Star of David, Lead the Way

By

Obododimma Oha

Come, Star of David! Rest on every life
Even the lives that try to end other lives!
Even the lives that detest other lives!
Even the lives that think they own other lives!
Come, shed your light into that darkness!
Come, Star of David!

Come, lead these travellers
To the crib, the beginning of beginnings!
Come, lead the way!
Show the way!
Star of David, lead the way!
Lead the way out of dark times.

Pericomo's Dilemma+

By

Obododimma Oha

Mụ na elu; mụ n’ala!

Mụ na ọsọ; mụ na ije!

Mụ na ndee; mụ na ndee!

Mụ na Aso Rock; mụ na Ojuelegba!

Mụ na AU; mụ na UN!

Mụ na America; mụ na Africa!

Mụ na ndị amị; mụ na ndị ọchịchị nkịtị!

Mụ na ndee; mụ na ndee!

(The heights versus I; the depths versus I!

Running versus I; walking versus I!

This group versus I; that group versus I!

Aso Rock versus I; Ojuelegba versus I!

AU versus I, UN versus I!

America versus I; Africa versus I!

The army versus I; civilian rulers versus I!

This group versus I; that group versus I!

+Poem incorporated into a blog article and forthcoming.

E Leta A Ghara

By

Obododimma Oha

Many highlife musicians in Nigeria are not just entertainers of millions of local people, but also social philosophers on whose thoughts these people try to model their lives. In the Igbo context in those days, was it Chief Osita  Osadebe’s “Ndi Ochonganooko” or Joe Nez’s “Onye ma echi, onye ma ụwa?”Many people in the context listened to these songs and found their ways through life understood as a kind of battle! The late Oliver Akanite (Oliver de Coque) also taught a lot of lessons through his numerous songs. E Leta A Ghara (also written as “Eleta Aghara") was his own theory on tolerance. The song (crafted as call-and-response) went thus:

Oyị na oyi na-aga ọfụma .....E leta a ghara!

Di na nwunye na-ebi n’udo....Kwa eleta a ghara!

(A friend and a friend move on well ... E leta a ghara!

A husband and a wife live in peace .... Indeed, E leta a ghara!

.....

In the theory, we just try to overlook weaknesses in others, not that we like them or that they are not there to make us uncomfortable. In a sense, allowing what we do not like gives us a higher moral advantage. Yes; it makes us better people.

And when we are better, then, we can put others right. But if we return evil for evil, weakness for weakness, is badness not winning? E leta a ghara is our victory already! When we can only teach what we know and give what we have, not what is exactly what we oppose! Unless we approve of what we oppose, which is a great contradiction in terms. So, E leta a ghara.

From family to public life, we wrestle with the objectionable, always. We have to become practitioners of E leta aghara in order to carry on with life at these various levels. We must come face-to-face with something we do not like and must deal with it, everywhere! In dealing with it, we must try to be on the winning side of E leta a ghara. 

Indeed, one is being asked to accept the very difficult in that theory! That is also an irony!

Having pointed these general of ethics in the theory out, let me just pay some homage to my discipline. I will comment on its structure and link that comment to ethical issues already noted. In E leta aghara, the pronominal “E” could be anyone and has no gender. The “o,” “a,” “e,” and “ọ” in Igbo and other local Nigerian languages luckily hide the gender of referents, so that speakers cannot be accused of making a gender more visible than the other. Unlike English, these languages cannot express a given gender as the norm while the other is a mere deviant! So, in Eleta a ghara, both male and female are in focus (in no particular order)! This genderlessness that applies to “E” in E Leta a ghara is also applicable to the pronominal “a” in the sequence.

One also has to say something  about the internal parallel structure of

E leta

A ghara

(X Y

X Y)

that contributes in making the expression memorable and crisp to be ear. There is something that is in parallel structures (whether internal or external) that helps their aesthetic outlook! They are reiterative patterns and are therefore simple and could be handled easily so that one does not bite one’s tongue in the regular craft! Also, they look natural and make the texts friendly to users.

Is that theory or social philosophy not an important counsel? Should it not be helped or embellished structurally  so that it would be accepted easily by its receivers and live long enough in the memory?

This retention in the memory becomes intensified whenever that song is played, especially by lovers of good-oldies and evergreens that are sold in CDs in special videa shops.

Yes; E leta a ghara, if the president locks the citizens up but remains with the ex-colonial master to look after his life! E leta aghara if security agents are running after that fellow carrying a bag of rice and cocking their guns. E leta ghara when security agents round up artisans and accuse them of being Boko Haram terrorists unless they are able to produce any acceptable identities to show  that they are helpless and law-abiding citizens. E leta a ghara if citizens wake up every day to expect the worst, or that new heartless laws would be implemented. E leta a ghara when democracy turns out to be the worst form of military government practised by any human society.

When God Speaks Nigerian Pidgin

By

Obododimma Oha

One interesting evidence to show that human beings want to make God in their own image could be seen in the type of communication given to Him in our discourses. Not only is God, a non-human, given a human language, He could be made to speak a human language (I hope He speaks and understands all!) and favours a particular language! It is the particular language in which He is said to have made a given revelation, which He has symbolically assumed to have chosen as His (just as He chose a particular race!) and which we have to venerate as  a "special language" of worship. That shows you our desperate attempt at linguistically characterizing Him as burdened with the excess luggage of our sentiments!

OK , I am using English in this discourse and therefore referring to the antecedent "God" as "He," even graphologically beginning the animate, non-human, pronoun with capital. Maybe, I am afraid, secretly and my letters betray me! Maybe I think that a small case in a "God-pronoun" is downgrading or denigrating. Maybe I already identify my God as literate in a given language and able to decipher gestures and stylistics of graphetics!

Having inherited a religious tradition in which God has to be linguistically revered, I should consistently assign Him a high variety of language and not a low one. He is mighty and the human language that He speaks should equally be mighty! So, when God descends from His linguistic height to speak a variety of language associated with common folks, a fanatic should begin to get worried! Yes; this is my story: I heard Jesus and His disciples speaking Nigerian Pidgin in a CD on the Passion of Christ playing from a video shop in Ibadan, and I was worried. Oh, dear Jesu, dem don finish you! Fada, try forgive dem, for dem no sabi wetin dem de do!

I heard that one Nigerian Christian singer, Chuks Ofojebe, sometime ago sang that Jesus in Africa has to enter the canteen, relax and get ready to be served eba. And He has to eat it with His naked fingers! Jesus in Africa must be African and must be Africanized in every aspect.

So, when Sam Ezugwu recently released a Christian praise song, "Come Make We Thank Our God," in Nigerian Pidgin, one was excited. Seeam here! 

It seems that Heaven has eventually recognized the language of common people in Nigeria; it seems that God now speaks their variety of language, and may go beyond signification to begin to fight for them.

No mind dem, O Lord!

Talk Pidgin!

Carry go!

Make you fight for us!

You also fit getam for YouTube.

A Conversation on Indigenous Knowledge

By

Obododimma Oha

Indigenous knowledge, simply understood as a type of insight which insiders possess and which has been working for them for a long time, reminds me about one thing: there are diverse forms of knowledge; in fact, can talk of “knowledges”. There are other cogent things, namely:

(1) these extant forms of knowledge, shaped by the different dimensions from which groups look at life, are players in the global village square, which I could follow someone like Ikhide to call, from Igbo lexicology, the “ilo;”

(2) the forms of knowledge present at the ilo enter into some relationship, and this leads them to compete for space or to collaborate;

(3) the forms of knowledge present at the ilo, as they compete or collaborate, suggest to me that I have to be careful in selecting which form would influence my life;

(4) In being careful in selecting forms of knowledge, I realize, too, that the ilo is a kind of classroom of life, and thus, it is foolish to model one’s life by anything one hears in that classroom;

(5) one thing is clear: as these forms of knowledge compete for dominance or collaborate, my  life skills developing is partly dependent on how I relate with them;

(6) quite inevitable are the agents of these forms of knowledge, and , along this line of thinking, it would be lopsided if I can only quote  Asian and European  thinkers and forget that my ancestors are also also thinkers worth citing once in a while; and

(7) along the line mentioned in (6) above is the indubitable fact that my parents are my first and memorable professors who have played a great role in helping me to understand life and what is happening at the ilo.

Let us look at these, very briefly. First, its naming here and there. It is popularly called “indigenous knowledge” or IK, for short. Indigenous because it is seen as being tied to that local context or does work there! But, of course, it may have been borrowed. When culture meets culture, they should be humble enough to hold a conversation. In that conversation, each should be willing to learn and gain from the other. Each of us brings something to the table. Now that I have lived in the heart of Yorubaland for many years and one of the subjects of Olubadan, am I to to tell my kinsfolk that I will retire and come back to them without some Yoruba culture with me? If I have somebody that I have interacted with, is there nothing that I have learned or used in consolidating my learning with from the person at all? If there is nothing, then the interaction is a waste of precious time! So, “indigenous knowledge” may be informed or energized  by knowledge from the outside. Chinua Achebe tells, in his Arrow of God, that each time the reverend father and Ezeulu met in the former’s obi and conversed, there was mutual respect, and although none succeeded in converting the other, each left a better person!

Further, we often think of conflict in this relationship of the inside and the outside. But it could also be complementary and cooperative. The conflicting, an attempt at being the only  one reigning, is just primitive. Indigenous knowledge should actually be multivoiced, indeed multidimensional. This does not mean that it does not speak to context and about context. It liberates context in that one basket of singularity!

Because I am face-to-face with diversity at the ilo, the village square of discourses, I have to be wary in not only seeking primitive homogeneity, but also in not thinking that the one from the outside is my only hope, my only future. It is important that I recognize the various “classrooms” available to me from the culture of my starting point, and pay due homage to my professors in the culture. Those “professors” do not have to wear the gown and the hood to be my teachers! In that case, it is regrettable if I miss any class or appear late while learning at their feet. They may not wield the cane, but I mus have lost something through my poor attitude to learning! That poor attitude, of course, first registers, in my preference, in thinking that, because, the professors have not donned the gown, the knowledge they dispense is worthless and the type dispensed at formal school preferable. No wonder my paternal grandfather in saying “Nkịta nyara akpa, nsị agwụ n’ọhịa” (When the dog hangs its bag, there would be no excrement left in the bush”) and thereby disallowing my father from attending formal school, was rightly worried. It is even getting worse: the hungry mad and wild dog now hangs its hunting bag and has cleared the bush of faeces! Don’t we like that? At least, there is less likelihood that we would step on exposed faeces if we are roaming the bush in our new pastoralism, following our cattle or goats about.

Let us get this very clear: as we quote thinkers from Asia to Europe and America or elsewhere in our writings, are we not displaying acceptable level of learnedness? Are we not lucky to contact these thinkers? But we should do well to cite our ancestors also, at least our parents who have encountered this life before we do. We should be fairly familiar with our local cultures and be able to cite them. Or are they not quotable?

Indeed, indigenous knowledge accuses me. And rightly, too. My knowledge, without it, is grossly incomplete.

Intersecting Roads

INTERSECTING ROADS

By

Obododimma


We meet
We meet to part
To continue
But we part
To meet again
Because we are part
Of the mysterious whole

We meet
To part
Only to meet
At the end of the tunnel.

Gate-keepers

By

Obododimma Oha

It should not be surprising that one takes interest in gate-keepers that we often find in films and plays. Gate-keepers could be very funny but nevertheless serious-minded. They could be awkward but clever, anyway. They could take all the blows, abused and battered, even by invaders. Gate-keepers are exposed in their small out-house and are subject to human and environmental relegation. They are ordinary folks and are required to mind their businesses, but could be useful to bigtime, big-house troubles.

I remember the gate-keeper in Shakespeare’’s Macbeth ironically suggesting to us that being at the gate after the king has been murdered in the big house inside is like being like the porter at hell’s gate. From him, we could see how sadness and joy are interwoven, and we try to laugh in-between our tears. That shows us that a gate-keeper is neither with joy or with sadness, and that these, flowing from happenings in the big house, affect gatelife significantly.

From porter of hellgate to film-show bashing of the gate-keeper, at least in Nollywood, we can understand the victimhood of the gate-keeper. The gate-keeper is uniformed, to mark his identity as anonymous (and is usually male, uniformed male!). The gate-keeper has to be costumed as anonymous, not just as male. Even that uniform needs to be funny. It should be pseudo-military; military but not quite! After all, the gate-keeper frisks visitors, but could be tied up easily by invading robbers and gun folks. So, that pseudo-military uniform is a fit; its wearer can only bark but not bite. Even if he holds a baton.

Let somebody from the big house desire to drive out; that “someone” would shout orders and the gate-keeper would tremble. Gate! And he acts accordingly. The gate has to fly open, or he buys the trouble. He won’t like it if the trouble is transferred to him. He won’t like it at all. So he opens wide the gate for trouble to pass!

Gate-keepers  get into trouble, sometimes due to what they have said that they should not have said. They get into trouble when they go beyond gatelife and enter the kitchen or living room. Their place and territory is at the gate, no more. But gate-keepers looking for trouble mess with the cook, the madam, the car, and sometimes the oga. In that case, they tend to forget their place and territory.

Oh foolishly wise people of the gate, when you morph to checkpoint hands, carrying guns and harassing travelers in the shithole, I shudder. Now that you will have your tollgates restored, is your lefthand collection not legitimized? It does not matter which thief wants to have a share of the loot or which thief wants to disadvantage which thief! Restore stealing points. That is the game. And the game is the foolish wisdom of gatelife.

When I see gate-keepers at checkpoints, I remember the Yoruba prankster god, Esu Elegba. He is settled and asked not to enter the main house. He stays at the gate, and when he is armed, I am sorry for those trying to pass his road-block! When Esu cocks his gun, somebody is finished.

It is risky to surrender the gate to Esu. Anybody that wants to pass and has to pass must submit to him. And to submit to him is unpredictable. Esu is the gate-keeper and anyone that wants to pass must see this security agent!