The Audacity of Tropes: Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and

31 Pages·2014·0.16 MB·English

The Audacity of Tropes:
Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and the Rest of Us.

Congregation Lecture at Igbinedion University, Okada, Nov 27 2014
By
FEMI OSOFISAN

Sometime in 1963—that is, three years after Nigeria gained her
independence from Britain—a large delegation of villagers from the then
western state hired a mammy wagon bus and headed for the country’s
capital, which was then in Lagos.. They took along with them many bags of
garri, baskets of yams and mangoes, some goats and rams, and even some
gourds of palm wine. Their mission? To see the Prime Minister of the
Federation. I don’t have to tell you the hassles they went through to get
through to the Prime Minister’s office. But finally there they were before the
great Tafawa Balewa himself. Whereupon they all went down on their faces.
“Prime Minister, it is now three years that you and your politicians brought
Independence to us and we have come to thank you. Please accept these
few tokens of our gratitude. But sir, we have been sent by our people to ask
you—when will it end? Yes, sir, this independence, when will it go away?”
Today, it is more than five decades now after that episode. The nation’s
capital is no longer in Lagos, but in a more expansive city called Abuja. Our
leader lives now in a fortress built by the military, called Aso Rock and
which is no longer as easily accessible as the Marina beach. But just suppose
that a similar delegation of our people were to succeed in getting inside Aso
Rock today, what question do you imagine they would put to Goodluck
Jonathan? All of us can guess the question, I am sure. Like those villagers,
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they would almost certainly ask—This Democracy, Mr President, when will
it end? When will it go away?

For some 30 years the soldiers ruled over us. They treated us like a
conquered people with no rights of our own, and all our resources were like
booty, which they felt free to loot with the power of their guns.
To liberate ourselves, we fought a long and bitter war. Many fell by the
wayside; many were brutally suppressed. Some were made to pay a
gruesome price; many were forced into cruel exile; and some sold their souls
and turned traitors to survive. But in the end, the soldiers were chased away
from the saddle of power.
In their place, we brought civilians to rule over us. People like us, without
gun or bayonet. Our scholars looked across our borders and found in
America the best example of government of the people by the people for
the people. Eagerly we imported the system, installed a president whose
powers would no longer be arbitrary or without control because there would
be two other houses of our representatives to monitor and control his
powers. Besides, there would be an independent judiciary to superintend
over both. Thus planted on these three tridents, we believed our freedom
was safely balanced, our progress assured.

I need not tell you now how those hopes have been broken, betrayed.
In a strange and startling manner that none of us ever foresaw, Democracy
has come to become our nemesis nowadays in the post-military era. It is the
new Enemy that we have to learn now to confront in our various ways and
with our different weapons. Our new war is against our very own people,
our erstwhile friends and comrades, those we elected as legislators, but have
suddenly turned into predators.
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And so it has dawned on us like a cruel joke, that what we thought was the
end of our struggle may in fact just be beginning of the real war for our
freedom; that the new frontline of combat is the one we thought we had left
behind.

The question I want to tackle then in this lecture is, in what manner can
literature help in this new desperation? What can we do, beyond merely
hissing or uttering effete curses and shaking our heads in self-pitying regret,
to rescue our country and our nation from our self-appointed date with
Apocalypse? What lessons can one learn from the examples of Wole
Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, and the rest of us?

But before this, ladies and gentlemen, please permit me to fulfil the
prerequisite, customary courtesies. In our profession, the unwritten law is
that no masquerade must dare dance in public without a preliminary gesture
of acknowledgement to his hosts, his elders and his audience, or else he
dances into disgrace. And besides, in this hall today, they are many who
tower above me in precedence, and whom I revere. As a true omoluwabi, I
know what I must do on such an occasion.

Let me start properly therefore by paying my homage, first and foremost, to
all of you distinguished personalities who invited me here, especially you, Mr
Vice Chancellor. Our friendship as you recall dates back several years, to
those days in the old UI where we have both been undergraduates, and
where our dreams were born.
It is mostly because of your insistence and concern that I am here today,
this shortly after my many trips. And my hope is that the lecture does not
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disappoint you or your audience, that it proves in fact that the old ardour
has not faded, that those aspirations that we nursed for our dear country
have not been quenched...
Please permit me also to present my gratitude to the Governing Council, the
Senate and the Principal Officers of the university, as well as the entire
Management Staff, the workers, and our wonderful students whose
ebullience always reminds me of the “fine-fine” days of youth. A lutta
continua!

And then of course, my deepest respects to your proprietor, visionary and
entrepreneur extraordinaire, the Esama of Benin, whose foresight and
pioneering zeal so many years ago gave conception to the singular idea that
has brought us here today. But of him and his achievements, much more
later on.

I confess that it is indeed an honour to be invited to deliver this year‘s
Convocation Lecture at your institution. Even more awed am I by the list of
speakers who have preceded me on this platform, men of great stature all,
and of undoubted sagacity, the kind that the late Mbadiwe would have
referred to as „Men of Calibre and Timber.“

After such rich contributions, one cannot but wonder candidly about what,
at such a late hour, one can possibly add to their accumulated wisdoms?
It was indeed a question that bothered me, till I recalled that story about
Tortoise and the Calabash of Wisdom. Perhaps you remember the story?
You see, Tortoise whom we Yoruba call Ijapa, decided one day, for some
reason I no longer recollect, to gather all the wisdom in the world and go
and hide them in heaven.
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So, carrying his biggest calabash, he went walking for months around the
world, gathering all the pieces of wisdom he could find, till finally he had
them all.
Now the only place to hide the gourd, the safest place where no human
hand could reach it, was obviously up the tallest palm tree.
Ijapa chose his moment carefully therefore. Very early one morning, when
no one was yet awake, no birds yet stirring, nor insects buzzing, Ijapa
tiptoed to the tree. Then, tying the calabash securely to his chest, he began
to climb. The first leg...the next foothold...
Ah, picture the scene my friends! Our dear tortoise, a large calabash up his
chest, trying to pull himself up the trunk of a tree!
Gbagam! He tumbled down! Sh! He kept still, not daring to breathe, his ears
stretched out. But he heard nothing; no one had heard or seen him.
Relieved, he breathed out again. Picking himself up gingerly, he resumed the
attempt to climb the tree. And it was gbagam, again! And again and again! It
was becoming more tricky each time stopping the calabash from hitting the
ground and smashing to pieces...
Then as he stood up again for the umpteenth time, panting and sweating, he
suddenly heard a voice from a hole nearby, where a small rat had been
watching:
"Mr Tortoise," called out the rat, "if I may offer a suggestion, sir, why don’t
you bring down the calabash from your chest, and strap it to your back
instead?"
Ijapa opened his mouth and could not close it. Such a simple idea and yet he
had not thought of it himself! So, in spite of all his efforts, there was still
some wisdom left in the world!?
He threw down the calabash in despair, abandoned the mission, and went
away.
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So the lesson is clear—the moment will never come in the world when
wisdom will be totally exhausted. The more lectures we hear, the more in
fact the lectures we will still have to hear!
The solution we need to solve some vital problem in our life may come
from some quarter we have hitherto considered inconsequential.
That was mainly why I accepted to talk here in the end. For who knows,
perhaps even after all that has been said here in previous years—perhaps my
little voice may still have something to add to aid our collective quest for
success and happiness in our lives.

The earlier lecturers spoke each from his area of competence. Thus the
eminent social scientist, and Nigeria’s former Foreign Affairs minister,
Bolaji Akinyemi, talked about governance, and specifically on ‘the social
contract between the governed and the government’. Retired Lt.-General
Dambazzau spoke appropriately about how to overcome Nigeria’s security
challenges. And last year, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, then the Governor of the
Central Bank before he became the Emir of Kano, spoke about the growth
prospects for the Nigerian economy.

And so on. Well, as you have been told, I am a writer; and my province is in
the creation and narration of stories.
Using different formats and in various genres, my business is to plunge into
the realm of the imagination to craft out stories that I hope will be
scintillating enough to capture your hearts and your minds, to give pleasure
and information, joy and at times, disturbance.
Today therefore I have come with quite a handful for you, and I have told
you two already. Well, here is another one, taken this time from a writer
called Amos Tutuola. It is from his book, titled The Palmwine Drinkard,
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published in 1952, and the very first Nigerian novel to gain international
acclaim...
Tutuola, who died in 1997, had very little education and his English, as you
will notice, tends to be rather bizarre, to put it mildly.
So his great success did not amuse the educated Nigerians at that time,
especially as they were trying to prove to our English masters that we were
sophisticated and ripe enough to earn be given our independence from
colonial rule. They thought Tutuola’s book was being deliberately and
mischievously praised by the duplicitous British, in collusion with their
agents in the British press, in order to mock our ignorance, and hence
further delay the independence struggle.
Therefore it was many years afterwards before Nigerians came to read and
appraise Tutuola objectively without that taint of inferiority complex, and to
see finally the magic he had wrought in modernizing our traditional folklore.
The story I am going to read from the book is entitled “The Beautifully
Dressed Gentleman, or The Complete Gentleman.” Some of you probably
know it already. But listen now to how Tutuola recounts the appearance of
the man at the market:
He was a beautiful 'complete' gentleman, he dressed with the finest
and most costly clothes, all the parts of his body were completed, he
was a tall man but stout. As this gentleman came to the market on
that day, if he'd been an article or animal for sale, he would be sold at
least for £2,000.
As this complete gentleman came to the market on that day, and at
the same time that this lady saw him in the market, she did nothing
more than to ask him where he was living, but this fine gentleman did
not answer her or approach her at all. But when she noticed that the
fine or complete gentleman did not listen to her, she left her articles
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and began to watch the movements of the complete gentleman about
in the market and left her articles unsold.
By and by the market closed for that day then the whole people in the
market were returning to their destinations, etc., and the complete
gentleman was returning to his own too, but as this lady was
following him about in the market all the while, she saw him when he
was returning to his destination as others did, then she was following
him (complete gentleman) to an unknown place. But as she was
following the complete gentleman along the road, he was telling her
to go back and not to follow him, but the lady did not listen to what
he was telling her, and when the complete gentleman had tired of
telling her not to follow him or to go back to her town, he left her to
follow him.
But when they had travelled about twelve miles away from that
market, they left the road on which they were travelling and started to
travel inside an endless forest in which only all the terrible creatures
were living.
As they were travelling along in this endless forest then the complete
gentleman in the market that the lady was following began to return
the hired parts of his body to the owners and he was paying them the
rentage money. When he reached where he hired the left foot, he
pulled it out, he gave it to the owner and paid him, and they kept
going; when they reached the place where he hired the right foot, he
pulled it out and gave it to the owner and paid for the rentage. Now
both feet had returned to the owners, so he began to crawl along on
the ground, by that time, that lady wanted to go back to her town or
her father, but the terrible and curious creature or the complete
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gentleman did not allow her to return or go back to her town or her
father again…
When they went furthermore, then they reached where he hired the
belly, ribs, chest, etc., then he pulled them out and gave them to the
owner and paid for the rentage. Now to this gentleman or terrible
creature remained only the head and both arms with neck, by that
time he could not crawl as before but only went jumping on as a
bullfrog and now this lady was soon faint for this fearful creature
whom she was following. But when the lady saw every part of this
complete gentleman in the market was spared or hired and he was
returning them to the owners, then she began to try all her efforts to
return to her father's town, but she was not allowed by this fearful
creature at all. When they reached where he hired both arms, he
pulled them out and gave them to the owner, he paid for them; and
they were still going on in this endless forest, they reached the place
where he hired the neck, he pulled it out and gave it to the owner and
paid for it as well…
When the lady saw that the gentleman became a Skull, she began to
faint, but eh Skull told her if she would die she would die and she
would follow him to his house. But by the time that he was saying so,
he was humming with a terrible voice and also grew very wild and
even if there was a person two miles away he would not have to listen
before hearing him, so this lady began to run away in that forest for
her life, but the Skull chased her and within a few yards, he caught
her, because he was very clever and smart as he was only Skull and he
could jump a mile to the second before coming down. He caught the
lady in this way: so when the lady was running away for her life, he
hastily ran to her front and stopped her as a log of wood.
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By and by, this lady followed the Skull to his house, and the house
was a hole which was under the ground…
Let us stop here. You can imagine the rest. A fantastic story, you will agree.
Just another gifted author exercising his imagination; and the story has
nothing at all to do with reality. But you will be wrong. Look at it again, and
you will see that far from being a mere fantasy it is in fact an accurate and
uncanny trope predicting the future that the novelist himself had not seen,
but which we Nigerians live right now, sixty years after he wrote it. Indeed,
that picture of the Complete Gentleman is an exact mirror of the present-
day Nigerian.
You and me, all of us in this assembly, what else are we individually, but the
assembled bricolage of spare parts borrowed or hired from different parts of
the world?

If you don’t believe me, I have another story to prove it.
This is from a young Nigerian writer called Elnathan John, who is just at the
beginning of his career, but who I believe will soon become famous as a
contemporary Jonathan Swift.
Just a few months ago on the occasion of the Nigerian Independence
anniversary, John, who writes a column for the Sunday Trust, declared
himself a Presidential candidate for the coming elections.
On Sunday, 05 October 2014, he wrote the following story titled, “Gratitude
in dependence”. Listen to the following excerpts:
It is another celebration of Nigeria’s independence. Speeches have
been made about how great we are as an independent country.
However, as president come 2015, I know when to be thankful to all
the people who make sure that Nigeria is still standing; the people
without whom we would be in real trouble. I am disappointed that
President Jonathan didn’t think to do this, but here goes:
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