Nigeria Content Online

I have to say that
there are times when I am happy that I will be long dead by the time
the book as a medium of communication, dies. Otherwise, I would miss
the delicious messiness of my weekend mornings, surrounded by
newspapers and magazines. Every now and then I would also actually
download a story, and proceed to enjoy it at my leisure when I have the
time. And so I recently had a great weekend reading from two of
Nigeria’s powerful and lovely owners of words – Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie and Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. The New Yorker has a lovely little
tale by Adichie called, intriguingly, ‘Birdsong.’ The UK Guardian has
Nwaubani’s essay, ‘Nigeria tribalism: a personal love story’ in the
Comment is Free section.

Adichie’s story
showcases her intimate knowledge of Nigeria, in many instances it is
quite moving. You almost wish you were in a room alone with Adichie and
her story listening to it unpolished, without the ruthless discipline
of the editors of the New Yorker. Stripped clean of the edge that is
mostly Nigeria’s drama, it comes across as sanitised for a Western
audience. In some places, the story has the hallmarks of an Uwem Akpan
classic – edited relentlessly until it becomes cold wooden prose. It is
not all Adichie’s fault; there are Western audiences to satisfy and the
publishers make sure that words like “panel beater” never make it to
the West. Who needs the drama of explaining the delicious difference
between “mechanic” and “panel beater”? But the heart craves ogbono soup
that is not garnished with the pretence of cucumber rings. You know,
sloppy, draw-soup, primeval, dripping all over you, that sweet savage
nectar of the gods.

Adichie’s story
goes nowhere because, there is nowhere to go to. Reading ‘Birdsong’,
one wonders, what is the purpose of these lives, lived in the
conspicuous consumption of mediocrity? The main characters eat, make
love, and shit over and over again. In Nigeria, life is good and
aimless. If you are rich. Life is hell and aimless. If you are poor.
This is Adichie’s genius; she effortlessly narrates the aimlessness of
a people. Sometimes I almost understand why some of our writers write
only about the past. Stories like ‘Birdsong’ remind us of what is
missing in today’s Nigeria, what some would describe as the “moral
clarity” of our people’s past.

I thoroughly
enjoyed Nwaubani’s piece; she describes the tension in relationships
among the major “tribes” of Nigeria. I cringed at the word “tribe” just
as I did after recently re-reading several invocations of it in Peter
Pan Enahoro’s ‘How to be a Nigerian’. But then don’t our people use
“tribe” in discussions? Who says, “na my ethnic group?” The unintended
consequence of political correctness is to distort history. I could
make a compelling argument that “tribe” as Nwaubani meant it is a
distinctly Nigerian term. Transferred on to a white paper read mostly
by condescending patronising know-it-all white liberals, the meaning
could get lost in its translation. I am glad that Nwaubani’s editor did
not do to the piece what Adichie’s editor did to Birdsong. In the hands
of a Western editor the New Yorker almost rendered Adichie’s
potentially beautiful piece into the kind of clinical stuff that Uwem
Akpan is famous for. This is all the more reason why we need to support
our own home-grown newspapers and publishers and editors who know a
panel beater from a mechanic, our tribe from their tribe etc.

The two stories offer a great commentary on how we should record
our history. What is the role of the writer in faithfully documenting
the lived life? I believe that a writer should be faithful to the exact
words used in dialogue. If someone calls someone a nigger, I would say
so, not say, someone called her the N word. This is not the same as
legitimising its use. I have complained about the gods of political
correctness ruining the history of our discourse and their delicious
rhyme, flow and poetry… Try saying “abeg go jo, were! mad man!” And
then try saying “Please go away, you emotionally challenged person.”
And of course this is all a roundabout way of saying I miss the raw,
brilliant unfettered poetry of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. For that reason
alone, I am afraid to go up to New York to go watch Fela on Broadway. I
might not like what I see. And I might be alone in that assessment. Who
needs the stress of being alone? Nwaubani’s authenticity is refreshing.
We are going to lose her though. Soon she will be writing clinically
sanitised pieces for the New Yorker and the Guardian, she will be a
superstar whose secretary will not take my calls. And I will remember
that magical afternoon in Lagos as she sat with me in a buka sharing
amala without meat. I regret now that I did not have someone snap us a
picture for when she was… one of us. It is all good; everything is as
it should be.