Monday 30 September 2013

Nigerian writers mourn Ghanaian writer, Awonoor, others, pay tribute



By Anote Ajeluorou

Nigerian writers have joined their colleagues all over the world in mourning the untimely passing of Ghanaian writer and diplomat, Prof. Kofi Awonoor, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Kenyan over the weekend. Awonoor and other writers from across the world, including U.S.-based Nigerian writer, Teju Cole, author of Everyday for the Thief and Open City, were attending a literary festival, Storymoja Hay Festival, when Somalia terrorists, Al-Shabab struck at Westgate shopping centre, killing dozens of people and holding several hostage inside.
  They also condemned Al-Shabab terrorist group for its senseless attack on innocent civilians and the death of several other people, saying enough was enough and that it was time the international community rose to the challenge posed by such terror groups all over the world.
  Multiple award-winning writer and publisher, Dr. Ogochukwu Promise was livid with rage at the killing, and said it was time to fight the menace of ignorance that terrorism represents, noting, “We need to find ways to fight ignorance, violence... They've taken so much from us. Now, they've snatched away Prof. Awoonor!”
  Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan and President, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Prof. Remi Raji, while praising Awonoor for his poetic vision, said his death was the rise of urban barbarism that has gained prominence in recent years. He noted, “Kofi Awoonor was a great poetic prose stylist. He belonged to the illustrious generation of Ghanaian writers whose names arrived at our learning doors as young students of modern African literature. We were introduced to both his poetry and poetic prose uniquely and forcefully expressed in his classic, This Earth, My Brother, a novel which had great impact on our understanding of the postcolonial African condition.
  “He would be remembered for contributing to the deployment of the indigenous Ewe folk stylistics in his poetry; beyond its cultural aesthetics, his Songs of Sorrow now seems to be too prophetic to be forgettable.
  “The manner of Awoonor's death is unfortunate, really indicative of the new phase of urban barbarism that has taken hold of our space in recent time”.
  Former President, Association of Nigerian Authors and former member, House of Representative, Dr. wale Okediran also joined in mourning Awonoor. He said, “Like many important writers, I had met Kofi Awoonor through his works several years before I actually met him in person. And when I finally did I in 2008 in Accra, Ghana during one of the activities of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), I was captivated by his literary dexterity and humility. For more than 30 minutes, he held the audience spellbound with his elegant poetic rendition.
  “That same year, we were to meet again at the Garden City Literary Festival in Port Harcourt where he again gave good account of himself. Now that he has left us even though in a very tragic circumstance, our solace is that his work will continue to live after him. My heartfelt condolences go to his family, his associates and the literary family at large. May his gentle soul continue to rest in peace, amen!”
  President, PEN Centre, Nigeria and poet, Tade Ipadeola, in his tribute expressed shock at the attack and condemned all Islamic fundamentalists, noting,  “I'm still in shock about Awoonor. This fundamentalist madness must stop. It is time we faced Islamic fundamentalists properly. Enough is enough!”
  His fellow Ghanaian and poet, Kwame Dawes said, "I received news that Kofi Awoonor, the Ghanaian poet, diplomat and academic had been shot to death by terrorists in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. I got the news in my hotel, which is about five minutes from the mall. The news came through diplomatic channels in Ghana. 'Barring a miracle, we have lost him. Get some sleep, we have a long wake ahead.' This was the note his protégé and fellow Ghanaian poet, Kofi Anyidoho, sent to me. Kofi Awoonor's death is a sad moment here in Nairobi. We have lost one of the greatest African poets and diplomats. I've lost my uncle.”
  Ghana's president, John Dramani Mahama, said in a statement, "I am shocked to hear the death of professor Kofi Awoonor in the Nairobi mall terrorist attack. Such a sad twist of fate."
  A statement from Storymoja Hay Festival, which Awonoor had been attending when he was killed, said: “We were honoured to be graced by his appearance at Storymoja Hay Festival, and deeply humbled by his desire to impart knowledge to the young festival audience. Professor Awoonor was one of Africa's greatest voices and poets and will forever remain a beacon of knowledge and strength and hope.”
  Awoonor was born in 1935 and became known for his poetry, early collections of which were heavily inspired by the dirge singing and oral poetry of his native Ewe tribe. He published his first collection, Rediscovery and Other Poems, in 1964. Awoonor gained a masters degree in literature at University College, London in 1970. His second collection, Night of My Blood, was released in 1971 and was a series of poems that explore Awoonor’s roots and the impact of colonialism and foreign rule in Africa.
  Awoonor was a diplomat as well as a poet. He served as Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Nations between 1990 and 1994, where he was the head of the Committee Against Apartheid. In 1975 Awoonor was imprisoned without trial for several months. He was later brought to court on charges of helping ‘political criminal’, ex-Brigadier Kattah, fled the country. Awoonor denied aiding Kattah’s escape, but admitted to hosting him. His imprisonment was met with protest from International PEN, Amnesty International and writers including beat poet Allen Ginsberg. His third collection, The House By the Sea, was inspired by his incarceration and was published in 1978.

Global stakeholders raise awareness on copyright issues in Lagos




By Anote Ajeluorou

The global fight against copyright infringement and the need to pay for use of rights took centre stage last week, when stakeholders from the global copyright community gathered in Lagos to raise awareness on Collective Management of Copyright. Participants came from Europe, America and several African countries to rob minds on the imperatives of protecting intellectual property rights, which are endangered all over the world, but especially in Africa.
  The international rights’ organisations that attended the seminar included International Federation of Reproductive Rights Organisation (IFRRO), Belgium, Rights Clearance Centre, U.S., Copyrights Licensing Agency, United Kingdom, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Africa Reproductive Intellectual Property Organisations (ARIPO) and hosted by Nigeria Copyright Commission, (NCC) and Reproductive Rights Society of Nigeria (Repronig), led by its chairman and secretary, Prof. Olu Obafemi and Mr. Jare Ajayi respectively.
  At its media parley, Obafemi said the seminar presented a historic moment, as it was the first time his organisation gained the confidence of international bodies to visit Nigeria to deliberate on copyright issues and chart a better future for everyone in the copyright system. For them at Repronig, Obefemi stated that it was a privilege to host the seminar.
  “We’ve been looking at ways of minimising activities of people who want to deny copyright owners of reward for creators of copyright materials,” he said. “Creators of works need to be rewarded in a world that is growing in knowledge”.
  Also in welcoming the global bodies, Obafemi said his organization, Repronig, “is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that those who legally reproduce copyrighted works in Nigeria pay tokens for doing so. Its mandate covers works produced by academic and non-academic writers, scholars, visual arts, translators, journalists and photographers.
  “We are all engaged in intellectual work in one form or another. We are all aware of the damage, which actions such as plagiarism, piracy and unauthorized reproduction of literary or visual works does. It has ruined a lot of artists just as it serves as disservice to creativity. Repronig, in league with the Nigerian Copyright Commission, has the mandate of exposing the evils inherent in unauthorized reproduction of intellectual property and in ensuring that authors of intellectual works get compensated for their efforts”.
  Obafemi also condemned all forms of terrorism and threats to human life in all parts of the work, saying it had direct consequences on creators of intellectual works, as everyone was a potential or actual creator of intellectual property, and added, “We place a lot of premium on creators of intellectual works. It is in this respect that news of increasing threats to human life and physical attacks in different parts of the world gives us a lot of concern.
  “Every individual is an intellectual rights owner potentially or in actuality. We are calling on politicians and governments in various countries where this is happening to urgently find a lasting solution to it just as we appeal to the conscience of evil perpetrators to desist”.
  On his part, NCC boss, Mr. Afam Ezekude, who was represented by Chris Nwocha, raised the hope of stakeholders in Nigeria’s creative sector of the possibility of licensing yet another Collective Management Organisation (CMO) apart from Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) to accommodate creators of works not represented by the latter. This may appear an indirect way of the commission recanting its earlier and alleged ill-conceived stand of licensing a monopolistic CMO in a democratic setting that encourages trade liberation.
  According to Ezekude, “Apart from enhancing our oversight functions on collective management organisations, we are also encouraging right owners who are otherwise not represented in the existing collective management framework to work towards establishing new collective management organisations in separate fields of collections. I wish to mention the recent establishment of the Audiovisual Rights Society by stakeholders in the Nigerian film industry. The commission has closely monitored the process of this group and is satisfied with its broad-based composition, which reflects the interests of the majority of stakeholders in that industry”.
  He expressed hope that the seminar would “provide new insights in collective management and assist authors and managers of collective management organisations to refocus on their on mandates and come up with more pragmatic measures of addressing their operational challenges”.
  Chief Executive Officer of IFRRO, Mr. Olav Stokkmo, said his organisation was a network for protecting rights worldwide and represented in 140 countries. He stated that last year alone, it raked in $1.2 billion, which it disbursed to rights owners, noting, “We defend copyright owners and journalists. Intellectual right is human rights; it’s human rights to protect the rights of authors, composers and creators of intellectual property. The issue is to make the difference between what is legal and what is not. The world is about sharing, but it has to be done legally”.

Soldiers of Fortune… Revisiting The Dark Days Of Nigeria’s Military Rule



By Anote Ajeluorou

14 years after, Nigeria still struggles to shake off the incubus of military rule that continues to constitute a blight on the country’s socio-economic and political fortunes. Nigeria’s current effort at democratic rule has a serious handover from prolong military rule, especially with official impunity and corruption at its heart. Also, a sizable number of the current political gladiators are of military stock, individuals who played active and pivotal roles in Nigeria’s political trauma, individuals who stalled all efforts at democratic restoration while they enjoyed the spoils of office.
  But how did the military come to wield so much power over Nigeria’s large civil populace so much so that it almost annihilated it? What subterfuge did the military employ to wheedle civil populace into accepting it to its peril? Who were the invincible men in army uniform that warmed their way into the hearts of civilian population and played and manipulated them so well that a militarized ethos became entrenched into a national psyche? What love-hate relationship existed between the military the civil populace while the military ruled? Importantly, who where Muhammadu Buhari, and especially Ibrahim Babangida, and how did they gain notoriety as maximum rulers?
  These varied and complex questions are the thrust of a new book, Soldiers of Fortune: Nigerian Politics from Buhari to Babangida (Cassava Republic Press, Abuja; 2013), by unarguably Nigeria’s best known expert in military matters, Max Siollun, who writes about Nigeria’s military, as no insider would be able to write about that establishment that evokes so much mixed feelings. His first book, Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture (1966 -1967) gives such firsthand factual account about the coups and counter-coups that ousted the First Republic in 1966, which eventually resulted in a bloody 30-month old civil war. Indeed, Siollun’s factual, almost eye-witness narrative of the grim events and masterminds of every stage of the coups and the fragile political contexts that provided the impetus cannot be surpassed.
  It’s with such eye for details that he has brought to bear on this new book, as he relives and recreates again the tumultuous political years of the 1980s, with an impotent President Shehu Shagari, who could not rein in his powerful cabinet members, who went on corruption spree that brought in the military yet again to power. The military were to stay for the most prolonged and convoluted military-inspired political campaign ever there was in Nigeria.
  Gross corruption and poor management of the economy (with hyper, run away inflation in overdrive) in the Shagari government brought back the military, with Buhari as head although the architects of the coup were Babangida, Sanni Abacha and several other well-known coupists from the days of Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s ouster from power way back in 1975. In fact, when the Shagari government was toppled there was widespread jubilation among the civil populace, as indication of its lack of popularity in not being able to deliver the democratic dividends to the citizenry. This wide acceptance of the military, Siollun posits, emboldened Babangida to inflict himself on Nigerians the way he did.
  Siollun writes, “Politicians continually fell into every trap set for them by military conspirators. A factor that few Nigerians will admit today is that the military always enjoyed widespread support any time it deposed an elected government. The military were always cajoled into political power and welcomed as heroic redeemers after each coup. Babangida revealed the extent to which civilian preference for military rule over democracy encouraged the military to retake power”.
  But the Buhari/Idiagbon’s regime didn’t last either. It turned out to be too draconian, as it curtailed all civil rights enjoyed by Nigerians, especially freedom of expression. It also failed to deal decisively with the economic problems it inherited from Shagari. Once again, entrenched coupists, Babangida, Abacha, Joshua Dogonyaro and their henchmen took over power to usher in the most convoluted political transition campaign that stretched the national imagination to its limits.
  It is Babangida’s eight years in office that Siollun’s book concentrates on as marking a watershed in Nigeria’s military intervention in politics. Babangida seemingly reinvented all the known rules as means of entrenching himself indefinitely in power. He wielded the tools of political patronage and settlement to devastating effect. These tools also polarized the military and created dichotomy between political office appointees and professional, careerist soldiers, with the former looking down on the later on account of the stupendous wealth they amassed.
  Such rich officers later became Babangidas’s headache, as he could not convince them on the need to leave the political stage having tasted the wealth that came with political power. Senate President, David Mark and Adamawa State governor, Murtala Nyako (retired as Vice Admiral) were some of these powerful military office holders that partly held Babangida and Nigeria hostage to the evil genius of Babangida.
  Siollun does not spare details. His account is a re-enactment of Nigeria’s bitter history in the hands of men employed and paid by Nigerians to protect them, but who turned against them in their self-proclaimed mission of redemption from elected civilian administrations. It was always the same story; elected governments are accused of performing badly in office. That becomes a pretext for staging a coup.
  Beyond researching into his material, Siollun has in this book also brought insider witnesses to give immense credibility to the narrative. A principal actor like Domkat Bali speaks on some of the potent issues of the day. In Soldiers of Fortune, every step or missteps taken by Babangida are documented. He gives his convoluted transition train great attention and relives some of the intimate and behind-the-scenes’ maneuverings that shaped Nigeria’s watershed moment at democratic efforts that produced implacable June 12.
  Siollun’s narrative of the Gideon Okar coup is reminiscent of his first book, where coup narrative is easily his forte. He brings out the actions in their broad theatre in a gripping, thriller narrative style. He also presents in graphic style how and why the coup failed in spite of its bloody execution.
  Siollun paints a grim picture of the military after the annulment of June 12, when he writes, “The annulment polarized the army’s professional and political wings to such an extent that the army factionalised into “little more than an assorted array of conspiratorial groups”. As coup plotting had become some officers’ preferred method of settling differences of opinion, different pro and anti-Babangida forces in the military planned several overlapping coups…
  “Colonel Ababukar Umar (Commander of the armoured corps) later admitted that he and other officers (including Gen. Abacha) also planned a different coup… However, Umar told his men to stand down after Gen. Abacha and Brigadier Mark disagreed and favoured the continuation of military rule under a new regime not led by Babangida”.
  Siollun’s book indicts the likes of Senate President, Mark and Governor Nyako, who vehemently opposed restoring June 12 while they enjoyed political offices as soldiers, but who eventually became its biggest beneficiary at the inception of the current democratic dispensation. They were also the ones whose action led to the spilling of innocent blood of Nigerians on the streets while protesting their continued stay in office after June 12 expired their illegally appropriated mandate.
  This is the chief aim of Siollun’s Soldiers of Fortune: Never to forget. With Nigerians often falling into collective amnesia, Siollun’s book will continually nudge them awake and never to forget what had gone before. Mark and Nyako and others of their ilk are now not only beneficiaries, but champions of the democracy they once worked so hard to scuttle!
  Soldiers of Fortune is Nigeria’s recent history rewritten with a keen eagle-eye. Its fast narrative pace makes it a delightful and a must read.

Saro, The Musical Tells The Spectacular Story Of Lagos, As City Of Dreams



By Anote Ajeluorou

Inside Terra Kulture hall four days ago, it was a harmonious fusion of traditional African drums throbbing and the clash of horns as Saro, the Musical was unveiled to a critical audience made up of government officials, theatre buffs and business executives. From the standpoint of the production crew, Saro, the Musical’s marks a remapping of Nigeria’s cultural landscape in this Broadway-style music drama, the first to come out of the heart of Africa, Nigeria.
  First was the Opening Glee, with classic music master, Ayo Ajayi conducting his large choir in announcing the arrival of Saro in Yoruba language. Indeed, the pounding of the drum sequencing, with the horns weaving in and out reminded audience of something primal and evocative as could only be coming of out Africa.
  However, this opening rhythmic throbbing soon gave way to Saro’s unfolding story, a story that begins with a love affair between two young people soon to be separated by the twin forces of a father’s desire to give out his daughter to another young man from a wealthy home, since her choice of suitor is an upstart musician, with nothing else to recommend him, and the young musician’s impending sojourn to find greener pastures in the city. The two youngsters deftly perform this romantic plot in a classical Romeo and Juliet fashion to the delight of the audience.
  And when they lent their sensual voices to singing about the impending separation threatening their love, there is evident in air that tragic loss and longing for the divine.
  But the pace of performance is quickened as the foursome set out on a journey to the city of Lagos where they hope to realize their musical dreams. When they arrive Lagos, it’s everything they’d hoped for and more much. The frenetic pace of living, the lifestyles, the petty crime, the extortion, the free dramas that are endless in Lagos suck in these four rural folks; they are fascinated, shocked, and repelled by it. But they also enjoy it. They respond to Lagos the way they see it, and then begin their arduous road to building a career in Africa’s most turbulent but reputed city of dreams.
  Only four scenes were performed out of the 14, as a foretaste of what is to come, when the show opens in October to audiences from Nigeria and abroad.
  According to the Executive Producer, Bolanle Austen-Peters, “The most natural thing that came to my mind was to come up with a story of people that make up Lagos. In trying to do that, I said to myself, ‘who best can represent a true Lagosian?’ There are different types of people that represent Lagos. You have the Saros, the Aworis, the indigenous Moslems, the Afro-Brazilians, etc. You know, the Saros spoke to me simply because they are free slaves from Sierra Leone. More importantly, my mother-in-law is also of that stock.
  “So, it is just an easy way of representing who Lagosians are and also talking about the free spirit that these people brought with them. And being a music lover, I see music as a form of freedom. I express myself through music; I love to dance and I love to listen to music. In the writing of the story, I had to create emotions; that is why you have the love story, the success, the failure and just all that depicts the everyday scene you find in Lagos, hence the beach, the police, the motor parks… all those things that make Lagos what it is are all the facets we are going to feature in this play”