Why are Nigerians able to walk on rivers abroad but often struggle to crawl at home? Why is it that these days, most Nigerians have to leave home to excel? – Nels Abbey
(A review of OF THIS OUR COUNTRY- Acclaimed Nigerian writers on the home, identity and culture they know, Ouida Books, Lagos, 2019)
By Olayinka Oyegbile
Nigeria is a country that citizens have never been able to describe in agreed terms or words. Assemble ten Nigerians and ask them to give you a picture of their country, what you are going to get is going to be more kaleidoscopic than the rainbow! You are going to get as many views as would fill more than a decade-long testament. This was the feeling I had when about two years ago I bought the book Of This Our Country (Ouida Books, 2021). The editors and publisher had asked twenty-four prize-winning and emerging writers to embark on that great task of writing about the country.
According to Ore Agbaje-Williams and Nancy Adimora, who are the editors, “We recognised that cohesive collection would need a brief that anchored it to a single concept while giving each writer the creative freedom to approach it their own way.” They, therefore, gave the galaxy of writers the brief to write a personal essay focussed around three broad themes: “Reflections on Nigeria that you know, a memory or memories you have of Nigeria that is/are significant to you and how and when you have experienced Nigeria, whether that be in the country itself, or an aspect of its culture and traditions found elsewhere in the world.”
With this blank cheque, the writers sat before their blank computer screens or pages, as the case might be, and went to work. Of course, as I remarked in the opening lines the views that came out of the twenty-four variegated writers are as diverse as they all are. Nigerians can never agree in one voice what the country means to them because the country is like the masquerade which the immortal Chinua Achebe says you can’t stand on a spot and watch its dance.
From the award-winning Ayobami Adebayo’s opening essay which sees Nigeria as a society which makes you struggle for everything no matter how essential it is to your survival. Nothing comes easy, from learning to singing the national anthem without knowing the meaning of the words and getting a space in the lecture hall at the university. In capturing the battle of getting a foot in the door of the lecture hall, she writes, “Some professors believe that all this suffering would make us resilient, even exceptional…This always sounded ominous to me, as though university education was preparation for citizenship in the country that demanded your soul and gave little in return,” (p6) while Caleb Femi writes, “The Nigerian people, like my siblings and me, are beautiful children of a conflicted union.” (p17). Do you see what I mean?
Helon Habila writes about coming to Lagos from his home state in the northern part in a way that looks like travelling to the much talked about Eldorado. According to him, “If you lived in the north of the country, going to Lagos was an epic performance, it was nothing short of a rite of passage.” He writes about his first train trip to Lagos and how it later became his launch pad for his writing career. To Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, “To live in Lagos is to live in distrust” because of its many conmen and women who are always looking for ways to take advantage of you. And like many environmentalists that have raised concerns over the ‘taming’ of the ocean, Adichie asks: “One wonders always: have things been done properly? Eko Atlantic City, the new ultra-expensive slice of land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean, has already been mostly sold to developers and promises Dubai-like infrastructures, but my reaction remains one of scepticism, I cannot stop imagining the ocean one day re-taking its own.” (p62) However frightening this might be, no one is listening, at least for now.
There is also, Hafsa Zayyan who is half-Nigerian, half-Pakistani, who finds herself neither here nor there because “In or out of Nigeria, I always felt uncertain of acceptance – in Nigeria, I did not look like them, I could not speak their language; outside of Nigeria, I was not of the better half, and the Nigerians I met did not recognise me as one of them.” (p120). Lola Shoneyin writes about a country she grew up in that was a lovely place where you could travel to any part without fear or apprehension. She writes about how she left for the mandatory one-year national service going to Wukari, Taraba State and how she got to Jos, Plateau State, in the middle of the night and had to be sheltered by a taxi driver whom she did not know from Adam! She hardly slept before dawn wondering if she could be attacked by him at night. A lone lady sleeping on the bed vacated by a totally strange man for her. But her faith in the oneness of humanity was solidified. But that was then. Today, she says, “The Nigeria I knew is receding, but that Nigeria has also taught me to be unafraid of the Nigeria that is emerging.” (p132).
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s haunting image of the country is palpable. He looks at the country from the prism of the hopes it stares in the citizens and how that has today become something else. A deadly knife seems to have severed that thing that ties us together as one. He writes about how politics and religion have torn to shreds love that had hitherto existed among people of various religions and ethnicities turning the country into a nightmare and a battle zone of sorts. This was registered in him by the spate of destruction and killings the country has gone through. He wonders: “By this time, the hate-spewing beasts of Politics and Men of God had embraced them. They had become Children of the Dragon. The friendship we had growing up had become secondary because politics married religion and reminded them that people of different faith must be enemies.” (p152).
Nels Abbey who had his secondary education in Abeokuta on a return to the same institution years later was surprised at the decay that had overtaken the hostel and he wonders, “Today, you could not pay me to sleep in my old hostel. If it was a prison in the West, it would be shut down and the people responsible for it would be arrested” (p217). But not in Nigeria, we bring up our young ones in a pigsty and expect them to behave like princes!
In all the essays, the resilient and ‘Can do’ spirit of the Nigerian is deployed to overcome every challenge. This can be seen in the recent so-called withdrawal of subsidy on petrol which has brought untold hardship on the much-abused common citizens. Nigerians are gradually taking it in their strides and life goes on. As noted by Abi Dare in her essay, “Nigerians wade through affliction, bad governance and corruption and emerge on the other side, fuelled by humour and resilience.” (p264).
For anyone looking for a quick read or introduction to our country, I strongly recommend this book with its strong cache of writers gathered in one book, including the immensely talented Chigozie Obioma. This book is a big success that one hopes would get wide circulation and be read. It is a compulsive read and I salute the editors for being able to gather such gifted writers for the project.
However, a slip which must be corrected in future prints is on page 229 where NEPA, the epileptic National Electric Power Authority which has gained notoriety to the point that even a three-year-old child’s speech is usually “Up NEPA” was called National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)! Haba! editors, how did this escape your attention?
