Faux Historians and Nigeria's Need for Humanities

Adelakun

(By Abimbola Adelakun) - Fani-Kayode And His History Teachers 

If by now, faux historian and professional agitator, Femi Fani-Kayode, has not responded to the rejoinders of Professors Banji Akintoye and Farooq Kperogi on his Yoruba identity flippancy, we can conclude he has nothing further to say and move on to drawing some lessons from the brouhaha of “Yoruba” and its etymology. In some ways, Fani-Kayode’s attention-seeking ways represent the flawed ethics of the present milieu. We live in a post-truth world; the traditional structures that regulated popular inanities have broken down and given way to the reign of alternative facts.

There are two lessons that I took away from the Yoruba/Yariba episode. First is the role that the media played in helping Fani-Kayode brew his pot of mischief. There was no other apparent motive about his claim that the Fulani bequeathed the Yoruba their name other than troublemaking, and it fits into a larger pattern of his anti-Fulani sentiments. He did not cite any source for his discovery, and the way the more astute scholars dislodged his argument shows that there was no rigour invested in his ideas before he hit the streets. He just wanted to arouse the ethnic chauvinists permanently resident on social media as he is wont to do. Judging by how tribal irredentists crawled out of the woodwork to feast on his historical dabble, he pretty much succeeded.

Of Grandmothers, Culinary Magic, and Nostalgia

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) – Grandmother hated maggi, no, “mmagi”, her term for all English condiments, which she said were invented to rig the cooking process. Yet she had her own cooking secrets: ogbamkpo and nwaurubiri, two types of dry fish without which she made no soup. Only the bones were laid to waste. The heads and skin, she would pound; and send the grain into the boiling pot to literally fish out incredible taste. 

The main fish, now rid of all bottlenecks, then plunges into the soup, filling it with true blessing. No meat or fresh fish approximates to the supremacy of nwaurubiri, Grandmother’s wise culinary vote. 

I once searched in Lagos for the pair—nwaurubiri and ogbamkpo—in my bid to restore the dignity of oha. Only twice did I find them. Ruined by urban touch, the Lagos ogbamkpo tastes like the bark of a tree. I eat the authentic one only when I visit the village. 

          Two more items sometimes helped work Grandmother’s culinary magic: otukwuru and onyenenkete, in my view the tastiest mushrooms on earth. I do not know the English names of these species, nor do I particularly care. 

Of Women, Change, and the Industrial Revolution

"The domestic function of the preindustrial woman had not needed ideological justification; it was implicit in the biological and political economy of her world. Someone had to keep the spinning wheel turning and the open-hearth fire constantly tended, and the nursing mother who could not leave her infant was the obvious candidate. In the domesticity of the preindustrial woman there was no sharp disjunction between ideology and practice. But the Revolution was a watershed. It created a public ideology of individual responsibility and virtue just before the industrial machinery began to free middle-class women from some of their unremitting toil and to propel lower-class women more fully into the public economy. The terms of domesticity were changed, and the pundits would not bring back the past."

Linda Kerber, 1980, 231

Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

Adichie: Race, Identity, and Feminism

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Identity, Feminism and Honest Conversations

The Economist

Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

(By Will McBain) – Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

Increased foreign investment in the wake of the purchase of a Nollywood studio by Canal+ could be a game-changer for Nigeria’s already thriving film industry. Will McBain looks at the prospects for a sector targeted to make $1bn in export revenue by 2020.

Nollywood has begun the biggest financial makeover in its history with this summer’s acquisition of Lagos-based production house ROK film studios by French media giant Canal+.

The studio was bought from Africa’s largest subscription-based video-on-demand company IROKOtv, whose founder Jason Njoku called the sale the “largest media deal in West African history”. Actress and producer Mary Njoku – Jason Njoku’s wife – founded ROK studios and will stay on as director general under the Canal+ acquisition.

Chris Abani: Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani - TedTalk Global 2007

Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani: Of Chukwu, Priests, and Slavers

"Have you heard of the oracle of the Igbo?
The one called Chukwu? Just one word: God.
The oracle of God.
The voice of God.
The final arbitration.
Kpom kwem.
Deep in a grove of trees, the sacred lake,
and rising in the gloom and heat,
mist, the very breath of divinity.
The unbearable trepidation,
the worship, the sheer terror and earnestness
trembling the supplicants. And the priests
sitting on rocks and in trees on haunches,
silent like vultures or Rilke's unspeakable angels.
And then a pilgrim wades cautiously into the lake.
On the shore, the line of unannointed
shivers in a shared awe.
And if the petitioner is beautiful or strong,
the priests hold her under, then shackled,
for slavers. In the lake, red dye bubbles up
as God smacks his lips.
And that endless line of believers near faint
with the fearsome beauty of the thought:
Please consume me, God.
Consume me and find me worthy.
But don't let me die."

Chris Abani, 2010, 15

"Sacrement, 1," Sanctificum

In Need of Artistes and Intellectuals like Sofola

(By Sylvester Asoya) - “The Artist and the Tragedy of a Nation”

          On March 28, 1991, the late Professor ‘Zulu Sofola, Africa’s first female professor of Theatre Arts delivered one of the most reflective and scholarly inaugural lectures in Nigeria. Sofola, prolific playwright, astute administrator and scholar par excellence was at the time, head of the Department of Performing Arts, University of Ilorin. For those in the audience, the playwright’s superlative performance was not only outstanding, it was also record-breaking. 

          An inaugural lecture is an event of great importance in the life of every academic. It provides a rare opportunity for the newly elevated professor to inform his or her colleagues, the university community and the public of his or her research outcomes and plans for the future. Sofola, who had returned from her sabbatical leave in the United States two years earlier, used the occasion to speak, and eloquently too, on the artiste and a nation on the edge. 

          In 1991, Nigeria’s tragedy was not close to home. For instance, the chaos in public universities today was only incubating and hope was not a scarce commodity. Apart from the fact that there were a good number of Nigerians with discretionary incomes in the middle class, prices of goods and services had not hit the roof, despite Ibrahim Babangida’s voodoo economics. Today, ignorance, hopelessness, ineptitude and disillusionment reign supreme and nothing is being done to reduce poverty, promote inclusive growth or engender hope.

Reinventing Enterprise in Igbo Land

NKATA UMU IBE | MARCH 2019

Centre for Memories: Ncheta Ndigbo
Topic: 'Mkpuru Onye Kuru'
Reinventing Enterprise n' Ala Igbo. Speaker: Ike Chioke (Group Managing Director, AFRINVEST)

In Memoriam: John Samuel Mbiti

John Samuel Mbiti (1931 - 2019)
-Theologian, Philosopher, Priest,
-Professor of African Religions
-Author of (among many others) African Religions and Philosophy (1969)

Nigerian-Americans Celebrate Dual Heritage with Family Photos

(By Tolu Oye as told to Claudia Owusu and Kanyinsola Oye) - The Nigerian-American Siblings Using Traditional Family Portraiture to Celebrate Their Heritage

Photographs have always been a way for my family to hold on to our past—no matter how far we moved, or how complicated the idea of “home” became for us. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I keenly remember my mother dragging me and my siblings every year to the JCPenney Portraits studio for our family picture. What made the ritual so uncomfortable was that we were not dressed like other Midwestern families at the mall. My mother had us all in matching golden-brown-and-beige traditional ankara, an African wax-print fabric with vibrant patterns.

Nollywood Goes to Oscars with Lionheart