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I
read each line of Ayo Obe’s article in last Sunday’s edition of NEXT with
alarm. That’s no melodrama. Literally, every line increased my alarm. What
exactly was she saying? Why exactly was she saying this? What exactly was the
significance?

Even
with the gratuitous ridiculing of the word youth (‘yoot’, she called it), there
was a brittle condescension for the whole idea of young people demanding that
their voices be heard and that their interests be protected in this
dispensation.

The
article evidently sought to deconstruct the youth movement – starting from an
attack on the whole premise of a youth bulge. Ms. Obe spent a good part of the
article making it clear what little regard she has for the globally-recognised
reality that the youth population is now the biggest demographic.

In
doing this, she set up a false contrast between the demands of youth
campaigners and women campaigners. Yet the argument fell flat – because, at the
end of the day you went away wondering what exactly was said, and what its
purport was.

I
say this because, at the end of the treatise, I still had no sense of what was
being said – all I was left with was one statement that was clear, one clear
knowledge gap (youth is defined 18 – 35, not 18 – 24, in our context) and a
bucket full of innuendo. The suggestions, however, were both disingenuous and
dangerous – as was the one definite statement that she made.

The
statement: that the present band of
youth activists and campaigners for youth involvement in elections and
governance feel “entitled”.

Wow.

I
am almost speechless. Almost speechless, because, more than any cadre of youth
activists in nations across the world, ours has been one of the most reserved.
This has been a season where youth groups have gone out of their way to
denounce student-activist-style engagement, have insisted on denouncing
violence in any form, opened up channels of communication, deepened
partnerships with other stakeholders, and built durable networks across. In
addition, many youth campaigns have gone out of their way to note that their
interests and issues are identical to those of the larger population.

Even
better, this cadre of young activists has been ready to invest money, sweat and
time. On the streets, they have campaigned under the sun and under the rain; to
raise money, they have worked hard without public appeal or sometimes funding;
and they have managed to build socially-sustainable platforms – especially
technological – that are responsible models of social investment.

So,
what exactly is the cause for disrespect?

Considering
that Ms. Obe is herself a near-legend in terms of activism, and one of those
that loudly demanded their entitlement under military regimes and made the
country uncomfortable for those who didn’t accede to their driven interest, it
is important to ask Ms. Obe what exactly about the success of this movement she
is upset with: the fact that it exists or the fact that it is successful?

Or
the fact (gasp) that it seems to have left a generation of activists behind –
abandoning old tools and resources and building entirely new systems of
activism and engagement?

I
have heard plenty of the ‘oh this is the elite youth speaking’ argument and can
only shake my head. And what exactly is the problem with educated and connected
youth making their voices heard? Is an engaged and aware elite youth population
not eminently more desirable than an ignorant and disengaged one?

If
young people on Twitter, Facebook and Blackberries are actively interested in
the state of their nation, is the fact of their numerical minority enough to
discredit their importance?

The
reality is that nothing is to be gained in this rather curious attempt to
belittle the campaign for the young to be heard and be relevant. And,
unfortunately, like the kinds of Malcolm Gladwell who have taken it upon
themselves to battle social media relevance because they simply don’t
understand it, anyone who seeks to ridicule or undermine the emerging power of
youth in any area of Nigerian life – from brand marketing to governance – is
wasting time.

But,
above all, the most relevant question is this: why would you want to waste your
time fighting the spectre of an enlightened and empowered youth population
willing to change their country? Pray tell, what really is the redeeming
quality in that fruitless battle?

Click here to read Ayo Obe’s original piece.

“But they were ready before you!” Snapped my father angrily,
early on March, 6, 1957.

I had innocently asked: “But Dad, why did the Gold Coast get
independence before us?” There are two tiny sovereign nations, Benin and Togo,
hanging like strips of spaghetti on the map between Ghana and Nigeria. Yet,
Nigerians feel their real neighbours are Ghana. A bonding factor of colonial
experience in the way we relate to other nationals is pervasive. So, we compare
and measure ourselves with Ghana all the time – in politics and economics,
football and highlife music, education and fashion, cocoa and now oil. Luckily,
it has been healthy rivalry tinged with mutual respect, unlike the state of
affairs with our brothers to the east. Nigeria and Cameroon nearly went to war
over the Bakassi peninsula, even though ethnographically, we are closer to
Cameroon than to Ghana.

I sometimes ask what matrix or criteria are used in measuring
the Ghana-Nigeria competition, but all I hear is a savage rebuke: “Go to Ghana
and see!” Clearly, we live in a comparative world. Physics, biology, geography
and many more subjects have their comparative modules. Every life process is
compared with the other. Yet, in most cases, there is no linearity, no
parameter applied in arriving at judgmental conclusions. Our world subsists on
subjectivity, parochialism, unnecessary competition and naked prejudice.

Meeting the Queen

James Robertson replaced John Macpherson at the Marina as the
ruler of Nigeria, and had the honour of welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to Lagos.
I’ve never seen a human with a head as massive as the new governor-general’s.
He looked like an ox, and I almost ran away in horror the day he visited our
school.

Queen Elizabeth II stepped out to be confronted by the
regimental band of the Nigerian Army that could not have looked smarter and
more professional. They smashed out God Save the Queen, before advancing
through a series of Prussian martial tunes on to the lilting Blue Bells of
Scotland and the melodious Old Calabar. It was a sunny day. A broad Union Jack,
one of the most beautiful flags in the world, fluttered gracefully in the sea
breeze of Lagos. The impressive Royal Yacht Britannia bobbed and bubbled on
anchor in the murky waters of Lagos harbour.

Elizabeth’s visit in 1956 was not the first by a royal to
Nigeria. Her uncle, Edward, the Prince of Wales, was here for a week in April,
1925. I heard stories about him from my parents that he was handsome. They did
not tell me about the king’s huge appetite for married women. There was genuine
fear in England that he was going to turn Buckingham Palace into a brothel.
Eventually, Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 after just one year on the throne,
when the British government objected to his marrying Wallis Simpson, an American
divorcee. She had two living ex-husbands! My mother thought it was great and
gallant for a king to leave his throne in order to marry the woman he loved. My
father just shrugged and withheld his opinion. I asked to know what a
“divorcee” was, but got slapped down by my parents.

What didn’t we see in the way of automobiles during the Queen’s
visit – Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Armstrong-Siddeley, Austin Princess and Daimler!
A Roll-Royce epitomises everything that imperial splendour and authority
represents – silence, reverence, dignity, austerity and quality. But of all the
cars I saw in colonial Nigeria, none impressed me more than the Humber Super
Snipe.

I’ve not seen one again since 1953. A shame the British car
industry doesn’t exist anymore! In her farewell speech, the embryonic Nigerian
Army was re-christened the Queens’s Own Nigeria Regiment by Elizabeth herself.
They were terrific when it came to ceremonial occasions; the soldiers all the
same height – slim, very dark, with slightly bowed legs. Each soldier looked
like the twin of the subaltern next to him. The regiment, in heavily-starched
Bermuda shorts, marched in step like mechanised toys. Not a single Nigerian
soldier at ceremonial parades in those days had a pot belly balanced on K-legs.

“Regiment,” which insinuates command subsidiarity or a component
of a larger unit, attracted criticism in Nigeria. The army of an independent
Nigeria was not going to be something like the Scottish or Welsh Regiment
within the UK armed forces. So, a change was effected to the Royal Nigeria Army
(RNA) under the last British commander, Major-General Welby-Everard.

I hear it said now and again that the most efficient black
soldier is the one commanded by a white officer? True or false, this naïve
belief could have contributed to the downfall of Nkrumah and Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa. One cardinal error the two men made was to retain their British chiefs
of staff, well into independence.

Despite open warnings from Tawia Adamafio in Ghana and Azikiwe
in Nigeria,

Major-Generals Alexander and Welby-Everard remained in charge of
the Ghana and Nigeria armies until 1961 and 1965 respectively. The two Britons
could not have done a good job. Once they left, the armies rebelled!

Champion of the world

“They said that Bassey has knocked him down! The commentator
said the man has got up! I’m not sure what they’re saying now. Eh-hem, now they
said the man is bleeding from the nose. I think the referee is stopping the
fight!” We didn’t wait for a confirmation, screaming, hugging one another, jumping
about like kangaroos. It had been a live commentary of the live commentary on
the night of June 24, 1957 at Uyo.

Our small, robust radio set was never loud enough. Someone, a
second commentator, had to stick an ear close enough to it for better audio,
and then translate the actual commentary to the rest of us. Over 50 people
crowded around this unreliable radio set on that night at the hall of the TTC,
the Teacher’s Training College.

Nigeria’s Hogan Bassey was fighting Cherif Hamia, the French
Algerian for the Featherweight Championship of the World in Paris. Tears still
well into my eyes today when I recall the Daily Times front-page headline of
the next morning that simply read, “Hogan Bassey, Champion of the World!” The
1950s were the golden period for black people in international sports. To my
generation of Nigerians, sports remain the ethos around which our lives are
built. When, in 1958, I returned from the interview for admission into Umuahia
Government College, my father was waiting anxiously, pacing about like a caged
lion on the platform at Aba Railway Station.

“So, how did it go? What questions did they ask you?” I told him
there were three white men:

the principal, Mr. Wareham; Mr. Wilson and Mr. Garrod. After
they confirmed my name, place and date of birth, Mr. Wareham began seriously,
that he had heard I played cricket, and did I know cricket was played at
Umuahia College? Would I continue to play if admitted? It was like a crown
counsel cross-examining a criminal. I answered the questions timidly, but in
the affirmative. The three men looked at each other, and then asked me to call
the next candidate. It had been such a brief encounter I thought something had
gone wrong, and these white men didn’t want to waste their time with me. On the
short train ride from Umuahia to Aba, I sat somewhat dejected.

“Ahhh,” concluded my father, “then you’ve passed!” How? It was
in 1952, when my father was at University College, London and he sent two
cricket bats, a ball and some linseed oil to condition the bats, through the
district officer of Owerri, Mr. Mann to my brother and me. It resulted from a
letter my mother wrote to him that we used the branches of coconut trees for a
bat, and old tennis balls to play cricket. My brother got into Umuahia in 1954 and
was regular in the first team by 1958. The news about a younger brother, still
in primary school, who could use a cricket bat, had filtered into the school.

I kept a scrap book in which sports clippings from the Daily
Times, the West African Pilot, the overseas Daily Mirror and Illustrated London
News were stuck. There is no doubt in my mind over who qualifies to be the most
celebrated Nigerian footballer of all time – Teslim Balogun! He was, simply,
Thunder Balogun to everyone and for a striker to bear such a frightening name
speaks volumes of his exploits, and how goal-keepers must have suffered.

Three important landmark records made the 1950s memorable for me: that West
Indian side with Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott beat England
in a cricket test series, winning at Lords, the cricket citadel; Brazil won the
football Jules Rimet trophy ( the FIFA World Cup) in 1958. There were black
players in their team – Pele, Didi, Djalma Santos and Garrincha. In the same
year, the West Indian, Garry Sobers set a world batting record of 365 not out
against Pakistan. It was a wonderful decade!

For a certified
glutton, it is somewhat contradictory that I should have the ability to
happily live off three foods: I don’t have to eat red meat or bread. I
rarely ever eat chicken. If I were kidnapped at Ikot Ekpene and carried
off to some undisclosed location, like a friend of mine was, my captors
would only have to feed me small creamy yellow Yoruba bananas,
baby-gourd shaped avocadoes (with a little kosher salt) and gourmet
chocolate (with pepper, please). Some brown rice crackers would go well
with the avocado. I’m not at all fussy. Stewed stockfish is a new
passion for me. It took me over 35 years to befriend that terrifying
smell that lingers on your lips and fingers. Or to get used to the
strain stockfish puts on your teeth; the way the fish fills the space
between them until they feel like they are being pushed out of their
roots. This does not mean that I now like the smell of stockfish, only
that I have turned my attention to that graceful collapse of the
stockfish when it is left sitting in hot soup for a couple of hours. I
eat it out of the pot, so no one will ask me for some.

The idea of
cinnamon could only have come out of God’s mind. Fried plantain, in the
words of Amma Ogan’s father, is the food of the gods. A combination of
fried plantain and cinnamon is a sin. I love fresh cinnamon sticks, and
there is nothing like the big sweet warm woody spicy aroma of fresh
cinnamon. Like pepper, it goes in almost everything that I cook: in my
morning coffee with honey, used as a two-day-long marinade for chicken,
generously sprinkled over boiling meat, added to a lazy pot of plain
basmati rice with turmeric fennel and bay leaf…devoured just plain
like that. A seasoning for fresh catfish simmered in palm oil, and a
delicate highlight in porridge made with potatoes and cabbage.

My favourite
cooking oil is coconut oil, never mind those naysayers who say it will
give you a cardiac arrest. I have a clandestine source in a West
African country where you go, sit under wise coconut trees and watch
the locals process the freshest, most incredible smelling coconut oil
under the sun. The aroma of coconut oil poured into a hot pan is a
revelation, a little cinnamon added and, yet again, one is sinning. My
stews, against my proffered advice to others, have become a dogmatic
affair. They must always be cooked in an oven. Cooking them is a
longwinded affair that frustrates those waiting to eat, but at the end,
it is so smooth on the palate that you can just drink it like soup.

Okra soup is my
ultimate comfort food, cut in large chunks and cooked briskly with hot
fragrant peppers, onions, shinenose fish belly and freshly harvested
ugwu. The face of my food must unfailingly have colour; palm oil red or
turmeric or brown, or green, never without specks of fennel or thyme or
pepper or something.

Blandness in food
equals queasiness. Garlic, ginger and onions are fundamental to most of
the meals I prepare. I cannot go one whole week without eating hot
peppers or else I become depressed. There is an exception to my love of
colour; fufu, with its excruciatingly beautiful, smooth texture. It is
a good thing that I don’t often stumble on fufu that doesn’t smell. I
would be as big as a house. Any ‘swallow’ that can be microwaved like
fufu can, in my opinion, deserves a national award.

Chocolate, and hot freshly fried puff puffs wrapped in the smell of
old newsprint, are my two greatest weaknesses. I can in fact resist
chocolate but never ever puff puffs. The near-perfect dessert is
chocolate mousse served with dashes of Tabasco. Our very own Milo mixed
with peppermint tea, Darifree, honey and a quarter teaspoon of hot
Cameroonian pepper is my beloved twist on a Starbucks beverage. I cook
every day; many days, six different meals. Every day, I resolve to
continue to cook my family fresh hot meals, and every day, I regret the
decision. If I could have any meal of my choosing right now, it would
be some sticky rice or ofada rice served with stewed smoked catfish and
a hot steaming moin moin with a whole egg in it. It is indisputable
that I love food.