Niyi Osundare is an interviewer’s delight. His choice of language and words are graceful. You can’t beat the Ikere-Ekiti-born poet, dramatist and literary critic when he decides to pour out his thoughts. He gained degrees at the University of Ibadan (BA), the University of Leeds (MA) and York University, Canada (PhD, 1979). Previously professor (from 1989) and Head of English (1993–97) at the University of Ibadan, he became professor of English at the University of New Orleans in 1997. The author of such works as Songs from the Marketplace (1983), Village Voices (1984), The Eye of the Earth (1986, winner of a Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the poetry prize of the Association of Nigerian Authors), Moonsongs (1988), Songs of the Season (1999), Waiting Laughters (1990, winner of the Noma Award) and many more tells KABIR ALABI GARBA that it is very wrong and utter deification to assert fathership role to any writer of African Literature. He also speaks more on other issues, especially Climate Change. This debate about the ‘Father of African Literature’, what is your view on it? The so-called ‘debate’ rankles in its utter banality and jejuneness. It’s nothing short of an exercise in false – but mischievous – genealogy, a nauseatingly egregious time-waster. As a writer, thinker, and humanist democrat, I’m averse to all kinds of assigned, imposed hierarchies and orchestrated myths of origin… ‘Who Is the Father of African literature’? Let us go ridiculously biblical and reframe the question: Who Begat African Literature? Yes, it’s that ludicrous… Well if we designate somebody — whether it’s Achebe or Soyinka — as the father of African literature, who then would be the ‘Mother of African literature’? Where, then, are the children of African literature? I think this Father designation is a manifestation of the Nigerian habit of overpraising public figures and privileging them into autocratic arrogance. This patriarchalisation is just one step short of utter deification, one of the notorious practices of Nigeria’s public life. I don’t think any author worth his/her salt would be eager to don this mantle. African literature could do without this primogenitorial distraction. Let us get this straight: Chinua Achebe, at no point, said or agreed that he was father of anything except his own children. Soyinka did not at any time call himself the father of African literature. So, we have to trace the origin of this Father- designation to critics, theorists, camp followers and praise singers. I see something rather disingenuous, even galling, about it all. As is the common practice, once anything gets to Africa, it begins a process of trivialisation and bastardisation. This has already happened to our political life. It has happened to our culture. Now it is taking hold of our literature. Come to think of it: Have you ever heard any Chinese talk about the ‘Father’ of Chinese literature? Any European about the ‘Father’ of European literature? Any Asian about the ‘Father’ of Asian literature? The designation in question is so wide, so seamless, and, in the final analysis, so irresponsible. And it becomes even more irresponsible when it is being tossed between our two prominent writers: Achebe and Soyinka. And this ‘Father’ war is being waged along ethnic lines — like most things Nigerian! It falls within the purview of what I have always seen as the tribalisation of Nigerian literature, a plague that has been with us for a very long time. Very disturbing. If you really are looking for people who are enthusiastic and passionate about the works of Achebe, people expect you to go east; if it is Soyinka, they expect you to come west. In my opinion, no disservice could have been greater to these two writers. This tribalisation infantalises our literature; it belittles us as a people. It plays into the sick imagination of those who see everything about Africa in childish/childlike terms — the typical image of the African as the eternal baby. Let us take a walk down the temporal lane, then ask: if Achebe is the father of African literature, it means that that fathering began in 1958, when Things Fall Apart was published… Now let us pause for one moment and give to that novel and its author the epochal, indelible significance they have so deservedly acquired. As I said in my keynote address in 2008 in Lisbon at a conference which literally kicked off the Things Fall Apart @ 50 celebration that took place the whole year in different parts of the world, some books choose their own epochs, some epochs choose their own books. With Things Fall Apart, both choices worked together in stupendous serendipity, because the book found the right time and the right time found the book and both of them found the right author. Let us crow about Things Fall Apart and its author, what the author has done and the great impact that the novel has had all over the world. Let us not diminish these achievements with petty bickering about disputatious birthrights. Before Achebe and Soyinka came to the limelight, the world had witnessed the genius of pioneers such as Thomas Mofolo, Camara Laye, Cyprian Ekwensi, Mazisi Kunene, D.O. Fagunwa and many others. What about the stupendous stock of African oral literary tradition, a tradition from whose seamless resources Achebe and Soyinka and others, including me, have profited so voraciously? If any entity has a primogenitorial right to African literature, that entity is the African oral tradition… Honestly, this fathering, childing thing has got to stop. It is bourne of a validation complex, the an id-ological anxiety, which Nigerian, nay African literature, would be better without. Besides, it fuels that stereotypical entitlement to Africa’s leadership, which people from other African countries often tout as an unmistakable aspect of Nigerian arrogance. How do you think that the literary community can move forward from this era, especially with the exit of Achebe? The literary community has never stopped ‘moving forward’. The literary movement of any country is like a flowing river, which can ill afford to be stagnant. We have to thank the quartet: Achebe, Soyinka, Okigbo and JP Clark. And Ulli Beier, the intrepid catalyst. We have to thank them tremendously for what they have done. I call them the Mbari generation. A wonderful thing happened in this country in the 1960s, shortly before the unfortunate Nigerian civil war. It is a pity the civil war came and scattered everything. Nigerian literature has been growing in leaps and bounds. My generation (some call us the second generation) has drawn heavily from the resources of Achebe, Soyinka, JP Clark, Okigbo, Mabel Segun, and Gabriel Okara. And in the so many years I have been teaching creative writing and practising it, it is likely that one or two things I too have said and done have influenced those I have taught or interacted with me. This is how the literary tradition re-generates itself and this is how it flows like a constant river. Achebe was here, Achebe is here. Achebe will be here forever. As I said in my very short tribute to him, soon after his passing, we are celebrating him, not mourning because Achebe has defeated death and this is what good literature does for its practitioners. This is what arts does. We talk about Picasso in the present tense; we talk about William Shakespeare in the present tense; so Achebe is still very much with us. But I must say that it is not a matter of saying now that Achebe has gone, a new tradition is going to begin. No! The new tradition was already there when he was alive. I think one of the great characteristics of really great artists is that they live beyond their time and are capable of generating and re-generating their own legacies in the kind of influences that they have on younger and succeeding generations. There is something today in Nigerian literature that could be called the Achebe School of fiction. This designation began around the 1970s or so. And it is still very much with us. The so many novelists that Achebe has influenced - I do not think Elechi Amadi would quarrel all that much if we say that he is one of the beneficiaries of the Achebetradition. Nor would John Munoye, Flora Nwapa - and younger ones like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie… On my own part, I feel indebted to Achebe’s narrative dexterity and ingenious linguistic experimentation. True, he wrote prose most of his life, and I have been writing poetry all mine, but that has not resulted in a generic barrier. Achebe did something with the English language that hardly any other African writer did before his time: he bent that language, taking care not to completely break it. There is also a stylistic bridge across the genres. What Achebe did with language in prose fiction influenced me tremendously when I was trying to carve out my own craft in poetry. The delicately textured language of his fiction joins the tellurian imagery of JP Clark, and oftentimes I swing (what a word!) between the telling simplicity of Things Fall Apart and the riverine riffs of JP Clark’s amazing lyricism. What does it matter that Achebe is a novelist and Clark a poet?. So, styles and generic expectations travel across time, cultures and generations. We cannot just arrange them in a one-dimensional hierarchy or genealogical grid. Of course, who can read my works without knowing that what I have done and what Soyinka has written have come from the same culture? He is a man whose works and ideas I appreciate a lot: his mercurial mind and ecumenical disposition. Soyinka’s mind is large, his arms open. Like the American poet Walt Whitman, he has room for pretty many. From east to west, north to south, great art gathers humanity in its arms… So, back to your question: Achebe’s passing does not in any way stop the music. If anything at all, it enhances it. He is gone, but we will continue to study him, appreciate his works and quarrel with them. Achebe himself did quite a bit of ‘quarrelling’ when he was on this side of the river. He generated a lot of controversies. He is going to continue to generate controversies. We are going to have writers that will deliberately deviate from his way of writing, but that, in a way, is also a tribute to him. There will be others who will follow his legacies; that is also a tribute. The artistic universe is extremely large and Achebe, luckily for us, has passed through that universe. Great writers never die. Shakespeare lived between 1564 and 1616. Who will tell me that Shakespeare died about four centuries ago? We still talk about him in the present tense today. This is how it is supposed to be. Don’t you think Achebe’s ‘inability’ to win the Nobel laureate could have inflamed passion as regards this ‘father of literature’ thing? I thought you were not going to raise that issue because I thought I had heard enough about it and that I was sick and tired about people who mourn all the time that Achebe never won the Nobel Prize. It is sickly because it really shows us in Nigeria as children forever sulking over a prize that has thousands of potential winners all over the world every year. The way some people talk about this issue tends to diminish Achebe himself by underplaying/undervaluing the so many other prizes this remarkable writer has won. What else would somebody ask for as a novelist? There is no corner of the world today in which Achebe’s name is not being mentioned. Just see the great international splash occasioned by his death. In the so many parts of the world that I have been to, whenever I am introduced as a Nigerian writer, some of my audience invariably ask: ‘oh, you’re from Achebe’s country?’… Enough of this sickening fetishisation. Let Achebe rest. Let him take his well-deserved rest. He has left more than enough for us to celebrate. Let us celebrate his triumphs. I returned from the US a couple of days ago. When the news of Achebe’s passing broke in late March, you should have seen the kind of phone calls and emails I was getting from my colleagues and students at the University of New Orleans. Many of the sympathizers were colleagues who had encountered Achebe’s writing on their own, many were students who had entered the Achebe world with a key provided in my African Diaspora literature classes. They had no problem making the connection between Achebe’s literary sensibility and mine. Africanists among them know how important Achebe’s works are in literature, anthropology, sociology and even in psycho-analysis. What more could a writer ask for? How do you relate the ethnicity coloration of art works with the last work of Achebe? I have deliberately refrained from commenting on There was a Country because it is a book I found personally very painful, very unnerving. No matter what you may say, the civil war created a lot of trauma for Achebe. It created a lot of trauma for the Igbo, and it should for any non-Igbo with sufficient fellow feeling. It is the kind of experience you can never forget and it is still very much with us. Forget the ‘No Victor, No Vanquished’ mantra that came in the wake of the (un)civil war. To appreciate the full import of the Biafra experience and the agony that propelled Achebe’s account of it, we need something more intense than sympathy; we require a full-bodied dose of empathy, an earnest faculty of fellow feeling. As the Yoruba say, ‘Ka fi sara eni ka yeewo nii pelejo lete (put yourself in the position of the victim so you can know how to judge him). The reviews of and comments on There Was a Country I have read so far have really been very disturbing to me. Hardly any of them seems to capture the depth of the suffering that the Igbo people went through. And the extent and the unforgetability of the genocide that actually led to the Nigerian civil war. So many people took up that book and just read history on the surface as it were and their comments are drained of emotional gravitas; that itself is a way of mocking the tragedy of the afflicted and literally throwing oneself on the side of the afflictor. On the other side, nearly all our brothers and sisters from the east accepted the book in an amazingly uncritical, unquestioning totality, as if it was a Bible of sacred facts. It is a book I wish either Achebe had written differently or had written earlier in his career. It does not look good as a parting shot for a writer of Achebe’s stature. So much structural looseness, so much stylistic unevenness. The pain and the pang of the Biafra experience inflicted Achebe’s style with a kind of stridency uncommon with a craftsman who earned his colours through nuanced signification and devastating deployment of irony. It was this kind of pained consciousness that produced an unfortunate phrase like ‘Awolowo and his Yoruba people’, which, most expectedly, has turned out to be the most offensive to Yoruba readers of the book. For me, it was the most disappointing, most dispiriting. I had never in my wildest imagination thought that one of our foremost writers and thinkers was capable of uttering such a totalistic condemnation of a whole ethnic group. The first question that thumped my heart upon encountering this phrase is ‘Am I one of those ‘Yoruba people’? Is Soyinka one of them – the Soyinka who nearly perished in the federal government’s incarceration as a result of issues relating to the war? What about Tai Solarin who incurred the wrath of the military rulers for telling them that war was not a reasonable solution to the Nigerian problem? And Sam Aluko, the famous economist and non-conformist who was Ojukwu’s good friend, and who was actually lecturing at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, just before the outbreak of the war? What about hundreds, if not thousands, of Yoruba people who were appalled, no, shocked, at the horrific pogrom on the Igbo in the northern parts of the country and felt called upon to shelter those in the west at the risk of being called saboteurs and collaborators by the federal forces? At the personal level, I remember my History and Religious Studies teacher at Amoye Grammar School, Mr. O.K.U. (initials only, so as to protect his privacy. Bless his soul: an admirably neat, conscientious teacher who introduced our class to African history,) who along with his family stayed the whole length of the war in Ikere-Ekiti. I remember a friend’s uncle in Lagos who collected and saved up the rent on two houses belonging to his Igbo colleague who had been forced to flee as a result of the war. When he came back three years later, after the war, haggard and mercilessly dispossessed, and his colleague handed over his bank account, he was frozen with gratitude. Of course, not all Yoruba were this angelic. The Yoruba had their own share of opportunists who profited from the crises. But not ALL ‘Yoruba people’ are guilty as implied by Achebe’s blanket condemnation. I am surprised that one of our favourite humanist thinkers did not take account of those significant exceptions. There are silences in There Was a Country loud enough to rattle the ear. One of the conspicuous absences from the author’s account is Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, the then Governor of Western Region who went down with his guest, General Aguiyi Ironsi, rather than betray or abandon him in the bloody counter-coup of July 1966. The soldier who was famously reported to have told the invading coupists: “You will have to kill me before you kill my guest”. The unstinting loyalty and chivalry of this officer and gentleman within the terrible geo-ethnic situation in Nigeria in the 1960’s and beyond, should not have escaped the attention of Africa’s foremost novelist whose forte is the delineation of character and recognition of personality types. For, were Nigeria a country with a true sense of value, the likes of Fajuyi would stand on prominent pedestals in public places, celebrated from east to west, north to south. What course would the Nigerian crises have taken if Fajuyi had allowed Aguiyi Ironsi his guest to be murdered under his watch while he walked or scurried into safety? How would the Yoruba have avoided being implicated in the bloody, essentially anti-Igbo counter-coup? This is one of the potent if’s of History that shouldn’t have missed Achebe’s radar screen. Other silences: did General Odumegwu Ojukwu have any faults at all? Charismatic, well schooled, well spoken, scion of a wealthy parentage quite alright; a courageous man who sprang into his people’s service in a time of acute crisis; but were there any chinks in the shield of this warrior? Did he have his own share of human frailty? Achebe’s account of the elimination of Ifeajuna is disappointingly fuzzy, just like his account of the overrunning of the Midwest at the beginning of the war. In many instances, Achebe’s portrayal of Ojukwu soars from approbatory to reverential and frequently hagiographical… Indeed, There Was a Book. Suffused with so much pain, so much passion. This is a book we need to look at more dispassionately, more critically. At the moment, it seems to have lodged itself in the notorious faultline of Nigeria’s ethnic morphology. I hear strident shouts from both sides of the ethnic (almost said tribal!) divide. Needed: a rational engagement with the book and critical appraisal of the circumstances that brought it into being. A large dose of that needed empathy that makes it possible for the onlooker to see the raging fire on the other side of the fence. Honestly, I wish Nigeria would never again put one of its sterling minds to the unenviable task of writing this kind of agonizing autobiography. How are you coping after the experience of New Orleans? Still very difficult, especially when the need arises for the things I lost. Like my books and manuscripts, for instance. Or our beautiful house. The nightmares and the dayhorses!... What can we do about nature? Anytime, anywhere I hear people talk about strong winds and rain, Katrina comes straight to my mind. Yes, I think philosophically what this tells us is that we human beings, as arrogant as we are, actually have our limitations. Within the twinkle on an eye, nature could destroy a castle that took a dozen years to build. Nature could just snuff you out, with your billions of naira or dollars. But more than that, I think nature is reminding us that she wants some respect. She should be treated with dignity and consideration. All these natural disasters are happening all over the world because of climate change. The snow is melting in the Polar regions, swelling the oceans and river beyond their capacity. Lands formerly reclaimed from the oceans are being repossessed by angry water. As I said in one of the verses in The Katrina Poems, water has memory. It never forgets. Hurricanes have become so frequent and so severe in New Orleans, for instance, because of the decimation of the vast wetlands that used to serve as buffer between the city and the ocean. What about mountains, rivers, lakes and all? Lake Chad has literally dried up; nobody is talking about it. One of the largest lakes in Africa has literally dried up, and you know what this means to the environment and human life. A friend told me that at a point the whole place was very smelly because dead frogs and fish were all over. What are we doing about this? Each time I am flying into Africa and I have to fly across the Sahara desert, my heart begins to thump because the rain forest is almost gone. Yes, what used to be a vast green expanse is narrowing into a very thin belt, very close to the Atlantic Ocean. We are pushing the forest, closer and closer to the ocean. And we are pushing ourselves closer and closer to the desert. I think we need to go back to the warning in Tess Onwueme’s The Desert Encroaches. On my part, my consciousness has been tugged several times by the feeling that The Eye of the Earth is yearning for a drastic sequel. What do we have to do? Human beings have to control their greed. The human being is a very arrogant animal. Insatiable in appetite, improvident in attitude, and myopic in vision. Consider the Nigerian personality: You have one million naira, you want to have one billion. You have one billion, you want to have two billions. You do not really care whose ox is gored (literally and figuratively) in your effort to get this. You have one or two houses, you want to have ten. You have three cars, you want to have five. You have forgotten all the toxic emission in the air. You have forgotten that nature does not harbour a vacuum, whatever comes out has to find somewhere else to go. Something will have to happen about our pathological possessiveness. For everything you consume, you are preventing other people from having access to it because when you consume it, you make it disappear. That means its life is shortened and its ability to benefit the lives of others has been taken away. Fellow feeling and empathy: again, those virtues. Fellow feeling not just for fellow human beings, but also for nature itself. Nature has life, the tree has a spirit, the river has a spirit that is what makes its water flow. The forest has a spirit, that is why the leaves are green. Unfortunately, we human beings are too deaf or too self-absorbed to listen when trees talk to one another. So we mistake our deafness for their dumbness. The desert also has its own life. Every grain of its sand is as precious as gold. So, respect for nature is extremely important. Are we responding positively to the challenges here? What problem has Nigeria ever responded positively to in a timely fashion? This is a country without a plan. This is a country without a vision. We just wake up, do whatever we have to do in the day and go to bed if we are not killed by armed robbers or die from hunger. We are an ad hoc country. If Nigeria had a plan, we would not be the way we are. Who is talking about the environment anymore? Our friends, Ogunseyitan and Kole Ade-Odutola, used to go around in the 1980s campaigning for the environment. Incidentally, this was about the time my book, The Eye of the Earth, made its debut, and its ecological message was not lost on the country. In the 1990’s it was Ken Saro Wiwa, Nnimo Bassey, Oronto Douglas, focusing world attention on the criminal oil pollution in the Delta region… Of this lot, only Nnimo Bassey is still soldiering on. What are we going to hand over to the future generation? These days, people do not talk about the environment and, particularly in Nigeria, everybody is trying to grab and grab. Look at Lagos, many parts of which are in danger of being reclaimed by the sea. Unfortunately, this is where you have the most expensive estates, the abode of some of Nigeria’s criminally rich. Yes, water has memory and water never forgets. And water’s memory is vindictive, full of righteous vengeance. You take away something from water, it will retreat and stay quiet for some time but it will come one day and claim back its own. If you do not believe me, after a heavy rain, take a drive along Ahmadu Bello way or Marina and Victoria Island (by the way, which ‘Victoria’ is this portion of Nigerian land named after?) , it does not take more than ten minutes of heavy rain for the entire place to be taken over by water. Incidentally, that is where most of the states of the federation have their liaison offices and guest houses. Lagos is a city in danger. The late Prof. Onabamiro used to sound the alarm bell about 30 to 35 years. Now, nobody is listening. Who is going to listen in Nigeria? Is it our politicians who are busy helping themselves to hefty sums of public funds? Is it our Distinguished, Honorable Lawmakers who are collapsing under the venal weight of their inordinate perquisites and emoluments? These people cannot think beyond their graft and bribe, their oil subsidy scam, and the devising of a more devilish way of rigging the next election… Nigerian politicians do not think about the future. Their eyes are permanently fixed on their stomachs. As the Yoruba say, when a tree is being cut in the forest, it is the wise and conscientious that watch where it is likely to fall. The not-so-wise, not-so-concerned only watch the edge of the greedy axe. Our existential tree is under assault, but our rulers are too preoccupied with the pressures of the appetite to care where it is likely to fall. It takes visionary leadership to envisage, to anticipate, where the tree is likely to fall. Unfortunately this kind of leadership is in short supply in obodo dike Naijiria. Otherwise, the Niger Delta wouldn’t have been as polluted as it is today. Two years ago, when a massive Shell BP oil spill polluted parts of the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, you should have seen the way the American government responded. The erring oil company was brought to expeditious justice, made to carry out a thorough and extensive cleanup; compensate those whose properties and workplaces had been polluted; then cough out millions of dollars in atonement. Today, the polluted areas are back in glory: marine life is back, the pelican soars in the blue sky; and tourists can take off their clothes and swim in clean water! That is a country where there is the Law, and that law is there to be obeyed to the letter. Go to the Niger Delta in Nigeria, look at the mayhem we have there, all the oil companies are polluting the place. The Nigerian government is absent. Nigerians are orphans because those who should protect them as their parents have been corrupted and compromised beyond significance. Take a look at the phone service. Nigeria has one of the most expensive but most inefficient GSM services in the entire world. There is hardly any oversight; hardly any inspection. No one is bringing the GSM companies to order. Why? Because most of the regulating agents have been compromised and accorded the ‘Nigerian’ treatment. In a country that is so devastated by corruption, anything goes. This is really what it is, there is no order. This is the most lawless country I have ever seen. The ones making the laws, our Distinguished and Honourable Lawmakers, are the most virulent lawbreakers. Is Farouq Lawan really a lawmaker? What about the probers of the Rural Electrification Project under the honourable chairmanship of the Very Honourable Elumelu? Those well-heeled billionaire children of billionaires who scammed the subsidy project and subjected the entire country to impoverishment and extreme suffering: where are they today? Where are the looter-bankers and their Prayer-Warrior marabouts? This, indeed, is not a country. Now consider the case of the law enforcers: what law can our police enforce in their present state of destitution—torn uniform, ragged shoes, pigsty barracks, low self and professional esteem… All virtues flow from the top; all vices also flow from there. Our rulers do not show interest in the country they rule. They have no interest in us, the Nigerian people. Their interest is how to steal our money and where to hide their loot. Most of them do not want for us the people what they so fervently crave for themselves and their families. What a Country!, the intrepid journalist Kunle Ajibade once exclaimed. Nigeria is not a country, not yet. As Chinua Achebe once said on Saharareporters, when Nigeria has become a country, we will all know. We are not yet there. And a lot will have to be done to get us there. How and by who? By us. We the people of Nigeria. Something happened in January last year, when Dr Jonathan, in spite of countless remonstrations to the contrary, decided to remove the so-called oil subsidy and plunge Nigeria into unspeakable misery. The people trooped out and demonstrated their disapproval. And this lasted many days before the intervention of the jackboots. That kind of demonstration has never happened that way in the history of Nigeria, and it’s not going to be the last. Tahir Square is not an exclusive possession of the land of the Pharaohs. It is already here in Nigeria. We the people. The future of this country is in our hands. The fate of Nigeria is too precious to be left in the hands of politicians. We have been taken for a ride so many times by so many politicians (in military uniform or in mufti) because we have not developed the habit of pinning our rulers down and holding them to account. So long as we remain the kind of feckless, nonchalant, and politically apathetic citizens as we have been, we will keep on getting the kind of politicians we have always had. In the words of Akanji Nasiru, the playwright and university don, our fate is in our own hands.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 06:43:44 +0000
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