'“On Black Sisters Street” marks the arrival of a latter-day Thackeray, an Afro-Belgian writer who probes with passion, grace and comic verve the underbelly of our globalized new world economy.' Great review of Chika Unigwe's book in the New York Times. Here.
Yes, we are angry now but 1) How much longer will that anger last before we all go back to our merry lives and forget all about this? 2) How will anger actually lead to any solutions unless we do something?
The government has promised compensation for the families of those like Ukeoma AikFavour and Obinna Okpokiri who lost their lives, but this is not enough. Their deaths should not be in vain – it should lead a fundamental change in the way that the youth corps scheme is implemented.
The Future Project (which runs The Future Awards), in partnership with the National Youth Council, AIESEC, SleevesUp Nigeria and Friends of Aik and Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, has decided to take up this cause.
We are aware that many initiatives have been undertaken in the past – but we believe it is time to move from anger and protest and to make this a broad-based national campaign. It is also a fine opportunity for us to put our hard won democracy to work – to move from protest and activism to advocacy and productive democratic lobby.
SO, over the next nine-months, we are implementing a solution-oriented approach that involves 1) Engaging government on a policy level to restructure and reform the NYSC in order to protect corps members in the interim and then to completely overhaul the scheme in the long term so that it is actually useful to the nation. 2) Supporting this Policy Engagement with a wide-ranging public and media campaign to ensure pressure is sustained on the government. Starting from tomorrow therefore, we are activating a #ProtectTheCorpers campaign that will involve both online and offline strategies to engage the authorities, the media and young people.
The strategy is simple –
1) We are gathering 100, 000 signatures for a petition that is going to the Presidency with a 7-point demand (see demand below) to restructure the scheme and protect the corps members.
2) Request an urgent meeting with the Minister of Youth and the Director-General of the NYSC to implement immediate action points.
3) Begin an aggressive lobby at the legislature, especially the Senate and House Committees on Youth, towards include the deletion of the programme from the section of the Constitution and placing it as an Act of Parliament with a revamped structure, as recommended by the Senate Spokesperson, Ike Ekweremadu.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
1) Read the demands below and sign the petition on www.thefuturenigeria.com/protectthecorpers – and get at least 20 of your friends, family and associates to sign the petition.
2) If you have any direct influence with any legislator who can help with introducing and facilitating this bill, please get in contact with us at [email protected]
3) Use the #ProtectTheCorpers Hashtag on your Twitter and Facebook Accounts Daily, Use the Avatar/Display Picture on Your Facebook/Twitter/BBM Accounts and Send this Message To All Your Contacts.
4) Support this initiative with resources or donation to sustain the publicity and lobbying drive over the next 9 months (our working time-frame.)
5) Join the ProtectTheCorpers group on Facebook as well as the ProtectTheCorpers group on Yahoo.
6) Send us an e-mail on [email protected] or call us on with any suggestions or how you can or want to help.
7-POINT DEMAND TO #PROTECTTHECORPERS
1. Hotspots - Identify violence-prone “hot-spots” states and/or districts and ensure that corps member posting to these areas is voluntary. This voluntary posting must also come with an institutionalised incentive.
2. Emergency Fund – Institute an NYSC Contingency Fundthat is easily accessible in pre-crisis situations. This Fund should be easily accessible at crisis periods.
3. Decentralisation – The command structure of the NYSC should be devolved in terms of accommodation, welfare, wages and security to avoid red tape during times of crisis. State governments should be primarily responsible for welfare as well as security – including evacuation – at moments of crisis.
4. Compensation - Corps Members posted out of their states of residence should be beneficiaries of a comprehensive life insurance policy as a compensation structure in time of unavoidable loss.
5. Data Management – Digitise the database of corps member with location, contact information and total number per state. This is to ensure easy pre and post-crisis accessibility and tracking.
6. Representation – Institutionalise an alternate platform for corps members to interact with administration on welfare and security. This structure will interface directly with the corps commandants and state level and the Director-General at federal level.
7. Full-scale Reform – Constitute a National Youth Service Corps Reform Committee that will recommend full scale structural and policy reforms for the scheme and make binding recommendations to the Federal Government to be implemented into a National Youth Service Act.
Let’s ensure that we put our government under pressure immediately after the elections. This is a good place to start making our democracy work! Those ‘corpers’ cannot die in vain. Yours-for-change The Future Project, Nigeria. www.thefuturenigeria.com/protectthecorpers
Stephen Hendel is a New-York based oil trader. He is also the main promoter/producer behind the Broadway-version of the Fela Musical currently showing in Lagos. He is being sued by Carlos Moore, author of the authorised biography of Fela, Fela: This Bitch of a Life, published in Nigeria by Cassava Republic.
With all his oil money and corporate leverage, its hard to imagine he is going to be able to successfully defend his claim that the musical was a work of independent inspiration. You can fool some people some times, but you can't fool all the people all the time. At some point in the near future, Jay-Z, Jada Pinkett Smith and Bill T. Jones may have to eat humble pie and realise that they tried to write another black man out of history, and failed.
The graphic of the results of the Presidential elections on Saturday on Nigeriaelections.org provokes much thought. In a way, it reminds immediately one of the two Nigerias of colonial times - the north ruled on the QT via the convenience of the native authorities, the south heavily focused on Lagos as the commercial hub, with a completely different kind of colonial officer in each place. In the north, enthusiastic slightly waify Oxbridge-types, keen to learn hausa and wander around their domain on horseback. In the south, altogether more mercantile brutal deal-cutting types.
At least in the early to mid twentieth century, there was a balanced fiscal framework for Nigeria, with taxes from groundnuts, cocoa and palm oil going directly to the North, South-West and South-East respectively. The heavy reliance on oil revenues and the resulting resource curse since the 1970s has eroded all other sectors of the economy. The heavy CPC vote can be explained in many different ways - as a vote against abandoning zoning and a vote for a northern leader. On another level however, its a cry of pain from millions of wasted lives. The North desperately needs a viable development solution. It probably also needs fresh blood and fresh leadership. Where will the northern version of Fashola come from and when?
This woman is almost certainly Nigerian, and just as certainly, she is likely to be from Edo State. She was photographed having sex just off the Ramblas in Barcelona. To most tourists who visit, the Ramblas is perhaps the most beautiful shopping street in Europe. To her, it is degrading servitude. As we know from the Channel 4 documentary Unreported World (see the previous post), she was probably forced to take a juju oath, which ensures she spends years and years as a prostitute in Europe paying off 50,000 Euros or more, in utter fear of the consequences of running away.
It seems there is a conspiracy of silence around this contemporary form of slavery in Edo State. Its not hard to imagine why: the remittances keep flowing in, with 40,000 or more Bini prostitutes in Mali and perhaps the same number (or a lot more) again in Europe. We know this is going on. We know it is causing enormous suffering. A lot of the girls imagine that they will only have to be prostitutes for a few months, and persuade themselves that they will find other work as a hairdresser etc. It is only when they arrive in Europe and their Madam tells them the terms of the job that they realise their life is effectively over.
Its long since time that a full-on campaign to challenge sex trafficking in Edo State began with civil society groups joining forces with the Edo State government and NAPTIP. Their may need to be punitive state-specific legislation passed.
We are all allowing this to happen, by looking the other way and dismissing Benin women as promiscuous and enthusiastic to do the work anyway. We were in denial in Germany, 70 years ago, just as we are in denial today.
"I do not need much convincing from this detribalised, white Yoruba man in Germany wearing a traditional tie-and-dye shirt. The proof is in his life spread out before me like an Ifa divination chain. Through honest, pagan vigour he founds the Mbari-Mbayo Literary and Arts Movements, without which there will be little of modern Nigerian culture to speak of. It is an occasion for rejoicing because Ulli Beier is not dead but has merely joined his pagan Yoruba ancestors..."
"I imagine a reader who, like me, is a bit exasperated with the accumulation of the follies of our times, someone ready for a new way of looking, thinking and being; someone who combines youth and experience, idealism and realism. Someone who isn’t afraid to dream but also is not afraid to roll up their sleeves and participate in the tough magic of life." Review here.
Ugandan civil society activists are campaigning in London to put pressure on the British Govt to create its own version of Dodd-Frank/EITI legislation. The awareness of what went so badly wrong with the resource curse in Nigeria is high...
The photographer George Esiri followed the PDP Presidential campaign trail around Nigeria. An exhibition of the images he captured was launched at the Yar'Adua Centre yesterday. I took the picture with my Blackberry.
Kongi celebrates the rebirth of Lagos in Newsweek from a month back, here. Reading the piece (nicely edited, for a change) prompted me to go back to Richard Burton's memorable description of Lagos, 150 years ago:
"The site of the town, four miles from the entrance, is detestable; unfortunately there is no better within many a league... The first aspect is as if a hole had been hollowed out in the original mangrove forest that skirts the waters, where bush and dense jungle, garnished with many a spreading tree, tall palms, and matted mass of fetid verdure rise in terrible profusion around."
Poor (or rather, not so poor) Pastor Erastus Akingbola has been ordered to pay back the money he stole from Intercontinental Bank. I wonder if he still preaches at church on a Sunday? Its hard to imagine anyone learning anything that is good and moral him. However, if you want to know about the best way to set up a shell company in the Cayman Islands...
A piece by James Eze from a few years back gives a flavour of the man:
Watching President Olusegun Obasanjo dole out national honours on prime time television to Nigerians and non-Nigerians of all ilk the other night, it struck you just how odd it seemed that Nigeria had yet to say 'thank you' to him. Yet, he was here when it all began. Not as a distant spectator, but as a prime mover, an enthusiastic facilitator and a devoted promoter of the Nigerian letters. He is a black man in white skin. He is a German born Yoruba man. He is indubitably Nigerian. He is 83. He is Ulli Beier. And it is a pity that his name was not on the honours list of this year's National Merit Award recipients.
Professor Beier is a foremost Africanist scholar, whose arrival in the University College Ibadan in 1950 at 28 sparked off a chain of events that eventually led to the lighting up of the African literary tree. As a university teacher, editor of the influential Black Orpheus and proprietor of the catalytic Mbari Artists and Writers' Club as well as Mbari publications, Ulli Beier found himself strategically nestled in the fork of time. But he made the most of it. Flapping all around him were budding writers whose creative gifts needed stronger wings to soar. There were Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, J.P Clark, Mabel Segun, Demas Nwoko, Duro Ladipo, Ezekiel Mphalele of South Africa and of course Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. It was a great moment in time all right.
The flowering of ideas that ensued marked the preparatory stage of modern literary offering from Africa. As you raise the micro tape recorder to his lips in this plush little room inside the cavernous sprawl of Osun State government house, Osogbo, you marvel at this man whose deep set eyes still sparkle behind a pair of rectangular eye glasses at 83. In your opening remark, you had generally alluded to his contributions to African literature and how one of his former students, Mabel Segun had spoken fondly of him in a recent meeting. At the mention of that name, his powerful eyes lighted up "Oh! Where is she? What is she doing?" he asks in quick succession and without waiting for your reply he wades into an old familiar tunnel. "She was one of my students in the University College Ibadan. I only spent one year on campus and she was one of the students I saw a lot privately to. A lot of the students came to my house; Chinua Achebe, Mabel, all kinds of students. “It was more than just a class, you know what I mean?
She was one of the first people to write poems. She was bright and wrote some quite good poems and I think I would have published a few. Another student who came quite a lot was Chinua Achebe. He had quite impressive manners. I kept a lot of contact with him in later life and when he was working with the NBC, I did quite a few programmes with him and he was also a member of the Mbari Club when we founded it", he recalls in a voice that belies his age.
Beier is urbane. He returns compliments with compliments. Mabel Segun, he said, was brilliant. A statement of fact, but he also talked about Achebe and the Mbari Club which offers a veritable opening for a follow up question. When did you found the club? You ask. "I think in 196o and it was Chinua who gave it a name. Mbari is an Igbo name. Soyinka and I were tossing around in search of a name to give the club and then Chinua rang and said 'what about Mbari?' And I jumped at the name because I knew Mbari Houses," he recalls with a nostalgic glint in his eyes.
Ulli Beier's recollections are incomplete without names like Soyinka, Chinua, Okigbo, Duro Ladipo etal. In a manner of speaking, his story is their story. "My whole activity in Nigeria in the 196os was basically to help people get a better identity by pointing out what wonderful culture they have", he had said in an earlier comment. In a way, Ulli has walked the road of his destiny well. Along with Gerald Moore, an Englishman, who taught extra-mural classes in Eastern Nigeria, Beier made his presence felt on the continent, translating and publishing modern African writings from David Mendessa Diop to Leopold Sedar Senghor, and even some Yoruba poems. He also played a fundamental role in the conception and nurturing of the world famous Oshogbo school of artists along with influential playwright and gifted composer Duro Ladipo. Story telling comes natural to Beier. He is dressed in his trademark Aso Oke and his luxuriant grey hair has turned completely white like a soft tassel drooping down a corn cob. You let his sweet old voice swaddle you up with nostalgic recollections, let it carry you to a time beyond your reach when our people still retained those things that made then distinct. "I really loved the idea that people do creative work that involves young people of a certain age grade and that under the guidance of craftsmen they created mud buildings populated by arts figures," he says of the Mbari Houses from which the name of his literary club was chosen. "They had a figure of the earth goddess with a child on her laps, a leopard pouncing on a goat, a school teacher with a book and a tailor with his sewing machine. Then within a few years, this building crumbles back into mud because it's not fired and all the figures virtually collapse. But there's a beauty in that. The building and artworks must give way for the next age grade to practice their own craft, you see.
And there I learnt something for the first time in my life. Growing up in Berlin as a child visiting museums, I thought that the older a work of art was the better and more valuable and all the so called art treasures and worth not. “It's all because of the false values attached to art. Now from the Mbari Houses, I have developed a whole concept of Ephemeral Art; which means art that is not meant to last, art that is allowed to disintegrate, art that is destroyed, burnt, drowned and art that is shot. It is a very fascinating concept and on December, 18 at the Obafemi Awolowo University I am going to give a lecture on Ephemeral Art. And I will start with Mbari."
The incurable photographer, curator, author, translator and publisher may be in love with the concept of ephemeral art, but he builds eternal friendships. That is why when he talks about Christopher Okigbo, or Wole Soyinka or Chinua Achebe and J.P Clark, he comes across like a teenage Casanova regaling his crowd of youthful admirers with tales of his new conquest. "When I moved out from the University Campus, I was giving extra-mural classes in Oyo. On the way, I used to stop in a little, town called Fiditi," he recalls in the same pitch of voice. Wasn't that where Christopher Okigbo taught? You interject. "Exactly! Then I met Christopher. Well, he wasn't one of my students. So, I met him and we developed a very close relationship. Then, when he became the representative of Cambridge University Press, he had a big house in Ibadan and I was living in Osogbo. “So, when I had business in Ibadan, I would just go in there, whether he was home or not, I was sure of a bed and a good meal. His house was just like home to me and we talked about art, literature and politics and a whole lot more.
Then, when the Mbari Club started, I started something called Mbari publications which subsequently published his first two volumes of poetry Heavensgate and Limits. “So, we were very close and I remember that he was very upset about the way the political situation in the country was going at the time. I was not surprised when I heard later that he was first to go to Biafra and enlist in the army and first to die. It's very tragic," he surmises looking suddenly crestfallen. You sense that it may be tactless to allow this mood prevail long enough to affect his recollections and then wonder if there are particular things he could remember about the late poet. "Well, he studied classics and then Greek and later when we published Black Orpheus; he would take a view and say 'I am not an African poet. I am a poet'. “This was where he was different from others. He was contemporary. He was extremely influenced by contemporary English poets. But the other aspect of him was that his poems became more political in Path of Thunder. It was actually inspired by some of my translations of Yoruba poetry, some images, you know. He became more interested and more African and finally more relaxed with his craft.
One thing about Mbari Club was that we had people who had very different ideas. “Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo never agreed on anything with J.P Clark. But they respected each other because there was some merit in their separate positions. And we always had a very lively interaction. They never agreed on anything but they worked successfully together. That was fascinating”.We had artists like Demas Nwoko, Uche Okeke. But no. Beier is wrong. The disagreement between Soyinka and Okigbo with J.P Clark did not end on the floor of the Mbari Club. At least what Okigbo told South African Lewis Nkosi about his resentment of Clark and what Clark wrote in some of his civil war poems where he basically spat on Okigbo's grave lend credence to this position. However, this does not in any way in particular, whittle down the legacy of Mbari Club. Listening to Beier’s flawless English, it strikes you just how wonderful it is that he is actually German and has a remarkable grasp of French and Yoruba languages as well. This led to his translation of literary works from Yoruba and French to English. But Beier went beyond mere translation of Yoruba works. He became deeply immersed in the Yoruba culture and worldview earning himself names like Obotunde Ijimere, Sangodare Akanji and Omidiji Aragbabalu. His close friends boldly refer to him as the German-born Yoruba man which he relishes with pride. "In a sense, it was necessary for me to do the translations because when I started teaching African literature and extra-mural classes, there wasn't that much African literature coming out of Nigeria," he says of what pushed him into trying his hands on translations. "There was no Soyinka and Achebe in 1950-51, so I had to translate Sango and Diop and Aime Cesare the Caribbean writer. So, I have always enjoyed translation for one reason or the other and I was totally bilingual in German and English. “At a time I didn't know which was my language anymore and I had a pretty good French. So, from that, I was able to do what I did. But one thing about translation is that you must know the language from which you translate but turning it into a poem requires a deeper knowledge.
When you are translating from Yoruba to English, you have to realize that there's a lot of things that you can't do. You have to make it as simple as possible but what survives adds to a unique philosophy. "Of course Beier should know. He translated the works of Bakare Gbadamosi and Timi Lawuyi among others to wide reception. Still, it is interesting to note that Beier, in spite of his complete immersion in the Yoruba culture has some critics. Oyekan Owomoyela for instance thinks that Beier's "representation of the Yoruba ethos is too often distorted and even slanderous."
But Beier is not deterred. Even at 83, Obotunde Ijimere still recalls with enticing vividness, his earliest impressions of Chinua Achebe at the University College Ibadan. "He was a very calm person. And when I returned to Nigeria after the Biafran War in 1971, I went to the University of Nigeria at Nsukka and it was all pretty raw then. Students were trying to clean up the mess left by the soldiers. I saw Achebe then and you could see that the terrifying experience of the war had given him some kind of strength.
“And Achebe told us a very touching story that when the frontline moved during the war, as it did all the time, they had to pack from house to house. And his children said "daddy you must be very rich, because we have so many houses.' That's a great anecdote. Great anecdote! I learnt a lot from Chinua.
Later on, he came to Bayreuth University when I was there and gave a lecture and I later did an interview with him which was called - "The world as a Dancing Masquerade." The world is a dancing masquerade, if you want to see it properly you cannot stay in one place. This explains the Igbo ability to move and try new things. They are a very dynamic people. Achebe's Things Fall Apart was published in 1958 and up till today it's popular all over the world and a recommended text for HEC exams in Australia.
“It's one of the most successful books in history and it means a lot because that's somebody looking into his culture without sentiment, without chauvinism and at the same time showing the dignity of his people, you see. And from him I learnt what I know about Igbo culture. He did an interview with Georgina which was called 'Wealth is not what you have but what you give away'. That's a wonderful point. So, we learned a lot about the Igbo culture from him and also Obiora Udechuckwu and we learnt to respect the Igbo culture.
“I realized that the culture has extra-ordinary tolerance. Chinua told us a story of when he was in primary school. The teacher one day moved the class out of the classroom to the shade of a tree and put the black board on the tree and proceeded to give them a lecture on the geography of Great Britain. Then the local lunatic walked by and stopped to watch the class for a while and walked up to the teacher, took the chalk out of his hand, wiped the black board and proceeded to give the class a lecture on Ogidi (Chinua's home town) which was more important to the children. What amazed me is that the teacher let it happen. In Europe he would call the police. That's fantastic!
This is one of the things I admire about Nigeria, these experiences." Ulli Beier is not only full of years at 83 but full of stories as well; wonderful stories, exciting stories and he tells everyone with fresh candour. He is also an adventurer who left his beloved Nigeria for Papua New Guinea where along with his wife Georgina, he repeated the Mbari experience setting up a Center for Art and Literature in Moresby which threw the door ajar for creative people in the region. Almost as many books have been written on Beier as he wrote on African literature. But Beier deserves even more books for all that he did in Nigeria and on the continent. Beier and Gerald Moore played a memorable role in erecting the pillars of Nigerian literature upon which African literature stands. Beier's cultural activism in Yorubaland with all his translations and books on various aspects of the Yoruba culture offer deep perspectives on the Yoruba race. Now, if these do not qualify a man for a national honour I wonder what else does. You see why Obasanjo's national honours list for 2005 was in complete?
Interesting yet highly disturbing-sounding documentary coming up this Friday on the UK's Channel 4, here. The women who are trafficked have little or no idea of what is in store for them. Their belief in witchcraft is exploited to the full. With tens of thousands of mostly Edo women working as sex workers in Italy, it seems that NAPTIP is fighting a losing battle. What if the Governor of Edo State organised mass screenings of the film, as part of a wider public awareness campaign?
Posts
