Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Nigeria is a Lie


From the thick foliage of my mind
Sprouts a tremulous song of a militant kind

Bombs detonate everyday on heaps of injured history
Kano blazes up in tongues of mutant misery

I squeeze orange juice on a blank page…
To bury metaphors and douse my rage

Every ping on my BB is a prick
On my conscience that makes me sick

The ears of my mind are forever wide open
To the dolorous sobs of the downtrodden

Its disquieting quiver nudges me to arms
To crush the bed bug called Boko Haram

Images of barbequed bodies on facebook
Make me retch in revulsion when I take a look

Nigeria is a lie and every day we cry
But redemption is far way no matter how we try

I can’t take it anymore I want to retaliate
But between my people and the Whiteman I wonder who to hate  

In my sleep all I see is the remains of murdered dreams
Dear mama, come and wake me when you hear my screams

I stifle my sneeze; wipe my tears every time I pray
Too many questions on my mind I wonder what to say

The story seems the same from Jos to Jesse
And still no one has an answer for James Eze

I’m meditating in my mind, God hear me please
This weight is crushing me when I try to sneeze

My country is a lie and every day we cry
And redemption is far away no matter how we try


People like me never win the Nobel Prize – Naiwu Osahon


Maverick author, scholar and self-acclaimed pagan, Naiwu Osahon stirs up controversy in this interview with James Eze


His grey hair glowed like a clump of fireflies in the dim light of Agip Hall, Muson Centre, Lagos, where an eclectic audience waited patiently to hear his dear friend, Chinweizu rail at the West and sound yet another warning to Africans. The fiery bard, Odia Ofuemun had pointed him out earlier in the lobby; “That is Naiwu Osahon”, Your curiosity had the better of you. You tip-toed after him when the lecture ended. But he had declined your request for an interview with a big grin that halved his face in two. But he had taken your phone number. About one week after, your mobile phone suddenly twitched with bionic impulse. The message on the screen said: “I am willing to do an explosive interview…..” Naiwu.

Now, it´s difficult to come across Naiwu Osahon and miss his whiff of enigma. His lean frame, loud sepulchral voice and sallow, introspective mien mark him out. But Osahon´s enigma does not end with his looks. It lies deep in the pages of his incredible oeuvre of 152 books, his incendiary pan-Africanism and his puritan paganism.

Osahon has cultivated his mystique like a Mullah´s beard over the years, and it´s still growing. Although it´s not clear whether his taking up residence in a desolate farm in Agbara, Ogun State is part of the mystique, it has deepened his legend by a jot as the ensuring dialogue had to be conducted online on account of distance. After emptying his venom on the ´imperialist West´ and their African collaborators for the black man´s pitiable lot on the planet, the exchange tapered off to literature; an area where the wiry intellectual would seem to have made the most mark. Still, Osahon had to be pushed against the wall. When will all these finger pointing to the West for all of Africa´s woes end? You queried. “The problem now is about the Blackman´s mindset. We have made significant progress in re-orienting the Blacks in Diaspora. We still have some work to do in the area of alien religions. They are waiting for us to provide home grown alternatives.
Africans in Africa are our greatest problem at the moment and that is largely because most of our people are still illiterate. Even the literate ones have no books to read that can transform their lives. Where such books are available, they are too expensive to procure because of the marginalization of the local currency by the IMF and the World Bank. They dump their Bible and Koran on us free of charge to keep us perpetually illiterate,” he said. Osahon never lacks opinions on the issue of ´alien´ religions, which he blames for the general inertia among Africans. He thinks religion is the strongest neo-colonial weapon against black Africans.

But there´s one area where neither religion, nor slavery nor colonialism can erode. The African has an edge in that area. That seems to be what Osahon was suggesting in his popular book, Sex is a Nigger. So, what did he actually set out to do in that book: dispel ancient stereotypes or re-enforce them? “Sex is a Nigger was my second published book and remains Africa´s best seller, along with Lagos Na Waa, I swear, and three other similar books, he replied. “They were written principally to pay my bills. I am better known as a rabid critic. My books are among the most hard-hitting books in the world. I have written 26 adult books with titles like God is Black, The Black Agenda, The Climate of Darkness, The Colour of Anger, The Cradle and The End of Knowledge, which is my magnum opus. I am considered the leading author of books for children in the black world. I have over 126 titles for children. On the issue of unconcealed attempt to proclaim black sexual prowess in Sex is a Nigger, the story is about my true holiday experience in the Scandinavia in the 60s. I had a wonderful time and my white girl friends indirectly provided the title with their relentless demand for my services. It is not a secret that blacks dominate in that department. White men are not circumcised and so are invariably weak. Before their instruments find their way out of their sacks, they are pissing prematurely already,” he explained, sounding more like a racial ambassador than a ´rabid critic.´ But Osahon is like that, brash, vocal and almost visceral, he has no room for prisoners. It does not matter to him that there may not be a scientific proof of his submission above.

Again you sought to have his back up against the wall once more and have him come down smoking. The titles of his books sound a little voyeuristic, you observed. Like something one would rather associate with the popular Onitsha market literature than some more distinctive literature. What was his explanation for the overt banality of his themes? Sadly, this move did not elicit the desired response as the maverick clammed up. “If five books out of 26 for adult and 126 books for children sound like Onitsha market literature, that is not a disaster for literature? I wrote those books as I have already said, to pay my bills because our people do not buy serious literature as you call it, and people like me would not accept financial assistance from the CIA”, he posited. He didn´t have to say it though. It has always been clear that Osahon could not be tempted with certain kinds of patronage. But wasn´t it remarkable how his literary enterprise had gone? A look at his graph of literary productions indicates a steady growth that began with The Climate of Darkness in 1971 and reached an orgasm in 1981 when he pushed out 25 books for children. Since then, his inkpot seemed short of the precious fluid. What was behind this temporary aridity? Is he a shout away from menopause or already in it?

“No, I now have 126 books for children and I have pushed out 12 additional adult books since then. I hardly do book launching and it is book launching that register book titles in our critics minds. Our book critics do not read. They copy what others say. I sell most of my books abroad and the internet has now enhanced that culture. With a website, you can have a shop on the electronic highway of the world. It took ten years to complete, The End of Knowledge, because it reveals secrets never before revealed to mankind. I don´t think I was human most of the time I was writing it. An incomplete edition came out six years ago but distribution was spiritually blocked because I had not said everything I was supposed to say. The End of Knowledge was virtually spiritually dictated. It required a learning process to write. That is why it took so long. I went through severe suffering to receive what I wrote about. I have now added 120 pages to the book. I am still adding bits here and there even now. Those waiting for the book should be patient. It is the greatest book ever written and there is not likely to be anything like it ever again,” he submitted, leaving you to wonder what he meant by The End of Knowledge. It sounds visionary though, and of course, writers are regarded as visionaries whose creative effusions define the ebb and flow of the national polity.

Would he say that the Nigerian writer has acquitted himself in his sacred duty to speak truth to power within the Nigerian context? “I am not sure that we have quite done that,” he opined. “We do not have committed writers like some of the old breed. People like Chinweizu, Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, Chinua Achebe and myself. I think my writing influence attitudes. Yes, we can influence attitudes. Chinweizu and I ran a regular workshop for young writers in my Apapa office in the eighties. People like Ogaga Ifowodo were graduates of our workshops and see what he has turned out to be now. I am not saying we are his only influence, but we helped. We have many others like Ogaga and we are working at the moment on reviving the workshop. Young writers need mentoring by the established ones and there has not been much of that in recent years in Nigeria. University education is not enough; there is something you learn from Naiwu that is not available in any book”. Osahon is almost always assertive in his declarations. So, how would he assess the present Nigerian literary scene in view of the fact that the period of his high literary yield coincided with the creative ferment of the era when Nigeria maintained a literary invincibility on the continent? “I am impressed by what I am seeing. The young ones are not letting up. They are winning international laurels and I have seen some great poetry and essays. I think there is hope. We need institutional support to sustain the ferment. That is all.”

While preparing for the dialogue, you had come across the fact that his career with the UAC, where he began his working life had ended rather sadly on account of his volatile brand of unionism.
You wondered what exactly happened. “Ok, that is well in the past now. I have even forgotten that I once worked in the UAC. They recruited me from England immediately after my MSc. degree in marketing from the University of Sanford. I enjoyed myself in the UAC because I was highly respected and largely undisturbed. I was writing critical books against our oppressors and running institutions to strengthen our resolve. At the push point, they decided to disorient or frustrate me from continuing my activism for my race. I rejected this and insisted that I must not be treated differently from how white managers were being treated in the company. We fought a battle over the illegal termination of my appointment in court but they used the money they were to compensate me with to buy over the judge and that is history now.”

Again that finger to the West. Again this we-against-them posture. Again, the undisguised victimhood. But it all sounded a bit phoney. His has been a strong voice against racism, imperialism and all, but he gladly accepted the key to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, USA….a strong racial enclave. How would he reconcile this jarring contradiction? “Memphis is not a racial enclave now in the sense that you have portrayed. Memphis is politically a black dominated enclave. The mayor is black. The counselors are mostly black. It is culturally a black dominated city and I was given, apart from the key to the city, several other awards from neighbouring counties, including councilmanship, citizenship, commissionership and also a silver shield (trophy) by Morehouse College, for my services to the entire black race. I was honoured for what I am doing for my race. People like me do not win the Nobel because we are aware and critical of what the West is doing to suppress us as a race. It is great, therefore, to be honoured in one´s life time by the people you are fighting for. Usually such honours come after we are dead. I am glad I received some while still alive. They serve as incentive to do more for my race.”

You recalled that you had heard it noised in some quarters that Osahon was an agnostic. Was his resentment of religion an offshoot of his famous hypersensitivity to racism? “An agnostic is a person who believes that nothing can be known about God or life after death. That is not me. I told you that I am the first in the history of the world to know certain things. I have put them in ´The End of Knowledge.´ Some of the knowledge were known to a few and were referred to historically as the secrets of the ages. Others had never been revealed before to man. For instance, I know that the Jesus story is a lie. The knowledge is not a secret to the spiritual elite of the world. Yahweh himself confirmed the Jesus lie to me before I dug up the proof that was hidden from most of mankind for ages. It is annoying to see our people living a lie. I know about life after death and I also know that what you think is ´God´ is not ´God.´ The problem you have understanding what I just said is that you have a wrong definition of ´God.´ What you think is ´God´ is a deity. Yahweh, the Christian and Muslim ´God´ is only a deity. Yahweh, the Christian and Muslim ´God´ is only one of the ten Jewish deities.

All Gods are tribal deities, i.e. intermediaries between man and the spirit world. All deities are gods and are all to be spelt with the capital letter ´G.´ The Jews called the Ultimate Source of Spirituality En-Sof, which we in modern time call Tu-SoS, meaning, The Ultimate or Unlimited or Universal Source of Spirituality. No religion or spiritual movement in the world worships the ultimate Source. Even the largest spiritual groups in the world, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism do not worship the ultimate Source of Spirituality.
I am a Pagan. I am the leader of the modern Pagan world and the Spiritual Prince of the Black race. I know that the spirit world exists and it is the real world. Our physical world is a mere illusion. The spirit world is not in some remote or obscure place called heaven or hell but right here in parallel orbit with our world. The living and the dead cohabit. They can see us but we cannot see them unless with specially trained eyes. Everything that happens to us happens first in the real world. So, our physical world is only a shadow or reflection of the spirit world. Every living thing consists of the physical and the spiritual and it is possible to transmute from human to spirit life and back to human through the process called alchemy."

Sunday, September 9, 2012

What Chinua Achebe told me about the Biafran war…Ulli Beier,


Ulli Beier

 

Once in every while, you come across people that force you to interrogate yourself, to question long held notions and re-arm you with a better compass to observe the world. Such people compel us to re-examine our received wisdoms, our interpretation of reality, our overarching sensitivity about the world and its many imbalances. Ulli Beier, the late German born Yoruba man was one such person whose very life altered racial stereotypes and the preconceived apprehensions of our race-torn world. I was lucky to meet him in Oshogbo, Osun State, Nigeria in 2006 and the memories of that amazing evening are mine to relish forever. Ulli was eighty three then but very much in self-possession, his memeory was fairly intact and he talked about things that happened about fifty years before as though it were yesterday. The ensuing narrative was my impression of that evening -
Beier

Watching President Olusegun Obasanjo dole out national honours on prime time television to Nigerians and non-Nigerians of all ilk the
other night, it struck you just how odd it seemed that Nigeria had
yet to say 'thank you' to him. Yet, he was here when it all began.

Not as a distant spectator, but as a prime mover, an enthusiastic
facilitator and a devoted promoter of the Nigerian letters. He is a
black man in white skin. He is a German born Yoruba man. He is
indubitably Nigerian. He is 83. He is Ulli Beier. And it is a pity that
his name was not on the honours list of this year's National Merit
Award recipients.

Professor Beier is a foremost Africanist scholar, whose arrival in
the University College Ibadan in 1950 at 28 sparked off a chain of
events that eventually led to the lighting up of the African literary
tree. As a university teacher, editor of the influential Black
Orpheus and proprietor of the catalytic Mbari Artists and Writers'
Club as well as Mbari publications, Ulli Beier found himself
strategically nestled in the fork of time. But he made the most of
it. Flapping all around him were budding writers whose creative gifts
needed stronger wings to soar.
Chinua

There were Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, J.P Clark, Mabel Segun, Demas Nwoko, Duro Ladipo, Ezekiel Mphalele of South Africa and of course the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka. It was a great moment in time all right. The flowering of ideas that ensued marked the preparatory stage of modern literary offering from Africa.

As you raise the micro tape recorder to his lips in this plush little
room inside the cavernous sprawl of Osun State government house,
Osogbo, you marvel at this man whose deep set eyes still sparkle
behind a pair of rectangular eye glasses at 83. In your opening
remark, you had generally alluded to his contributions to African
literature and how one of his former students, Mabel Segun had spoken
fondly of him in a recent meeting.

At the mention of that name, his powerful eyes lighted up "Oh! Where
is she? What is she doing?" he asks in quick succession and without
waiting for your reply he wades into an old familiar tunnel. "She was
one of my students in the University College, Ibadan. I only spent one
year on campus and she was one of the students I saw a lot privately
to. A lot of the students came to my house; Chinua Achebe, Mabel, all
kinds of students.

“It was more than just a class, you know what I mean? She was one of
the first people to write poems. She was bright and wrote some quite
good poems and I think I would have published a few. Another student
who came quite a lot was Chinua Achebe. He had quite impressive
manners. I kept a lot of contact with him in later life and when he
was working with the NBC, I did quite a few programmes with him and
he was also a member of the Mbari Club when we founded it", he
recalls in a voice that belies his age. Beier is urbane.

Oracular Achebe
He returns compliments with compliments. Mabel Segun, he said, was
brilliant. A statement of fact, but he also talked about Achebe and
the Mbari Club which offers a veritable opening for a follow up
question. When did you found the club? You ask. "I think in I96o and
it was Chinua who gave it a name. Mbari is an Igbo word. Soyinka and
I were tossing around in search of a name to give the club and then
Chinua rang and said 'what about Mbari?' And I jumped at the name
because I knew Mbari Houses," he recalls with a nostalgic glint in
his eyes. Ulli Beier's recollections are incomplete without names
like Soyinka, Chinua, Okigbo, Duro Ladipo etal.

In a manner of speaking, his story is their story. "My whole activity
in Nigeria in the I96os was basically to help people get a better
identity by pointing out what wonderful culture they have", he had
said in an earlier comment. In a way, Ulli has walked the road of his
destiny well. Along with Gerald Moore, an Englishman, who taught
extra-mural classes in Eastern Nigeria, Beier made his presence felt
on the continent, translating and publishing modern African writings
from David Mendessa Diop to Leopold Sedar Senghor, and even some
Yoruba poems. He also played a fundamental role in the conception and
nurturing of the world famous Oshogbo school of artists along with
influential playwright and gifted composer Duro Ladipo.

Story telling comes natural to Beier. He is dressed in his trademark
Aso Oke and his luxuriant grey hair has turned completely white like
a soft tassel drooping down a corn cob. You let his sweet old voice
swaddle you up with nostalgic recollections, let it carry you to a
time beyond your reach when our people still retained those things
that made then distinct. "I really loved the idea that people do
creative work that involves young people of a certain age grade and
that under the guidance of craftsmen they created mud buildings
populated by arts figures," he says of the Mbari Houses from which
the name of his literary club was chosen.

"They had a figure of the earth goddess with a child on her laps, a
leopard pouncing on a goat, a school teacher with a book and a tailor
with his sewing machine. Then within a few years, this building
crumbles back into mud because it's not fired and all the figures
virtually collapse. But there's a beauty in that. The building and
artworks must give way for the next age grade to practice their own
craft, you see. And there I learnt something for the first time in my
life. Growing up in Berlin as a child visiting museums, I thought
that the older a work of art was the better and more valuable and all
the so called art treasures and worth not.

“It's all because of the false values attached to art. Now from the
Mbari Houses, I have developed a whole concept of Ephemeral Art;
which means art that is not meant to last, art that is allowed to
disintegrate, art that is destroyed, burnt, drowned and art that is
shot. It is a very fascinating concept and on December, 18 at the
Obafemi Awolowo University I am going to give a lecture on Ephemeral
Art. And I will start with Mbari."

The incurable photographer, curator, author, translator and publisher
may be in love with the concept of ephemeral art, but he builds
eternal friendships. That is why when he talks about Christopher
Okigbo, or Wole Soyinka or Chinua Achebe and J.P Clark, he comes
across like a teenage Casanova regaling his crowd of youthful
admirers with tales of his new conquest.

Great Okigbo
"When I moved out from the University Campus, I was giving
extra-mural classes in Oyo. On the way, I used to stop in a little
town called Fiditi," he recalls in the same pitch of voice. Wasn't
that where Christopher Okigbo taught? You interject. "Exactly! Then I
met Christopher. Well, he wasn't one of my students. So, I met him
and we developed a very close relationship. Then, when he became the
representative of Cambridge University Press, he had a big house in
Ibadan and I was living in Osogbo.

“So, when I had business in Ibadan, I would just go in there, whether
he was home or not, I was sure of a bed and a good meal. His house was
just like home to me and we talked about art, literature and politics
and a whole lot more. Then, when the Mbari Club started, I started
something called Mbari publications which subsequently published his
first two volumes of poetry Heavensgate and Limits.

“So, we were very close and I remember that he was very upset about
the way the political situation in the country was going at the time.
I was not surprised when I heard later that he was first to go to
Biafra and enlist in the army and first to die. It's very tragic," he
surmises looking suddenly crestfallen.

You sense that it may be tactless to allow this mood prevail long
enough to affect his recollections and then wonder if there are
particular things he could remember about the late poet. "Well, he
studied classics and then Greek and later when we published Black
Orpheus; he would take a view and say 'I am not an African poet. I am
a poet'.

“This was where he was different from others. He was contemporary. He
was extremely influenced by contemporary English poets. But the other
aspect of him was that his poems became more political in Path of
Thunder
. It was actually inspired by some of my translations of
Yoruba poetry, some images, you know. He became more interested and
more African and finally more relaxed with his craft. One thing about
Mbari Club was that we had people who had very different ideas.

“Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo never agreed on anything with J.P
Clark. But they respected each others because there was some merit in
their separate positions. And we always had a very lively
interaction. They never agreed on anything but they worked
successfully together. That was fascinating”. We had artists like Demas Nwoko, Uche Okeke.
Very much like Okigbo's Watermaid

But no. Beier is wrong.
The disagreement between Soyinka and Okigbo with J.P Clark did not end on the floor of the Mbari Club. At least what Okigbo told South African Lewis Nkosi about his resentment of Clark and what Clark wrote in some of his civil war poems where he basically spat on Okigbo's grave lend credence to this position. However, this does not in any way in particular, whittle down the legacy of Mbari Club.

Listening to Beier’s flawless English, it strikes you just how
wonderful it is that he is actually German and has a remarkable grasp
of French and Yoruba languages as well. This led to his translation
of literary works from Yoruba and French to English. But Beier went
beyond mere translation of Yoruba works. He became deeply immersed in
the Yoruba culture and worldview earning himself names like Obotunde
Ijimere, Sangodare Akanji and Omidiji Aragbabalu. His close friends
boldly refer to him as the German-born Yoruba man which he relishes
with pride.

"In a sense, it was necessary for me to do the translations because
when I started teaching African literature and extra-mural classes,
there wasn't that much African literature coming out of Nigeria," he
says of what pushed him into trying his hands on translations. "There
was no Soyinka and Achebe in 1950-51, so I had to translate Sango and
Diop and Aime Cesare the Carebean writer. So, I have always enjoyed
translation for one reason or the other and I was totally bilingual
in German and English.

“At a time I didn't know which was my language anymore and I had a
pretty good French. So, from that, I was able to do what I did. But
one thing about translation is that you must know the language from
which you translate but turning it into a poem requires a deeper
knowledge. When you are translating from Yoruba to English, you have
to realize that there is a lot of things that you can't do. You have
to make it as simple as possible but what survives adds to a unique
philosophy.

"Of course Beier should know. He translated the works of Bakare
Gbadamosi and Timi Lawuyi among others to wide reception. Still, it
is interesting to note that Beier, in spite of his complete immersion
in the Yoruba culture has some critics. Oyekan Owomoyela for instance
thinks that Beier's "representation of the Yoruba ethos is too often
distorted and even slanderous." But Beier is not deterred.

Even at 83, Obotunde Ijimere still recalls with enticing vividness,
his earliest impressions of Chinua Achebe at the University College
Ibadan. "He was a very calm person. And when I returned to Nigeria
after the Biafran War in 1971, I went to the University of Nigeria at
Nsukka and it was all pretty raw then. Students were trying to clean
up the mess left by the soldiers. I saw Achebe then and you could see
that the terrifying experience of the war had given him some kind of
strength.

“And Achebe told us a very touching story that when the frontline
moved during the war, as it did all the time, they had to pack from
house to house. And his children said "daddy you must be very rich,
because we have so many houses.' That's a great anecdote. Great
anecdote! I learnt a lot from Chinua. Later on, he came to Bayreuth
University when I was there and gave a lecture and I later did an
interview with him which was called - "The world as a Dancing Masquerade." The world is a dancing masquerade; if you want to see it properly you cannot stay in one place. This explains the Igbo ability to move and try new things.
They are a very dynamic people. Achebe's Things Fall Apart was
published in 1958 and up till today it's popular all over the world
and a recommended text for HEC exams in Australia.

“It's one of the most successful books in history and it means a lot
because that's somebody looking into his culture without sentiment,
without chauvinism and at the same time showing the dignity of his
people, you see. And from him I learnt what I know about Igbo
culture. He did an interview with Georgina which was called 'Wealth
is not what you have but what you give away'. That's a wonderful
point. So, we learned a lot about the Igbo culture from him and also
Obiora Udechuckwu and we learnt to respect the Igbo culture.

“I realized that the culture has extra-ordinary tolerance. Chinua told
us a story of when he was in primary school. The teacher one day
moved the class out of the classroom to the shade of a tree and put
the black board on the tree and proceeded to give them a lecture on
the geography of Great Britain. Then the local lunatic walked by and
stopped to watch the class for a while and walked up to the teacher,
took the chalk out of his hand, wiped the black board and proceeded
to give the class a lecture on Ogidi (Chinua's home town) which was
more important to the children. What amazed me is that the teacher
let it happen. In Europe he would call the police. That's fantastic!
This is one of the things I admire about Nigeria, these experiences."

Ulli Beier is not only full of years at 83 but full of stories as
well; wonderful stories, exciting stories and he tells everyone with
fresh candour. He is also an adventurer who left his beloved Nigeria
for Papua New Guinea where along with his wife Georgina, he repeated
the Mbari experience setting up a Center for Art and Literature in
Moresby which threw the door ajar for creative people in the region.
Almost as many books have been written on Beier as he wrote on
African literature.

But Beier deserves even more books for all that he did in Nigeria and
on the continent. Beier and Gerald Moore played a memorable role in
erecting the pillars of Nigerian literature upon which African
literature stands. Beier's cultural activism in Yorubaland with all
his translations and books on various aspects of the Yoruba culture
offer deep perspectives on the Yoruba race. Now, if these do not
qualify a man for a national honour I wonder what else does. You see
why Obasanjo's national honours list for 2005 was in complete?

 

Editor’s note: Ulli Beier, the influential German Jewish scholar, writer, editor and aggressive promoter of African culture died in April 2011. This interview took place in January, 2006.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Self-interrogation is imperative for black Africans – Niyi Osundare


Interview

Niyi Osundare
 Niyi Osundare is one of Nigeria’s most important poets whose voice always carries the timbre of a sage. He is poet, dramatist, literary critic and a caustic social commentator whose rage against the manacles that hold Nigeria down is well documented. Trained in Ibadan, Leeds and York University, Canada, Osundare is a Professor of English at the University of New Orleans. He is prolific with over fifteen titles to his name. He is also a winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Noma Award.  

In this Interview with James Eze, Osundare draws attention to what African thinkers and social crusaders may have left behind. Excerpts -  

GH: What have young Nigerians lost by having our best and brightest outside the shores of the country?

Osundare: This time yesterday, it was this kind of song of regret that was being sung by a couple of students who met me on the University campus. “Ah! You’re here sir!” The ASSU strike is still on but somehow a number of them happened to be on campus. And occasionally, students would run into you and say ‘oh you’re so so and so, I came to this University because of you; because when I came the first time I saw your name on the door, then registration time I paid my fees and so on. And I said, but when is this man going to teach us? Only to find after some time that you had left.’

You have asked a very good question. The Nigerian society still has to learn that the quality of the student; that is the future national citizen, is a function of the kind of instruction he or she received and the kind of person that the instruction was received from. Teachers fill a vacuum. This is why developed countries in the world do not joke with them and I think this is also why, they are developed and we are under developed.

I produced three books published by Spectrum about three years ago; Book 1-3, called Books of Poetry aimed specifically at students aged between 10-16, it was a very challenging task and very critical. I was teaching creative writing, Intermediate English 354 at the University of Ibadan. After the first two weeks, I discovered that the students were not really getting the message. I then asked; what is a metaphor?

Only one student knew. Okay what is the difference between a metaphor and a Simile? Silence! I said, haven’t you heard about poetry before? Then I realized that most of them registered because they wanted to be in my class or because of their enthusiasm for poetry and I gave them credit for that. But many of them said they weren’t taught Poetry in secondary school. I then decided to ask these students very basic questions; things we knew even in our last two years in elementary school, things we knew in Form 1 Form 2 in secondary school, but they didn’t know.

Then I said oops! When you tell a hunchback you are carrying a crooked body, he tells you, ‘don’t look at the upper part of my body, look somewhere below my knees’. I decided to look somewhere below the knees. So, I started wondering what to do. I take teaching very seriously and it’s always something I think about when I have left the classroom. So I was thinking about what to do. One week later there was a book event and I ran into Jude Berket and Tony Igbeke; a very very conscientious editor and publisher and it was Mr. Igbeke who then said to me; ‘ Prof, there’s a market for Poetry at the Junior level’. And I laughed and said, ‘you know I don’t run after money’ then he said ‘ok let’s forget market; there’s an audience’.  And I said ‘now you’re talking’. He then continued “your poems are being used in all these poetry books for children, why don’t you do something on your own?’

And I said ‘that’s something to think about.’ He said ‘why don’t you meet us next week?’ A week after, I was there and all the top cadre of Spectrum were present with Jude Berket in the middle. After about 40 minutes they gave me a mandate; I thought I went to spectrum to negotiate for one book, but I ended up with three; book 1, book 2, book 3! In the distance between Spectrum books and the University of Ibadan, my mind was a whirlwind of ideas.

But I got to my house and I stood right in front of that house, I looked to the left, I looked to the right, straight after me, behind me, and I exclaimed, ‘my God! This place is full of materials for Poetry!’ So, the poem On the Guava Tree, the poem On the Coconut Tree, the poem On the Almond Tree, the poem On the Yam, Paw Paw, Banana, Plantain, Flamboyant Tree over there, Oh what about The Mango?! Before I knew what was happening, that night I think I wrote up to ten poems, that is how it began, at the end of three years, I completed the three books.

I decided to dedicate the books to Teachers. Book One I dedicated symbolically to the teachers who taught me in elementary school. Book Two to those who taught me in Secondary School and Book Three to those who taught me at the Tertiary level in different parts of the world; in Nigeria here, UK and in Canada.

The Teacher is extremely important. I’m a teacher today because I’ve been influenced by those who taught me. I remember one of my old teachers who saw the dedication and said, ‘I’m 76. This is the first time this kind of thing has been dedicated to me’. Tears were rolling down his eyes, ‘but I might live another five years because of this gesture.’ The man is still alive but I know Poetry is not a doctor. I wouldn’t say that he is alive because of that, but what I’m saying is that it makes a lot of difference when what you are doing is being recognized. In Nigeria, the teacher is regarded as a dispensable beggar, somebody you just treat anyhow. But it used not to be so.

When we were in elementary School, which was between 1953 and 1959, up to the 1960s just before the unfortunate Civil War, the teacher was a role model. The two most important professions in the villages in those days were the teacher and the preacher. And the two were not far from each other. Many of our teachers never bought food. On Saturday, the community would come together and provide large quantities of various food items for these role models. They were very highly regarded. In fact there were many songs in Ekiti which eulogized the teacher – ‘Ala kowe’ and ‘If death does not kill me quickly, I will grow up to be a proud mother of a Teacher and one day I will seat in the car of my child.’

That is translating an Ekiti song. The teacher was on a higher pedestal, and in the elementary school, teachers were so revered that people like us thought they never ate, they never defecated, they never urinated, they were not human, they were supra human. These were teachers in those days, they had respect and that respect robbed off on the students and you dared not disobey the teacher. If you were a stubborn child at home, your parents brought you before the teacher. The teacher was feared, the teacher was well regarded, and the teacher was able to do his or her work properly. Today the money man has taken over completely.

GH: There seems to be a steady drift in our educational policy leading to a situation where the majority of our schools now operate a framework that places the promotion of foreign cultures above the preservation our traditional values. Do you agree with that?

Osundare: Absolutely, one of the most intrepid elements of humanity is culture. Without culture, society disappears. Without culture there can be no civilization. In fact, in some respect, the word culture and the word civilization are used interchangeably. And culture is regarded as the harmonious perfection of humanity. It is systemic because it is like the human body. If your nose, your ears and eyes are not working, you’re not complete. One finger has a problem, it affects the entire body. It is when all the parts are working organically and harmoniously that you have systemic functioning. This is precisely what culture makes possible for society and that is why culture makes society possible, and in a manner of speaking, society also makes culture possible. When you have disjuncture in the functioning of culture, it is bound to unhinge people in society. It is the unhinging of culture that is affecting the psyche of our people. Now let me take it one by one:

I did an essay for “Adunni Olorisha” sometime ago, that is Susan Wenger, an Austrian who came to this country in about 1950 and was touched by Nigerian culture and decided to become a priestess of Osun. There was Ulli Beier who brought another phenomenal woman, Georgina – the roles these three have played in modern Nigerian culture are simply tremendous. Take Mbari, from Igbo heartland; Ulli Beier, went there, understood what was happening and when he came back to the West, he set up a kind of Mbari cultural movement. It was in Ibadan, it was in Oshogbo. Mbari did not only cross the Niger culturally, it also crossed linguistically. In fact for a long time I did not know that the word “Mbari’ was Igbo. I thought it was Yoruba and you can trust the Yoruba, within a short time, they had naturalized it and given it an addition Mbari mbayo- ‘If I see, I will rejoice.’ It became a Yoruba word, it became a Yoruba concept.

What that means is that the cultural traffic between the East and the West is there. When Things Fall Apart turned 50, I still recall the first conference that was held to commemorate that event in Lisbon, Portugal. I was invited to deliver the keynote address. And I told myself, I was going to write an address that nobody had written before. Why? Because, I was going to write it from my own personal perspective. How we got hold of Things Fall Apart in our set in 1964; we were young people in high school and how Things Fall Apart shaped our lives. And the correspondences we saw between Okonkwo and our own Fathers, between Nwoye, between Obierika and between the deities. Amadioha, god of thunder is Sango here, the powerful Egungun masquerade is same in both cultures. And then the impacts of Christianity; our societies were more united before the coming of colonialism, ironically. And two very important factors in the unity were culture and the economy.

My father used to talk about Onitsha; how they would walk all the way from Ekiti to Onitsha. He talked about Agbor, Benin; these were neighboring villages. These were times they had to walk and it took months. Now we have the airplane, we have the fastest means of communication, and yet our country is divided more than ever before. It is the way we have handled Culture.

When Adunni Olorisha said, ‘no, I’m going to worship Olorisha’.The Yoruba people were laughing at her and calling her the daughter of Satan, and saying ‘it is the devil that has touched her ‘and so on. And Ulli Beier translated with the help of Yoruba translators, Yoruba proverbs into English. That book is one of the most authoritative on Yoruba poetry I have ever seen. This was done by a foreigner. So I call them the modern Mary Slessors of our culture.

Why is this happening? Civilization has wrecked a terrible havoc on Nigerian and African culture. I remember when I was to leave for elementary school; it was as if my father knew. I was young and my father said; in fact the way he behaved reminded me of the way Achebe’s characters behaved. He said, “now that you are going to the white man’s school, regard yourself as going there with one hand. When you come back to my house, I want you to have two hands, you will take this one there, add that other hand to this one, it is only when you have two hands that you can swing them by your sides. It is only then that you can run your fastest,’

That is to say that that man who never went to school knows that the best cultural behavior came by additive not subtractive processes, adding to what you already have. Unfortunately what I see around us today is the replacive phenomenon. You have to destroy what you have first before taking on what is foreign. The foreign is revered, is idealized

When I see what is happening on Television, the way African culture is denigrated by Africans themselves, I just wonder. I teach in the United States and I know how many African-Americans regard African culture. So many people rush to my class because they want to be taught by an African. They want to hear about Africa from the horse’s mouth in a manner of speaking. And they ask me questions, they are very enthusiastic.

You go to Brazil, Cuba and Haiti, it is the same thing. Then you wonder, in fact, in some parts of Brazil, ancient dialects of Yoruba are spoken. In fact, I as a Yoruba don’t understand them because they died out here but they retained them. They worship African gods, they do all these things and they wonder “how come you Africans are so deracinated?

GH: What other Factors may have influenced this despoliation of our culture?

Osundare : The economy. You remember, Achebe was saying in the third part of Things Fall Apart ‘the white man did not only bring the Bible, he brought a trading store, and a school.’ Now palm oil and palm kernels fetched a lot of money. Christianity didn’t come alone, it was a packaged deal. For you to have education you must belong to one of the Christian sects and then the economic traffic was monetized. You had something now and you could sell it and get money and that money was capable of purchasing so many things. It raised your status, you used it to send your children to school, you could even use it to acquire more titles.So, money also played a very important role here and it is still playing a very important role. The role models in our society today unfortunately are the moneyed people and we all know how they evolved their culture of wealth. So, money has played a very important role.

And then Technology, it is human nature when you see a motor car, something that eats up the distance and you look up and you see an iron bird in the form of an airplane, you are bound to appreciate the people who brought them. Now if your reaction ended with appreciation; that would be simply good. But with many of our people, it boils down to abasement. You feel inferior when you see all these things that other people have invented. And therefore you are ready to accept whatever they bring and reject whatever is yours.

GH: How come, other cultures had similar contact with the West, particularly the Asiatic peoples and they seem to have managed and in fact, used it to their own advantage?

Osundare: A very important question you’re asking, but unfortunately I don’t know whether you can ever get a comprehensive answer from me or from anywhere for that matter. I asked this question too when I was in Japan, when I was in Malaysia or a couple of months ago when I was in Korea. All these countries have been colonized before, how come they are able to retain the kernel of their culture? In fact when I was in Japan, you see people coming out in their three piece suits in the morning, corporately dressed. In the evening, you’ll see them in their Kimono going for dinner or going for an occasion. There’s really nothing wrong in that bilingual, bi-cultural, way of doing things. This is really what should have happened in Africa; the additive process. But in Africa, it is basically subtractive.

I don’t know but I know that we have been very submissive people, we Africans, extremely submissive!

Vietnam reacted against colonialism in a way that is very different from the way we reacted here. First it fought French colonialism and defeated them, and then it defeated in a manner of speaking the most powerful country in the world, the United States. It simply said “I’m going to have the kind of government that I want; you can’t impose this from abroad. What happened to us as Africans? Why did we, like knock-kneed people simply collapse at the onset of this very powerful Western influence? And it’s not just Western influence. Before the Western influence, there was Islamic influence. From my experience of Boko Haram, we can see that there is a lot of malady in the way many people are absorbing this foreign thing.

We have to look at ourselves in a very hard way and ask ourselves; why is the black person so submissive?

Nobody can call me a racist because I am a black man myself. We need a lot of self-interrogation, self-investigation, self-questioning, self-apprehension is necessary here. What is wrong with us, why did we collapse so easily? At the end of Things Fall Apart, that is the question I asked. When I see Okonkwo’s body dangling from that rope, I saw Okonkwo’s body as a metonymy. It is the entire African culture dangling there. Why do we collapse so easily? Is it because of the atomistic nature of our culture? Take Nigeria, we have well over 350 languages and ethnic groupings in this country. It was so easy to divide our rulers. Could it be why the English Language has remained paramount because you cannot talk about culture without talking about language? There are so many languages and our societies are so disparate.

When we talk about culture per se, we also have to talk about political culture. How did Nigeria come about? 1914, Northern Protectorate, Southern Protectorate, Knock them together! The British, Mr Lugard who did that didn’t do so because he loved Nigeria but because he loved Britain and he wanted a large sphere of influence in the centre of French dominated part of Africa. You know Nigeria is surrounded by Francophone countries. So that kind of political culture led to the inauguration of Nigeria. What kind of culture do we have now? The northern part of the country is mostly Islamic, hermetic and so on. The Southern part, Christians and, though some would call them animists, but I would say they are traditional worshippers. That division is so much there. The Nigerian story reminds me so much about the situation in the Sudan before the final independence of the South and both countries are really not stable. The question I keep asking is why did we collapse so readily?

I’m still asking because if you look at the contemporary situation, people still jump at whatever is foreign, at the expense of whatever is indigenous. We have to look at ourselves very well because it is affecting not only our culture but also our economy. Look around you, this is the Nokia I use from Finland. A friend of mine has Erickson from Sweden, this is Motorola from America, Samsung from Korea, everything around us comes from another country. We cannot even manufacture the car we use. Culture is so comprehensive that we have to look at it from these different angles, we are too interested in what comes from abroad, I’m not against what comes from abroad. I’m wearing a pair of jeans, the next moment I could be in my Yoruba attire, two hands in my hands! As JP Clarke once said ‘what has happened to one of our hands?’Our politics has not helped. The kind of education that we’ve had has not helped.

GH: As a teacher do you see Education playing a role in this quest for self-rediscovery, this self-rebirth that you speak about if we as a people are not to go extinct as a people? Again, crippled as the sector is right now, can it really salvage itself and in turn the nation?

Osundare: The educational system as we have it in Nigeria today cannot salvage anything. In fact the way things are going in this country today, we are nose-diving towards jeopardy, there’s no doubt about it. You started about colonial times, and the period after colonialism and then you compared that with what we have now. If you plot a graph of Nigeria’s development, what you’re likely to have is something like this; from independence right to the present day, what we have is some kind of terrible decline, everything seems to be in decline.

Eh! You are right, in the first six years of Nigerian independence, we had five universities, but suppose somebody tells you, well, now we have over 90 universities. But we do know that the devil is in the detail, it is a matter of quality not quantity.

Nigeria is a country of interminable ironies. The irony of the Nigerian situation today is that the more universities we have, the more illiterate our citizens become, just as the more Churches and Mosques we have, the more implacably corrupt our rulers become, our country is a country of interminable ironies, yes!

What has happened is that, in the 1960s if you posted a letter in Lagos, it would get to Owerri within one week, in fact within 4 days. If you placed order for goods in the UK, within two weeks, they would be delivered at your door. Honestly! Everything worked, the roads, tortuous and colonial as they were, were solid; they were not washed away by erosion. It was a colonial economy quite right but there was no inflation. All these things were there that time and that is why education was so solid too. I don’t know if you’re familiar with my valedictory lecture at the University of Ibadan, July 2004. The title is The Universe in the University - A Scholar- Poet’s Look from Inside-out. It is precisely what you are saying that I was trying to say in that lecture.

As somebody who has been in the University system for over 30 years, I just decided to take account of what was happening and present the university system through the University of Ibadan to the public. A month before then, I was in France for a presentation of one of my books that was translated into French by UNESCO. Just before the show, the translator decided to take me round France, and we went to the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne was established in 1120 almost 1000 years ago and I sat in the lecture room, the wood was solid, the roads were paved, everything was well taken care of. Old buildings were shored up so they wouldn’t collapse. The University of Ibadan is the oldest University in Nigeria, it was founded in 1948, I’m one year older than that University. But that University is already aging whereas the ones founded about a thousand years ago are waxing stronger and stronger. So I was asking our people; people talk about Nigeria as a failed state, can we start talking about the University of Ibadan as a failed University?

If we cannot create new structures, how come we are unable to maintain the one that we have? We are talking about culture, culture is impossible without education. Education is culture and vice versa. Education is the missing link between culture and civilization. So our universities, what has happened? A lot of the blame will have to go to our University people, I’m one of them. In fact, as I said in that lecture, the caterpillar that eats leaves lives among the leaves. We have to look at ourselves from inside-out.

We have some of the best academics in the world; very enterprising, very hard working and very inventive, but the system constantly and vigorously denies them what should make them world class intellectuals. This is why many of them rush abroad. Many people say our intellectuals are running away, they’re unpatriotic, they want the dollar. I for one have been charged with dollar chase. I know money is not my problem. I don’t have money but it is not my problem. It is for family reasons that I’m there. I had a daughter that was wasting away because she had a challenge; I had to take her abroad. There are quite a number of Nigerians who have such problems. Then there are many Nigerians who are abroad for professional reasons. I have spoken with many Nigerian scientists who came home; they obeyed the patriotic call and they came home, six months, nine months, one year, and they’re still in the University guest houses and there are no laboratories, and you know what happens to a scientist without a laboratory. Out of frustration they will just pack their things and go back to the United States or go back to Europe - another loss for Nigeria. Each time we have a conference in the US and I meet the likes of M J C Echeruo, Isidore Okpewho, Abiola Irele, Omolara Ogundipe, Tanure Ojaide etc. And the younger people too, Pius Adesammi, Olu Oguibe, Uche Nduka, Godwin Ibe, Mike and Angela Nwosu, Akinwumi Adesoka etc they are all gone. In fact, it is not only the older ones that are gone; the younger ones are also there.

These are the ones we know that are there. Call them exiles. The most excruciating case comes from the exile within; that is those who are in Nigeria only nominally, whose minds are fixed on the Visa offices and they are doing everything to escape the hell that we call Nigeria. They are nominally living in this country but psychologically, they’re absent. Their minds are constantly in overseas countries. Every time you go to the US embassy, there are thousands of people there trying to run away from the Nigerian. The Nigerian government simply doesn’t do a thing.

In the military era, a Commission of Enquiry was set up to investigate the issue of Brain Drain. I think the Commission came out with a very enlightening conclusion that Brain Drain was not bad for Nigeria because it brought in foreign exchange. That will show you how philistine our government really is. When last did our president read a new book? When last did any of the governors read a new book? Do they know what is happening in the movies? Do they even know what is happening even in the Newspapers?

We are talking about Culture; they don’t know what culture is. Beyond the parade of bare breasted girls, shaking their breasts or bodies for foreign dignitaries at the air ports, that as far as they understand, is the meaning and extent of culture. But you and I know that culture goes beyond that, the most important aspect of culture actually is invisible. It is that thing that is in you that makes you a civilized, refined human being. Our educational system is not out to develop them.

When we were in elementary school, we learnt our indigenous languages; we also learnt English and we had to learn the Bible anyway. Teachers were hard working.  

When I entered the Grammar school in 1961, there was only one graduate teacher and that was our principal. We were taught by Grade Two teachers. We were taught by those who had finished High school and were preparing to go to the University. But those are the people who laid the foundation for the education of people like us. They taught us so thoroughly and so conscientiously, we knew where we were. Today the whole place is full of graduates, you pick up a PhD dissertation today in English, and you can’t finish the first paragraph without running into grammatical errors. Many of the PhD Theses are not as good as first year essays written by undergraduates about twenty years ago.

You cannot give what you do not have. Our educational system today is collapsing because the mediocrity that used to exist at the lower level has circulated upwards, if you permit that contradiction in terms. It has seeped upwards and that is what they say ‘if you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.’ Nigeria sowed the wind by not taking care of education, that is why we are now reaping the whirlwind. As I said earlier on, there are more Universities now in the country than at any other time in the country’s history. The illiteracy rate is very high. Literacy now is not just the ability to read and write. I’m looking at literacy now in more metaphoric terms; Doctors that do not really know where the inner organs in the body are, graduates in English that cannot compose two sentences logically, electrical engineers that cannot make NEPA run, graduates in Computer Science that cannot move the mouse efficiently. All these things are part of the culture, so the culture of mediocrity is what we have now.

I am a life member of ASUU because I believe in its ideals. The demand we are making, and that ASUU is making from the government is; if we cannot give 26% of GDP to education recommended by UNESCO, at least give something reasonable. There was a time the Nigerian allocation to education fell as low as 2%. It wasn’t enough to pay teachers adequately; it wasn’t enough to set up capital projects in institutions of higher learning. The labs have collapsed, there are no Libraries, and there are no book stores, even in the universities. What education are we talking about? And then I ask all the time, if the laboratory is the way it is, how have our colleagues managed to produce 1st class, 2nd class and whatever every year? The PhDs you produce, where do they carry out their experiments? So government has ruined education. We who work in the vineyard, also have to ask ourselves honest questions. We have been collaborating with the government in ruining the educational system. ASUU frequently goes on strike, asking for better working conditions. You cannot imagine how many academics, so called academics are working with the government to frustrate the strikes, to frustrate the struggle.

So we cannot talk about culture without talking about education, but the way we are at the moment, education is in the doldrums.

Finally, we also have to distinguish between two kinds of education. There is the education we have in Nigeria for the award of diplomas, I call it ‘nominal education.’ It is never deep. Then there’s education for liberation; that is the kind of education that empowers you to ask questions. That is the kind of education that empowers you to read between the lines, not just along the lines. Many Nigerians don’t know how to read between the lines, many Nigerians are not trained to ask questions. I have heard lecturers in the university blame their students for asking questions. An interrogative student should be a joy to his teacher, a student whose mind is full of fire, whose mind is full of ideas, should be a joy to his teacher. That kind of student can only be a joy to a teacher who knows, who is not challenged, who is not intimidated by the knowledge of the student. The category of people teaching in our universities today, the quality of their education will have to improve. And then our Professors, our Nigerian Professors, and I stress this, our professors, many of them have stopped reading. Many of them have stopped professing anything. The fashion in Nigeria today is you keep struggling, and struggling, you play all your politics, the day you become Professor, you sit in your chair, so called chair, you sink into it and say “from now on , it is Ija aye, it is Ari ya’ no more writing, no more teaching”. Many of the Professors farm out their lectures to junior colleagues. And then what do they do? They go all over the place looking for political appointments. Many of our professors are fake professors. Many of them should not move near the walls of a university in an ideal situation. This is partly because we have students who cannot ask questions. In March in one of our Universities, I’m not going to call its name. I ran into a student who came to me and said ‘sir, we’ve seen our teacher only twice this semester” and it was the end of the semester. I said ‘two times?’ and he said ‘yes’. In a fifteen week semester, the teacher saw the students two times, at the beginning of the semester, then the last week when he came to give them assignments. That kind of teacher should be tied to the stakes and whipped, after that he should be put in jail for wasting our money, wasting the students’ time and for contributing to the corruption of the youth.

No! Teaching is serious business! We are talking about culture and education. Quite a number of the teachers in our universities don’t see it that way. This is not to take the credit from the hard working ones. There are many hard working ones who are so persevering, who are there, but many of our professors should be made to defend their professorship.

At the University of New Orleans where I teach, whether you’re an instructor, whether you’re an associate professor or assistant professor, it doesn’t matter. At the end of each academic year, you have to submit what is called Faculty Activity Report FAR. That is from August the previous year to May of the present year, what have you done? The lectures you’ve given in different places, the papers you’ve published, your contribution to community development, including articles you’ve written in Newspapers, interviews you’ve had on Radio, everything you’ve done has to be done. At the beginning of the next semester, it is that,  in addition to your teaching activity, that would be responsible for whether you’re going to get promotion or not, or going to get what they call merit pay. Here, whether you work or not, you get your promotion. In fact, the very moment you become professor, its enjoyment forever. In fact you have to defend your tenure. Many of our academics here are superannuated mediocre. And that is why the educational system is the way it is. They are not inspiring to the students. I am what I am today because I was lucky to have been taught in the best universities and by the best teachers, including the University of Ibadan. The University of Ibadan laid the foundation for my education. Now things are different. We blame government and we should blame government, but what have we done to improve the situation in the country?

Finally, the down turn in our educational system began with the military. The military waged a war against the university. People Like us were called ‘undue radicals’ and pursued and persecuted in all kinds of ways. It came to a height in the time of Buhari and Idiagbon, then went low with Babangida who did his own in a very indirect way, then accentuated in the time of Abacha, the University was reduced to nonsense and the kind of ministers of education the military used also helped to destroy the universities. Many of these ministers of education were themselves professors, they helped the military destroy the university system.