Jonathan Haynes: Pioneering Nollywood Studies

2019 LSA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR AWARD: JONATHAN HAYNES (PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND FILM STUDIES, LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY, USA)

Nomination Submitted by Paul Ugor, Associate Professor, Illinois State University, USA

It is indeed my pleasure and honor to nominate Professor Jonathan Haynes of Long Island University, New York as the LSA Distinguished Scholar for 2019. I have known Prof Haynes for eighteen years and I know of no other Africanist scholar who is deserving of this prestigious award than him. Not only has Prof Haynes been a consummate scholar of African literatures and cultures for the past twenty years, in those two decades, he has been an incredibly gracious and generous mentor, ally, advocate, and guardian to many Africanist scholars in the humanities.

Prof. Haynes’ research work in African literature and cinema marks him out as a scholar of towering international reputation whose persistence of scholarly inquiry into African modes of self-expression has secured legitimation for a field of study now known globally as Nollywood studies. To get a sense of Haynes’s scholarly achievements, it is important to remember that only a few years ago, Nollywood was a film industry scoffed at by mainstream cinema directors and elite scholars in the humanities. With his longtime friend and research associate, Prof. Onoookome Okome, Prof Haynes worked tirelessly to make sense of the artistic worth of Nigerian video films and to defend the legitimacy of the industry as a remarkable mode of African self-expression worthy of critical attention. Today, Nollywood it is at the centre of scholarly inquiries in prestigious scholarly fields such as Media Studies, Popular Culture, Film Studies, Anthropology, English and Cultural Studies, History, Linguistics, and other disciplines in the humanities.

Dave Allen on First Encounters with Religion

Dave Allen 

Eke, Orie, Afo, Nkwo: Igbo Market Days

"EKE: (taking stage vigorously and waving the ogirishi branch) I am Eke! First part of the whole. My day is sacred. I hold the Eastern pillar of the earth. Agwu, the unpredictable, multi-faceted, creative and destructive force, patron of diviners and medicine men, is my consort. The ogirishi is my sacred staff. (waves it).
          ORIE: (taking stage and waving the ikenga) I am Orie! I hold the pillar of the earth on the West. Ogwugwu, that fearsome spirit, benefactor of the just and industrious, protective yet ruthless in anger, patronises my markets. I wield the ikenga.
          AFOR: (taking stage and waving the ofo branch) I am Afor! I hold up the earth at the Northen corner. The fearsome Amadioha is my impatient instrument for justice. The ofo is my staff.
          NKWO: (taking stage and waving the aboshi) I am Nkwo! Ala, the pacific nature spirit of fertility, guardian of morality and prosperity patronises my markets. I hold up the Southern edge of the world. I wield the sacred aboshi branch.
          ALL: We are the four pillars of the earth!
          AFOR: We gave our names to your market days.
          EKE: We are the four market days.
          ORIE: We are Izu! Complete.
          NKWO: We represent your forebears!
          ALL: We are your forebears!"

Toni Duruaku, 2003, 44-45

A Matter of Identity

This Lagos: Carnivorous and Voracious

(By Toni Kan) - "Lagos is a beast with bared fangs and a voracious appetite for human flesh. Walk through its neighbourhoods, from the gated communities of Ikoyi and Victoria Island to Lekki and beyond, to the riotous warrens of streets and alleyways on the mainland, and you can tell that this is a carnivorous city. Life is not just brutish - it is short.
          In Lagos, one is sometimes struck by the scary fact that some crazed evil genius may have invented a million quick, sad ways for people to die: fall off a molue, fall prey to ritual killers, be pushed out of a moving danfo by one-chance robbers, fall into an open gutter in the rain, be electrocuted in your shop, be killed by your domestic staff, jump off the Third Mainland Bridge, get shot by armed robbers, get hit by a stray bullet from a policeman extorting motorists, get rammed by a vehicle that veers off the road into the pedestrian's walkway, die in a fire, get crushed in a collapsing building. You could count the ways and there would still be many others.
          Yet, like crazed moths disdaining the rage of the flame, we keep gravitating towards Lagos, compelled by some centrifugal force that defies reason and willpower. We come, take our chances, hoping that we will be luckier than the next man, willing ourselves to believe that while our fortune lies here, the myriad evils that traverse the streets of Lagos will never meet us with bared fangs.
          Abel and Santos were in Mushin when Lagos bared its fangs. There are no quiet streets in Mushin. It crackles with electric intensity and ripples with animosity. It is as if everyone, from shifty-eyed men to paranoid women, feels you are out to get them.

Lagos: A City Still Becoming

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - Still Becoming: At Home In Lagos With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The novelist has lived in Lagos on and off for a decade. Here, in an essay for Esquire's new Travel & Adventure issue, she reflects on life in Nigeria's biggest city

          Lagos will not court you. It is a city that is what it is. I have lived part-time in Lagos for 10 years and I complain about it each time I return from my home in the US — its allergy to order, its stultifying traffic, its power cuts. I like, though, that nothing about Lagos was crafted for the tourist, nothing done to appeal to the visitor. Tourism has its uses, but it can mangle a city, especially a developing city, and flatten it into a permanent shape of service: the city’s default becomes a simpering bow, and its people turn the greyest parts of themselves into colourful props. In this sense, Lagos has a certain authenticity because it is indifferent to ingratiating itself; it will treat your love with an embrace, and your hate with a shrug. What you see in Lagos is what Lagos truly is. 

          And what do you see? A city in a state of shifting impermanence. A place still becoming. In newer Lagos, houses sprout up on land reclaimed from the sea, and in older Lagos, buildings are knocked down so that ambitious new ones might live. A street last seen six months ago is different today, sometimes imperceptibly so — a tiny store has appeared at a corner — and sometimes baldly so, with a structure gone, or shuttered, or expanded. Shops come and go. Today, a boutique’s slender mannequin in a tightly pinned dress; tomorrow, a home accessories shop with gilt-edged furniture on display.