Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)

"......I've learnt that behind all the shakara and self-regard of the Nigerian critic, there's something always merely at the surface; not deep enough; certainly not without intelligence but mostly undermined in the unreflective criticism of Nigeria. Much of it is driven by the neccessity to be fashionably sanguine......"
--------Obi Nwakanma.

I disagree with the above generalization.
----Chidi.


From: Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 6:59 AM
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)

I am not going to dignify Obi Nwakanma's parsing of words with a response. Pius is right, ours is a leadership of illiterates. What does it matter that they have PhDs? Let's be serious.
-Ikhide


Ikhide, let me "dignify" some of your presumptions with a reply: and I'll do it principally because I think it is neccessary to correct your mindset. I've learnt that behind all the shakara and self-regard of the Nigerian critic, there's something always merely at the surface; not deep enough; certainly not without intelligence but mostly undermined in the unreflective criticism of Nigeria. Much of it is driven by the neccessity to be fashionably sanguine. It is fashionable to dix Nigeria, and in the most hyperbolic of terms: "our is a leadership of illiterates." Nothing can be more ridiculous! From a nation that does not read to a leadership of illiterates you get the picture of a terrifying "heart of darkness." Nigeria's leadership - intellectual, political, and economic - is anything but "illiterate." Incompetent? compromised? Lethargic? Maybe. But not "illiterate," Lord Ikhide.
 
In any case, the subject is about the situation of the writer or artist in a place like Nigeria. Well, perhaps these examples might suffice: in 1963, Cyprian Ekwensi's Jagua Nana was the subject of a parliamentary debate in the Federal House of representative and eventual censor. The Nigerian government stopped the move by an international film maker to acquire the rights and make it into a film on the premise that the book was too racy and portrays Nigeria in bad light. So Ekwensi lost the opportunity of millions of pounds on movie rights. It was the subject of much debate in the Nigerian newspapers in that period. In 1971, the Gowon government banned the circulation of Wole Soyinka's prison memoirs, The Man Died in Nigeria. In 1985, the Babangida administration banned Arthur Nzeribe's book from circulation. Kole Omotosho's Just Before Dawn, we may all now have forgotten was subject of serious security scrutiny in its publication in 1988, that he soon fled into exile following threats to him. In 1994, the Abacha government stopped the publication by Arthur Nwankwo's Fourth Dimension Press, of the proceedings of the constitutional conference. In 1978, Chris Okolie's Newbreed magazine was banned from further publication by the Obasanjo government. Newspaper houses have been closed; journalists arrested and sanctioned for their writing; a Nigerian journalist Dele Giwa was assasinated - I'm certain, not simply because of his handsome face. Meanwhile, Colonel Togun, erstwhile Director of Military Intelligence in that period - ex-King's College, ex-Ibadan, could have been anything but illiterate. There is of course, another question, of whether the goverment censors consider the work of the Nigerian poet or novelist of any significance - that is, worth the trouble - particularly in its tepid state. In an increasingly lethargic and cynical society with far more immediate bread and butter issues the writer is no threat.  But even then, you'd be shocked how well-read the "Nigerian state" could be.
Obi Nwakanma
 
 
 
 
 _____________________ "If I don't learn to shut my mouth I'll soon go to hell, I, Okigbo, town-crier, together with my iron bell." --Christopher Okigbo
 

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:44:25 -0800
From: xokigbo@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
CC: chidi.opara@gmail.com; piusadesanmi@gmail.com

Chidi, you said this: "Professor Chinua Achebe was arrested and interrogated immediately after the 1966 coup for what he wrote in the novel "A Man Of The People"." And you are using Obi Nwakanma's statement below as proof that you are correct? You are kidding me? Are you still saying that Achebe was arrested, or would you prefer that we all call him up to clarify your statement? Next time, please be careful what you put out. It was generous of Pius to want to bow out of the conversation, clearly, it was also unnecessary.

I am not going to dignify Obi Nwakanma's parsing of words with a response. Pius is right, ours is a leadership of illiterates. What does it matter that they have PhDs? Let's be serious.

- Ikhide

From: Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@yahoo.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 4:48 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)

"Kennedy:
In 1966, Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People drove him into hiding. The coincidence with its public launch in the same week as the January 15 coup certainly had much to do with it, as with the close reading of a "prophetic" action in the novel which the folk in the D Branch thought too "prophetic" to be innocent. All said, to presume that "the Nigerian state is an illiterate state" is to project a most damning and asinine complex. As many of us who encountered some of the folk of the Nigerian State Security Services quickly found out in the normal course of our work in journalism in Lagos in the late 1980s and 1990s, these were some of the more highly educated Nigerians, recruited from all fields - Literature, Law, the Sciences, etc. They were not dumb. They read and they took note of all texts - from newspaper articles to books published in and out of Nigeria. Indeed, the requirement on local publishers to deposit copies of every book published in Nigeria in the National Library is not an act of arbitrary absent-mindedness. I had on one occasion, during one encounter in Lagos, to answer questions on exactly what I meant with a line in my poem on Fela - then still unpublished, and which surprisingly I had read only at an ANA gathering in Lagos. The "Nigerian state" reads; this you'll only find out but only when the occasion arises......"
--------Obi Nwakanma.

Do I need to say more? I must however state here that I am surprised at some of the replies to this post. Let me make two clarifications; this is not about Abani and certainly not intended as crucifixion of your dear PP. 
........Chidi.
 


From: Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 1:35 AM
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)

Kennedy:
In 1966, Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People drove him into hiding. The coincidence with its public launch in the same week as the January 15 coup certainly had much to do with it, as with the close reading of a "prophetic" action in the novel which the folk in the D Branch thought too "prophetic" to be innocent. All said, to presume that "the Nigerian state is an illiterate state" is to project a most damning and asinine complex. As many of us who encountered some of the folk of the Nigerian State Security Services quickly found out in the normal course of our work in journalism in Lagos in the late 1980s and 1990s, these were some of the more highly educated Nigerians, recruited from all fields - Literature, Law, the Sciences, etc. They were not dumb. They read and they took note of all texts - from newspaper articles to books published in and out of Nigeria. Indeed, the requirement on local publishers to deposit copies of every book published in Nigeria in the National Library is not an act of arbitrary absent-mindedness. I had on one occassion, during one encounter in Lagos, to answer questions on exactly what I meant with a line in my poem on Fela - then still unpublished, and which surprisingly I had read only at an ANA gathering in Lagos. The "Nigerian state" reads; this you'll only find out but only when the occassion arises. By the way, this is not in defense of Abani. I worked at the saner side of Kirikiri, where the Canal flowed only beer, cognac, and such "blood" known only to salts:) So, even if he were there at the Dantesque or Darker side Kirikiri, I could not have met him nor did I hear of it,nor would swear even now that he was not there - either in his mind or in his body. The writer makes myth. Kabissa!
Obi Nwakanma


 _____________________ "If I don't learn to shut my mouth I'll soon go to hell, I, Okigbo, town-crier, together with my iron bell." --Christopher Okigbo
 

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:01:12 +0000
From: kemetulu@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

 
 
...
 

 

"dear all
would soyinka and achebe have been imprisoned if they hadn't already had reputations that put them in the national spotlight? or saro-wiwa? would he have been considered such a threat if he hadn't been able to mobilize international opinion?" – Kenneth Harrow
 
 
Prof, below is what Pius said about the above:
 
 
"..........No Nigerian writer has ever been persecuted because of a novel or a poem or any such thing. Not even Ken Saro Wiwa or Wole Soyinka have that history. Writers have been persecuted by the Nigerian state because of their political praxis. Never because of literature. The Nigerian state is an illiterate state. She does not read novels. She would be happier if Soyinka concentrated on writing plays and poems. He would be free to write those to his heart's content. She reacts to writers only when they make political noise, not when they write novels........."Pius Adesanmi
 
 
That is the fact. What you want us to do here in your question is conjecture; but we can make intelligent conjectures from the facts. First, clarification is that Achebe was never imprisoned. Soyinka was, but only because of his politics.
 
I'm sure you've heard the story of those imprisonments and all the legends associated with them – how Soyinka hijacked a radio station at gunpoint in 1965 to demand the cancellation of the rigged elections in the West; how he was arrested and later freed by Justice Kayode Esho; how in 1967, he was arrested by the Gowon government and put in solitary confinement for actively trying to broker peace between Biafra and Nigeria. Before then, he was lauded and sponsored by the state as a writer; but once he began to get into active politics and activism, they arrested and imprisoned him. Achebe, as I said, was not imprisoned; but it was the suspicion that he knew of a military coup (because of the uncannily prophetic novel he wrote before then) that made him a person of interest at a time his ethnic group and men of his stature in the army and Civil Service were being hounded and killed by a state controlled by those opposed to his ethnic group.
 
Saro-Wiwa was a writer also feted and sponsored by the state. His plays were broadcast on national television controlled by the state and he himself, early in his career served in government as a Commissioner in Rivers State and also as a member of a quango created by the Babangida government. But once he took the political road of championing the cause of his ethnic group against the dominant and predatory state in a fierce political battle, they came for him.
 
Of course, all of them had international reputations as good writers before their brush with politics and the state; but it was their political involvement that got them bigger visibility internationally, because what this did was to awaken the international literary and political establishment to their plight as writers being persecuted for their politics. The lines became merged and the rest is history.
 
It is that type of history that Chris Abani is manufacturing to get the credibility of people like the Soyinkas, the Saro-Wiwas and the Achebes. He didn't go through the suffering these people went through for their politics and their art (as both became merged once the state came calling), but he felt by lying that he went through that and prop up these lies with his work of art, he would achieve their status. Well, it would seem he has, if we accept the fraudulently contrived encomiums coming his way. But we are not about to let him get away with it. If his promoters in the West think they can impose his false history on us, they have another think coming. Nigerian literature has never had a fraudulent figurehead. Chris Abani will be purged of his lies and made to walk the plank!
 
 
 
….
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, 28 November 2011, 21:17
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)

dear all
would soyinka and achebe have been imprisoned if they hadn't already had reputations that put them in the national spotlight? or saro-wiwa? would he have been considered such a threat if he hadn't been able to mobilize international opinion?
ken

On 11/28/11 2:49 PM, Pius Adesanmi wrote:
Chidi:
 
Thanks for that detail on Achebe. Correction taken in good faith. But you must admit that starting a new thread with my name and very nearly killing a mosquito with a laser-guided intercontinental balistic missile in the process could make your enemies accuse you of diversion. Although I will defend you if they do but your enemies could come out saying that you are using corner-corner sense to divert attention from the real issues, having been unable to satisfactorily explain to, say, Kennedy and Moses, why you took the unbelievable position you took in the thread that you are now trying to hide under a bushel. Anyway sha, I intend to now start claiming that Buka Sukar Dimka got his coup inspiration from the first poem that I ever wrote and I was put on death row until I escaped to Canada via France. Chances are I will get some dumb institutional do-gooders in America to invest in the story and reward me plenty plenty. If my lies eventually catch up with me, shebi I can always count on my brother, Chidi, whose love for me passeth all understanding? Abi no be so?
 
Pius
 


From: Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@yahoo.com>
To: USA Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, 28 November 2011, 5:46
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)

"..........No Nigerian writer has ever been persecuted because of a novel or a poem or any such thing. Not even Ken Saro Wiwa or Wole Soyinka have that history. Writers have been persecuted by the Nigerian state because of their political praxis. Never because of literature. The Nigerian state is an illiterate state. She does not read novels. She would be happier if Soyinka concentrated on writing plays and poems. He would be free to write those to his heart's content. She reacts to writers only when they make political noise, not when they write novels........."
.....Professor Pius(PP)

Haba PP,
Professor Chinua Achebe was arrested and interrogated immediately after the 1966 coup for what he wrote in the novel "A Man Of The People".

Late Hubert Ogunde was severely persecuted in the early 1960s by the Tafawa Balewa and Akintola federal and regional governments for what he said in the play "Yoruba Ronu"

Eedris Abdulkarim, a Nigerian contemporary musician complained of severe persecutions during the Obasanjo civil regime for what he sang in the music "Nigeria Jaga Jaga".

In activism, there is no clear boundary between Politics and Literature. If Okey Ndibe, an activist who uses Literature as his primary platform can be taken hostage in a Gestapo-style operation at the Lagos International Airport by the Goodluck Jonathan regime goons, the credibility of your comment above then seems doubtful to me.

There are of course many uncelebrated cases in contemporary Nigeria, like your spouse and children being denied certain benefits they should ordinarily been entitled to by a state government in a state you have lived in for more than two decades and a government official pretending to be a friend, calling and advising you "to cooperate for the sake of your family", and you know very well that you write poems and that you have no other "
political praxis".

PP, your views carry some weight, so, make you no dey yan dis kin yan.
.......Chidi
 
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--  kenneth w. harrow  distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu
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