ORIGINS
PART A:
THE INTERVIEW
By Toyin Falola
(unedited transcript)
Who is Olu Obafemi?
Obafemi
By the framing of this question, I surmise a concern with my genealogy, my ancestry, family tree and so on. Quite a mouthful and may be an exercise in tedium. I shall be brief, merging, inseparably, your first and second questions. I was born in Odo-Affin Kabba, Kogi State of Nigeria and my umbilical cord was buried in Baba Jimba’s house from where my mother’s parents partially nurtured her after she was brought to Kabba in her early teens and from where my father courted her. My father’s paternal parents and partly his maternal stock were from Akutupa-Kirri, Bunu, from the Iwo Ege family and my mother is from Ohura. All of my parentage is of Bunu descent—Bunu is the northernmost part of the North Eastern Yoruba polity of the Lower Niger Basin of Nigeria. Who refer to themselves on account of tongue and culture as Okun peope. In short, I was born in Kabba to Bunu parents who came to live in Kabba from as far back as the early thirties of the twentieth century. My early education, formal and informal, was very interesting. I was bred in the folklore, oral traditions, masquerades, dance as rites of passage, wrestling, Agura (bonfire rites of the cold and wintry December festivals) This combined with my Western primary school education, both of which were fed into my psyche and social membrane in Kabba. These all happened before I went home to Kirriland in Bunu, the ancestral land of my descent to imbibe the Kirri-Bunu consciousness of my later nurture in life… I am digressing in a very distractive manner!
I had my early education at the Wesleyan missionary school called Methodist School, Kabba. I crossed the Niger, from Lokoja to Shintaku—some ten miles on the River Niger in the ferry to Igala land, precisely to Dekina, into an originally Provincial Secondary School which was later in the middle of my secondary education converted to one of the provincial government colleges of Northern Nigeria, remarkably equitably, across the region—established by the northern Nigerian Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the grandson of Uthman Dan Fodiyo. It was called Dekina Government Secondary School, Dekina, in the old Kabba Province. My higher school certificate education—a two-year programme of rigorous study for the Cambridge Exams, christened the HSC, was in the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) sponsored system, in the Titcombe College Egbe in the then Kwara State of Nigeria. I studied English at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from the early to about the mid-seventies. My graduate studies were in England; the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds where I took my Masters and PhD in English. With a background in journalism as a Reporter in The Herald Newspapers in Ilorin, I went into the Ministry of Information as an Information Officer for a short while before I moved into the academia as a teaching Graduate Assistant in 1976 where I spent nearly 44 years, rising through the ranks to the Professorial Chair in 1990 and retired in the year 2020. I have functioned from that base in the public office as a Chairman of the Governing Board of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, board member of other parastatals, and later on as Director of Research in the apex policy think-tank of Nigeria, the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, and so on.
Tell us something about your background: birthplace, early childhood, growing up in Nigeria. What was your college experience like and its impact on your adolescent life in shaping your future?
I have partially answered this question above. As I said elsewhere, I have never really addressed the issue of my birthplace. In a normal clime, it should suffice to say that I am Nigerian, if that patriotic consciousness was fed to a child growing up in our land, rather that the loyalties to sub-national ethnicities into which our nation’s loyalties were packaged into in place of national love and patriotic consciousness. A child is born in Aba, or Jos, or Ibadan, for instance, where his parents have lived all their lives, as I have detailed, needlessly above. He needs admission or a job, he is not only treated as an alien, a foreigner where he was born and lived but he is required to return to his father’s birthplace (in our patrilineal system) to fetch a hideous document called ‘certificate of origin’. And our Nigeria’s constitution has been quite nebulous on the settler/indigene matter and the various fractious politics, with murderous implications of warfare that it leads to. And the deleterious impact it has on the colour and shape of our nationalism and patriotism. I have stated above where I was born and where I come from—a nebulous distinction in our country, especially if you want to go for an elective position. I am told Hilary Clinton spent less than two years in New York before she contested and won a seat to the Senatorial Assembly in her country. That is rarely possible in Nigeria. The Okun nation, the Yoruba constituent of the Lower Niger, which housed the Kwa group of languages which included the Yoruba, Nupe, Kakanda, Edo, Igala, Igbirra and so on, were one of the oldest civilizations in Nigeria. But we remained one of the most marginalized peoples anywhere in the country—a fate which we suffered in spite of the fact of our being the most educational advanced polity in the North and in Nigeria as a whole. Being at the northern tip of the Yoruba South and the and the southern apex of the so-called core north, we suffered the disadvantages of both regions and hardly any of the corresponding advantages, especially since the true north died after Ahmadu Bello and the genuine effort to harness us with the South West by Obafemi Awolowo. A child born into such a situation cannot but be conflict and combat prone.
My early childhood has tremendous impact on my cultural awareness and disposition in my later life, vocationally and professionally. I went to a missionary school for my primary education. At the back of my school in Odolu quarters of Kabba was the ancient Katu hills from where the Ebora’s (the deities) descend seasonally for the planting and harvest festivals called Oroka. Children were not to openly participate unless you were an initiate. The Masquerade ensemble in Kabba where the important masquerades, Monure (dexterous dancing Masque and, Alase, the Rafia Masque with great sceptres of authority and others descend and annually was a stone from my Odo-Affin street. At school, I was a member of the choir in the church and later a band leader. I was a regular feature in the annual concerts and the Christian cantata. Back in Bunuland, I grew to be familiar with the Masque ensemble and festivals in Odo-Ape and Agbede Apaa, Iluke and Kirriland, where later in life I carried out research in the masquerade traditions, with both its cosmogonic and sociological accompaniments. In Kirri land, the Ajon Festival became a tradition in which I grew, almost obsessively. Ajon herself, the legendary, revolutionary female, became a creative inspiration, a central creative Muse of my literary vision. Her name became the anchor of my theatre practice, her name is manifest in most of my endeavours. Even my e-mail carries her insignia. Thus, the syncretic, cultural diffusion that became an ideological and aesthetic format of my creative life evolved right through from my childhood experiences and nurture.
Beyond that stage, my later life as an actor, playwright and theatre director took its root from my early life in school. I was a member of the Dramatic Society in the secondary school, Dekina, with its incipient itinerant structure. We had begun, that early in life to take theatre out of school, under our American drama master and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Green. In Titcome, I was prominent on the stage. And my media life also began in the secondary school, where I shared in the punitive consequences of daring publications. My outspokenness as a school newspaper and magazine person and literary propensities loomed dangerously large at the High School in Titcombe College. Here my debating and current affairs engagements became the alibi for my being named the revolutionary inspiration to the first ever college demonstration in a mission college. At the investigative panel for identifying the planners of the demonstration, my name became constantly mentioned, and the vocal peace corps teacher, Mr. Greggor or so, compelled the students to confess to knowing ‘Perm Sec who debates’. Perm Sec—or Permanent Secretary was the popular nickname given to me at school, meaning to them, the highest anyone could aim at attaining in the civil service. It was not a surprise to many that I would have wanted to choose journalism as career preference early in life until the academia chose me!
Kabba Day Festival
PART B
INTERVIEW ANALYSIS AND REFLECTIONS
BY TOYIN FALOLA
Obafemi: Locating a Life in History and Mythologies
Okun masquerade
Professor Olufemi Obafemi belongs to the outstanding category of Africans whose early life was an admixture of African cultural traditions and Western culture, infused with formal education. They can be said to be the last generation of Nigerians who experienced the beauty of African customs, traditions, and mores combined in some uncontaminated form in one or two locations. Before the cultural deracination of African values began in earnest, especially during the peak of colonialism, a number of rural settlements in the country were immune to the blinding effect of imperial cultural encroachment, which later decomposed the people’s cultural traditions and distorted their orientations. These settlements enjoyed a certain degree of immunity from the insanity of colonization because the imperialists abhorred interior African environments and because of this, they had limited influence in many rural settings. Their engagement with any rural environment was determined by the quantity of raw materials they could extract from the place. This means that the more a people or community was distant from direct imperial power, the safer their cultural traditions were because they would remain original to themselves and not become cultural outcasts, forced by the prevailing manipulations of these external conquerors. Bunu, where Obafemi comes from, is a sub-group of the Yoruba, which means that they share a common linguistic and philosophical ancestry.
Obafemi enjoyed the beautiful combination of African culture and civilizations because he witnessed some cultural traditions in their older forms. For instance, in his parental background in Okun, there was the annual celebration of indigenous traditions, such as the masquerade festival, where participants treated their audience to the beautiful spectacle of the Yoruba artistic performances in oral and acrobatic displays. Through the celebration of ancestors, the Yoruba pass on their indigenous values and social behavior to younger generations. Contrary to the Europeans’ misconception that these practices were used to display Africans’ unholy traits, worship unseen forces, or conjure spirits for nefarious reasons, the African people have continued to use these cultural platforms more than a non-member or practitioner would ever understand.
Kabba Day
For one, the masquerade activities that graced Obafemi’s childhood experience, alongside other Yoruba or Africans of his time, are important parts of the people’s culture where they celebrate their ancestors whom they believe can see them from the realm where they are. The system was to achieve several things, including the validation of their perception about the triadic levels of existence—the unborn, the born, and the dead—and to celebrate their existence as it was the umbilical cord between the past and the present. But beyond this, masquerade celebrations have additional values. They are regarded as conflict resolution agencies in many African societies, mediating between warring factions among family members, communities, or resolving other quandary levels that ferment troubles and bring about chaos in communities. As such, young people who witness these events are tutored about their impending roles as members of society and their expected contributions towards its development.
The African societies are a site of numerous socio-cultural activities where different events bring interrelated functions. Cultural osmosis takes place during these events, and as a result, the people extend the lifespan of their cultural traditions to future generations. Aside from the social developmental value that these activities represented in Obafemi’s childhood, they provide enough entertainment to ease public tension. The understanding that humans always absorb pressure from their desire to find a means of survival allows for the collective detoxification of these burdens, part of which can be achieved when the annual masquerade celebrations take place. The entertainment segment always featured the cultural dance, rites procession, and wrestling, among other things. Many ideas are shared and ultimately evolved to the point where society will integrate those that are applicable to them and discard those that are morally unappealing. Anyone familiar with Obafemi’s level of brilliance would understand the connection between him and his organic identity.
Again, Obafemi’s childhood experience will help us understand the gendered cultural underpinnings of the Yoruba, as well as many other African societies. Like many Africans, he came from a gendered root because his people recognize the significant place of women in society. Better than the ways children relate with their paternal siblings, the Yoruba have a socio-cultural arrangement that emphasizes women’s roles, and as a result, various elements of “matrilineal” connections. This structure reveals a great deal about the people. Despite the widespread misconception that Africans are solely patriarchal, a number of anthropologists believe that the odds are stacked against women in the social makeup. This is not only contrived, but it also shows that there is an information or knowledge deficit about these civilizations. Women have their roles in the social arrangement in the same way that men have theirs, and they are never considered as people below the hierarchy of men, or anyone for that matter. In the Yoruba society, for example, there are few social positions in which males are expected to function while females are excluded. Every trade and many endeavors require the registration of both genders in equal measure. Being treated to this kind of ideological configuration helps to facilitate a knowledge of gender equality. Sadly, this situation is not the same at the ascension of colonial structures.
However, Obafemi’s childhood experience will be grossly underrepresented if the colonial or European influence is not discussed. Fortunately for him, he belongs to a generation that accessed Western education when it was both poisonous and liberating. In the former case, Western education was toxic for African children because it challenged their existential values and ridiculed their inherited epistemology. This was done by subtly promoting the narrative that the African cultural infrastructure was weak and inappropriate for the development of a worthwhile civilization. The African children, even while in the African classroom, got the impression that their indigenous education system was inferior and dangerous to their own sanity. In essence, the classroom became an abattoir of identity lynching for the pupils where their cultural existence was sacrificed in exchange for Western epistemology. The reincarnation of their indigenous structures was not possible until certain courageous African intellectuals began to challenge the established misinformation so that the future of Africans would not be entirely left for the Europeans to determine. Obafemi went to a missionary school for his primary school education. However, since he was well-versed in African cultural traditions, he was able to strike a balance.
Proximity brings about the simulation of ideas, and from Obafemi’s extensive experience, it is undeniable that he has been a product of multiple cultures. He was born in Nigeria, one of the modern-day monuments of cultural pluralism, and was raised in borderline areas where two or more civilizations exchange cultures very closely and easily. Okun, his ancestral lineage, shares geographical boundaries with different cultures, making cultural osmosis very easy for him. Bordered by the Hausa, Igala and Ebira people, it is understandable that ideas would flow in the head of this intellectual figure. In the early period of Nigeria’s independence, the regional governments embarked on various projects, including the sponsorship of an educational system that would promote excellence. Obafemi had his secondary education in a different cultural setting under the northern regional government. Although he was getting the necessary knowledge in these schools, he was simultaneously absorbing the cultural information that would eventually help him navigate his journey as a Nigerian and a Yoruba icon with a stake in their eco-political engagement. Exposure to another culture and a good understanding of their traditions and behavior would prevent others from making bogus assumptions about them.
After loading his head with assortments of cultural and social history, Obafemi continued his education in England at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, where he obtained an English education to complement his background knowledge. As an undergraduate student, he had been groomed as a journalism expert too, and there was no way he would not experience immediate transformation with additional knowledge of English, which he went to pursue in the English society. Expectedly, Obafemi did extraordinarily well in his studies both at home and abroad, which prepared him for the excellence he was later associated with in his career. Upon graduation, Obafemi’s academic adroitness was put to a practical test. His knowledge acquisition in journalism was immediately set in motion when he was employed as a journalist in the information sharing industry. In the Ministry of Information, he worked exceptionally and built a robust ethical structure that continued to dictate his trajectory even when he considered pursuing a career as an academic where he would eventually build a greater image for himself. After nearly five decades of service, he influenced the Nigerian educational system, and even after retirement, he became more valuable in the public sector where he was engaged in different capacities.
It is barely impossible that anyone with a postcolonial civilization’s identity would not be affected by a conflict of confluence. Despite having spent a significant number of years in post-independence, enough to have created a sense of nationhood and oneness, many postcolonial political creations still carry the fractures of division sustained by their immersion in contemporary separatist politics. The vestiges of this colonial implantation persist because different groups have not progressed from their clannish thinking to modernized orientation where the boundaries erected by cultural philosophy and geographical differences are particularly expected to have been submerged. Despite having access to a globalized environment, the framework for the restoration of oneness has been perpetually challenged because people have not demonstrated satisfactory or quality intellection to establish an identity that would extend beyond the sentiments of ethnicity and cultural absolutism. Obafemi understands that this particular situation impedes the country’s potential and the ability of its diverse people to reach their full potential. The country is dragged back into antiquity because subgroup or sub-regional patriotism is prioritized beyond national identity, which comes at the detriment of true nation-building. Humans are different, and this is not a new development in human nature. It is more evident now because of the forceful influence of globalization and westernization, which places on everyone the responsibility of reconsidering things.
Scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and even Frantz Fanon speak negatively of the impact of colonization and its destructive infrastructure because of the complex effects of identity politics in a postcolonial environment. Children’s psychological domain is developed by the philosophical constructs used in their immediate environment. Moreover, because their minds are susceptible to manipulation when they have the wrong impression about an environment, it goes on to determine their social behavior, not only to the society from which they were developed, but also to the people with whom they will share their future relationships. For instance, Said talked about the unhomeliness of the postcolonial African child whose mind and psychology are divided between two diametrically opposing civilizations. By being “unhomed,” according to him, the ex-colonial candidate oscillates between the indigenous community’s cultural traditions and that of the European world that has been imposed. In fact, it was more sardonic with the introduction of the internet as a means of globalization. There is little opportunity for the ex-colonies to continue with their cultural systems because they have not only been carefully displaced by European systems, but they also face critical challenges in reclaiming “traditional” African culture. As a result of this condition, they have struggled with identity issues, and the problem of unity persists.
In essence, individuals who fall within the minority circle in Nigeria face a perpetual problem of segregation and subversion. They are vulnerable because getting the appropriate political attention in the country remains a constant challenge. Apart from this, there is the possibility that they are reaping unsatisfactory dividends of democracy due to ethnic politics. Meanwhile, intellectuals like Obafemi have ideological reservations about the state of affairs in the country. Perhaps he has been exposed to this inequity at several levels because he is a member of the Okun community. Their situation is more complicated because the postcolonial Nigerian society mobilizes political power to advance a parochial agenda. For example, categorizing Okun, which culturally and ideologically belongs to the Yoruba, among the northern bloc, opens them to nebulous conditions. When the issue of political power surfaces, they are considered as northerners, and because of this grouping, they use their political stake to influence the concession of power to the said bloc. However, they are marginalized themselves for obvious reasons. All of these are factors that contributed to Obafemi’s position in the messiness of politics. He understands that the politics of difference is mobilized by the elite for their parochial objectives, allowing them to remain in power even when they have no credible credentials to operate at these political levels. In the true sense of it, therefore, it cannot be contended that he belongs to the class of people, or Nigerian, born and raised in conflict-ridden environments.
Regardless of their conflict-prone experience, people can make something out of every situation based on some factors. One, an individual who is determined to become very great, will always consider pressure and widening challenges as the necessary instrument needed for the crystallization of their life agenda and goals to make maximum impact in their lives. Two, rather than being encouraged or challenged by daring situations, some people are usually downcast and forlorn, allowing the pressure of the situations to overwhelm and submerge them beyond repair. Three, there are those caught between these horrible conditions, and who, because of their indecision, make no meaningful addition to themselves, and neither would be considered backward. It would not be a mistake to say that Obafemi belongs to the first category. In the process of being affected by a polarized environment, he used the experience as a motivation to build a lasting legacy for himself by attaining a level of academic excellence that would project him beyond the confines of his cultural geography.
There is no better way to demonstrate how important Obafemi’s sociological background was to his eventual intellectual growth than to provide evidence of his involvement and success in the different engagements he found himself. He is an actor, a playwright and a theatre director in part because he was involved in itinerant school acting during his formative years. As a student, he was equally outspoken, and all of these reflected very well in his life in the later stages of his journey. He has been using his intellectual property as a tool to negotiate political justice, and an environment where equity is allowed and fairness is possible. Participating in these preliminary verbal debates and polemics laid the groundwork for his future journalistic adventures. Life has thrown a sizeable number of challenges at him in the form of growing up in an environment where pluralism is given. Beyond this, he was shown a cultural economy that enriched his moral and sociological experience while also guiding him in his engagements. He has worked as an administrator in different capacities, has successfully organized a handful of academic programs, and created a patronage network that continues to propel him beyond expectations.
As previously stated, his access to cultural tradition gave him the opportunity to create a culture that would later transform him into someone of international relevance. It appears that the cultural pluralism of the environment did not become an albatross to his career and social development. Instead, they became a pool of cultural possession from where lies different possibilities for him. During an engagement with him, he fantasized about the masquerade celebrations during his childhood, which introduced to him the heart of the Yoruba culture. He confessed that these cultural activities became the creative inspiration behind his future literary and artistic productions.
In essence, although Obafemi has a pleasing physical stature, it is important to emphasize that it is dwarfed by his intellectual capacity and talent. The multicultural society from where he grew up influenced his future creativity, as the icons of his cultural traditions are the muse and indexes of literary engagements. He has successfully transformed what was considered an inhibiting challenge into a motivating factor in developing a worthwhile academic and moral ideology.
Books written by Obafemi
