Changing Chairs at JosANA

“For the reason that your friends are moving on up in their lives, do you feel less sad that they are moving away?” That question precisely, in its convoluted syntax and import, confronts JosANA. We are faced with the loss {not in the sense of death though} of our Chairman, Allen AbdulJabbar Omale, who has most unexpectedly been poached away by the smart alecs of ANA Abuja following his taking up an administrative appointment with the Nigerian College of Education Commission {N.C.E.C.} Abuja. The meeting held on Saturday 31st May 2008 at the Nigerian Film Institute, Jos was the last at which Allen Omale would preside as Chairman.

The meeting started with the arrival of Bose Tsevende who drove in with Alpha Emeka, Michael Emeka and David Onotu. They met Richard Ali just outside the gates and together they set up the chairs for the meeting. Redzie Jugo subsequently showed up. Chairman Allen was late in coming and Richard Ali assumed the chair of the meeting. Person by person, the balcony filled up with our members including Prof. Kanchana Ugbabe who had not been attending meetings as regularly as she used to and her student Stephanie Onyejekwe, poet, who just picked up a B.A. in English from the University of Jos. Banter and news about the fortnight were exchanged. Richard Ali confirmed that five of his poems were published in the well-approved African Writing 4 journal which until very recently was edited by Afam Akeh. Everyone congratulated him and Redzie Jugo asked, via a “motion”, that such information as how to send in submissions to journals such as AW ought to be relayed to the members of JosANA. Ali, who is Secretary General, agreed and said he would spread the word on that. At this point, Dr. Agboola arrived with his two kids, ‘Laja and Opeoluwa, aged ten and eight respectively. We really are catching them young at JosANA!

Adam Abubakar read an interesting poem - the typical situation writers find themselves in where they express their hearts to a woman in the form of verse and yet claim to have no words to say! It was a fine poem and Redzie Jugo made comments about a clash of imagery in the second stanza. Bose Tsevende and Alpha Emeka also suggested modifications. Abubakar eventually read the poem again and Richard Ali said the trouble with the stanza was that too many similes followed each other and the use of “fumes” in comparison to love tended to jar. Abubakar, BBC 2007 African Performance Playwright, took the comments in good faith. Dr. Agboola then took the floor and read a poem title “Iwa”. “Iwa” connotes “character”, “manners”, “grace” in Yoruba language and the striking thing about the poem was its blend of Yoruba and English. Its first stanza was a Yoruba proverb and it really came to life being read in the baritone of the dreadlocked poetaster. The House loved the poem and took the poet on on the Yoruba. Unwittingly, that poem set the theme of “performing” poetry as opposed to merely reading it. This theme kept recurring through the meeting like a hidden hand at cards. While Dr. Jide Agboola was reading, Chairman Allen Omale {as he then was} came in with his delectable wife, Rahmah. The House broke into applause. But it was strained applause, not because we were sad but because the exertion of our hands was for a fellow collaborator who was moving on and away.

Chairman Omale acknowledged the felicitation of his lieutenants, cronies and troops, each of us highly effective operatives, skilled in the operational arts of contemporary Nigerian writing and intellection. Like General Lee taking leave of his troops at Appomattox, the sadness was mutual but had to be borne like the soldiers we are. We went into the practical matter of the succession. The Vice Chairman, Matthew Mzegha, had declined the Chairmanship because he expected to be transferred from the Nigerian Television College, Jos in the near future. Richard Ali’s stay in Jos was not determinate so he could not take up the Chairmanship for what would amount to an interim period. It was decided that a Chairman be picked from the floor, someone who would guarantee the continuity necessary to consolidate the gains made by Allen Omale. Though we have always been aware of it, we became increasingly more aware of the immense role Allen Omale’s energy and dedication has played in reconsolidating JosANA. Allen Omale mentioned that Bose Tsevende had also declined the post.

However, the House, speaker after speaker, re-nominated Mrs. Ayeni-Tsevende. Everyone, from Redzie Jugo to Richard Ali to Kanchana Ugbabe to Michael Emeka affirmed their belief that she could do the job of chairman. Alpha Emeka however mentioned that the Chairmanship must not be forced on Mrs. Tsevende if she did not wish it. Aunty B, as she is fondly called, was then asked why she was declining. Her reasons were that she was new to JosANA and was not really an administrative person.

Concerning being “new”, the House replied that literary associations were like Phoenix’s; they renew themselves, spend themselves, revive and flag. Indeed, most current members of JosANA are new and it would be recalled that we did have some serious fractious troubles a few years back. Only Redzie Jugo, Allen Omale and Steve Rwang Pam remain from that “old” JosANA. In this way, Aunty B. Tsevende’s first excusat was discounted. As to the second, Richard Ali promised that he personally, and the rest of the EXCO, would be with her all the way if she accepted the JosANA Chair. It was resolved that Aunty B should reconsider her refusal over the next fortnight {until the next meeting}. Baring further declination, it is expected that Bose Ayeni-Tsevende, professional dancer, internationally recognized choreographer and lecturer of Dance at the University of Jos will be the next Chairman {or is it Chairwoman or Chairperson – na which one dey politically correct now sef?} of Jos ANA.

Redzie Jugo said he was sad Allen Omale was leaving but was happy since JosANA would get some “Abuja” checks {possibly Ghana-must-go’s} through him. The laughter following this crack led the House to a more important matter – literature. Matthew Mzegha informed us that Nigeria’s top breakfast TV Show - A.M. Express - had requested that JosANA feature in one of their upcoming editions. The House was so happy about this that grins broke across every face. It really was gratifying that JosANA is increasingly being taken seriously by the media as being one of the most active Association of Nigerian Authors chapters in Nigeria. Allen Omale commended Richard Ali on the work he had been doing viz publicity. But of course, only reality can be publicized, so the commendation went back to Chairman Allen and the members of JosANA.

Next, Stephanie Onyejekwe, the freshest B.A. in the House, read her poem “Africa’s Maid” which was written for Aunty Bose Tsevende. It was a fantastic poem and as is typical of Stephanie’s finer poems, it was full of allusions well blended with exquisite diction. However, it prompted the show of the erstwhile hidden hand. Stephanie read the poem. But it was a poem that demanded to be performed. Allen said that the delivery is what gives life to a poem and he mentioned the Abuja Poetry Performance’s he had witnessed in the past. The Vice Chairman, Matthew Mzegha, who works for the NTA, hammered on the primacy of “performance”, saying basically that a listless performance made for ambivalent reception of an erstwhile extraordinary poem. Allen advised Stephanie to read her poems into a tape recorder so she could improve her presentation.

It was then that our first time member, the ten year old ‘Laja Agboola wowed us with his poem, “a sort of short rhyme” he called it. It went –

“Here comes a hungry man looking for some bread
If you have a piece of bread, don’t wait till he’s dead”.

- do you doubt now that the boy is a worthy son of his father and bonafide member of JosANA?

Dr. Agboola brought up the issue of artistic synergy. He noted JosANA comprised playwrights, poets, choreographers and very talented storywriters, arguing that there ought to be greater collaboration between all artists for the holistic expression of our take on Nigerian literature. Almost on cue, Jos City playwright extraordinaire, Paul Ugbede, joined us. The thing really is that when a writer writes, it takes a most perceptive reader to hear the text as it exists in the writers’ head. Considering that the average reader {while not in the least insulting the discernment of our literati} is not so sophisticated, a synergy between artists to provide a complete performance would go a long way in impressing our work in the minds of posterity.

Matthew Mzegha read a poem “Water is Life” which exalted the primacy of water much in the manner of Akeem Lasisi to whom Allen Omale rightly compared the Vice Chairman. It really was a fantastic poem except for the little-big issue of the title, which Redzie Jugo rightly said was cliché-ish. Mathew Mzegha’s poetry has been improving steadily over the last year and his effort was roundly praised. He told us that he had performed the poem with props, complete with beard and animal skins, for a TV program recently. Once again, “performance” slipped into our deliberations.

Redzie Jugo read an engaging short story title “Mirage” in what is becoming his characteristically punchy style. It was a tale of Dutch courage, a girl, father and son with cross-purpose expectations of each other, inopportune time, and a desire for marriage that goes fantastically wrong. Mirage. And all this in 601 words. Truly remarkable. Next David Onotu read “Season of Rain”, dedicated to his friend Michael Emeka who was present at the reading. I don’t know if Niyi Osundare has had anything to do with Jos City. I wonder because he has a protégé here! The tame lyricism of Onotu’s poetry begs comparison to Osundare’s “Waiting Laughters”. Richard Ali compared it to TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land” for its diction and the curiosity the poet sustained throughout the long poem.

There really is a Fourth Generation extant in Nigerian letters and many of its components are found bi-weekly at JosANA. One feels as if one is in the cusp of something auspicious and from my study of the Third {1990’s} Generation, it was the same with them. While we do not have dictatorships to rail against and be made martyrs by, we have our contemporary re-explanations of the world. This re-explanation is necessary because increasingly, appearances, in international politics and social interaction are not what they seem. Where are all those Lagos-Ibadan publishers? Come up north and catch the next wave of cosmopolitan, definitive Nigerian literature.

Richard Ali read next, but neither of his readings were his work, he chose to pay respect to his elders. The first was an Ifa divination for the outgoing Chairman, he took the liberty {hoping the purists don’t ask for his head} of reading five odu’s for Allen Omale at this most auspicious juncture of his life. He then presented the hand copied sacred verses to Mr. Omale. Next, he read from Olatoun Williams’s 1992 “The Triumvirate”. He read two paragraphs, a short story in its right, from that book titled “The Wild Rose Garden”. JosANA listened enthralled as he read and applause, for Ms. Williams, followed. Ali said what struck him was the sheer beauty of the lines –

“If sanity is provisional, the line separating mental health from lunacy is not the great distance we think it is. Not the gulf from which we feel ourselves spiritually removed. And if indeed it is an abyss, then we all float on its vast cerebral surface – from which access to the brink of a mad world is rapid.

If madness is incomprehensible, how can we hope to understand it? How can we hope to save the madman who may have traversed the nightmare journey of a life, punctuated by glimmers of light, thereupon reaching the frontiers of a uniform world – where the days number one, and the sun shines through moon rays and bathes in an acid-golden haze? The heady perfume of madness within which the man is drowning, cannot be restrained, drop by drop, its scent emanates from the private and passionate jungle of his senses.”

Where is Olatoun Williams now?


The meeting wound to a close with the reading of Alpha Emeka’s short story “The Celebration of Ugba” written for Allen Omale and Aunty B’s reading a passionate paean to the pen and all penners in a voice that was powerful and reminiscent of Toni Morrison. The poem was performed as only a natural habitué of the theatre can. Finally, Adam Abubakar read an excerpt from his debut novel due out in the United States by August. The novel is titled “The Quest For Nina” and he brought to bear his skill from writing drama and screenplays, creating a compelling, subtly powerful chapter.

At JosANA, we celebrate our own – our own that is leaving, our own that remains with us. And we are not sad, for we are wiser, we are happy.





Richard Ugbede Ali is Secretary General of Jos ANA. Enquiries may be made to 08062392145 or emailed to rugbali@gmail.com.

The Fluorescence of JosANA

The Fluorescence of JosANA

For some reason, the word “ferment” has always fascinated me with its ambivalent Marxist undertone. For a long time, I heard it used in speech by campus demagogues and find myself checking up its meaning again for this article. Oxfords assures me that it still means “a state of social or political excitement . . .” Very fittingly, this word can best describe Jos ANA as it is now, something heading for its full bloom, a crescendo.

The last meeting of JosANA was held on Saturday 3rd, April 2008 at the Nigerian Film Institute, Jos and it began at exactly 1 p.m. with the arrival of the Ag. Secretary General, Richard Ali. The Chairman had made it known he would be unavoidable late but that the meeting should go on without him. {So Ali was Chairman for the day!} Already in the hall waiting eagerly were three members – Esther Chinke, winner of the 2007 Uyi Efeovbokan/ANA Plateau Prize for Poetry, our youngest member, Hamaya Frama Abraham and a new member, Patience Eguwrube who is an actress, a television producer/scriptwriter and is currently working on a book, fiction but one that concerns the Railways, a trip across Nigeria by rail. Pragmatic fiction? The retired but untired educationist, Silas Nnamonu, came in next with yet another new member, Amaka Dike, who seemed rather shy but soon enough the intellection of the house warmed her up. Gradually the hall filled up.

Everyone had had a more or less very busy fortnight and they shared the highlights of the preceding two weeks with the house; basically meetings, deadlines and preparing for exams.

The first reading was by Hamaya Abraham, {our youngest member at a little under seventeen years old}, who read the prolog from her unpublished first novel, “A Chest Of Letters”. It was a most fascinating piece of prose, especially from one so young; it suggested kinship with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American classic, “The Celestial Railroad”. Mr. Jerome Dooga of the University of Jos claimed the honor of primus criticus {sic] and he first of all praised Hamaya for her effort – then he noted that she had trouble with her point of view which kept vacillating from an “omniscient” to a “third-person” voice and that, of course, is a critical no no. He suggested she try the “omniscient” narrative voice, as the “third person” did not seem to be working very well for her. Richard Ali, adding to Mr Dooga’s comments, said she had sometimes fallen into the error of breaking sentence syntax in a manner, which while might be acceptable in schoolgirl speech, did not work while writing of serious content, a novel no less. He also mentioned that while sometimes writing was didactic, it must not be “preachy {Dooga’s word}”; Ali said it is the novel, taken as a whole that should be didactic and not the authors voice within it. There were plenty of kind comments for Hamaya’s novel.

Next was read the first chapter of Michael Emeka’s draft novel, “The Divine Will”. The first chapter was the background of the story and an introduction of the major characters, a father and his son. The father was a ”soft spoken giant of a man who would only push back when he was forced to the wall” while the son “did not even need to be pushed a little” before unleashing the fury of a storm. The story is set in Eastern Nigeria, precisely in Abia State somewhere near Isialangwa. Michael Emeka’s reading was one of those that because of their sheer perfection, the admirable control of diction and story flow, there were no comments save those of praise. One can easily imagine that Chinua Achebe, if he were younger and still writing, would have approved of Michael’s work. Michael is the younger brother of noted Jos City novelist, Alpha Emeka.

During the reading of Michael’s work, the Chairman, Allen A. Omale, arrived with his pretty wife, Rahmah. The Chairman had attended the Achebe Colloquium held at Nsukka and he proceeded to give the gist of all that had happened. He also distributed the Nsukka program of events. He told us that Odia Ofeimun was there as well as other high priests of Nigerian writing. He told us about a certain Dr. Dennash from India whose paper advanced the thesis that the ruin of Okonkwo lay squarely with Nnoka, his father. It was in the desire not to be like Nnoka that the seed of Okonkwo’s tragedy is firmly planted. Considering that Nnoka has erstwhile been considered a ‘minor’ character in “Things Fall Apart”, this thesis was well received by the house. Strangely, the Jos based playwright, Paul Ugbede had advanced the very same thesis to this writer privately three weeks before. This reinterpretation of Nnoka’s role seems to be largely beholden on the psychoanalysis of Okonkwo and it is tribute much to the credit of our own bard, Chinua Achebe.

But Chinua Achebe was not around for his own colloquium.

The Chairman however informed us that ANA Lagos had come with a larger-than-life painting of the bard by which those aspiring to “bard-hood” {including our lucky Chairman!} could have their picture taken. The Chairman also showed us a clip he made of Nigerian writers during their pilgrimage to Chinua Achebe’s old house at the University of Nigeria Staff Quarters. Our lucky chairman also had his picture taken touching the brick of the house reverentially. Our own Professor of Creative Writing, Kanchana Ugbabe, presented a paper at Nsukka that was very well received. The Chairman however expressed sadness with the dilapidated state of infrastructure at the University of Nigeria and indeed the generally deplorable state of the roads in Southeastern Nigeria, Nsukka particularly. Mr. Nnamonu, whose village is just twenty kilometers from Nsukka, lamented this and wondered why things were still so bad in the Southeast so many decades after the Civil War. Some of those roads are federal roads and the University is a federal University. He said that in one country, no one area should be put at a disadvantage. JosANA members generally concurred and we hope that the FGN would do something about UNN, which is a national university and without which, together with Ibadan, Ife and Zaria, the history of Nigeria cannot be properly told.

Chimamanda Adichie’s family lived in the same house that Chinua Achebe lived in at Nssuka and it was wondered if they had slept in the same room. “Not at the same time,” Mr. Nanamonu wittily interjected. As we say up here, “da haka ne, da magana ya kare”. Were it otherwise, the issue {the genesis of her literary talent} would have been put to rest!

Another new member who came fully prepared was Babajide Agboola. He came with a poem and an excerpt from a play but was only able to read the poem. It was a poem about the sabotaging of the environment and it was the first poem read at JosANA on that theme for a very long time now. However, it came under critical fire from Mr. Dooga who commended the theme but nonetheless condemned the prosaic nature of the poem. Richard Ali said there was a little less poetry in the poem than the poem required. This unleashed another storm as a debate started, following Mr. Dooga’s assertion that there were ‘basics’ of poetry that cannot be deviated from. Patricia wanted to know whether these basics are those of technique or content. Though not unanimously, the house agreed that it was the basic of technique, a poem without a metaphor, or rhythm at least, cannot be a poem. The Dissenting Party held that if the content was profound and written in verse, it was poetry. Jide, whose reading had sparked the row, said “Art is best interpreted by the artist”, a platitude worthy of Oscar Wilde even when one {me} does not agree with it, especially in the context of that particular debate.

Somehow, the house got talking about short stories, how “short” {or longly short abi} they can be. Richard Ali came to this, corroborated by his British Council Radiophonics compadres, that indeed a short story could be as short as one line. He gave the example of Katherine Atkinson’s -

“It can’t be; I’m a virgin.”

- much to the enjoyment of the House.

The new member, Amaka Dike, who had by now overcome her shyness read an excerpt from her unpublished novel. The novel is also set in Southeastern Nigeria. It was a situation of Nwabuife and her suitors. Her use of language was so controlled that I can stake my last Bic Biro that she will be the next great Igbo female writer {watch out, Chimamanda!}. It was one of those reading that elicit only critical praise.

Richard Ali read two poems, “Lady Butterfly” and “Suite of Blue” and opened the floor to another round of critical appraisal. Steve Rwang Pam, the Country music crooner and radio personality, said the poem reminded him of another JosANA when he and Allen were still underdogs, that Ali’s poems reminded him of the things Allen used to write back then and which brought him {Allen] into the eye of philistinic storm. Most people loved the poems and Chairman Allen commented on Ali’s unusual use of simile. A new member and first timer, Ajih Gabriel, also a poet, asked Ali to explain the second stanza of “Suite of Blue” –

A lynched cat swings with dead eyes
Popping educated and too late knowing
The singularity of its day, I pass on
I pass on, leaving some of me behind.

Ali said that the dominant idea regarding cats is that of their ‘nine lives’; but “if I take a gun and shoot a cat, or take a rope and string it up, what happens? The cat dies. Imagine the cat who all the while thought it had nine lives. You grow old and things happen to you and you start wondering whether you are happy or not and what it mans to so be.” Mr. Nnamonu asked why Ali did not use or sparingly used commas and other sentence complements in his poems, to which Richard Ali replied that he heard a personal rhythm in the lines of his poems and that rhythm did not necessarily and indeed is more often than not outraged by the insertion of commas, full stops and the rest of that butting family.

Allen Omale, in a reminiscence brought about by Ali’s “Lady Butterfly”, read a poem from years back, before his marriage, “The Heart is an Organ of Fire”. It was a fine poem, love, but not profane love. It was deeply moving and well received. Allen Omale said sadly that he knew he was incapable of writing such a poem now after all the years, so many things had happened. The house contributed variously to this statement about the spontaneity of poetry and how when you do not write a poem at its own sacred time, you cannot write it again.

Poe3 is the most sacred of all the arts and the poet is something of a prophet in the service of an awesome god, arbitrary in its power and resolute in its finality.

Barrister Redzie Jugo, disciple of Prof. Victor Dugga, the playwright, read a short story, “The Divorce.” It was a court situation with a judge, who disliked drunks and drinking, faced with the case of a man who has beaten his wife to pulp and she was petitioning for divorce. The man, drunk as a lord, interrupts the proceeding with “Mr. Judge, my name is Chuwang Pam and nor ‘Mr. Man’ and you know my name is Chuwang Pam because you, father, gave me that name.” It was just under 600 words and was as punchy as they come.

Barrister Jugo also recently won the top prize, a laptop computer, in a reality TV show called “Shine Plateau Youth” put together by the Youngstars Foundation in collaboration with the British Council.

The meeting ended after that and everyone got together to take a group picture.

Back to ‘ferment’. JosANA is in a state of intense ferment right now and anyone who has been around for a while knows that ‘revolution’ is the next thing; in the case of Nigeria, there is an intellectual revolution afoot comprising foot soldiers {pun intended} who are here on the ground and are increasingly making themselves relevant within the national space. The early Christians in their catacombs were in ferment. The flower of Christianity and its still ongoing revolution of international politics and history is the result of that.

Bow your necks and spread at the fluorescence of JosANA.








Richard Ugbede Ali is Ag. Secretary General of JosANA.

Poesondra: Stylistic Innovation at JosANA

The last JosANA meeting on the 5th of April proved a memorable one.

Quite atypically, it started a behind schedule due to the lateness of our chairman and the little problem with our venue being locked. But of course, the informal workshop had already commenced in the corridor with the arrival of Mr. Nnamonu, the educationist, and Richard Ugbede Ali. In time, other members joined in and the Chairman arrived with his apologies.

The meeting proper began with Richard Ali’s report on the British Council sponsored Radiophonics program at Kano which he had attended with three other members of JosANA; Abubakar Adam, Redzie Jugo and Alpha ‘Meka. The house was very interested in hearing about the experience and asked questions regarding it. Questions were also put to Abubakar Adam and later to Redzie and Alpha when they arrived. Aunty B Tsevende, who had arrived with a crate of chilled soft drinks, asked about specifics of radio writing and discourse followed. Abubakar Adam replied that the trick was to keep the audience’s attention. Repeating the words of our facilitator, Mike Harris of the University of Sheffield, he said that when you’ve written a book, if the reader gets bored, he could close the book and maybe give you another chance later; with radio on the other hand, he simply reaches out and “OFF”, and that ends the whole thing. So, good radio writing must be like a drug, given in small doses, and spaced out with highly dramatic reversal points. Sound effects are also a very important aspect of radio writing.

Next was talk on the at hand Achebe Colloquium. The Chairman updated the house on how far the arrangements were going and generally, what the latest news was.

The activities held in honor of Prof. G. G. Darah’s 60th birthday anniversary had culminated the week before at Abraka and Mr. Dooga of the University of Jos, who attended, gave us a rundown of the whole event. He made everyone feel the heat of the intellection that had gone on there and yet, each person felt a bit sad that they had not been there in person to see the likes of Tanure Ojaide and other highly esteemed literary icons. Mr. Dooga showed us pictures taken at the event, which was well attended, and a clip of the “ovedje {sic}” dance. He also brought us up to speed on the intellectual pulse of the Niger Delta. It would seem that the same anger we up north feel for the Niger Delta intelligentsia who we see as having been railroaded by thugs like Ateke and Dokubo, is replicated with their own anger directed at particular northern academics. From the foregoing, there is the necessity for greater interaction between the north and the delta, especially amongst the academics; there are obvious differences, resource control et al, but they should not be insurmountable ones.

The Northern Writers Conference scheduled for Minna from the 4th to 6th of May was announced and all who wished to be delegates from JosANA were asked to get their names across to the Chairman.

Aunty B Tsevende would be touring the United States this week with a production of Queen Idia, which she has choreographed.

Richard Ugbede Ali read “Seesaw Selection”, the fruit of his one-week stay in Kano to the critical acclaim of the house which included Paul Ugbede, noted Jos based playwright.

But the high point of the meeting came with the rendition of piece by a new member, Ejiofor Okolo; he called his style “poesondra”, a fluid style incorporating the character of poetry, song and drama. Needless to say, it was an interesting performance, and a definitive experience. Ejiofor rendered his piece, really rendered it, with action, gesticulation and voice modulation. One was put to mind immediately of the griots of Mali and Senegal and our own Yoruba drummer boys from the 1970’s Lagos, with their little talking drums who seem to improvise their poetry as they moved along the streets. But then, you wonder, such deep poetry cannot have been improvised there and then, the complexity of meaning in them betrayed the true skill of a poet as gifted as any. We at JosANA have witnessed the birth of what may turn out to be a new thrust in Nigerian literature, which has been long dormant since Niyi Osundare swept up a storm with his highly lyrical “oral” poetry in the 80’s. If that movement acquires a stable form, its most visible representative would be Ejoifor Okolo, an Igbo griot and very importantly, a member of JosANA.

Following this, the meeting broke up once again into informal groups, some clustering around the Radiophonics people, others around Ejoifor and yet others around the chairman.

The next meeting is for Saturday 19th of April at the Nigerian Film Institue, Jos.

biyi bandele's things fall apart

egbe belu, ugo belu

When this gem of a phrase first struck me a year ago, I asked a literary friend of mine what it meant and she told me that translated from the Ibo tongue, it meant "let the eagle perch, let the hawk perch also". The counterpart English aphorism would be "live and let live". Subsequently, I remembered having come across it in one of Chinua Achebe’s novels, either Things Fall Apart or Arrow of God.

The reason for this recall is that yesterday I happened to be at the Jos Repertory Theatre where I watched the thespians rehearse Biyi Bandele’s adaptation of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, perhaps the finest sociological novel Africa has produced. Its main character, Okonkwo, has engaged over the decades as the most tragic of humanist heroes and a fitting metaphor of Africa as a whole, both in terms of the tragic and the heroic.

It being 50 years since the book was first published, Nigeria is right held in celebrations of this golden milestone. Generally called the "Achebe Colloquium", amongst its details is the staging of this aforementioned adaptation by the Patrick Jude Oteh directed Jos Repertory Theatre on the 19th and 20th of April 2008 at the Cultural Center, Ibadan and Abeokuta respectively. The staging of the play is sponsored by the Ogun State Government and the Association for Nigerian Authors.

I watched the rehearsals in company of the ANA PRO, Alkasim Abdulkadir, the ANA Plateau Chairman, Allen Abduljabbar Omale, his wife and the up and coming Jos based writer, Barrister Redzie Jugo. By the end of the two-hour long production, the phrase "egbe belu, ugo belu" kept repeating itself in my mind. A complex but flawlessly controlled play told from the perspective of Obierika, Okonkwo’s friend, I found in it worthy obeisance to Achebe himself and to the emerging spirit in the Nigerian stage and literature.

Perhaps, being an Ibo phrase, it would lend itself to further construction? If the eagle perches and the hawk perches, it means that everyman comes into his own time, let no one hold the rest to ransom by snatching the trappings of forever. Perhaps we can say that no matter how long ugo {hawk} has slumbered, when it arises, its place is still there in the scheme of things, waiting to be claimed? Shall we not say that the generations of writers following in the trail blazed by Achebe and his contemporaries are coming into their own? Both Biyi Bandele’s generation who have adapted this novel and my generation, the players of Jos Repertory, who have brought it to life?

Among the most haunting passages in the drama adaptation, made if possible even more surreal than in the novel itself, is the point when Okonkwo finds that the cancer of the white man has spread so deep into the tribe that it cannot hold anymore, that the tribe, which gave him accolades through his life for his strength, had become attributed with the blemish of Nnoka his father, that of "effeminate" weakness. In Biyi Bandele’s adaptation, I still see Okonkwo looking to his fellows to follow his action and finding their backs turned to him, I see the deconstruction of truth work its way across his face and his heart, the superstructure of a broken tribe’s soul. I still see him, his face haunts me even now, taking off the cap of his title, the ozo, the toga, his machete once trusty now sterile, his life, placing all on the impotent earth of Umuofia. And Obierika’s ringing indictment, "That man was the greatest man in Umuofia; now he will be buried like a dog!"

Though I have been honored greatly to watch the rehearsals of the Jos Repertory, as it were, from the vantage of a private box, I am not merely a trifle sad that I shall not be in Ibadan to watch the premier from the public stands. I can only say that the shimmer of my sadness would be tempered only in the knowledge that my high regard for this production might draw even one more lover of literature to be there with his own eyes, to see and hear Nigerian progress for himself.

My musings end with the thought that every generation hears its own drummer, its own sound and it betrays or acquits itself by the sincerity of its dance to that thrumming. It has been our blight, this long period of time reversing itself. But we have overcome that blight, we have overcome the differences of an Igbo novelist adapted by a Yoruba playwright and played by a Northern Repertory because we realize that all these, all this, is uniquely and authentically Nigerian. We have come of age and have come to our own.

Egbe belu, Ugo belu.

A Review of Landscapes of Realities

Poet Alert: Dr Yusuf Adamu

Not being a cricket, this piece should not be considered a work of cricketism; it is rather a sanarwa, news, a review, and an acclamation of a newly published poet. Once every few years a collection of poems comes along that so definitive it can only be reviewed on its own terms. Dr Yusuf Adamu has provided us with just such a collection with the publication of his 2008 Poems, Landscapes of Realities. This review is meant to offer lovers of verse everywhere a studied opinion of this latest offering from the generally considered literary-arid northern Nigeria.

The poet is a football aficionado and geographer, he lectures at the Department of Geography, Bayero University, Kano. This background proves important in considering his poems. His literary grounding is in the Hausa language where he has published three novels; Idan So Cuta Ne {If Love Is a Crime}, Ummul Khairi and Maza Gumabr Dutse. He is also a blogger of note; {http://www.africanpublicpoet.blogspot.com/}, {http://www.tagarduniniya.blogspot.com/}.

Landscapes of Realities is a very slim volume of fifty six pages comprising forty three poems written entirely in free verse. The poet has conveniently divided them into three thematic hubs; “Innocence”, “Places” and “Realities”, comprising five, seven and thirty-one poems respectively. The poems included in Landscapes were written during the years 1997 and 2000 and perhaps their being published in 2008 is an acknowledgement by the writer that the content and context of his poems have remained relevant over the last decade.

The arresting individual characteristic of each poem in Landscapes is leanness – an almost anorexic control of diction such that each poem renders a chosen reality starkly, without the confusion of ambiguous words or an obscurantist style. The collection, taken as a whole, betrays an acute social conscience that is prescient but not overly sentimental in its comment, exhortation and, more often, denunciation. The bareness of geography, where a hill is a hill and a plain is a plain, have been transposed successfully into the poems of Dr. Yusuf Adamu, where Nigerian realities – the motorcyclist, eclipsed dreams, the corruptions of power and time – are rendered in severe relief.

The five poems comprising “Innocence” – “The Child”, “Truth”, “Childhood Dreams”, “Almajiri” and “Happiness” adequately reflect the bare template of each Nigerian, before experience ups and happens to them. The innocence of childhood and truth, the beauty of a child’s dreams are captured in their fragile ephemeralty. This nostalgia is punctured by the poem “Almajiri”, about the agonizingly human fodder, child-scholar-beggars, that have become an embarrassing fixture in the cities of Northern Nigeria. The blight of Innocence, occurring in “Childhood Dreams” –
. . .they wake up growing
into a world full of malice
falsehood
diminishing glory and shame
. . .guilt replaces innocence
ancient dreams
barely materialized
-is given a context in the lines from “Almajiri” below –
he is very young an frail
the economy is biting hard
the Mallam cannot sustain him
. . .he must hunt for himself.

The second part of the collection, “Places”, comprising seven poems, are poetic descriptions of Kano City, Jos City, the Plateau, Kura falls, Wembley Stadium and the town of Sussex. They are simple poems. However, a poignant question is sneaked in which forms the prelude to the next part of Dr. Adamu’s poems, the poet asks –
Where shall we be
If there is no geography?

“Realities”, comprising thirty-one poems, provides a rich mine for critical exploration. The poet-persona in these poems is above the fray of the realities being described yet we can feel the organic, umbilical relationship between the two. “Realities” probes maternal mortality and poverty, germane issues in the North, with the poems “Child Birth” and “Malnourished Child”. “Fuel Scarcity” and “Motor Cyclist” critique the nature of government insensitivity vis a vis the devious and oftentimes, dangerous, “survival” activities of the Nigerian citizen. Beggary, another social problem in Northern Nigeria is given the treatment of clinical satire in “Professional Beggars”; “Career Beggars” on the other hand denounces the beggars for their ignorance, however, it doesn’t stop there, the poem ends –
their minds are enslaved
by false beliefs and ignorance
chained by laziness
their minds may never be free
until the society decides to set them free.

On the late General Mamman Vatsa, he says –
His sprit shall forever be
Nourishment for his memory never ceases
As the living drink from his lines
In the same spirit of the Ecclesiasticus, of paying respect to “great men and their fathers who begat them”, he honors the “Ancient Revolutionary”, Akhenaten {1338-1358 BC} and a “Brave Captian”, Sultan Attahiru of Sokoto who defeated by the British, was subsequently killed at Burmi, on his way to join forces with El-Kanemi or Rabih in the Sudan –
Maxim gun he hasn’t got
Can he remain on the throne?
. . .our glory has fallen and broken.

Perhaps in correcting the conservative and reactionary stereotype of Northern Nigeria, Dr Adamu has in a series of poems affirmed that the radical, revolutionary streak has been in the north long before the south knew of cause and anti-cause, I speak of men like Muhammad Rumfa, Shehu dan Fodio, Sa’ad Zungur, Aminu kano, Hamza Abubakar. In the poems “Strike”, “Rebellion”, “Smash Them” and “Speak Out”, he idolizes revolt in the face of malevolent power. Says he –
But if they are unjust
If they oppress you
Day and night
If they mismanage your funds
If they deny your rights

Then rebel
Fight in the open
And in the close
Do not fear their might
For God is not on their side.

However, even judging this collection by its standard, there are shortcomings. On the ground of “leanness”, there are poems laden with prosaic fat so much so that the poetry of the poem is lost. Examples of this are the poems “Problem” and “Kindness” which read too much like penny motivational tracts. Secondly, the poet’s style involves the breaking of sentence syntax and while this stylistic preference has in the main worked superbly, it has not so worked all though. An example of the jarring and unaesthetic effect of this is the line “His colleagues he betrayed” from “Driver’s View”, “For, truth they represent” from “Kayan Sarki” and the first stanza of the poem “Frankenstein”.

Another critical charge, this time of complacency may be laid against the poet. Instances abound where the non-printing of a single letter, “s” or “’s”, have discontextualised poems and hurt the flow of their line. One inevitably pauses at such a point. An example is the first stanza of the otherwise correct “The Sun”. On another limb, “The Poet Died” is rendered unwieldy for its sheer and abrupt vacillation between past and present, sample –
The power of the gun
He knew quite well
Yet it is the power
Of the written word
He believes in
I have no doubt that General Vatsa for whom this poem is in memoriam “believed”; but he cannot “believe” {L4 excerpt above} because that would imply living contemporaneity and Vatsa, we know, has been dead for decades.

These shortcomings can easily be overcome during the expected reprint of this Poems. They do not much hurt the beauty of the collection or derogate the sincerity of the poet behind the lines. Among the emerging voices in Nigerian poetry, Dr. Yusuf Adamu’s Landscapes of Realities would definitely find a niche for itself.

Kano Memoirs: Creative Writer’s Forum

Among The Brothers

During my recent literary sojourn to Kano City in Northern Nigeria, I had the unanticipated pleasure of meeting the crème of that city’s young writers and thinkers. The accusation variously laid against the northern part of the country has been that, vis a vis the south, it has largely been unable to tell its story. Not on one occasion, in salons across the length of this country, the question, axiomatic, has been – the south has produced Wole Soyinka, Eastern Nigeria has produced Chinua Achebe, who, of that stature, has the north produced? I was well aware of that typecast even as I attended the Forum, as the meeting is called. I merely reminded myself that stereotypes must be held in abeyance until real evidence can prove its truth or falsity.

The writers of Kano meet monthly under the auspices of the ANA/EEL British Council Creative Writers Forum. It is a partnership between the local chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors {ANA} and the English and European {French} Languages Department of the Bayero University, Kano with support from the British Council, Kano. The meetings are held on the last Wednesday of the month at the Council’s premises along Emir’s Palace Road, which is an exemplum of traditional arewa architecture with its thick mud walls and old style motifs printed on the exterior walls. Together with my friend, Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz, I entered the meeting hall at exactly 4:30 p.m. Were not for Abdulaziz’s foresightedness, we would have joined the others standing at the corners or on tables – the hall was full.

A young man was reading from a poem, his very words were –
Like a river cut away from its source
A day without sunshine, shrouded by envious clouds . .
- “a love poet”, I thought, “a poet in love” and wondered the fatal connexion betwixt the two. Muhammad Balarabe Sango who is the PRO of ANA/Kano State was chairing the meeting. He showed his courtesy by recognizing my work with ANA/Plateau State and inviting me to the dais where I declared myself delighted to be there. There were over sixty persons in the hall; six times more that Lenin said would have stopped the Bolsheviks coming to power in Russia. Indeed, the Muse of writing dwelled amongst the Kannawa.


About twenty writers read that day, the 26th of March 2008, mostly prose and poetry; Bakano 80, Muktar Ali Hikima, Terungwa Isaiah Itiav, Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz, Abdullahi Sufi, Muttaqa Yusha’u Abdulrauf and M.B. Sango amongst others. I read my short story “The Ravages of Dust.”

The health of a country’s letters can be ascertained by the themes its writers tackle, the literary is the thermometer of the social. The themes of the Kano writers are astonishingly varied, ranging from the everyday such as love within the society, love and lust between the sexes, the road as a vehicle to social harmony to the clearly metaphysical such as Ali Muktar Hikima’s “An Odd World” and Abdulaziz Fagge’s “The Untold”. Bakano 80, a writer, in answering a critical salvo from the floor viz the crime obsessed theme of his work replied that he felt crime had been marginalized in contemporary Nigerian prose, hence his desire to affect this discrimination in his work. Needless to say, I found Bakano’s reply highly perceptive and true.

However, while protean themes indicate literary virility, the general style of the Kano writers leaves much to be desired. Liberal construction, and inevitable the misconstruction, of grammar has taken its heavy toll on the work read during that meeting, perhaps indicative of the corpus itself. Without paying attention to the “personal” nature of a writers style and the miring myriad arguments on that, I venture to say grammar, as synthesized in that unit of sense, the sentence, is and must remain the building block of style. Grammar is organic and an at least rudimentary mastery of it is necessary in order to avail a writer the defense of “style” when accused of linguistic or grammatical miscarriage. The writers of Kano have either largely failed or been careless in their use of grammar and I do not think the defense of “style” avails them. The grammatical liberties taken in some of the work read, prose and poetry - the appropriateness of syntax, imagery, and diction – too many times, those liberties were over-taken.

The real workshop proved educative and insightful critiques were made. Among the gathered that day were Drs. Yusuf Adamu and Bala Garba of the Bayero University, Kano. The former lectures geography while the latter is from the English Department. I left the meeting with the appropriate words of Dr. Bala on my mind, he said, concerning creative writing – “it is not the creative we lack, it is the writing!” Dr Adamu stressed that one should not call oneself a writer before one becomes one and the fitting toga of a true writer can only be worn at the end of a long process of writing and rewriting, refining and editing, and critique.

I agree entirely with the dons. The trouble with up and coming Nigerian writing is the impatience to get the cattle to the market. But you only get a good price when the cow is fattened. And fattening a cow is not a day’s job. Yet, the abundant energy that brings about impatience is very important because it pointed out the reality, that those twenty writers that day were confident enough and willing to put their work on a pedestal, to be critiqued and to accept criticism. That is, of course, the beginning of improvement.

On leaving the meeting that day, I felt that the future was promising since even as far up north as Kano, there are writers passionate about writing. It would only be a matter of time before critical appraisal would nudge these fine young persons to even greater refinement of their language and ultimately, the good of Nigerian writing.

Buddha Child and A Dark Ghazal {Poems}

Dreadlocked child sitting amidst
The fleeting cinema of urban feet
Child in Buddhic squat, palms between thighs
Folded correctly

Forlorn on a city pavement
They do not see you, mendicant child
But I do

And I know you too are on your way
Maybe you’ll be a rasta someday

Buddha Child


Infernal pointsman destroying space-time
Shattering science in a million frissons of glass
This is the end of the fury – the mad scribbling
The chill of waiting to pen perfect roses

Whirlwinds rage on, but I am innocent of dust
My imperfect lines throb as if they still live
The market still pulses with life

I tell you
Fortitude and solitude are one
The same with wine and women and art
Cold mistresses teasing flames in temples
Parched with thinking, longing
And forgetting

So
Life shatters into a million frissons
And I step out into the light
Killing the man in the mirror.

A Dark Ghazal