyrics in
both recordings are in Hausa and English.

When will he
release his earlier musical experiments with Oxygen and other groups?
“I think the time is right now,” he responds. “They were unknown
musicians then and the music industry then had not become what we made
it to be.” What are the special factors that now drive the Nigerian
Music industry? “These young musicians are money-spinning machines
today, not like before. The publicity, their involvement with
telecommunication companies and the fact that their music now has
international appeal has made all the difference!”

Celebrating Nigeria and Ghana

Musiliu Peregrino
Brimah’s pet project now is the Nigeria-Ghana Music Festival scheduled
for November 2010. It is a project that has gestated for some time. “I
first conceived the idea back in 2004/5. Then in 2007 I went to Ghana
to see the then President of the Ghana Musicians Association, Sidiku
Buhari, and told him that the purpose was to develop our culture
through music. He liked the idea. I then talked to Tee Mac who was then
President of PMAN and he too liked the idea. Then in 2008 I went to the
then Minister of Culture and Tourism, Adetokunbo Kayode, and the
Ministry gave me approval for supporting African Music and Culture.

“I then went into
collaboration with CBAAC and we did a promotional mini-documentary for
the Nigeria-Ghana Music Festival with the theme, ‘A Bit of Yesterday,
Today and Tomorrow’ and aired it on the Music Africa programme on
Silverbird Television for nearly two years. In the promotional film, we
talked about the Beats of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow including
Highlife, Juju, Afrobeat, Fuji, Kpalogo, Adowa (both from Ghana) and
others. We have done enough publicity and we believe this is the right
time to do the Nigeria-Ghana Music Festival because of Nigeria’s 50th
Anniversary and Kwame Nkrumah’s centenary. The theme of the Festival is
Integration and Development because Nigeria and Ghana are like
twin-sister countries!

“We are looking at 10 musicians, four from Ghana and six from
Nigeria. We are definitely planning on having great musicians from
Nigeria and Ghana. Already, some state governors are part of the
sponsorship we have received. We plan on using the Lagos City Hall and
more details will be available as we embark on the final advertising
and awareness push very soon,” Brimah concludes.

What makes America great?

Simple audacity: her dreams are bigger.

The country won independence

and proceeded to mature

in self determination and confidence

having shaken off the empire Britain

What makes Nigeria great?

Nature’s blessings

of location in our black continent

where food, clothing, and shelter

are the three basic gifts.

America’s

splendid isolation, exceptionalism, entitlement,

meet

Nigeria’s

regional leadership, prosperity, entitlement

Taken from ‘Comrade’; Kraft Books; 2010

The First Edition
of the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF), themed, ‘Africa
Unites’, is scheduled to hold from December 1 to 5 at the Genesis
Deluxe Cinema, Port Harcourt. This was announced at a press briefing
held on September 15 at City Mall, Onikan, Lagos.

According to Chioma
Ude, Founder and Project Director of the Festival, “AFRIFF draws on the
principle that being African is a bond that goes beyond geography,
birth or lineage; people of African origin are spread across the globe
and Africa is a proud home to many non Nigerians.”

Calls for
registration of film productions by both indigenous international film
makers have been made by the festival body. And according to Ude, the
response has been encouraging, “We have over 200 movies registered
already, from which [those] to be screened at the workshops will be
selected”. The festival will also culminate in an award ceremony in
recognition of outstanding movies screened during the festival. Movies
to be screened fall under the categories of features, documentaries,
short films and animation.

Workshops

Chioma Ude revealed
that while planning the festival has been challenging as expected, she
has had a lot of support from four other organisers, all female. “What
I like about the festival planning is the planning committee, each of
us have come together with different competencies.”

Peace
Anyiam-Osigwe, founder of the African Movie Academy Award (AMAA)’, is
the creative director of the festival. She says concerning her role,
“This will be the first time that there will be a call for projects. A
content market is one of the best things that the festival is bringing.
Most times we say that we have the stories, now we want to work in
putting those stories out properly.”

In a novel
development, the festival will incorporate workshops in the aspects of
scriptwriting, sound and cameras. Soledad Grognett, Technical Director
of the Festival, spoke further on the scriptwriting laboratory, saying,
“It will contribute to the long-term ambition of the festival. We are
already receiving short stories with a maximum length of 30 pages.
Instructors will select 3 to 5 projects which will be awarded cash
prizes towards the realisation of their production, with a view to
having them featured next year. We are utilising the youth and their
raw talent in the way stories are being told.”

While however the
scriptwriting workshop invites new entrants and university students,
especially from the Niger Delta, some of whom are being sponsored by
corporate bodies; the other workshops, According to Grognett, “are more
inclined to enhance skill rather than start planting; and work with
practitioners rather than students.”

Ude also disclosed
that, “this year, with the help of Film 24 and other partners, we are
introducing an equipments market, where equipments can be bought or
leased. The idea is to foster the African Film industry from within.
There is also the film content market established with the view to meet
supply with demand; to stimulate Africans to know the type of project
the market is interested in. And enable international film makers to
get the real African content.”

Rivers and Cannes

Scheduled to hold
annually in Port Harcourt, AFRIFF hopes to unite film makers from
across the world on African soil. And speaking on the choice of
Port-Harcourt, Ude disclosed that, “the Rivers State government is our
main sponsor; when you have a project, you take it to the most
receptive body. And the government of Rivers State has been a foremost
supporter of Arts and Culture.”

On hand to give his
support at the press briefing was movie marketer Emma Isikaku, who
praised the festival committee. “The people behind the festival are
tested hands behind the AMAA and the ION film festival. At the ION
festival last year, I saw something different from what we had been
seeing, so with AFRIFF I hope to see that same quality,” he said in a
chat with NEXT.

Isikaku, who
expressed a desire to market his films and acquire marketing rights to
some movies, at the festival, also remarked that, “Festivals like this
help producers and marketers to begin to see that they need to up their
game. It is a starting point.”

Ude, whose career has spanned nursing, medical staffing, marketing
and logistic planning, is the initiator and organiser of the AMAA
charity balls and producer the ION Film Festival held last year in
Port-Harcourt, through which the vision for AFRIFF was derived. She
concluded the press conference by expressing hopes that the festival
will take on a national significance, “I want AFRIFF to be viewed as a
national programme, like Cannes is for France.”

Tunde Kelani’s
Mainframe Productions and the National Association of Nigerian Theatre
Arts Practitioners, (NANTAP), Lagos State chapter, will stage Dotun
Ogundeji’s ‘Yeepa: Solaarin Nbo’ as part of events marking Nigeria’s
50th Independence anniversary.

Translated into
Yoruba from playwright, Femi Osofisan’s ‘Who is Afraid of Solarin’, the
play is a satire on the state of the nation and is being bankrolled by
the Lagos State Government. It centres on the public complaints
commissioner, Solaarin, feared by corrupt leaders in the community due
to his uprightness. Politicians in the village become afraid when they
hear he is due to pay a visit, and set about cleaning up their acts.
But does he?

“We are witnessing
history with this production,” began Kelani at a meeting with reporters
on Thursday, September 16. “It is a synergy between Mainframe, Lagos
NANTAP and the Dance Guild of Nigeria (GOND). It is a total performance
that is taking theatre back to the basics,” he said.

Artists, Toyin
Oshinaike, Lara Akinsola, Ropo Ewenla, Kayode Idris, Femi Tade and
others will feature in the play directed by Niji Akanni and co-produced
by Kelani and Mufu Onifade, chair, Lagos NANTAP.

“This special
Independence performance is designed to capture the theatre of the 60s
epitomised by the travelling experiences championed by the likes of
Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, Kola Ogunmola, etc,” explained Onifade.

He noted that
during that era, “opening glee was an integral part of the main drama
presentation. The opening glee, a combination of dance, music and pure
entertainment must, as a matter of compulsion, precede a full-length
drama presentation.” He disclosed that an opening glee choreographed by
Segun Adefila and Adedayo Liadi, will precede the staging of ‘Yeepa…’

“The Lagos State
chapter of the Dance Guild of Nigeria will also present a stage
dance/musical performance of Hubert Ogunde’s ‘Yoruba Ronu’ and 9ice’s
new musical, ‘Petepete’. These two performances will be rolled into
one, thus emphasising the vibrancy and potency of opening glee as
prelude to a major performance.”

Justifying why a
satire is being staged to celebrate Independence, Kelani said the
original role of drama, apart from entertainment, is to stimulate
people and “stir their conscience.” He added that the producers hope to
initiate a process of “re-orientation. To say to Nigerians we can
gather our lives together” despite the destruction of the society. “If
we all decide we must stay together, we must not focus on the problems
alone but also the solution,” Onifade added.

Kelani also
explained why a Yoruba play was selected for a multicultural state like
Lagos. He said the late Kola Ogunmola and Duro Ladipo got Order of the
British Empire (OBE) awards for plays they staged in Yoruba language in
England and that the message is not limited by the selection of a
Yoruba play. “Personally, the English plays have never been successful
for me,” he added.

The command performance holds on Friday, September 24, at the MUSON
Centre, Onikan, Lagos, by 5pm. It will also be staged free of charge
for the public on September 28 and 29 at the National Theatre, Iganmu,
Lagos at 5pm.

The burial ceremony
of publisher, Appolos Oguwike, publisher of Onitsha Market Literature
fame, held on Friday, September 17 in his hometown of Alaenyi Ogwa in
Imo State. Oguwike, proprietor of Apollos Brothers Press (Nig) Ltd and
a major player in publishing pulp fiction genre referred to as Onitsha
Market Literature, died on July 26.

He published Ogali
A. Ogali’s popular ‘Veronica My Daughter’ and ‘Alice in the Romance of
Love’ amongst many other titles. Until his death, Oguwike was the Odu
(prime minister) of Alaenyi Ogwa.

Born in October
1935, Oguwike had his primary school education in his hometown but
could not go further because of financial constraints. He, thereafter,
resorted to trading in books and stationery, after understudying his
uncle. Oguwike later established the popular and still surviving
Appolos Brothers Press, which produced numerous titles, including
Ogali’s ‘Veronica My Daughter’ – a classic of the genre.

Apart from
publishing and trading in books, Oguwike was also an active community
leader. He was made the Nze I of his kindred, Umuezelaeze, in 1996 and
the Odu (prime minister) when Alaenyi Ogwa became autonomous in 2000.

President General of the town union, Kenneth Nwanguma, disclosed
that the 2010 Irriji (New Yam Festival) of the community has been
postponed in honour of the late publisher.