Modibbo Hosts The Write Squad

Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Alhaji Aliyu Modibbo Umar (Phd), in further demonstration of his love for literature and the art will on Tuesday 2nd March, 2010 play host The Write Squad (a handful of students from FCT schools), and other members of the literati in Abuja to an interactive session tagged MY BOOK & I.

It would be remembered that the Minister, during his tenure as the FCT Minister help restored the Association of Nigerian Authors’ 56 Hectares of land in Mpape (allocated to the association in 1986 by the late Maman J. Vatsa), when he wrote-off the N22 million tenement fee slammed on the land, with promises that his administration will help in the development of the property. During the same period, he renamed the Abuja Council for Arts and Culture in honour of one of Nigeria’ Iconic novelist, Late Cyprian Ekwensi and was on the verge of setting up a Library of Nigerian Books, which would have been the largest collection of Nigerian Authors in collaboration with one of Nigeria’s top Banks, when he was removed from office.

 

The Gombe state born teacher and politician who also collaborated with the Association of Nigerian Authors in the celebration of Things Fall Apart at Fifty by sponsoring a celebration in Abuja which included the invitation of a Chinua Achebe Bard Fellow and author of Waiting for an Angel, Helon Habila from the United State as the Guest Writer at the event, sees hosting this literary session as a necessary contribution back to the society that anyone should emulate. “I have always been passionate about literature and art and so I see this as a great opportunity to demonstrate my love for literature and especially to contribute to youth, education and national development” he said in his letter of acceptance to host the reading.

 

The monthly interactive session, tagged My Book & I is an initiative of The Write Squad, a school based literary club launched in Abuja in October 2009 by Arojah Concepts to encourage literary reading among school children.

 

According to Jerry Adesewo, the founder and coordinator of the group, the The Write Squad, through this critical literary reading session will mould a generation of readers, critical thinkers and writers which will in turn help us create a literate society and a resounding standard of education. “The issue of host is an attempt to use the Host/Read Ambassador, who will mostly be a reputable Nigerian or Nigerian residents from any field of endeavour to mentor the participants. In this case, the former Minister of FCT” he explained adding that The Write Squad will provide relaxed, unpressured atmosphere to read, interact, write and share works and serve as a sounding board and support network for a growing community of young writers and literary critics.

 

MY BOOK & I will help young Nigerians discover writing through critical literary reading and other literary exercises and workshop through its monthly reading session and a quarterly writing workshop and Author mentorship programme that will provide members and participants of the club opportunity to interact with creative writers on a monthly basis.

 

This maiden session will feature twenty-four students and six teachers (4 students and 1 teacher from each school) in a reading and interactive session with Barrister Ahmed Maiwada and his new book, MUSDOKI. Government Secondary Schools Kubwa, Wuse, and Tudunwada, Model Secondary School Maitama, Stella Maris College and Regina Pacis Girls Secondary Schools are the six schools to participate in this edition.

The March edition is expected to feature either Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Sade’s Wives, with Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, House Committee Chairman on Diaspora as the Host/Read Ambassador while Wale Okediran’s Tenants of the House is slated for April with Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello as the likely Host/Read Ambassador.

26a- A REVIEW by Tunde Aladese

Diana Evans’s book, ‘26a’, appears on the surface to be a story about the relationship between a pair of twins, Georgia and Bessi, the tale spreading out from the focus on them to deal with their entire family- a mixed race family with a British father, a Nigerian mother and four girls- Bel, Georgia, Bessi and Kemy.

The book explores the issue of dependent relationships, following the twins from a childhood of silent communication, as they coin their lifetime catchphrases –it’s good, eve- and share memories until they grow into womanhood and differences that can no longer be ignored. As they grow, the experiment with independence, only getting their toes wet, but it becomes more and more obvious that this freedom to fly is something only one of them wants, while the other dreads it. A slow acceptance of the need to find a life of one’s own leads to their abandonment of their dreams of a flapjack empire as they seek different paths suited to their personalities. How successful this separation ends up being, the reader can find out for his or herself.

The tension in the family is one of the first things the book introduces us to as the first consultation we find the twins having in the sacred land of their attic room is a discussion on whether their parents should get divorced or not. The marriage of their parents, in some ways, parallels the theme of relationships born of dependency. When the couple meets, they both feel like outsiders within the environment they find themselves in- their father Aubrey a fresh expatriate on assignment in Lagos, their mother Ida a runaway from Benin. Desperate for anything they can get, they cling to each other in their loneliness without really knowing each other and the result is inevitable as we find them years down the line barely tolerating each other, it comes as no surprise that their marriage grows into a situation of impatience, scorn and tension. The social and cultural differences between them grow more glaring by the day as Ida refuses to conform and Aubrey refuses to understand. Years later, Ida is still clinging to dreams of her youth as an anchor and talking to her absent mother. She has not made any successful attempts to try and integrate with the community she is living in, although towards the latter part of the book, she does begin to take some steps in that direction.

Although set for the most part in England, the book takes occasional forays into the world of Ida’s home country, Nigeria. It takes us on an interesting journey into Ida’s escape from home, revealing for the first time the youth and optimism behind the moody woman we first meet. Later in the book the entire family takes a trip home and I was unable to find the merit this visit added to the story. With the exception of giving the children a few scares, the three years the family spends in Nigeria seem to pass in a blur and they are back to England in no time. The pace and development of the story do not seem to have been greatly advanced by this interlude.

Diana Evans’s style of writing is explicit in its attention to the thoughts behind the actions of her characters and the regularity with which these thoughts are disjointed puts on them a stamp of reality. She parallels the emotional roller coaster of the family relationships with the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, as a marriage captures the imagination of a nation and is constantly chronicled on TV, avidly watched by people, including the characters in the book. Exploring the emotions and reactions of the characters, even in the minds of the children, is a strong part of the book. You feel the palpable terror that lies in something as alarmingly basic as a drunken, angry parent.

I moved through the book quickly which in some ways was a bad thing because, in gaining momentum, I kept expecting to be taken somewhere but the book ended up in a place I could see it heading towards from about halfway through the book. Sometimes the book felt more like a collection of events in the lives of a family than a tale and it seemed like I was just waiting for the inevitable to happen and enjoying the quality of the writing on the way.

Review: 26a by Diana Evans - E. Sankore

26a, Diana Evans’ lyrical, enchanting first novel, tells the coming-of-age story of Bessi and Georgia, identical twins growing up in the North London suburb of Neasden and the story of their mixed race family – the mother, an Edo girl who runs away from home at 15 to escape an arranged marriage, the father, a Derbyshire accountant who runs to Lagos to escape an alienating childhood, an elder and younger sister.

The rich, fantastical tone of the novel is drawn from the twins’ exploration of individuality and identity and their efforts to make sense of themselves in the world. Twins- sacred, mystical beings in Nigerian myth and folklore- are revered and reviled, their birth raising questions about the nature of existence, identity and personhood. Evans taps into this rich cultural vein to provide her story with its haunting, magic-evoking rhythm. Bessi and Georgia understand the look in the eyes of their pet hamster when “feebly he poked at the plastic wheel in the corner, looking for motion, hoping for escape or clarity. And the explanations never came. It was deeper than needing to know what the wheel was for, where the cage had come from and how he’d got there, or in the twins’ case, the meaning of ‘expialidocious’ or why their father liked Val Doonican. It was more of a What is Val Doonican? And therefore, What am I? The question that preceded all others.”

In their loft bedroom – the “26a” Waifer Avenue of the title- the twins engage in their unique communion of “decision” making, “deciding” if their parents should get divorced, if they should become all Nigerian, making sense of the world beyond their joined/separate beings.

However, it was when the family moves to Nigeria, away from the apples, snow and Woolworths of Neasden that the twins start to draw into their separate selves. Georgia traumatized by her father’s cockroach-wrangling gateman in Nigeria keeps the experience from her twin, instinctively protecting her from the dark. “Bessi” Georgia says “is where bad things never happen.”

Back in Neasden, the twins grow into young adults in the same loft room on Waifer Avenue, apparently within the same external world but each now treading perceptibly different paths. It is North London in the 70s and 80s, a world of Michael Jackson concerts, electric blue fishtail skirts, Roy Ayers albums and leering Jamaican boys, lusting after their yellow skin. The twins move separately through this world, Bessi walking in light, Georgia clinging to the shadows.

The novel’s third and last bit is so keenly observed, so nuanced in detail, that it is not surprising to discover that the author was born a twin. Death reaches back into the twins’ lives for Georgia. “Georgia, who was born first, forty five minutes first, refused to breathe for seven minutes. And two and a half years later, still resentful she was rushed back to St. Luke’s Hospital….”

Nigerian myth and folklore provides a view of the world - a world shifting on itself, taking and losing form - that makes the novel work. It is therefore disappointing that in an otherwise finely observed and nuanced novel, Nigeria is sometimes tentatively drawn, without the sure hand and detail that enlivens the novel’s London.

But this is a minor quibble, 26a is a beautiful, wonderful book.

LAUGHING WITH THE GODS

Title – The Gods Are Laughing

Author – Chinedum Ify Onwusilikam

Publishers – E mage Reality

Pages – 150

Reading through Ify’s book, I cannot help but to laugh along with the gods. Not because I find them funny but rather scary. The events depicted in the one hundred and fifty page book took one on a journey back to the pre-colonial Nigeria where men are nothing but pencil in the hands of God/gods. Where became nothing but pawn in the hands. The gods, with the help of their priests toy us around as they desired.

This book reminds one of Africa’s male child traditions. In those days and till today, the joy of a typical African man is not complete without a male child. Such was the faith of Ichie Amadi in the first plot of this interesting story, whom after his talk of the village marriage had four female child in quick succession. He became so dissollsioned that he isolated himself from his wife and daughter. Through the village priest, Akrika, Ichie Amadi offered sacrifice to the gods to appease them that they may give a male child who, as Africans would always put ‘will carry on the name of the family’ The gods did heard him and gave him a child, or so he thinks but only for a short while as that same child whom he called Ebubedike and shower so much love on would later be decreed by the gods to be casted into the evil forest when he was discovered to have grown his first two teeth from the upper jaw. But as fate would have it, the boy finds his way back to the village of Umunna Ala through her elder sister, Ihuoma who up till then still hold herself responsible for the evil that befell his brother Ebubedike.

The God’s are laughing is no doubt a unique piece of creative effort worth reading because of the multiple sets style used by the author. For instance, in the village of Ekwuka, where another character, in the book, Ifediba had ran to after loosing her three children and husband in a mysteriously and was accused of being responsible for those deaths by her husband, the villagers and the gods of the land represented by their mouthpiece, Akirika the Chief Priest. She it was who later found and take care of Ebubedike, who was renamed Oluebubechukwu. Then contrast this setting then thrust on us is the conflict of people’s way of life and religion to be precise. While the people of Umunna Ala believes in their gods and abide by whatever Akirika order them to do without recourse, the people of Ekwuka, as was discovered by Ifediba discovered that believes in another ‘Chi’ which is the bigger GOD. This bigger GOD eventually finds its way into Umunna Ala when the missionaries invaded the village under the disguise of wanting to educate their children.

As would be the case, Ihuoma ended up becoming one of the pioneer brides of this new God. With the approval of her father she had enrolled in the missionaries’ school and rose to become a medical doctor. Are the gods still laughing? They dare not. For through this means the bigger God perfected his plan of bringing the doomed boy back to his root. Now a medical student himself, he got drawn to her elder sister, Ihuoma on first sight and the two could not rest until the mystery of their blood link was unraveled by the ever curios Ihuoma who is still not able to exonerate herself from her brother’s misfortune.

Talking about the missionaries and their mission, some of our fore-fathers till date are not still able to forgive themselves for allowing the colonial masters to come in under whatever guise only to come turn our people against their long known god. This was evident in the attitude of the people of Umunna Ala, whose Igwe approved the entrants of the missionaries to the village but with a stern warning not out step their bound. Amadi, Ekene and many others soon see the importance of this missionary, not minding the intrusion of their religious belief they all enroll their children and themselves in the school.

In the sub plot in this book of cultural anthropology, the people of Amofia were not spared from this archaic traditions and custom. Here, Igwe Uchendu insisted that his only son and heir to the throne must choose a wife from a royal family from any of the neighboring village. Kelechi, the Prince would however not hear of this as he already have his eyes set on Obianuju one of the most beautiful and well mannered girl in that village and who is from a good family as well. While Igwe Uchendu busied himself arranging for his son’s wife as is the custom, Kelechi who is determined to leave his life his own way and not to be burdened by any royalty string, also pre-occupied himself trying to win the love of the one his heart has chosen. For the Igwe, it was a double tragedy which for any reason will not have befallen him if the missionaries and their professed civilization have been prevented. He not only loose his son to this bridge in generational gap but his daughter Adanna who like his brother is already in a secret affair with Emeka instead of waiting for their father to choose him a princely husband from the neighboring village as custom demand. In the heat of this confusion and the conflicts that follows, Kelechi not waiting for his father to disown him as he already threatened packed his belongings and relocated to Lagos,

Consciously or unconsciously one interesting subject in this book is love, I mean true love. It runs through the book from beginning to the end. First was Amadi who laboured to win the love of Adaeze and how they lived happily thereafter except for their single moment of trial when he abandoned his wife and children when his wife gave birth to their fourth daughter while he was expecting a male child. Then, we talk about the display of true love, friendship and brotherliness displayed by Amadi and Ekene. The two families is a good example of what life was in the pre-colonial era where everyone lives together peacefully and one is his brother’s keeper. Another good example is Ikem and Obioma and the ease with which they receive Ifediba into their household even without knowing her before. And as the story implies, they must have lived together for not less than twenty years. Needless to talk about Ihuoma and Ebubedike when they first met in the hospital, Kelechi and Obianuju and ofcourse, Adanna and Emeka.

Without mincing word, I wish to say here that the book is no doubt a worthy addition to the shelves of every passionate reader in this country. It is a book for all ages and class. Its language is simple and the settings are not in anyway difficult to understand. In this age when we are already loosing touch with our ways of live as a people, the gods are laughing no doubt provide some insight into our ways of life as a people, especially to the younger generations.

So, go pick up a copy of ‘The Gods are laughing’ and laugh with the gods.