Friday 25 November 2011

‘Encourage young minds towards intellectual matters’


By Anote Ajeluorou

From all indications, Nigeria seems bound for a downward spiral. It was what motivated President Goodluck Jonathan to initiate the Transformation Agenda to bring the country back from the brink. Transformation to a new dawn also echoed last week in Lagos at the launch of a book, Rose and Thorns

Specifically, young Nigerians have been urged to take intellectual matters seriously in order to enrich their minds so they could be the vanguard of transformation that Nigerian society desperately needs to haul it from the abyss of under-development.
Chairman of the event, public elations expert and literary enthusiast, Chuddy Oduenyi, told the gathering of men, women and school children at Terra Kulture, Lagos, venue of the launch last Saturday, that poetry like Obiorah Momife’s Roses and Thorns, is an elevated art that enriches, ennobles and transforms the mind for the onerous task of building a better society. He praised Momife for taking the trouble to write poetry, saying, “poetry is the elevated form of literary engagement; that is why the quality of people here is remarkable, people who appreciate poetry.
  “This is why we should encourage the young ones to take to intellectual things. What enriches the mind like poetry is what people should encourage and appreciate. What Obiorah has done is remarkable. Your mind has to be developed to write, to think very deeply; it’s for people with uncommon talent. He has joined the league of immortals like Okigbo, who happens to be the poet’s patron saint. Okigbo remains the most remarkable poet to come out of Africa. Very few things endure in this world like the written expression.
  “What we need is a transformation to a new dawn, the resuscitation of values, and bringing out the things inside of us to contribute to the pool of ideas”.
  Although Oduenyi frowned at the low turn out, he, however, commended the few people who attended the book launch, saying it showed their commitment to the development of the literary art. He also said it would encourage young ones, especially the students in attendance, to appreciate poetry, and added that it was only cultured, deep and elevated minds that appreciated poetry. Oduenyi also charged the audience to support poetry for its future to be bright in Nigeria.
  To enliven the occasion, poems from the collection, Roses and Thorns, were read and performed to entertain the audience. Ese read ‘Bed of Roses’, Adesuwa read ‘Alabaster oil’, Funmi, with drum accompaniment, performed ‘Time’ to a roaring applause, while Gift also performed ‘Peacock dance’. There was also a cultural presentation, mostly drum performance, from the standing troupe of Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture to add spice to the afternoon proceedings.
  Intercontinental Distilleries, makers of Teezers and Finlays Tonic wine, supported the launch with their products.
  To review the collection was Alkazeem Abdulkadir, who flew in from Abuja, with the title, ‘Obiorah Momife: A Symbolic Interpretation of the Paradox of Life’. Rose and Thorns is a collection, which captures some memorable and excruciating moments in Momife’s life. An artist and writer, Momife’s Rose and Thorns boldly confronts some of the paradoxes that characterise life and how best to deal with them.
  According to Momife, Roses and Thorns was “borne out of several pains encountered in my life, the loss of a Job with Nigeria Airways, the frustrations that came afterwards both physically, spiritually, financially and otherwise. Then miraculously, a certain rose sprouted out of what was a desiccated, dead rose flower that had only "thorns" at the time.
  “The message, simply, is that in the beginning you might have love, then comes in pain and sorrow, but with patience and determination and, of course, faith in God, the sun will shine again and will usher in tomorrow with fresh hope for living...”
  Momife said exhilaration was what he simply felt, and then gratitude to Isioma and his children - Somtochukwu, Chimesomma, Ofiligonachukwu, Kamsisochukwu - and his bosom friends, and also to God Almighty, who made the roses to sprout again in his life.

LNG flags off Meet the Author initiative in Bonny Island to promote writers, books


By Anote Ajeluorou

Efforts by small groups and individuals to promote writers and books in the country received a boost with Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) launching its new initiative, Meet the Author campaign recently

The timing could not have been more appropriate, especially in a year that children’s literature took centre-stage in its literary prize. Recently, Mai Nasara, for whom children are special breeds, had just won the huge prize for his efforts in his winning work, The Missing Clock, in the Nigeria LNG Limited-sponsored The Nigerian Prize for Literature.
  Now, beyond awarding the most coveted literary prize in the country to deserving authors, LNG has joined the quest to encourage Nigerians, especially young ones to rediscover the joys of reading books so as to open a wider vista for themselves. The company flagged off its maiden edition of Meet the Author, a reading initiative, last week in Bonny Island, Rivers State, its operational base, where it took children’s author, Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, to motivate the young ones.
  With LNG Primary School located within the well- planned LNG Residential Area in Bonny Island as venue of the maiden edition of Meet the Author event, Ezeigbo spoke to the pupils about reading, and why important it is to read. But these particular children were not new to reading. They had been given copies of Ezeigbo’s children’s book, My Cousin Sammy in advance as text of focus.
  And beyond that, they had read other texts far higher than their age. Their excitement bubbled over as they interacted with the professor of English, multiple award-winning writer and gender expert. They showed their depth of understanding of My Cousin Sammy as they responded to questions and freely gave their views of characters and issues in the book.
  By taking the programme first to its operational base in Bonny Island, LNG’s charity could be said to have begun at home. It was the place for the test-running of a project proposed to travel to most parts of the country in a determined campaign to interest children in rediscovering the joys of reading so as to equip themselves for the future.
  On Friday, Day 2 of the programme in Bonny, the situation wasn’t much different although the scope expanded farther. Selected students from schools within Bonny Island were conveyed in buses to the Ibanise Hall to listen to Ezeigbo, selected journalists and an artist speak to students about the need for them to take reading seriously, stressing that the exercise offered them the best window to view the world outside their limited environment.
  With the theme Readers Are Leaders as guide, Ezeigbo took the young ones through her own life experiences and how she discovered the joys found in books and has since become hooked to books. She wrote My Cousin Sammy, she said, because of a personal experience she had. On a broader level, Ezeigbo told them how the dearth of locally written books motivated her to start writing for her own children while they were growing up, to help them to be grounded in their local culture.
  She said, “It’s good to read foreign books, but you also need to read books from Nigeria about our culture, that way, you learn about other people’s culture by reading about them in books. I wanted to write about our culture, especially the speaking of mother tongue. Those of you who don’t speak your mother tongues start now. Your mother tongue helps you to know your culture, because language is the carrier of culture”.
  Also at Ibanise Hall, Ezeigbo tasked students everywhere to form Neighbourhood Book Clubs as anti-dote to the absence of libraries in schools all over the country. That way, they could exchange the books they have read with their colleagues. She said this in acknowledgement of difficulties Nigerian students currently face in not being able to source needed school materials readily as it was in days gone by.
  The selected students were from Government Girls Secondary School, Finima (Junior and Senior); Bonny National Grammar School (Junior and Senior); Community Secondary School (Junior and Senior).
  In stating the objectives of the project, LNG’s Head, Corporate Affairs, Ifeanyi Mbanefo, may have hinted at the kind of corporate social responsibility (CSR) corporate entities ought to take seriously, which is investing in the future of nation’s young ones. This is especially crucial these days when the nation’s educational fortunes have since nose-dived. Also, LNG’s initiative may seem a masterstroke where role models for children seem limited, especially in a society in the grip of multiple social malaise.
  Although Mbanefo had projected 2000 students in all, a little over 500 turned up. Indeed, there would have been no need for the limited number as the Ibanise Hall was less than half full. Also, organisers would do well to throw subsequent Meet the Author programme open to as many pupils and students that are willing to attend to benefit from the initiative. A particular school should also have been chosen in an area to host the event rather than a non-school environment for greater pupil/student participation.
  Nevertheless, the students showed great aptitude towards the book, My Cousin Sammy, in their intelligent questions and responses. They showed uncommon flair for writing and books with their engaging questions about writing, especially the challenges a writer like Ezeigbo faces, her motivations for writing, the place of talent and hard work in writing, what influenced the writer the most in writing My Cousin Sammy and so on.
  Also on hand to drive home the intentions of the author of My Cousin Sammy was foremost artist and illustrator, Sam Ovraiti. After each of Ezeigbo’s talk with the pupils or students, Ovraiti would coordinate the illustration part, where they represented scenes from the novel, as they understood them. Also, Federal Girls Secondary School, Finima, acted out part of the novel even to Ezeigbo’s delight. ‘Readers Are Leaders’ theme also became a debate topic that got animated contributions.

INDEED, literature and its creators or authors may seem the only ray of hope children are left with to point them in the right direction as they grope their way into adulthood. “We invite them (authors, journalists) just to prove we can find within our country enough unblemished persons the children will look up to,” Mbanefo said. “These are also people we can readily recommend to children as worthy role models… The programme is dedicated to bringing the joys of reading, and indeed of writing, to students whatever their circumstances or background may be”.
  Mbanefo also highlighted the peculiar environment in which Nigerian children operate, an environment of lack that readily inhibit their innate gifts from blooming to their full potentials.
  He stated, “Our main reason for this event is that we cannot run away from the fact that children in Nigeria are disadvantaged…. So we decided to bring these writers to dialogue with students, and in doing so, realise the dreams of many of our young ones… We believe that the best way to get children excited about books is to provide them with opportunities to meet authors and hear them talk about their work, their lives and their views of the world”.
  On Ezeigbo’s virtues as a writer and role model, Mbanefo said, “She is a writer who consistently continues writes beautify stuff. Yours is the true writer’s gift, which enables you to look intently at the world around you, and to see similes and metaphors emerge. You have written beautiful books. And, besides being a good role model, you have a voice everyone respects. So, we want to enlist your help to get our children interested in books”.
  Also, Mbanefo did not fail to highlight the benefits of such a venture to any corporate body (apart from Nigeria LNG Limited) so willing to invest in redirecting the minds of the young ones to the path of education when he stated, “From the standpoint of marketing, there may be a business case for it: Taking literature to children will be line-extension; it makes good economy of scale, gives us lower costs for our emotional brand – The Nigeria Prize for Literature; brings increased goodwill and enhances Nigeria LNG Limited’s corporate image”.
  More importantly, the LNG Meet the Author initiative, as envisioned by Mbanefo and his team, would boost chosen author and the publisher’s economic base as thousands of copies of a selected book would be bought in advance and distributed to pupils and students before the event to acquaint them with its content.

Echoes of Arab Spring Revolution at Lagos book reading


By Anote Ajeluorou


It all started in Tunisia early in the year when youths of that North African country rose against dictatorship, tyranny and bad governance. President Ben Alli was forced to flee into exile. That singular uprising has so far seen the exit of two heads of governments and the tragic end of one, and still rising

REFERRED to as the Arab Spring Revolution, its echo reverberated in Lagos last weekend at the Pulpfaction Book Club’s Book’n’Gauge monthly reading event at Debonair Bookshop at Sabo, Yaba, Lagos. Journalist and writer, Sam Omatseye and Chuma Nwokolo were guest authors at the event and read excerpts from their works. The occasion was the club’s contribution to the on-going effort at energising book reading believed to be on the decline in the country.
  Although Omatseye’s The Crocodile Girls and Nwokolo’s Diary of a Dead African and Memory of Stone are not cast in revolutionary mold, the two spoken word srtistes that performed, Efe Paul Azino and Jeffery Plumbline, expoused strong revolutionary, thoughtful lines that set the audience thinking.
  Plumbline’s ‘Dead President’ traced Nigeria’s tragic history starting from the death of the first Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, with the first coup by the five Majors that eventually went awry to culminate in a bloody 30-month civil war.
  Plumbline showed the sequence of national failures that had since trailed that death and how the nation’s history has become checkered. Azino, on the other hand, expoused overt revolutionary lines in his new poem, ‘Justice Kidnapped’, which he tested on the audience. He stunned the packed Debonair Bookstore with the freshness and originality of his spoken words, ‘Justice has been kidnapped in my country…’. The corruption, the bad governance, the poor quality followership by the citizenry and all the other anomalies that have worked against Nigeria’s advancement found expression in Azino’s radical poetry.
  He also read his signature poem, This is not a political poem, which has earned him fame as a poet of choice.
  Indeed, the performances capped an already glorious afternoon of literary engagement that was fast becoming the hallmark of a rejuvenated quest for a rediscovery of the book as a national pastime. Following these poets’ performance, the question became inevitable: Could the Arab Spring-type Revolution be possible in Nigeria, where bad governance and corruption are unabating?
  For Azino, what a country like Nigeria needed was to talk itself out of a situation that could bring about such a revolution. However, Azino was skeptical about whether Nigerian youths had what it takes to usher in such violent change of government by standing up and demanding good governance and justice from their leaders. To his own question, he asserted, “I think they (youths) can demand good governance and justice from their government.
  “There’s always a tipping point beyond which their endurance can be tested and tried. I hope we don’t get there. We can get to the tipping point like the Arab Spring thing. But personally, I hope we don’t get there”.
  Azino further submitted that a revolution in a nation like Nigeria would be constrained by tribal sentiments. Rather, he argued that there is a need to engage the system constructively while also seeking personal social responsibility and accountability as possible models to follow.
  Nwokolo, however, argued that the Arab Spring Revolution has been a tragedy that ought not to have happened in the first place, saying, “Revolutions don’t discriminate in whom they claim as victims, including innocent people with the remotest ties to those in power. I don’t want that kind of thing in Nigeria. What happened in Tunisia, where it started was a tragedy.
  “Ben Alli was a revolutionary when he came to power in Tunisia and later became a tyrant; Mubarak was a revolutionary when he also came to power in Egypt. Muammar Gaddafi was a revolutionary in Libya before he became what he later became. Those who are intelligent should first think through things. What exactly do we want as a people? Government won’t get things right; governments never get things right. We need to think about what system to replace the current system with before whatever we do”.
  Nwokolo further advocated that the citizenry should show courage to demand what it is they want from their government, saying the Nigeria’s citizenry showed too much cowardice in the face of the bad governance that threatened their collective existence. He painted the incidence, where a handful of armed robbers usually held motorists to ransom for hours without respite, and argued that such cowardice is what those in power capitalised on to mortgage the future of the entire nation.
  He submitted, “What we need to do is change the way we do things in a transformational way. I have advocated a law that created capital punishment for corporate bodies to be liquidated; that will help solve our problem”.
  Omatseye, on the other hand, stated that the way Nigeria is constituted would make the Arab Spring-type Revolution impossible to organise. He argued that Nigerians were an opportunistic, hedonistic bunch of people that groveled from one extreme in shameless cross carpeting not possible in an environment seriously yearning for a change. He argued that what Nigerians needed was the Egyptian-type revolution that would force the leaders to see the need to change things quickly in favour of the masses.
  For Pumbline, a unionist, aggression, in a revolutionary form, is something to be avoided, as it does not have foresight. Instead, he argued that just as revolution comes in different guises, so also should it be pursued in its different molds, especially in its ideological type. He stated that Nigeria should find a model that best suited her and pursue it to create a better environment for the people.
 
HOWEVER, before the revolutionary talk, issues about the vexatious lack of reading in society took a sizeable part of the discourse. Omatseye believed that the Nigerian society is currently philistinic and opposed to reading and everything book or intellectual. He said he had a father, who had books and was always reading, and he’d talk about the books he’d read to him, and this made him want to read while he was young. He wondered how many fathers did that to their children these days to stimulate them to reading.
  Also, Omatseye ecalled that there were bookstores all over the place while he was growing up and that he used to walk a long distance to get the books he wanted to read. He confessed to having read Thomas Jefferson before he really knew who he really was. He lamented the absence of infrastructure in society, saying such lack create problems for the effective distribution of available books to those in need of them.
  To lighten up the event, musicians like Rubby performed Bob Marley’s Redemption Song and her own single, Okay.
  A book auction was also held to help raise money for cancer awareness. Two books, Teju Cole’s latest novel, Open City and Kenyan’s Bnynvanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir were auctioned in the unusual 1k for Cancer campaign and to support the Pulpfaction Book Club reading events, where each bidder paid the amount he or she bided for on the spot before another person bided.
  

Sunday 13 November 2011

Rain of tributes for veteran broadcaster, Ndaguba


By Anote Ajeluorou

Last Tuesday at the open ground of Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), Ikoyi, fellow broadcasters, both old and young, gathered to celebrate the passing on of one of their own. Also, the gathering drew friends and family from far and near to say a word or two about Onwa Ikenna Ndaguba, a man for whom accolades poured like palmwine from a fertile raffia palm tree.
  Some of the finest broadcasters from Radio Nigeria were in attendance. Those from its TV counterpart, NTA, also made their presence felt. For all that gathered, the opinion was the same: Ndaguba’s life was one of celebration; not even death could take that away from the man commonly referred as The Master of Ceremony!
  To underscore his prized place in broadcast history in Nigeria, similar events are being held in parts of the country in celebration of a man appropriately described as, The Man… The Voice… The Commitment! Lagos Television station, LTV8, was on hand to relay live the night of tributes dubbed, An Evening of Reminiscences’. Broadcasters Bisi Olatilo and Bimbo Oloyede anchored the evening event.
  To underscore the celebration, moving musical interludes from the Lagos City Chorale directed by Emeka Nwokedi and performance from inimitable Onyeka Onwenu (with Ayo Bankole on the piano) also formed part of the reminiscences for Ndaguba.
  And although the Lagos and South-West axis of the national burial committee, organisers of the event, failed to hoist a banner outside the sprawling FRCN’s premises to advertise the event, the number of eminent persons and fellow broadcasters that turned up was ample testimony to how much Ndaguba touched lives while he lived.
  Former Director-General of NTA, Mr. Vincent Maduka, praised Ndaguba, whose voice was already resonating in Lagos before he arrived the scene in 1972 from Ibadan. Maduka also praised the distinctive quality of selection and training of Radio Nigeria staff that made them to stand out.
  He said, “Ikenna remained till the last a legend. The public sector tends to fall into decay but Ikenna remained and continued to make waves. I hope he made some money from broadcasting. With his talent and skills, he would have made a lot of money in the private sector. Although money is not everything - what he left behind remains. He was the golden voice of the business”.
  Chief Femi Adeniyi-Williams simply described Ndaguba as an icon, a man with whom he moved around a lot while they worked together. When he left for advertising, Adeniyi-Williams said he tried to persuade Ndaguba to join up but he refused, adding, “He was a wonderful man; I simpathise with the family”.
  Another advertising guru, Biodun Shobanjo, said he knew Ndaguba a little over 40 years, and described him as one of the best in the field. He stated, “At the old NBC, you have to be the best to read news, and he was one of the best. I called him ‘my man’. He would be in the studio doing rehearsals 10 minutes before time. He read properly, especially names.
  “He was grade A anchor. He’s done his bit and is gone. The concern now is today’s broadcasters, how they can be like Ikenna, to try and make the best of broadcasting”.
  Another of his contemporary and language teacher at the training school, Bode Alalade, confessed to feeling numbed on getting news of Ndaguba’s death. “He was my good friend,” he stated. “He was the finest broadcaster I ever met in my life. He called me ‘the source’ while I called him ‘follow-follow’. I’ll miss him even in death. Ikenna is not dead; he’s living with us because his legacies will live with us.”
  Veteran broadcaster, Kevin Ejiofor also lent his voice in reminiscing about the late Ndaguba. “A high master of the art of the spoken word; a gentleman in everything he did, how he walked, played tennis,” Ejiofor eulogised. “How can we pay tribute to him? Ikenna brought care and diligence to how he did all things and attracted people of all ages, and was always the centre where he was”.
  Like Shobanjo, Ejiofor tasked broadcasters on making their profession better by forming a body to regulate and monitor standards rather than allowing outsiders without professional know-how to rate practitioners.

PERHAPS, one eminent person whose emotions ran very high during the evening of tribute for Ndaguba was former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku. He knew him for 62 years starting from secondary school when he was 16 and Ndaguba 14. “At 14 Ikenna entered my school, and we were in the same School House,” he told the large gathering. “I immediately recognised the sonority of his voice and his goodness of manners. He was predictable as he did things expected of him. Then he was recruited into broadcasting because of his voice and his eloquence.
  “It always gave me pride when his colleagues worldwide spoke fondly about him from the BBC staff to his colleagues in Malasia. It’s not surprising he’s called ‘The Master of Ceremony’! Diligence is an apt word to describe him; he’d research his materials; he was such a thorough man. When he spoke or read the news, it was more than reading the text before him. You get the impression he was speaking to the subject he’s talking about.
  “For upcoming broadcasters, they should strive hard and emulate the performance of Ikenna. It’s not easy to speak adequately about Ikenna’s record. Those who know me know that I’m not flippant in my choice of words. But Ikenna was one of the greatest broadcasters all over the world. He had a voice you readily recognised. He has joined the few whose legacies we will remember.”
  Another of his contemporaries, Dele Adetiba, described Ndaguba as an accomplished person, who made a success of whatever he laid his hands on; a gentleman who lived without a single scandal to his name. More importantly, he said Ndaguba’s was the passing of an era. And he went on to name the long list of those who had made impact at Radio Nigeria and had since passed on including notable names like Earnest Okonkwo and Yinka Craig.
  Adetiba said he was one of the very few of his era still alive and expressed his fears at the rate at which his colleagues have all succumbed to death.
  For Kelvin Amaechi, Ndaguba was “an embodiment of sartorial elegance” and that his “humility was overwhelming; he was a superstar to me. He inspired you no matter who you were”.
  Former D-G, NTA, Dr. Victoria Ezeokoli, the only lady called to pay tributes to Ndaguba, roused the audience to finer elements of the late broadcaster and the locations of the two foremost broadcast houses. She made no pretensions about what the event was: a moment of mourning for the late broadcaster. She said time had come for people to stop celebrating three score and a half, as it made everyone forget to live longer than they should, otherwise Ndaguba wouldn’t have died yet.
  Ezeokoli affirmed her determination to live much longer. She remarked about Ndaguba’s days at NTA and her first memory of the man during the Operation Feed the Nation launch in the late 1970s, and then the liberation fund-raising launch for South West People Organisation (SWAPO) now Namibia, how Ndaguba performed excellently to gladden her as a Nigerian.
  The broadcaster, whom Maduka dragged from academic to the newsroom, tasked policymakers to consider allowing a free-flow of persons from radio to TV to enhance the two mediums. She quipped at how the two foremost government-own Radio Nigeria and NTA are located in dangerous neibourhoods – one near a cemetery and the other near Bar Beach! She suggested that the two broadcast stations ought to have been in the same location and away from such zones.
  Also to lend a voice to evening proceeding was songstress, Onwenu, who, in spite of the death of her mother, deemed it fit to grace Ndaguba’s evening of reminiscences and also roused the audience in her performance.
  In the few encounters she had with the man, Onwenu attested to Ndaguba’s thoroughness and professionalism and how he showed so much love for young ones. Proverbially, Onwenu said, ‘the day you’re mourning someone else is the day you’re also mourning yourself’ to signify that the evening of tributes was for the late Ndaguba as much as it was for all those in attendance.
  She said, “He (Ndaguba) hasn’t left us; he is with us. I just lost my own mother; I shouldn’t have been here but I felt I have to…”
  Ndaguba’s widow, Carroll, was also in attendance during the event. Her son also performed on the piano.
  Some of those in attendance were Ruth Benemasia-Opia, Sienne Allwell-Brown, Taiwo Obileye, John Momoh, Lola Alakija, Sonny Irabor, Cordelia Okpei, Funke Treasure-Durodola, Jones Usen, Segun Thomas and Femi Akintunde-Johnson.

‘Africa Has Lots Of Expertise That Europe Can Tap From’


By Anote Ajeluorou

Until very recently, Europe’s collaboration with the continent was a one-way affair with Africa depending solely on the West for all its needs. But things have long begun to change, so said the Press and Cultural Attache of the German Embassy in Lagos in a recent interactive session with the media. For Dr. Burkard Weth, the view that changed Africa is always seeking assistance from Europe without offering anything to Europe in return has changed, even in the West.
  Weth stated at the German Cultural Centre, Goethe Institut at City Hall, Lagos Island, that there is a lot of expertise Europe could tap from Africa and be the better for it. “Collaboration with Africa used to be one-way,” he said. “But now, it’s a two-way traffic of cultural exchange because we need their expertise, knowledge, ideas and scholarship”.
  He further explained that Germany’s cultural policy is a steady component of the country’s foreign policy, which aims to represent its strategic interests abroad. Such interests, Weth explained, include “Providing a contemporary picture of German culture and at the same time to create sympathies for Germany and stimulate curiosity for its culture.
  “Today, German policy must brace up to face numerous challenges like the progressive globalisation of the economy, science and culture, the deepening and strengthening of the European Union and the menace to security by terrorism.
  “So, first of all, foreign cultural policy should contribute to the creation of a peaceful world order. It should help to mask the problems, which arise from economic and cultural globalisation thereby reducing conflicts or preventing them whether ethnic, religious or cultural.
  “Secondly, German culture policy is aimed at supporting the European process of integration. So the European Union should not only be seen as a bureaucratic institution, future Europe should become a common public space. So, foreign cultural policy and education policy pursue different purposes.
  “First of all is the presentation of Germany as a country with a varied cultural scene. Second is strengthening Germany as a place for education by the assignment of scholarship to young people and young researchers from all over the world; spreading German language in Europe and all over the world; contributing to worldwide conflict prevention.
  “For example, the construction of schools and a university in Afghanistan, support of the European integration, the preservation of the cultural variety in the world in supporting the restoration of cultural sites in developed countries, and creation of a stable fundamental for international relations for the dialogue of all people”.
  Weth also stated the instruments Germany is using to fulfill its cultural policy at the global level to include such programmes as university exchange, foreign school cultural programmes, linguistic support and cultural dialogue.
  “Here in Africa, the strengthening of the cultural collaboration with sub-Saharan Africa includes a steady representation and structures in the respective partner country,” he said. “Then there’s social and human communication, offer of information, material support and lastly, language courses.
  “We have a lot of institutions with which we collaborate in order to organise these programmes. First of all, our main partner is the Institute. Together with the Goethe-Institut we organise exchanges; and there is academic exchange; we cooperate with DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service and a number of other foundations. These institutions help us to provide scholarships with residences.
  “One basic element is the preservation of cultural heritage. We support the programmes of research of the Nok culture and the preservation of Kano Wall. There are the political foundations, which also offer political education programmes.
  “So, there are a lot of programmes and different instruments which we use in order to show what is going on in Germany, to provide a realistic and comprehensive picture of Germany and to stimulate interest in the country, and for the population.”

WETH also gave his assessment of Nigeria’s culture since he assumed duty over a year ago. He said, “Nigeria has a very diversified culture with different landscapes, ethnicity, languages and rich groups. It’s so amazing; I’m still going to discover Nigeria. I’ve been to Kano, seen the Durbar. Nigeria is very rich and diversified and vibrant; it’s very interesting”.
  Unlike most Europeans setting out for Africa for the first time, Weth said he had a positive image of Nigeria before coming, having consciously read and learnt about the country, saying he had no preconceived notion. He advised, however, that politics and culture should be kept apart as culture has an inherent value of its own, saying, “culture should not be used as political instrument”.
  He stated that the German Embassy is doing all in its power to raise money to get certain cultural projects executed in the country. He lamented that counterpart funding from the Nigerian government had not been forthcoming, which he said has stalled several joint projects already planned.

Trial of a continent’s tragic history


By Anote Ajeluorou

Amongst the continents of the world, Africa has remained the poorest and the most under-developed. And so far, there is very little indication that conditions of poverty and under-development will change significantly for millions of Africa’s population. These conditions are what have been described as the Curse of the Trinity that has continued to plague Africa and some of its constituent parts in Ali A. Mazrui’s The Trial of Christopher Okigbo written some 40 years ago.
  Indeed, Mazrui’s intellectually challenging literary piece, which seeks to provoke discussions around the ill-fated patriotic zeal that pushed Nigeria’s famous but young poet, Christopher Okigbo, to take to arms in Biafra’s armed struggle against Nigeria in that infamous bloodbath is still relevant today as it was at the time of writing it.
  Also, Mazrui’s literary showpiece attests to the immortality of true art in envisioning a new world order cast in fresh and everlasting mould.
  In it, Mazrui contends that Okigbo should stand trial for subordinating his artistic vision as a visionary poet to the calls of tribal demand for survival. In this intriguing novel of ideas, Mazrui argues that the call to artistic vision is far superior to any other vision, whether nationalistic or tribal, and that Okigbo should not have abandoned that vision by taking to the battlefield in a quest for another nation that promises the Igbo another nation that guaranteed them security.
  In this novel of high, combative wit, the author employs two characters, Kenyan’s broadcaster, Hamisi, and Ghana’s budding intellectual, Apolo-Gyamfi, as contestants in Okigbo’s case. Intriguingly also, the novel is set in the two worlds that define Africa’s socio-cultural consciousness, the Herebefore (the world of the living) and After-Africa (the world after death, or the world of the ancestors). Indeed, it is Africa’s ancestors long dead that constitute the jury and bench in the trial of Okigbo for subjecting his higher, immortal, artistic vision to a tribal, transient one for the realisation of Biafra that eventually proved abortive, thus making his sacrifice a vain one.
  But Okigbo’s trial is on three fronts. While Kenyan’s Hamisi is to be counsel for Okigbo’s defence or Counsel for Salvation, Ghana’s Apolo-Gyamgfi is counsel for prosecution or Counsel for Damnation. But these two figures are also on trial for taking precipitious actions that caused their own untimely deaths. Hamisi’s is accused of impatience in causing his own death in a road accident while Apolo-Gyamgfi stands trial for aborting a brilliant career as a first class academic when he suspected that he didn’t do well in one of his final papers at Oxford and drank himself to stupor.
  The acquittal of these two depends on how well they conduct themselves as counsels for Salvation and Damnation in Okigbo’s trial. The brilliance of these young Africans, whose precipitious actions lead to their untimely deaths just like Okigbo’s, shone through in the trial period in their impressive displays. But at last Apolo-Gyamgfi is acquitted while Hamisi is found guilty for not researching one of the witnesses properly before subjecting her to full disclosure of her tragic past that also included he (Hamisi’s) rash act of love with her one night in London. A pregnant Aisha or Salisha was to die in the hands of rapists in Enugu for being Hausa, in the heat of the tension that eventually led to war.
  But Okigbo’s trial and Biafra’s quest to secede from Nigeria, where their security could be guaranteed, is declared ‘Not Proven’. Okigbo’s case is also ‘Not Proven’, the elders of Africa decide, because although an artist’s calling or vision is unique and has both individualistic and universal implications, the calling of kinship is also strong as art is a call to service for society, which Okigbo heeded in going to war to wrest Igbo from Nigeria.
  But it is the tripartite curse hanging over Africa that that is the underlying message in this novel of ideas still relevant some four decades after it is written by one of the continent’s leading intellectuals, a political scientist of the 1970s. The verdict goes thus: “…The whole tragedy (Nigeria’s Civil War) was once again the Curse of the Trinity unfolding itself in the drama of Africa’s existence…
  “The Christian story of three in one, and one in three, had in part been a prophecy about Africa, and in part a post-mortem on Africa.
  “Yes, indeed, Nigeria eventually came into being. Islam, Euro-Christianity, and indigenous tradition struggled to forge a new personality in a single nation. Nigeria was Africa in embryo. But super-imposed over this eternal tripartite tension was the mundane accident of three regions in a Federal Nigeria, each dominated by one of three major tribes. The Curse of the Trinity was chasing Africa to the very embryo of its Nigerian manifestations...
  “The Elders of Africa had watched the events which culminated in the Nigerian Civil War, and decided to take judicial account of this painful infliction of the Curse upon the continent.
  “The Elders chose to put into trial a poet (Christopher Okigbo), partly because of the poet’s role in that great drama linking the living, the dead, and those yet to be born – again a trinity of divine organisation… But even a modern poet, by the very nature of what goes on within him, provides a fitting subject for examination where the Curse of the Trinity has hit again.”

LABAF... Four days of culture feast begin in Lagos


By Anote Ajeluorou

With rapid development in technology in all spheres, the book has managed to remain relevant and central to man’s quest for the ideal. Evidence that the book will continue to remain so abounds. Predictions to the contrary at the beginning of the 20th century that the computer would hasten the death or be an end to the reign of the book have not been proved right. What has happened instead, is that technology, more than anything else, has helped to reinforce the primacy of the book as man’s unique invention for knowledge propagation, deployment and acquisition.
  Nowhere else would this truism be demonstrated this month than at the 13th Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF 2011) that begins next Thursday, November 17 and running through the 20th at both the  Goethe Institut, City Hall, Lagos and Freedom Park, 1 Hospital Road, (Old Broad Street Prison site), Lagos Island. Lagos.
  LABAF is a yearly cultural event organised by the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), and it is the 13th edition in CORA’s 20 years of existence. The four– days of artistic showpiece with the book at centre-stage will examine modern trends and opportunities in the book business that publishers can tap into to bring the local book scene abreast of global practices with technology as chief driver.
  The Lagos Book & Art Festival is a comprehensive, four day programme of events, readings, conversations around books, art and craft displays, kiddies’ art workshops and reading sessions, book exhibitions, live music and dance.
  Remarkably, CORA has, in the past 20 years, been mapping the cultural landscape of Lagos City and Nigeria generally, providing the link between artistic aridity occasioned by a philistinic, anti-intellectual environment and the artistic, creative excellence that richly abounds. It is also at the heart of encouraging a keen return to book reading as first step towards national development.
  Indeed, CORA with its vintage yearly festival, has succeeded in stimulating a measure of artistic activities after years of economic hostility to artistic creation, especially in the 1990s. With LABAF, Nigerians can look forward to a robust session of interaction with art creators in addition to those in the business of art and consumers alike converging to share ideas and generally network.
  This year’s festival is no different as it will afford book and art lovers another opportunity to congregate and do business in books and art. Visitors to this year’s LABAF will also find programmes of the festival both stimulating and informative. More importantly, it is a festival that enables all visitors to share and be part of the show in contributing to issues, asking questions or stimulating discussion.
  The pre-festival event, the Publishers’ Forum, the second to be held, will open the festival on November 17 at the Goethe Institut, City Hall, Lagos Island, a stone throw from Freedom Park from 10am – 6.30pm. A statement from the organisers says, “The Publishers’ Forum provides a concentrated space for key publishers in Nigeria to gain critical insight into their current operations within the context of the challenges facing their industry, brainstorm on their findings and identify key steps that can be taken as individual businesses or as a collective to improve their bottomline.
  “At CORA, we picture ourselves as midwives to the different facets of the creative industries in Nigeria, therefore what we hope to achieve through the Publisher’s Forum is the blossoming of the nation’s book industry with the theme, ‘The Book in the Age of the Microchip’.
    Continued the organisers; “Within the four hours marked up for the business forum, we intend the participants to add value to their businesses through the intervention of key facilitators, critical feedback on their processes, input on the most challenging areas they have to deal with and useful networking.
  “The Publishers Forum will be followed from 5pm to 6.30pm by a conversation (open to the public) tagged: “Wooing the Mass Market” where two publishers will share from their current work and their future plans, by discussing a selection from their publishing list. This year, we will have two publishers discuss their efforts at publishing literary journals and what mileage the internet afforded them in their efforts. A digital display of past editions of their journals will be presented. The discussions will be brought to a close with a cocktail.
  “A most apt way to describe the Publishers' Forum is to call it a 'focus group' or a strategy session with key facilitators as guide. The forum is targeted at principals of publishing houses who seek to grow their market and are willing to engage in creative thinking towards identifying strategies that can make this possible for them whether within a collective or through their individual operations. Our expectation is that cogent strategies would emerge from the session which can be immediately implemented or could be built upon in future”.

ON November 18 also at Freedom Park and from 9am, the Kiddies’ Segment will be held. Topic is ‘My Encounter with the Book’ with a notable Nigerian, the Director-General of the Centre for Black African Arts and Civilisation, CBAAC, Prof. Tunde Babawale, giving a motivational talk to children.
  Starting from 11am same day, the first festival colloquium will kick off on the theme, ‘Documenting the Governance Challenges: Africa in the Eyes of the Other’. Reviews and discussions around such non-fictional books as A Swamp Full of Dollars by Michael Peel; Dinner with Mugabe by Heidi Holland and A Continent for the Taking by Howard French will be held. From 1pm, the second colloquium will start on the theme, ‘Arrested Development: Why Can’t They Get it Right?: Africa in the Eyes of the Other’. Also, reviews and discussions will centre around such books as The State of Africa by Martin Meredith, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink by John Cambell and It’s Our Time to Eat by Michaela Wrong.
  From 3pm same day, fictional books will take over in the discussion segment. ‘How Familiar Is This Town?: The City as a Key Character in the Fictional Narratives of the Continent’ will be discussed with such books as Goodmorning Comrades (set in Luanda, Angola) by Ondjaki, The Yacoubian Building (set in Cairo, Egypt) by Alaa Al Aswany and The Secrets Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (set in Ibadan, Nigeria) by Lola Shoneyin will be in focus. Other books to be considered in this category include Tropical Fish (set in Entebbe, Uganda) by Doreen Baigana and Under the Brown Rusted Roofs (set in Ibadan, Nigeria) by Bimbola Adelakun
  Day two also at Freedom Park and starting from 11am, the children segment will continue with the petroleum expert, Austin Avuru giving a talk to the children on ‘My Encounter with Books’. From 12pm. Town Talk 1, a panel discussion on the theme, ‘Books as Tools of the Knowledge Economy: Can a Book Make You Rich?’ will be held. These books, Hot, Flat and Crowded by Tom Friedman, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and The Ascent of Money by Nial Ferguson will be discussed.
  Town Talk 2 starts with the theme, ‘A Book as Key to the Knowledge Economy: A Conversation’ around Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers will hold.
  Also same day from 3 – 4pm, reading and reviews will be held on ‘Challenging the Present: African Authors and the Global Discourse on Governance’. Books in focus include Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and What Can Be Done About It by Dambissa Moyo and When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil and the Ogoni Struggle for Self Determination by Ike Okonta.

OF course, LABAF 2011 will not be all about books and intellectual rigours as past experience has shown. Entertainment in the form of musical interlude also punctuates proceedings. So, too, will it be at this year’s festival with live musical performances from some young acts.
  From 4 – 6pm, however, ‘The Future’ will be discussed with four young authors and publishers taking on the challenging landscape of the publishing industry. Toni Kan will discuss the theme, ‘What Happened to the Pacesetter Series and When Will the New Nigerian Thriller Come?’
  Thereafter, Festival Birthday Party will follow in honour of Fatai Rolling Dollar at 85, Chukwuemeka Ike at 80, Benson Idonije at 75, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett at 70, Lindsay Barrett at 70, Ebun Clark at 70, Sunmi Smart-Cole at 70, Yeni Kuti at 50, Richard Mofe-Damijo at 50, Joke Silver at 50, Tunde Babawale at 50, Femi Akintunde-Johnson at 50, Sola Olorunyomi at 50, Duke Asidere at 50 and Remi Raji at 50.
  Day three, Sunday, November 20 is the last day with activities also holding at Freedom Park from 12pm. Arthouse Forum with ‘Art of the Biography’ with a review and discussion around Femi Osofisan’s J.P. Clark: A Voyage, Adewale Maja-Pearce’s A Peculiar Tragedy: J.P. Clark and the Beginning of Modern Nigerian Literature and Dele Olojede/Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo’s Born to Run: A Biography of Dele Giwa.
  CORA’s famous Art Stampede featuring ‘The Nigerian Abroad: Fictional Accounts of the Immigrant Experience’ will hold with a panel discussion on The Phoenix by Chika Unigwe, Some Kind of Black by Diran Adebayo, 26A by Dianne Evans, A Squatter’s Tale by Ike Oguine, Her Majesty’s Visit by Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, Icarius Girl by Helen Opeyemi, Lawless by Sefi Atta and The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

MEANWHILE, The Green Festival 6 at LABAF 2011, dedicated to children’s learning workshop and activities with CATE, holds alongside the main festival to give children explorative moments in their own environment. It promises to be fun for children that will turn up.
  To bring the festival to a memorable close is a play performance, The Waiting Room by Wole Oguntokun. The play is to commemorate and deepen a fresh start of Nigeria’s democracy, organisers have said.
  With this array of interesting activities at this year’s LABAF, organisers are hopeful that once again, Nigeria’s cultural landscape will be further stimulated and culture creators and entrepreneurs will be helped to maximise their art and inputs aimed at deepening society. By so doing also, LABAF 2011 will have shown a consistency in leading the way forward for the revival that the nation’s art and culture sector desperately needs to contribute its quota to national consciousness.

Echoes of Arab Spring Revolution at Lagos book reading


By Anote Ajeluorou

It all started in Tunisia early in the year when youths of that North African country rose against dictatorship, tyranny and bad governance. President Ben Alli was forced to flee into exile. That singular uprising has so far seen the exit of two heads of governments and the tragic end of one, and still rising

REFERRED to as the Arab Spring Revolution, its echo reverberated in Lagos last weekend at the Pulpfaction Book Club’s Book’n’Gauge monthly reading event at Debonair Bookshop at Sabo, Yaba, Lagos. Journalist and writer, Sam Omatseye and Chuma Nwokolo were guest authors at the event and read excerpts from their works. The occasion was the club’s contribution to the on-going effort at energising book reading believed to be on the decline in the country.
  Although Omatseye’s The Crocodile Girls and Nwokolo’s Diary of a Dead African and Memory of Stone are not cast in revolutionary mold, the two spoken word srtistes that performed, Efe Paul Azino and Jeffery Plumbline, expoused strong revolutionary, thoughtful lines that set the audience thinking.
  Plumbline’s ‘Dead President’ traced Nigeria’s tragic history starting from the death of the first Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, with the first coup by the five Majors that eventually went awry to culminate in a bloody 30-month civil war.
  Plumbline showed the sequence of national failures that had since trailed that death and how the nation’s history has become checkered. Azino, on the other hand, expoused overt revolutionary lines in his new poem, ‘Justice Kidnapped’, which he tested on the audience. He stunned the packed Debonair Bookstore with the freshness and originality of his spoken words, ‘Justice has been kidnapped in my country…’. The corruption, the bad governance, the poor quality followership by the citizenry and all the other anomalies that have worked against Nigeria’s advancement found expression in Azino’s radical poetry.
  He also read his signature poem, This is not a political poem, which has earned him fame as a poet of choice.
  Indeed, the performances capped an already glorious afternoon of literary engagement that was fast becoming the hallmark of a rejuvenated quest for a rediscovery of the book as a national pastime. Following these poets’ performance, the question became inevitable: Could the Arab Spring-type Revolution be possible in Nigeria, where bad governance and corruption are unabating?
  For Azino, what a country like Nigeria needed was to talk itself out of a situation that could bring about such a revolution. However, Azino was skeptical about whether Nigerian youths had what it takes to usher in such violent change of government by standing up and demanding good governance and justice from their leaders. To his own question, he asserted, “I think they (youths) can demand good governance and justice from their government.
  “There’s always a tipping point beyond which their endurance can be tested and tried. I hope we don’t get there. We can get to the tipping point like the Arab Spring thing. But personally, I hope we don’t get there”.
  Azino further submitted that a revolution in a nation like Nigeria would be constrained by tribal sentiments. Rather, he argued that there is a need to engage the system constructively while also seeking personal social responsibility and accountability as possible models to follow.
  Nwokolo, however, argued that the Arab Spring Revolution has been a tragedy that ought not to have happened in the first place, saying, “Revolutions don’t discriminate in whom they claim as victims, including innocent people with the remotest ties to those in power. I don’t want that kind of thing in Nigeria. What happened in Tunisia, where it started was a tragedy.
  “Ben Alli was a revolutionary when he came to power in Tunisia and later became a tyrant; Mubarak was a revolutionary when he also came to power in Egypt. Muammar Gaddafi was a revolutionary in Libya before he became what he later became. Those who are intelligent should first think through things. What exactly do we want as a people? Government won’t get things right; governments never get things right. We need to think about what system to replace the current system with before whatever we do”.
  Nwokolo further advocated that the citizenry should show courage to demand what it is they want from their government, saying the Nigeria’s citizenry showed too much cowardice in the face of the bad governance that threatened their collective existence. He painted the incidence, where a handful of armed robbers usually held motorists to ransom for hours without respite, and argued that such cowardice is what those in power capitalised on to mortgage the future of the entire nation.
  He submitted, “What we need to do is change the way we do things in a transformational way. I have advocated a law that created capital punishment for corporate bodies to be liquidated; that will help solve our problem”.
  Omatseye, on the other hand, stated that the way Nigeria is constituted would make the Arab Spring-type Revolution impossible to organise. He argued that Nigerians were an opportunistic, hedonistic bunch of people that groveled from one extreme in shameless cross carpeting not possible in an environment seriously yearning for a change. He argued that what Nigerians needed was the Egyptian-type revolution that would force the leaders to see the need to change things quickly in favour of the masses.
  For Pumbline, a unionist, aggression, in a revolutionary form, is something to be avoided, as it does not have foresight. Instead, he argued that just as revolution comes in different guises, so also should it be pursued in its different molds, especially in its ideological type. He stated that Nigeria should find a model that best suited her and pursue it to create a better environment for the people.
 
HOWEVER, before the revolutionary talk, issues about the vexatious lack of reading in society took a sizeable part of the discourse. Omatseye believed that the Nigerian society is currently philistinic and opposed to reading and everything book or intellectual. He said he had a father, who had books and was always reading, and he’d talk about the books he’d read to him, and this made him want to read while he was young. He wondered how many fathers did that to their children these days to stimulate them to reading.
  Also, Omatseye ecalled that there were bookstores all over the place while he was growing up and that he used to walk a long distance to get the books he wanted to read. He confessed to having read Thomas Jefferson before he really knew who he really was. He lamented the absence of infrastructure in society, saying such lack create problems for the effective distribution of available books to those in need of them.
  To lighten up the event, musicians like Rubby performed Bob Marley’s Redemption Song and her own single, Okay.
  A book auction was also held to help raise money for cancer awareness. Two books, Teju Cole’s latest novel, Open City and Kenyan’s Bnynvanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir were auctioned in the unusual 1k for Cancer campaign and to support the Pulpfaction Book Club reading events, where each bidder paid the amount he or she bided for on the spot before another person bided.
  

Wednesday 2 November 2011

Moving tales in Udeze’s This Wonderful Life


By Anote Ajeluorou

Edozie Udeze’s two novellas and four short stories in the slim volume, This Wonderful Life (Concept Publications Ltd, Lagos; 2011) in association with Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), documents slices of life in its various forms. Essentially, they are slices of the realities of life in urban centres, with Lagos forming the centre-piece. The stories chronicle city life in some of its most absurd, sometimes bizzarre, and even funny. At other times, life appears in its starkest form delivering its hard blows. The range of Udeze’s narrative is as wide as it is varied.
  The first novella, ‘Adventures of Brother Harry’, is set during the military era when the Advance Free Fraud menace, otherwise known as 419, was most rampant. It was an era when the con artists held sway, and some unscrupulous Nigerians were bent on giving the nation a bad name, and fed fat on some gullible and greedy foreigners who would reap where they did not sow.
  Harry and his cohorts, led by Chief Daniel Ogaga, who had all risen from the depth of poverty from their respective villages, and without the prospect of getting decent jobs, had just found 419 the easy way out; and they were making the best out of it. But like every business boom, the bubble also bursts, as they were soon to discover.
  Like most dubious men also, they rely on the efficacy of juju to successfully con their victims and to escape police dragnet. But even juju has its grand rules that must be obeyed to the letter without which, instant retribution is certain. Also, Harry’s girlfriend desires more than she currently gets from her man. Eventually, things get to a head, and Harry and his gang come to a fateful end, falling into hands of the police, and thereby paying the supreme price with their lives.
  ‘Michael Story’ is perhaps more evocative of the lot. With a prostitute mother, Amaka, in the thick of her trade, Michael joins the fate of unfortunate children that come to unwilling mothers at the wrong time; he is abandoned in a gutter to either die or be picked up by chance passersby. Life smiles on Michael, however. Some reverend sisters pick him up and take him to a motherless babies home from where he gets adopted by the Adeyemis.
  His mother, however, quits her evil trade after a while, and with luck, gets a man to marry her. She begets Ednah. Eventually, Michael and Ednah’s paths cross, and they get married. What becomes of the marriage? Does their mother get her just desserts for her earlier crime? What becomes the fate of the trio? It is the story of a woman trapped in life’s most unhappy circumstance, and who tries to deal with life in her own peculiar way, and the aftermath of such lifestyle…
  Again, Udeze picks up the trend of the military era again in his third story, ‘The Spoilers’. Like most journalists had it, Toby is thrown into jail without trial for writing a politically sensitive story just while he is enjoying his honeymoon. Gashua prison is his fateful lot. He, however, regains his freedom after a palace coup by another set of soldiers. For those who didn’t know much about the dark days of the military and their dangerous dealings with journalists, Udeze’s story will fill up some of the missing links.
  Also, Udeze does a bit of romance in his stories. Two stories deal with this subject. First is ‘Travails of Love’ with Tobi Bosah romances a Ghanaian prostitute, Gladys, who suddenly become rich through inheritance in her native Ghana. It’s a moving love story that evokes a lot of emotion from both ends. Udeze, a journalist himself, gives a bit of an insight of the newsroom. Will the journalist take the Ghanaian challenge and move over with her to Ghana and manage the inheritance that just came her way?
  There is also the encounter at Ife, where young girls con new guests to a hotel with the intent of using their gang members to fleece them. Finally, an author dredges up the pain of losing a manuscript…
  These tales by Udeze show slices of extraordinary lives inhabited by his everyday characters. They show the ups and downs of life and how these fellows variously deal with their peculiar situations. Udeze employs a simple, easy style to tell stories that appeal to the heart. They are memorable stories in their own right and will resonate with readers long after putting the book down.
  However, the stories suffer from editorial and narrative lapses. In the first story, Udeze seems groping for his narrative voice, and never quite finds it till the end. Sometimes, words’ co-location is largely confused and out of place and they ring false. A good editorial work is needed to smoothen this out. But in the second story, Udeze would appear to have come into his natural element. His narrative voice is much more confident, and he tells his story a lot better.
  Indeed from ‘Michael’s Story’, readers would greatly enjoy Udeze’s collection of stories as they show remarkable variety and subtlety. Importantly, they ring true to the heart and invoke feeling of fun and enchantment…