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The adopted son of
the late Susanne Wenger, Sangodare Ajala, has won the third annual
Nigerian Breweries/African Arts Foundation (AAF) National Art
Competition.

Mr Ajala’s work,
titled ‘Fire of the Nation Burns Still,’ was adjudged the best out of
30 exhibited at the finals held at Civic Centre, Lagos Island, on
Wednesday evening. He got N1.5 million for winning the competition
themed ‘Chronicles of a Great Nation at Fifty,’ and organised to
commemorate Nigeria’s 50th Independence anniversary. Painter, Stanley
Dudu, and sculptor, Fidelis Odogwu, who came second and third got N1
million and N500, 000 respectively.

Mama’s fruits

Mr Ajala attributed
his success to years of training under the Austria-born Osun priestess,
also known as ‘Adunni Olorisa’ who died last year. “It was Mama Susanne
Wenger who insisted that we must have formal education, particularly in
the study of contemporary arts, and we are grateful today that we are
reaping the good fruits,” he said.

Managing Director
of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Paul Hamers, said the competition in its
third edition was part of the organisation’s effort to encourage
creativity and promote the arts. Mr Hamers said the first edition, with
‘The Unbreakable Nigerian Spirit’ as its theme, produced 10 winners who
were given the opportunity to exhibit their works in Lagos, Abuja, and
Amsterdam. The second edition, themed ‘Nigeria: The Future I See,’
produced four zonal winners.

He noted that the
competition was open to all budding artists, and that the scope had
been broadened to include diverse artistic genres such as new media,
photography, video, painting and sculpture. “This sponsorship remains
part of a broad initiative to support the promotion of arts as well as
the development of talents in various fields of endeavour,” Mr Hamers
said.

Director of AAF, Azu Nwagbogu, said that the 2010 edition of the
competition recorded more than 300 entries. He said that a jury,
comprising arts critics, curators and artists, shortlisted 50 entries,
out of which the 30 finalists were selected. “We are encouraged by
increased local interest in the ever-increasing medium of creative
expression and have observed a significant rise in the standard of
artworks submitted,” he said.

Photographer
Akintunde Akinleye, the first Nigerian prize winner in the prestigious
World Press Photo (Netherlands 2007) is among 30 shortlisted candidates
for the third annual National Arts Competition. The competition,
‘Chronicles of a Great Nation at 50,’ is being organised by the African
Artists’ Foundation (AAF) in partnership with Nigerian Breweries PLC.

In a press
conference held on July 13, Ageni Yusuf, Corporate Affairs Adviser,
Nigerian Breweries PLC, represented by Vivian Ikem, Public Affairs
Manager, NB PLC, announced that a final exhibition of the works of the
shortlisted candidates will open on Wednesday, July 21 at the Civic
Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos.

“The winners of the competition will be announced that day, and their prizes presented to them,” Yusuf said.

The competition had
made no age restrictions and, since the call for entries in March 2010,
organisers have received over 300 works from “budding and emerging
artists”.

The entries were in a wide range of visual art genres including: New Media, Photography, Video, Painting and Sculpture.

According to Zainab
Ashadu, coordinator of the competition, unlike the previous editions,
“this year, three overall winners will be chosen from any of the
genres.”

The prizes are 1.5
million Naira, I million Naira, and Five hundred thousand Naira for the
first, second and third placed winners respectively.

A week-long
training workshop will also be organised for the 30 shortlisted
candidates, during which they will be taught by local and foreign
experts who will be invited to facilitate the workshop. The idea, Yusuf
said, “is to facilitate the development of talents, so that apart from
the prizes they may win, they will also gain in terms of knowledge and
skill.”

As regards the sale
of shortlisted works during the exhibition, which will be open to all
members of the public, Director, African Artists’ Foundation, Azu
Nwagbogu, leaves the subject to the prerogative of the artists,
assuring that there is no obligation on the part of the candidates.

“We do not own [the
works], and do not want to own them. The artists own their works, so if
they want to sell it, it is up to them. If we can broker a sale for
them, that will be fine, but that decision is entirely up to them.”

The judges, who
will be deciding the winning entries, were not revealed. As according
to Ikem, “The winners are yet to emerge, so at this point, we can’t be
open about the people who constitute the jury.” On the criteria to be
fulfilled by winning works though, Nwagbogu opined that, “Originality
is one thing that should stand out. It is the main standard for winning
art.”

Addressing the
query concerning the shortlisting of a seemingly established
photographer of the status of Akinleye, whose works have been exhibited
in Washington, Los Angeles, New Mexico, Lagos, Amsterdam, Graz and
Madrid, in a competition specifically targeted at budding and emerging
talents, Nwagbogu said, “As far as I know, Akintunde Akinleye hasn’t
achieved the reputation of a George Cole. He has won an award, but as
far as I know, he is emerging and hasn’t had a solo exhibition yet.”

However, Akinleye
is not the only wave-making artist on the shortlisted. Also contending
for coveted prizes in the competition are: Osogbo artist Sangodare
Ajala, Stanley Dudu, Lucy Azubuike, Adolphus Opara, Taye Idahor and
Jude Anogwih.

Nwagbogu concluded
the press briefing by expressing AAF’s appreciation to Nigerian
Breweries PLC “not only for financial contribution but also for its
investment in time and commitment” in the annual arts competition since
its first edition in 2008.

Studio Visit returns next week.

Doreen Baingana’s
collection of short stories Tropical Fish examines Uganda and the
Diaspora in black and white, with history graying in the fading
distance. Idi Amin was a deadly buffoon. Up to 400,000 people may have
perished under his reign of lunacy. Amin’s atrocities were perhaps
dwarfed by Milton Obote’s. Then there is AIDS. Up to 800,000 people may
have died already. Amin and Obote died in peace in exile without any
credible attempts to hold them accountable. So much for justice. In
‘Tropical Fish’, Baingana says virtually nothing about Obote’s evil
reign. This is baffling. How do you forget? Should fiction not document
the lived history? Baingana says in the book that Idi Amin gave Asians
72 hours to leave Uganda in 1972. They were actually given 90 days
because Amin claimed that Asians had the habit of giving Ugandans 90
days credit.

The story, ‘Green
Stones’ is a delightful conversation about relationships, marriages,
and life. In Christine, the main character’s world, alcoholism and
infidelity hold sway in the form of Taata, her father, a mean drunk,
the sauced burden of her mother, Maama. It is a look at family
relationships, warts and all from the eyes of a child, a revealing
exploration of familiar issues: infidelity, alcoholism, the extended
family, patriarchy – all within the stifling confines of a traditional
marriage. ‘Green Stones’ is written with all of Baingana’s literary
muscle. Tart luscious prose bear nice turns of phrases and they delight
the palate.

‘Passion’ and ‘A
Thank-You Note’ are the only previously unpublished stories in the
book. No wonder. They are awful. They sit in the centre of the book,
smug, like badly cooked rice, hoping to be saved by great stew.
‘Passion’ is an imperfectly designed, puzzling story leaning on the
pretence of magic realism. ‘A Thank-You Note’ is an overwrought
introspection on AIDS. Baingana tries – and fails – to put herself in
the mind of an AIDS sufferer. The story does serve a useful purpose:
the inchoate main character Rosa is mercifully killed off by bad
writing. ‘Hunger’ and ‘First Kiss’ are rambling, pointless exercises in
self-absorption.

You must read
‘Lost in Los Angeles’ and ‘Questions of Home’. They are thoughtful
reflections on immigration, the immigrant, exile and homecoming. One is
taken by the unresolved pain and anguish that are unearthed in these
stories. There are some good observations about the impact of
technological advances on community and relationships. The stories
spoke to me. Nonetheless, the immigrant of colour in Baingana’s book is
painfully self-conscious. There are strong hints of self-absorption and
narcissism. For Baingana, even lovemaking is an opportunity for deep
introspection in search of meaning where none probably exists.
Sometimes folks just want to get laid.

The book’s
attitude to sex is fascinating; sex is described in near indifferent
terms – a few minutes of heaving and pushing. The book makes a grand
failure of exploring sensuality and is hugely successful at remaining
mum on the sum total of our sexuality. It is a poorly kept secret that
same-sex relationships in Africa’s boarding schools are common.
Baingana gingerly navigates the fringes of tradition as she rides
around on wheels of modernity.

Baingana is
unsuccessful at being more than one character, Christine. The other
sisters, Patti and Rosa are merely afterthoughts. They are identical
triplets cannibalised by Christine’s strong character and weak writing.
Baingana asserts Uganda’s otherness as she carefully separates Ugandan
words from English words, like a cook separating stones from beans. To
her credit, she does not provide a glossary of Ugandan terms. Yes. Let
the reader do the research. ‘Tropical Fish’ is slightly burdened by
some editing issues. Baingana should shop around for a more organised
publisher next time.

Africans are
victims of uncritical acculturation. Questions of identity abound: Who
are we? Who should we be? Why are we the ones who keep trying to be
like the other? What does exile mean in the age of Facebook? Who really
leaves home these days? Who stays home these days? Where is home?
Expecting Baingana’s book to answer these questions is like asking the
slide rule to compete with the iPad. Our intellectuals have no answers;
they are too busy navel gazing, whining about racism and drinking the
white man’s best wines. See, they wail to the West, we are human beings
too; we eat ice cream!

Baingana’s stories are sleepy, like passengers on a red-eye bus to
the city struggling to come alive at every junction manned by thieving
policemen. We see the self-loathing that Western education confers on
Africans as they flee anything remotely African or indigenous. In the
fashion, in the food, in the literature, Africa desires to be white.
Africa is turmoil but the book ends on a hopeful note. The exile begins
the long process of re-introduction to her ancestral land. Culture
shock streaks out of cultural attitudes to work and life. Still, she is
here to stay, says the book. Did she stay? I suspect that “Christine”
is back home in Washington DC, subversively pinching cantaloupes in
farmers’ markets. And the beat goes on.

Segun Ojewuyi is
nostalgic about returning to the Nigerian stage after almost 15 years
of being away. The director of ‘Preemptive’, a play written by fellow
US sojourner, Niyi Coker, and which opened at the MUSON Centre, Lagos
and will be staged in Lagos, Calabar and Abuja discloses, “In those
years of being away, I have worked alongside some of the great minds of
modern theatre that I studied in Ibadan – Lloyd Richards, August Wilson
and Arthur Miller. I have worked in those major theatres of the world
that we dreamt about as undergraduates – The Everyman Theatre, Oregon
Shakespeare Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre
and Kennedy Centre amongst others. In all these I was always drawing
from my essence as a Nigerian, a Yoruba man and an African. Though
there was always a hint of estrangement, I also always felt I was
serving as the essential bridge to the 21st century. In that sense, my
homeland Nigeria and I stayed intricately woven as in an ecstatic
dance.

“I have tried to
maintain contact with my friends and colleagues in the field.
Constantly, I hear people say that Nigerian theatre is dead. My first
reaction has always been no, Nigerian theatre is not to be confused
with the National Theatre or theatre in Lagos, Ibadan or Ile-Ife.
Nigerian theatre is a distinct aesthetic in which culture, history and
social ideals are to be found and given expression. So, I have
maintained that Nigerian theatre is an organism with the possibilities
for adaptations and mutation. It is not a stagnant, self-regurgitating
entity. It is a magnificent genie once let out of the bottle is never
contained or killed. It may experience a lull, but it is not dead.

“The performances
of Soyinka, Osofisan and Osanyin’s plays, the productions by Niyi
Coker, Esiaba Irobi, Awam Amkpa, Femi Elujobi, Biyi Bandele Thomas and
mine outside Nigeria are more frequent now than, say, in the 70s, 80s
or 90s. Our collective aesthetics are all legitimate children of a
living Nigerian theatrical tradition. What we are doing with this tour
is to prove that point. Niyi Coker, the playwright and I are Nigerians
as well as Americans. These two realities and cultures are reflected in
our production.

“I cannot wait to
be in Nigeria again. I cannot wait to see my friends. I cannot wait to
celebrate the gifts received from my departed mentors and friends —
Uncle Bola Ige, Bode Osanyin, Hakeem Shitta, Afolabi Alaja Browne,
Rufus Orisayomi, Wale Ogunyemi and many others. I also want to be able
to give a good account of my absence to others like Dapo Adelugba,
Segun Olusola, Abayomi Barber, Olu Okekanye, Ojetunji Ojeyemi — those
who took me by the hand and gently led me through the secret places of
our invaluable culture and traditions.”

Shared cultural experiences

Ojewuyi, a
professor of Drama at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale,
explains that the first objective of ‘Preemptive’ is to, “open up a
slice of the world that I know to this [cast]. We are all hopeful that
we can share and experience the linkages between Nigerian and American
cultures, our performing arts and artistic expressions as agents for
social mobilisation and development. A focused engagement with peoples
of the different countries and cultures in unfiltered urban and village
settings. We look forward to positive encounters with the subtle and
sometimes not-so-subtle existential similarities, between Nigerians and
Americans. The performance of an American play, presenting a slice of
American life and culture we hope will generate some pertinent
feedbacks.”

Healthy excitement

‘Preemptive’
features a cast of eight with six of these coming from the US. Ojewuyi,
the director of Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and The King’s Horseman’ staged
by the St. Louis Black Repertory in 2008 describes the cast of
‘Preemptive’ as “an interesting mix of performers – all graduates of
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and associates of the Africana
Theater Lab.” Some, he adds, are recent graduates while “others are
seasoned professional actors.” There also scholar-artists including
Niyi Coker, the Desmond Lee Professor at the University of Missouri,
Saint Louis, performance poets Chris Collins and Rachel Hastings,
director Tania Coambs, actor Basha Evans and scenic designer Bobbie
Bonebrake. “There is a healthy excitement in the company – the first is
to present their gift of artistry to the world and wait to see what the
audience’s response will be to our performances, and the second is
encounter and experience the visit to Nigeria,” he adds.

Poetics of panic

Though
‘Preemptive’ which was conceived in 2008 by Coker at a Black Writers
workshop at Indiana University in Bloomington appears to be abstract
conceptually, the director assures that audiences won’t have problems
getting the message. His directorial approach, he says, “is informed by
what I have defined as the poetics of panic. Theatre must entertain,
engage and inform. It must come with a certain degree of urgency – an
urgency of need – the urgency to express oneself in celebration of life
or (and particularly) in the face of any form of oppression. Nation
states and the cabals of corruptive power must be confronted with art
when they challenge humanity’s inalienable rights in the pursuit of
happiness. Audiences will be taken beyond the realistic to the imagined
and perceived. We will deploy the marginal plains of theatrical
illusion to reveal the best and the worst in us as humans.

“Ahmed and Vivian
– the two characters who drive the plot in ‘Preemptive’, come from two
different worlds. The differences are in culture, religion, political
history and even race. But their essential humanities connect in the
deepest places. There is something to say for exchanges of goodwill
across man-made boundaries. A simple story of love and romance could
actually help. We are playing such themes of goodwill and
reconciliation through theatre.”

‘Preemptive’ is at the National Theatre Lagos on July 16, then tours the following cities: Asaba, Calabar, Abuja, Ife.

To many Nigerians
and others across the world, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is a mentor
and role model from whom they draw inspiration. Disciples and admirers
of the man also referred to as Kongi always seize every opportunity to
celebrate him though he rarely attends such events. The occasion of his
76th birthday on Tuesday, July 13, gave people an opportunity to
express their love for the poet, novelist, dramatist and pro-democracy
activist at the MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos.

It was an event
where veteran stage and film actors dressed as characters in Soyinka’s
plays walked the red carpet in honour of the defender of justice. The
parade preceded the premiere of ‘Preemptive’, written by Niyi Coker and
directed by Segun Ojewuyi as part of an international cultural exchange
programme and world tour. The play had earlier been staged in Barbados
and the UK.

Colourful parade

Though 76 artists
were hyped to feature, fewer than that number appeared on the red
carpet. Those that did, however, gave a good account of themselves with
lines from the plays. Actor and musician who has recently dabbled into
art, Jimi Solanke, appeared as Chief Erinjobi in ‘Camwood on the
Leaves’. Albert Akaeze, who played the blind beggar in ‘Swamp Dwellers’
in a National Theatre/National Troupe of Nigeria production of the play
last year filled the same role on Tuesday.

Actors Muyiwa
Odukale, Tunde Adeyemo, Taiwo Obileye and Olu Okekanye appeared as
characters from ‘Madmen and Specialists’. Academic and director, Tunde
Awosanmi, was Gudrum, the Scandinavian journalist in ‘A Play of Giants’
while Tunji Olugbodi was Field Marshal Kamini in the same play. Jane
Bryce, attired in a simple Ankara skirt and blouse was Segilola in
‘Kongi’s Harvest’ while filmmaker Tunde Kelani, holding an antique
camera, appeared as Photographer in the same play. Poet Uzor Maxim
Uzoatu was the frightful Forest Head in ‘Forest of a Thousand Demons.’

The first, second
and third prize winners of the essay competition held as part of
Project Preemptive, Gbenga Adeniji, Lawrence Wakdet and Emmanuel Ugokwe
also had their minutes under the klieglights, as did the cast of
‘Preemptive’. The crowd, comprising school children and adults had
their first glimpse of Rachel Hastings, Christopher Collins, Tania
Coambs, Bashal Evans, Racquel McKenzie, Kit Ryan and Cortez Johnson on
the red carpet before seeing them in the play.

Organisers of the
project, Z-mirage Multimedia Ltd, whose chief executive, Teju Kareem,
directed affairs from the background, saved the best for the last with
Soyinka’s ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’. Toyin Osinaike, who played
Ireke in Femi Osofisan’s English adaptation of D.O Fagunwa’s ‘Ireke
Onibudo’, titled ‘Adventures of the Sugarcane Man’ came on the red
carpet as Olunde. Wale Adeduro and Bisi Marinho were Mr and Mrs
Pilkings while Kelvin Ushi was Joseph. Editor, Guardian on Sunday,
Jahman Anikulapo, appeared as Sergeant Amusa and amused the crowd with
his twists and turns. He later engaged in a quarrel with Iyaloja
(Gloria Rhodes Nash). The icing on the cake was the trio of Kola Oyewo
(Elesin); Peter Badejo (Olohun Iyo) and Ojetunji Ojeyemi whose
scintillating bata dance steps elicited applause from the audience.

Loaded play

A networking
session at the foyer by guests including Dejumo Lewis, dressed regally
as an Oba like he used to be in ‘Village Headmaster’ and a real king,
the Fadesewa of Simawa, Oba Gbenga Sonuga, poet Odia Ofeimun, singer
Ara, Segun Sofowote and others preceded the staging of ‘Preemptive’.

As promised, the
play, written and directed by the two US-based theatre artists, infused
technology sensibly to add razzmatazz to a poignant story. The
beautiful and lush set by Bobbie Bonebrake was another plus to the
multi-thematic play set in New York and Zanzibar, East Africa.

Amongst other
issues, the loaded play which opens with a call to prayers by the
muezzin examines inter-racial relationships as seen in the life of the
African Ahmed (Cortez Johnson) and American, Vivian (Tania Coambs),
both trained psychologists in love and who are cohabiting. While the
duo sees nothing wrong in the set up, Uncle Ted (Christopher Collins)
feels differently. His typical Western mind can’t fathom a Black man
dating a white lady; talk less of an educated Black man.

He goes as far as
smelling the bed sheet to ascertain if Ahmed and Vivian have been
“shagging”. He is aghast when Ahmed tells him they are lovers and
rewards him with some blows. Ted also doesn’t believe that Ahmed knows
anything about computers. “Brother from East Africa, where did you
learn about computers?” he asks while interrogating Ahmed unlawfully.

Religion and corruption

Religious
intolerance, the cause of wars and crises across the globe, gets a
mention in ‘Preemptive’, with Uncle Ted’s equation of Islam with
terrorism. He describes praying in the Islamic way as a ‘terrorist act’
and contends that “praying in that Arabic shit makes people
uncomfortable.” Ted, displaying symptoms of a paranoid American wonders
why Ahmed didn’t return to Tanzania after his studies; why he is dating
an American; and why terrorists who are Muslims and who are promised
virgins in paradise, would hide explosives in their underpants. He is
further displeased that African Muslims have taken over the taxi
business at the airport, making getting cabs at the airport difficult
on Fridays.

Official
corruption, which the West makes noise about in Africa, is also present
in the US as what brings Ted, a retired police officer, to Vivian’s
apartment is to make her change her report on a case of police
brutality. Ted wants the police officer to change the report which
indicts some officers and which will likely affect the re-election bid
of the Mayor but Vivian will have none of it. When she asks him if he
wants her to lie, Ted replies glibly that it’s just “re-arranging the
facts.”

Expensive place

The breaking of
familial bonds occasioned by long sojourns abroad is also examined in
the play originally conceived in the summer of 2008 at a Black Writers
Lab at Indiana University, Bloomington. Twelve years away from home
destroys the bond between Ahmed and Aishatu (Racquel McKenzie), his
lover back in Zanzibar and Mama (Bashal Evans), his mother. The
alienating tendencies of technology, especially the cell phone which
Ahmed sends to Mama to enable them communicate better, is also
highlighted. Mama admits this when she says, “It’s supposed to keep us
together, why do I feel it’s taking him away from me?”

America, like a
number of migrants have realised, can be a lonely and expensive place
to live, like Ahmed tells his mother in one of his letters. The streets
are not paved with gold as some are made to believe and Ahmed
reiterates this in his first letter. “America is a very expensive
place; you have to pay for everything.” And all sojourns to America,
like Ahmed sadly finds out, don’t always end in joy.

Much has been said
of the warped justice system in the US and its bias against foreigners.
Sadly, things have become worse following the terrorist attacks of 2001
and subsequent attempts. Americans’ heightened sense of fear for
anything Islam or African following Abdul Mutallab’s December 2009
bombing attempt is highlighted in the play. Most importantly, the play
asks the question when is it right to engage in a preemptive strike
against a perceived threat which might not be there at the end of the
day?

What the audience have in ‘Preemptive’ is a great, haunting story
brought to life by skilled performers who used every part of their
body; expression, voice and gesture in the telling. Cortez, Collins and
Coambs, who have the major roles, are outstanding. But the others are
no pushovers either.

Ogaga Ifowodo
literally stumbled on poetry writing during his fourth form as a
student of Federal Government College, Warri, when a senior student
requested that he writes a poem for the school’s festival of arts and
culture. For someone who had thought to himself unable to “string two
words together,” it must have been an inspiring surprise that his poem,
‘Ill Wind,’ won a joint first prize in the competition.

Ifowodo has not
relented since that first literary accomplishment. Author of three
poetry collections and an assistant professor at Texas State
University, the writer is back in Nigeria for what he calls a
“Homecoming.” He said, in reference to his poetry readings, which will
be taking place in Federal Government College, Warri, his alma mater;
and Oleh, his hometown: “Charity begins at home. It may not have
started there for me, but I might as well get home now – Oleh has a
right to hear back from me.”

A former customer

In keeping with the
homecoming theme of his current visit to Nigeria, Ifowodo decided to
visit the Ikoyi Prisons, where he was held as a political prisoner in
1998, under the regime of the military dictator, General Sani Abacha. I
was invited to tag along, as was Ayo Obe, lawyer and former president,
Civil Liberties Organisation.

We were admitted
into the yard of Ikoyi Prisons, after brief interviews regarding the
purpose of our visit. Obe did the introduction, gamely introducing
Ifowodo to the prison head, Muhammed Sidi, as “your former customer.”
When queried about his time in prison and his reason for his visit,
Ifowodo said it was for the purpose of “recollecting memories,” which
had become fuzzy in the years since his detention.

Our party was
handed over to Adeosun, a prison officer, who proceeded to take us on a
tour of the yard and its appurtenances. We visited the Education
Centre, donated by the Muharram Sisters. We also got to see the clinic,
where formerly there had been none. It is a well run clinic, with drugs
donated by churches and charities, where before, drugs had been scarce
to come by. Seeing the free movement of inmates – both convicted and
awaiting trial – when before, there had been restrictions to movement
within the yard, was heartening for Ifowodo. “It’s worlds apart from
what it was before. When I was there, donated drugs were being sold
(privately) and wardens were stealing prisoners’ food,” he said.

The poet remembered
being incarcerated in a small cell with other inmates in a block
bearing the name ‘Redemption Kingdom.’ Surprisingly, however, though
the prison attendants were very obliging of our requests, Ifowodo did
not ask to see his old cell. “I was satisfied with seeing the blocks
and yard. I can still picture the cell in my mind; the last room, a
small one, with eight of us in it,” he explained.

When asked about
the prison visit in the context of “homecoming,” his reply was a
slightly outraged, “Let’s not speak about homecoming please, not in
regard to prisons.” Nonetheless, the prison evoked vivid memories for
the poet, who observed that, “Its smell and feel came back to me; even
though I wasn’t able to look around extensively.”

Concluding about
the visit, the poet drew on the example of Nelson Mandela’s visit to
Robben Island, where he had been incarcerated for 18 of his 27 years in
prison. “A way of addressing a trauma is to revisit the place and the
moment in time. It is good to go back and look, with the eyes of
freedom, at the place where you were held on the unjust command of a
dictator,” he said.

Odes to the Delta

Ifowodo’s published
works are: ‘Homeland and Other Poems’, a 1993 ANA first prize winner;
‘Madiba,’ which includes a 27-sonnet poem about Mandela; and ‘The Oil
Lamp’, a 1001 line poem focused on the crises ridden, oil-rich Niger
Delta, where the poet hails from. On the cover photography of the last
book, showing gas explosions in the region, Ifowodo elaborates: “The
flares are dangerous, but in the absence of electricity, they are the
oil lamps of the Niger Delta.”

On the reason for
the precise number of lines in the poem, he responded with feeling, “In
1998, there were massive explosions of pipelines on Jesse. 1000 people
were officially said to have died. So I decided on 1001, to account for
the unrecorded deaths or those who were injured or maimed. I wanted to
revisit the flash-points of Ogoni, the flattening of Odi, and the Jesse
occurrence, and capture the excuses and rationalisations, falsehoods
and arrogance of government.”

Explaining what he
terms the accessibility (rather than simplicity) of the language and
style of ‘The Oil Lamp’, the poet said, “I do not subscribe to poetry
that sets out to be difficult, as if that is a mark of poetic genius.
Many simple poems are profound. We should not mistake accessibility for
simplicity and obscurity for profundity.”

Motivated to poetry
by life generally, Ifowodo gives his inspirations as “things that are
not as they should be, beauty, social injustice, and moments that make
you see something anew.”

Poetry is, however,
not all-sufficient for his need for artistic expression; and he is
currently working on his memoirs – an account of his run-in with the
State Security Service and his time in as a political detainee.
Excerpts have already been published in journals with titles like‘The
Travel Commissar,’ ‘My Own Room,’ and ‘Word Games in Prison.’

The seasoned poet
is also exploring fiction, having written a short story, ‘The
Treasonable Parrot’, which is expected to be published later this year
in a special African edition of AGNI, an US literary journal. Motivated
by this reception of his first fictional prose work, he commented that
“With the enthusiastic acceptance of ‘The Treasonable Parrot’, I am
going to publish the three fiction drafts I have,” he said.

Half the life of a writer

The poet describes
himself as “living half the life of a writer,” having spent the ‘other
half’ as a lawyer, an activist with the Civil Liberties Organisation
(CLO), a Ph.D student of Cornell University, US; and now, a ‘teacher’
of writing with Texas State University. He refers to his university
post as, “my day job, that which pays the rent.”

I asked about his
decision to study law in the University of Benin, following his
revelation that the discipline does not interest him. “I was not the
perfect Law student, but I could have been a good lawyer if that had
been my ambition,” he offers. His uncle, a man of science, had said to
him before he was admitted into the university, “Grammar won’t feed
you, get a profession!”

“Unfortunately, the
trouble was that I had no head for Science or Math. I was totally
seduced by literature,” recalled Ifowodo, who resorted to the
compromise of studying Law.

Intellectual activism

After a short stint
with a Law firm, Ifowodo joined the CLO, where he worked for 8 years;
researching, compiling and reporting human rights abuses in the
country, as well as advocacy and appearing occasionally in court for
pro bono cases. He eventually decided to singularly pursue his dream of
being a writer, though he’d been writing on the side all the while, and
had published a few works. Ifowodo enrolled for a Masters in Fine Arts
(MFA) programme with Cornell University, during which, according to
him, “I got increasingly stimulated and enrolled for a Ph.D.”

Activism resulted
in his status as a political detainee of Nigeria’s last military
regime, but now seems to have been put on the back burner. Ifowodo, who
had been involved in activism since his student days at the University
of Benin as a member of National Association of Nigerian Students
(NANS) and secretary of his school’s Student Union, reflected on the
shift: “I call it intellectual activism now; one can advocate change in
as many ways as possible. Distance is the major reason why I cannot be
involved as directly as I was. But I still do it in my writings and
whenever I have the opportunity to speak in public.”

Exile and homecoming

Author of the
famous poem ‘God Punish You, Lord Lugard,’ Ifowodo expressed an
intention to come back to settle in Nigeria, asserting that, “I never
went to exile. It’s not a matter of if I’ll return; it’s a matter of
when.” At my attempt to draw attention to the difference in the
standard of living in his hometown in the Niger Delta and his
residential town of Texas, both of which are oil-rich geographical
locations, he attributed the disparity in the evidence of oil wealth to
the ownership of the resource: government in Nigeria; private
individuals who would own their land, drill oil, and pay taxes to the
government in Texas. He also blamed the underdevelopment in the Niger
Delta on the “kleptocracy of government.”

During the
interview, which was interspersed with phone calls from Flomat Books
(the organisation hosting Ifowodo’s readings in Oleh and Warri on July
24 and 31 respectively), I gathered that the activist and lawyer would
be receiving a sort of hero’s welcome in his hometown. “My homecoming
in Oleh is looking to be bigger than I expected,” Ifowodo confirmed
expectantly. Hopefully, the experience might encourage him to return
‘home’ sooner, rather than later.

Ogaga Ifowodo reads in Oleh, Delta State, on July 24 and in Warri on July 31.

When I heard of the
death of Basil Davidson, the great historian of Africa on Friday July
9, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of personal loss, of a kind I had
not felt for many public figures since the assassination of Thomas
Sankara, the charismatic leader of Burkina Faso, in October 1987.
Although I never met Davidson, I had always thought of him as someone
to know in person. So deeply did his magnificent work speak to me I
often imagined I would write about him in this manner: a free-flowing
appreciation of his work, in grateful acknowledgement of what I learnt
from him, and just as often I imagined the piece of writing as an
account of a meeting.

About ten years
ago, I inquired about him from a British publisher I had met at a
conference, who told me that the historian now lived in an infirmary
and that his hearing was impaired. I was in graduate school at the
time, and had few opportunities to travel to England, out of pocket, so
I bid my time. While living in Portugal a few years ago I made serious
attempts to arrange a meeting and even had encouraging signals from
some quarters, but the encounter did not happen. After this I resigned
myself to the reality of never seeing him, and knowing how grown in
years he was—95 at death—I accepted that his passing would be
devastating, but not surprising. (The writer Kole Omotoso, who put me
in touch with some people who knew Davidson, said that though the
historian had lost much of his hearing his mind remained very sharp.)

He was the
preeminent historian of Africa; there is no debate over that. He was an
intellectual driven by a genuine passion and rather common decency to
record the past and the evolving present of the continent in all its
complexity. And he did this undeterred by the two cautionary roadblocks
most writers on this subject usually face. He evinced a readiness to
focus on the entirety of the African continent, and a willingness to
write about present historical events without a fear of being adjudged
hasty by posterity. In a field where scholars routinely argue that the
continent is too large to be spoken of as a unit, he wrote book after
book that touched on every part of the continent, sometimes on every
country, always looking for common thematic trends in ancient and
contemporary history. When he wrote about the rise to power of a
soldier, he was less bothered by the undemocratic route taken or how
soon the man of power would unravel than by the soldier’s actions as a
patriot. His stance is this salutary on the first, on the second, the
records are mixed.

A socialist

Davidson was born
in Aldershot, England in 1915 and became a soldier in the Royal Army,
seeing Second World War action in the Balkan theater. This experience
would feed into his work when he finally decided to write about Africa,
but before and after the war, he published several novels, about which
very little is known in part because they were published before he
discovered his great subject, which is amply and memorably recorded in
his essayistic but scholarly writings. He was a socialist, that is, a
political human being operating with the conviction that the modern
state ought to be in a position to supervise the redistribution of the
common wealth in such a way that excess is checked and each human being
has enough.

This orientation as
a socialist shaped the way Davidson approached African history. He was
a materialist in the sense that he believed that things are, that they
matter in specific verifiable ways, and that material forces in which
humans act as agents shape the course of history. His view of African
history frames everything he wrote about the various periods or events
in the continent’s long experience, but it is stated most explicitly in
the opening part of Africa: A Voyage of Discovery, the eight-part
documentary film he produced in the mid-1980s in collaboration with
Nigeria’s National Television Authority, NTA. Positioning himself
outside the frame and speaking from somewhere between Egypt and the
Sudan, Davidson said that African history did not start with the
continent’s contact with Europe. It had an impressive past comparable,
and in some cases superior, to Europe’s, and it was the Europeans’
violent incursion through the slave trade that ruined most of the
physical and the psychological aspects of that history. The duty of a
decent man or woman of letters, as he added in Black Mother, his study
of the Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery first published in 1968, is to
explain the present in terms of the past, to produce history, not
propaganda, which aims at just the opposite.

Africa in Modern History

In my opinion his
most important work is Africa in Modern History, published in 1978,
which both summarizes and demonstrates the themes of his work, using
the circumscribed context of Africa’s encounter with modernity to look
at the continent’s problems and prospects. The continent is big, to be
sure, and contains numerous multitudes, but through Davidson’s elegant
prose, lightened with irony and constantly powered by a deep
understanding of human abilities, this enormous complexity is rendered
accessible in beautiful passages in which the currents of history
passes from Mansa Moussa to Samory Toure through Herbert Macaulay to
D.D.T. Jabavu and Sol Plaatje. He shows how the fall in the value of
gold in the mercantile world of late Renaissance Italy was complexly
responsible for the maritime revolutions in which commerce in human
beings became the business of the day.

In all this, his
greatest investment is in African agency, the belief that Africans are
capable of making and do make their own history. His work constantly
pays homage to those of Africans who were his contemporaries—Kenneth
Dike, Adu Boahen, Festus Ade Ajayi, and Saburi Biobaku. He was a
personal friend of Kwame Nkrumah; Amilcar Cabral took him into
confidence as the documenter of the revolution in Guinea Bissau.
According to political insiders, his advice was decisive in the
Nigerian government’s 1975 declaration of support for the MPLA in
Angola, when Cold War arm-twisting might have weighed things in favour
of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA.

Given his interest
in African agency, he tended to look kindly upon moral reprobates who
happened to be in power: having been privy to General Olusegun
Obasanjo’s support for MPLA, he would write positively of Somalia’s
Mohammed Siad Barre and later of Ibrahim Babangida, but Master-Sergeant
Samuel Doe unraveled too quickly to deserve his kindness.

Basil Davidson, historian of Africa, will be remembered for as long as people continue to generate ideas about the continent.

Akin Adesokan is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at
Indiana University, Bloomington, US. He writes this from Lagos.

The play, ‘Who is
Afraid of Wole Soyinka?’, with a generous dose of humour and
exaggeration, sought to bring to recall, the dark, turbulent times
following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections;
and the subsequent assumption of power by General Sanni Abacha, after a
coup d’état to overthrow the interim government of Chief Ernest
Shonekan.

A day before June
27 at Terra Kulture in Victoria Island, Lagos, Theatre @Terra producer,
Wole Oguntokun, had at a BookJam event objected to Abraham Oshoko’s
statement, accusing Nigerians of sweeping issues under the carpet.
Oguntokun cited the works of several Nigerian writers, intended solely
at keeping issues firmly in the consciousness of the Nigerian populace.

It was, therefore
no surprise that with ‘Who’s Afraid of Wole Soyinka?’ Oguntokun
achieved just that. The note of reflective reminiscence was palpable
among the members of the audience, who were reminded profoundly of the
situation which the country had years ago emerged from: the black
goggled General, who bared to all, the ambition of enthroning himself
as the ‘life ruler’ over Nigeria.

Oguntokun dedicated
the performance to the memory of late Kudirat Abiola, whose daughter,
Hafsat, was in the audience. The play was preceded by a short humorous
sketch, which depicted the vacuous and narcissistic attitude of a
number of Nigeria’s political office holders.

Loose Cannon

Enter Daniel Loose
Cannon, played by Sola Iwaotan. Loose Cannon opens the scene as a poor
US immigrant who begs, with relatively little success, on the streets
of New York. Rather than return home with the shame of failure,
however, he prefers to keep eking a meagre living in this manner, as he
ponders “How can I go home? They’ll ask what I made of myself,”
illustrating how entrapped many Nigerians in Diaspora might be; unable
to return home with no evident success. Loose Cannon’s audience in the
play, however, somewhat unsympathetically, respond, “You’ll say you got
an LLB BL, bose lo lose bo (you came back just as you left).”

The next scene,
most surprisingly, has Loose Cannon back in Nigeria, now planning the
political campaign of the incumbent dictator, who is embroiled in a
plot to succeed himself. Loose Cannon, heading an organisation, BLADDER
(Body of Love Asking for Democratic Determination and Reform) solicits
the support of musicians, jounalists, traditional rulers, and an
effete, senile politician, in the person of Lukwu Merije, a
not-so-subtle indication of a real individual, one might guess.

Daniel Loose
Cannon, back as the fast talking upwardly mobile youth, quickly makes
an effort to organise the ‘stroll in September’, also an obvious
portrayal of the ‘two million man march in March’ planned by Daniel
Kanu on the platform of YEAA (Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha); or
Youth Earnestly Ask for Him (YEAH), as in Oguntokun’s play.

Anachronistic distortion

The play chronicles
the activities and state of affairs, which culminate in the death of
the dictator just after he has garnered political support in and
outside the country. The only clog in the political ambition of the
General or ‘Oga’ as he is called in the play, is his one nemesis – the
Nobel laureate Soyinka, the merest mention of whose name reduces the
general to screaming fits of terror.

Oguntokun, in a
brief departure from the familiar historical plot, incorporates a new
millennium perspective, as the general, in anticipation of his
successful transition from military head to a civilian ruler, is
courted by Barrack Obama, David Cameron, and Nicholas Sarkozy, among
other present-day world leaders – an effort, which resulted in a
slightly anachronistic distortion in a plot for which all other
inferences had been historical.

The most impressive
performances of the play, undoubtedly, were recorded through the
characters of Oga and his sidekick, Tafa, played by Kenneth Uphopho and
Precious Anyanwu respectively. The two actors exuded comfortableness in
their characters; and had their acts, along with their Northern
accents, down pat.

Incorporated
between the play’s acts was a slideshow of images associated with the
struggle for democracy. Photographs of democracy icons such as MKO and
Kudirat Abiola, accompanied by images of destruction and strife, were
projected while ‘Se na like dis’ by Wande Coal played in the background.

Felled by an apple

The play ends,
predictably of course, with the death of the general to the elation of
the populace, who rejoiced at how “Common apple kill Oga”; and the
disappointment of mercenaries such as Misty the musician, who had been
promised political appointments.

Also noticeable was
the ambivalence of Lukwu Merije, who had, in the course of the plot,
never made a positive input in the realisation of Oga’s ambition.
Instead, he was a prophet of doom, who repeatedly communicated the
impossibility of the General’s ambition with statements like, “I’ll see
you when you get there… if you ever get there.”

Though the play
should have ended on a jubilant note, with the country’s emergence from
the unyielding grasp of the dictator who had plundered its coffers and
persecuted its populace. It instead employed a mournful anticlimax, “In
the cycle of life, strange beings sometimes come to power… pray
earnestly that a new dawn breaks over our land” – which no doubt is
inspired by the current state of affairs of Nigeria, a country which
has still not managed to wade through the murky waters of bad
leadership.

Bogeyman Kongi

Little, however, is
seen or heard (by way of characterisation) of the Nobel Laureate, whose
name encourages an interest in the play, as Soyinka is employed,
instead as an invisible bogeyman, who though embodying the only check
for the excesses of the dictator, is kept well out of sight.

The play
incorporates an insight into the Nigerian culture by way of music,
dance, slang, and language. Also worthy of mention is the attention to
costume and props, as the actors’ attires, save Lukwu Merije’s,
enhanced charaterisation. The theatre acoustics and voice projection of
artists also worked together quite remarkably.

The staging, though
laudable, would have been even more commendable if it lost some of the
exaggeration of speech and action, contained in the scenes, and
substituted those with more historical fact or imaginative fiction.

International
theatre actor, O.T Fagbenle, who was in the audience, extolled the play
as a good chronicle of Nigeria’s history, but remarked on the seeming
unnecessary length of some scenes. In his words, “I think that each
scene should move the plot forward, and if I find my thoughts drifting
away from the performance before me, then a scene isn’t doing that; and
ultimately, can be cut from the play.”

‘Who Is Afraid of
Wole Soyinka?’ was part of the ongoing fourth annual season of plays on
the Nobel laureate to mark his birthday.

History was made on
July 13, 2010 in New York City when Femi Kuti, Nigerian musician and
son of the legendary Afro beat king finally went to see the critically
acclaimed Broadway show, Fela! He had been holding out on visiting the
show until he got the assurance that it would be brought to Lagos. “I’m
very proud of what I saw,” Femi said.

“This shows that
the fight is still going on,” an emotional Femi explained, when invited
on stage and introduced by Sahr Ngaujah, the Tony Award-nominated actor
who plays Fela in the show. Femi, who is currently on an international
tour and performed at the Lincoln Centre with his band, the Positive
Force the previous night, added, “Africans should have been the ones
who bailed Haiti out.” The audience was treated to a few more words of
wisdom as Femi continued, sharing his disappointment about the
continent’s leadership and economic progress. Femi then joined the cast
of the show in singing part of his father’s song, Gentleman, before he
left the Eugene O’Neill Theatre for a reception with a group of
Nigerians living in New York.

Standing in the
midst of cameras at the soirée, he recounted Sahr’s visit to Lagos,
explaining that the Broadway actor had wanted to get his family’s
blessing. Femi said that he wanted them to be confident in themselves
regardless of his opinion. “I am very proud of what they are doing,”
the musician said, visibly moved by the depiction of events he had
witnessed, such as the military raid of his father’s compound. “I cried
several times during the performance,” he admitted. “I was a boy of
about fifteen or sixteen when some of the things happened, now I am
getting close to fifty.” His grandmother, Funmilayo, died as a result
of the injuries sustained during the attack.

When asked what he
thought about the criticism levelled by some Nigerians that his
father’s lyrics as sung during the production had been changed, he was
quick to explain that the show’s creators did so to make it more
accessible to the audience of Americans.”What has Nigeria done for
Fela? Nothing.” Fela! is produced by Steve Hendel, an American who came
across Anikulapo-Kuti’s music and fell in love with Afro beat. He has
never visited Nigeria. However, as a result of his efforts, many people
in the US now have a clearer portrait of one of Nigeria’s most famous
sons. The show chronicles the life of Fela and his artistic and musical
journey, exploring some of his main influences. It also highlights his
relationship with his mother, Funmilayo, educating the audience about
her work, her teachings and her legacy.

The Broadway production opened on November 23, 2009, with star
power, fuelled by hip-hop mogul Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Academy
Award-nominated actor Will Smith and his wife actress Jada
Pinkett-Smith, the show’s executive producers. The premiere was
attended by Hollywood and music stars such as director Spike Lee and
legendary actor and musician, Harry Belafonte. It is still not an
uncommon occurrence to run into icons such as Madonna or Mick Jagger at
a regular Thursday evening performance. The hit show was nominated for
a record of 11 Tony Awards this year and has attracted some of the most
diverse audiences ever seen on Broadway. It is scheduled to open at
London’s National Theatre in mid November. Hendel, the show’s producer,
has also said that he plans to take the show to Lagos.

Major Zimbabwean
author, Tsitsi Dangarembga will be reading alongside writers Madeleine
Thien, Unoma Azuah and Helon Habila at the sixth edition of the popular
BookJam @ Silverbird, which will hold in Lagos on July 24.

Dangarembga, a
novelist, filmmaker and activist published ‘Nervous Conditions’ as her
debut novel in 1988. The book won the Commonwealth Writers Prize
(African Region) in 1989; and was listed as one of the Best 100 African
book. Almost twenty years later, in 2006, she published ‘The Book of
Not’, a sequel to Nervous Conditions, which traces the life of her
fictional character, Nyasha, as a much older woman.

Madeleine Thien,
winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, is the author of ‘Simple
Recipes’ and ‘Certainty’. Unoma Azuah, author of ‘Sky-high Flames’, won
the Flora Nwapa/Association of Nigerian Authors award and teaches
English in Tennessee. The quartet of writers is completed by Helon
Habila won the Caine Prize for African Writing (2001), for his short
story, ‘Love Poems’. He later published his first novel, ‘Waiting for
an Angel’ to great acclaim; then followed up with his second novel,
‘Measuring Time’, about a set of twins, Mamo and Lemano, who go on to
live very different lives through Africa’s many conflicts. Habila new
novel, about the Niger Delta, ‘Oil on Water’, is set for release in
August 2010.

The BookJam, which holds monthly, incorporates book readings by
featured authors, as well as discussions, musical performances, poetry
and a raffle draw for participants who purchase books. The next edition
holds at the Lifestyle Store, Silverbird Galleria, Victoria Island,
Lagos – starting at 3pm on Saturday, July 24.