So, Who Eventually Becomes Lionheart?

By

Obododimma Oha

I had desperately sent a WhatsApp message to my movie supplier, saying I needed even a bad copy of Genevieve Nnaji's Lionheart. The film was making waves on Facebook and I had even joined in speculating about Nnaji’s cultural roots! I needed to watch the film, to be able to pontificate on it. And so, I was greatly relieved when the reply came saying copies were available! I had to show up earlier than arranged, to make sure there was no excuse. I got the film and rushed home to watch it!

Initially, I was disappointed and wanted to dismiss Nnaji’s film with a wave of the hand. After a very long attachment to Hollywood, particular high-crime series (in seasons) and first-class science fiction, Nnaji’s film appeared to me to be mere introduction: it seemed to me that, just as the film was about to begin, it suddenly ended! I didn’t like it and felt greatly disappointed. But I had to reflect on the story deeper to understand what was happening in it. It was a long reflection, and it only dawned on me as I was discussing the film with a friend. I took a different route in the discussion and it was as if the film was being replayed in my head, the key issues laid bare. I clearly understood why Netfix grabbed it with both hands. The film uses a very clever surprise element to shatter our common cultural assumptions about the female victim.

Here is the female protagonist, Adaeze, who is obviously committed to the success of her father’s mass transit business, unlike her brother, Obiora, who is wasteful and into hip-hop music. In the Igbo cultural setting, it would be some sort of disappointment for the son of a rich man to say he wants to be a musician. Although we have many successful Igbo musicians that could be used to debunk this, musicians in the Igbo culture are generally seen as ọfọọgeri (roughly translated as “wayward”) people. So, Adaeze was hs father’s only hope and consolation. Our first expectation is that he would make her his successor. But when he gets a heart attack and it is as if the company is riding rough waters to survive, he wants his younger brother Godswill, who is managing the Owerri branch, to head the company. This intensifies our grief... yes, Adaeze is about to be victimized, we would say. This is based on what we are quite familiar with in the treatment of women when it comes to inheritance in the Igbo culture. Worse still, Adaeze’s mother is in good terms with her uncle coming and clearly holds him in high esteem. We would naively conclude the they are dating, a wrong assumption again, based on what we have mentally fossilized as the behaviour of wives that kill their rich husbands in order to get closer to their boyfriends who may be gold diggers. In fact, this wrong assumption means that one becomes suspicious of the actions of Adaeze’s uncle, even when he means well. If he talks with Adaeze’s mother, you would look for evidence of his duplicity. If he comes to solidarize and talk with Adaeze’s father whom he addresses as “Odogwu," we search for that evidence in his moves and in his speech and his face. But we cannot find one and ... well, we decide that it can be postponed or searched for elsewhere. Is it also not informed by the stereotype of the extended family member as a breaker, something portrayed in Ukwa, another Nollywood film starred by Nkem Owoh? The fact is that postcolonial elite families in Igboland are gradually moving away from communalism, embracing individualism dangerously. It is only my husband and I and the extended family member is an intruder, held in great suspicion!

But the film, as a surprise element, shatters this myth. Adaeze’s uncle comes only to protect her interest. The very individual she trusts on the board turns out to be a traitor, another surprise! Her uncle proves his loyalty and dedication to the extent that he punches a man who thinks he could use her as a sexual pawn to grant a bank loan to the ailing company and is detained in a police cell along with Adaeze for it. It is as if to say to Adaeze: witness it firsthand. Secondly, the strategy of merger with another company from Kano which he initially suggests eventually turns out to be the solution to the financial problems of the company. When Adaeze’s father finally announces that Adaeze is the new CEO, he rejoices with her right away genuinely, as if to say: good, we have won, ; yes, the greatest surprise and relief! He is not the bad uncle we had assumed he is.  He is a good fellow and everyone is happy.  Even the hip-hop musician-son gives a special number to celebrate his father’s birthday (and his father gets to like it for it is a rich repackaging of the traditional ogene music! So, hip-hop artistes can produce something refreshing from tradition and make an oldie dance? That is another great surprise!

Our wrong assumption must have been informed also by the stereotyped roles mostly played by Genevieve Nnaji as a female victim in Nollywood films. Is this victimhood going to happen again? Yes; she suffers again, but is not really a victim. Her victimhood is deconstructed. We are made to see the other side of the coin. That, too, should warn us not to operate with a formatted mind, but to allow when it comes to cultural issues.

And, by the way, who turns out to be "Lionheart"? It is true that it is the name of the mass transit company. But in the story of the film, it becomes symbolic, a symbol for endurance. And so we are right in asking who exhibits enough endurance and bravery to be metaphorized as “Lionheart” in the film? Is it Adaeze’s uncle who helps the company to wade out of its dark waters and succeed? Is it Adaeze who suffers with the company, suffers emotionally until it succeeds, until she succeeds? Is it Adaeze’s father who started the journey, making what look like mistakes and making it possible for other brave people to manifest? I think the bravery and the success is shared. Success is better, sweeter, if shared like a cup of wine. And so, for me, Lionheart is the triumph of good over evil, especially when we have laboured for it, and it requires good planning and team-work, not the kind of suspicion enacted by assumptions that extended family is a monster poised to devour the nuclear family!

The New Libation

Our ancestors
Misled to mislead
Ndi nduhie
Come, taste the frothing fire
A shot of 501 in Alomo

When you taste more
You could get drunk
To barb our heads with blades of broken bottle

And so here, taste just a drop
It is too early
To get tipsy over experience

Don't ask for a cow
You never reared any
Never had  an AK-47 but a catapult

If we kill a cow for you
The bank account of an enemy swells
If we kill a cow for you
Night continues as day

If we don't give you a cow
You would kill your only son
Waging this war from Heaven or hellfire?

If we give you a cow
You can't even eat its shit
Kinsmen must fight over the meat:
Who is junior and who is senior!
Those only spared by AK-47

So, you see, a cow for the spirits is a war is a war!

By

Obododimma Oha.

Ojota

By

Obododimma Oha

Some rank odour approaches me as I approach
the city, presents a clenched fist to my frightened nose

The breath of refuse that refuses
civilized welcome, it only yawns into my decency

Perhaps this is where we choose roads:
straight on, to pretend difference, in high halls;
towards the right, to face everyday battles, in piddle & pressure

Should I have asked:
Where is
the shoddy look an Oshodi used to wear,
or the marred modernity of a Maroko?
Always there is an extra mile beyond Mile 2
in this journey to a story
laden with smells.

Where a city begins is where its beauty ends

Now it wears its odours loosely
Like many years of failed hygiene
Each time welcoming some goodbyes –happy-to-miss-you

Ojota is more than random jottings
on someone’s governance notepad
a place where the Past Tense of government
shifts to a tensed up Present.

Saling these thoughts to the next UniVerse

i’m octobering on, hoping to locate the boundary between time & being
i’m mooning around an elusive plan of a planet
i’m righting a folding sail that complains about a nuclear amnesia
i’m mooning this fifth element, timing this timeless thought
soon to explode

--- Obododimma Oha

Gandhi in Rio

A soul that seeks
To find a Brazil whose zeal
Breaks down barriers
Between your speech and my silence

--- Obododimma Oha

Who Sits in Pa's Place, Telling Stories?

By

Obododimma Oha

In my Pa’s parlour, everyone has their own space and everyone’s space means. Everything, too, has its place, defined in relation to other things. There is the special place where Pa used to sit, from where he watched things that went on or watched everyone too. Pa always said we were all stories and were part of the stories that he told. When Pa was not around, like when he eventually slept and did not wake up again, Ma sat in his place, watching and also telling stories. In that way, Pa’s place was kept; the stories were kept. And the stories kept us.

Pa used to sit there, telling bearded stories. Stories of Mbe nwa Aniga holding a debate with Chukwu-abia-amuma. Stories of braves who went to the land of the spirits and defeated them in wrestling matches. Stories of why things are as they are. Stories of Wit slugging it out with Folly. Stories about values and the invaluable good life. Stories and stories and stories about stories in stories. Pa used to sit there, facing the whole family, telling stories that made our lives.


Now, the television and the video set sit in Pa’s place, telling a different kind of stories.




The television tells stories of things that never happened and wants us to believe that they really happened. The television tells its stories, making sure it has put adequate dose of salt and pepper. Seeing is believing and so showing is deceiving. And many maybes dissolve into certainties.

The video tells stories as if they are its own possession, as if those stories have not been stolen from the mouths and hearts of Pa and Ma and then peppered and salted into strange irresistibles. The video tells the story of this Igwe and that Ezemmuo and that village swallowed by the city and the city having constipation. The video tells all the happenstance as if people are always busy throughout the day and throughout the night scheming or quarreling over issues, and never have the time to go to the farm, or to do anything else. And the video expects us to believe that?

Is it not the same way the radio and the gramophone came to tell stories that competed with the stories told by Pa and Ma? The radio would sit there, so full of itself, and tell us, “This is London!” when, in fact, this is our village! How did the radio expect us to believe that nonsense, or to believe the stories it told afterwards?

And the gramophone, too, with that dog speaking the Master’s voice! How did it expect us to believe a story told by a dog, even if the story belonged to the Master?

The television and the video now want us to believe that they speak in stead of Pa and Ma. The television wants to Pa and Ma us with a different set of myths – its triumph over Time; its control over Space; its Presence in Absence and presencing of absence.

The television thinks we need more exaggeration and more vision. Now, it stretches and covers the whole wall, hoping to cover the entire mindscape and imagination of the hypnotized viewer. Is the magic the size? Is the magic in the size? This proxy Pa or proxy Ma that grows big and grows small. This proxy Pa and Ma whose stories expand and grow out of proportion; whose stories can also contract and reappear on the screens of handsets, Mpegs, etc, to spread and to peg the proliferating images on the canvass of our minds.

Ah, the TV and the video want us to see the story. That’s good. But the story is inside their eyes. They want us to see the story through their eyes, their eyes which never blink!

When Pa sat there, telling stories, he sat in our hearts. We asked him questions and he answered. He called and we responded. We called and he responded. Together with Pa, we sang the story. The TV and the video are far removed from us, do not feel our presence, and do not include us in singing and experiencing the story. The TV and the video speak alone, sit alone, and cannot see us.



We admire the ability of the TV and the video to tell stories through their eyes. Let the TV and the video take their seats as other storytellers around. But let them not displace Pa and Ma as the chief storytellers in this ezinuulo.

He Lived His Fictions (for Michael Jackson)

--Obododimma Oha

He lived his fictions, charmed moonwalker
Now frozen in the crescendo of his song

Many selves of lyrics embodied, disembodied, re-embodied
Yield, ecstasies, like this flexible

Was this self yourself?
Was this other in order?
Was this self selfless in melting hearts with ghostliness?

He lived his fictions, died his reality
Somewhere like nowhere on the maps of motion

Archangel to many visions
He stands at the threshold of changing myths