“The Gods of Our Land”: A Nollywood Common Expression

By

Obododimma Oha

A common expression one hears in many Nollywood films focusing on indigenous Nigerian life is “The gods of our land.” One does not need to be an expert in African Traditional Religions to understand that this sounds like a local self-enslavement to the supernatural, or a kind of fatalism in which the divinities have the final say. In this case, human beings just leave their affairs in the hands of the supernatural, but we know as viewers that it is humans who eventually take the decisions on behalf of the unseen entities. If it is banishment pronounced by the “king” against a widow accused of witchcraft, or an abomination pronounced by the chief priest, it is all in the service of “the gods of our land,” or it is “the gods of our land” who have “spoken.” The innocent widow has to be banished, chased out of the community, by a rabble that cannot think on their own. So, in this essay, I briefly look at how humans mortgage their interests with their expression or acts attributed to unseen divinities. What does this imply for human society in its relationship with the supernatural? I consider the interpretation of human actions as the action of the supernatural and how this makes the society susceptible to tyranny.

The expression, “the gods of our land,” first of all points to a triadic relationship: humans relate with humans, but they are not alone. As in many African situations, the world of humanity is seen as being intertwined with that of the supernatural which is populated by gods, goddesses, as well as other divinities. As I pointed out in another blog essay, the supernatural that are privatized or attached to the community are means of constructing identity and may even be weaponized. The primary role they play is to protect the community (since they belong to it) against another. But we know that when they fail in this role, they could be replaced. Chief priests as spiritual merchants may recommend and install other deities as being more responsive and powerful. Do you blame the local people? The deities are not just there to consume sacrifices but cannot make one community win a war against another. They have to transform into shells, fighters and bombers and even light weapons. They have to fight the enemy at the spiritual battlefield.

This then means that a deity could be transplanted, and as such, there is really no indigenous deity, no “gods of our land.” The postmodifier, “of our land” is just because their conscription or new identity for the moment. “Gods of our land” could become “gods of their land” and it is always “them versus us.” That is to say that the divinities have a social identity that is tentative. Communities that insist on permanent social identities for deities are disadvantaged.

The expression also makes community logic very prominent. In that relationship I talked about earlier, they are privileged, in the sense that they are the final arbiters. The members of the community must defer to them in everything. But there is a contradiction! Whether through the Afa divination (Ifa in Yoruba) or through the mouth of the king, the pronouncement deploys the human to be actualized. That is, it is the human that decides, deploys their logic, in deciding a case!

This has serious consequences!

First, consequences for the deities: errors or right actions could be attributed to them.

Second, humans could very easily smuggle in their own sentiments and claim that  such are the wills of the deities. Don’t tell me that they cannot do this! They can and sometimes do. They can smuggle those in so to feature human wickedness as divine action, since they know that naïve members of the community would swallow every spittle that is labelled as the gods’.  

The second above creates room for tyranny. People already enslaved to the supernatural can easily be mentally manipulated and deceived. They can easily do anything that they are told, since the directive is supposedly from “gods of our land.” In that line of thinking, they can submit to the worst form of leadership in the world, in the name of doing the wills of “the gods of our land.”

Now, the expression also represents the fatalistic logic of the community as one source of the community’s problem.  The community cannot possibly develop beyond its fatalistic logic. The logic is its norm. The logic is its future. Really, it has no future. If it has a future, it means it has to change its system of thinking – and, inevitably, “the gods of our land.”

Anytime I hear “the gods of our land” while watching a Nollywood film, one of the things that come to my mind is that the film is in a genre of traditionalism in which the bad could be the good. Although not all films in the genre surrender human logic to culture, it is often the case that the arbiters are above our heads and we are invited not to bring our logic with us. The “gods of our land” will have the final say, even if they are pursuing injustice. That may be part of the war they are conscripted to fight!

Many may be enjoying the film (as superstition can be so commodified), but I am worried that populations are exposed to a dangerous ideology: they are made to believe that they can suspend their own logic as community members in discourse, and depend rather on a ready-made thinking that may be against their interest really. That imposition, too, may come from “the gods of their land.”

Village-square Wisdoms and Facebook Pugilisms.

By

Obododimma Oha

I like sharing Igbo proverbs on Facebook  and one of the challenges I face in doing so is to negotiate audience beyond those who can read and understand the language. Of Course, I mostly use standard Igbo, but even if my primary intention is celebrate Igboness or Igbo thought in language. I am aware of the fact that not many of the present speakers of the language can read it. Readership of a language like Igbo is still very low, some quarreling with the variety of Igbo used or the orthography. Well, the most important thing is that I have to get many people (Igbo or non-Igbo) to celebrate the proverb. And in getting many to appreciate the sharing, I find the need to translate it into English, which remains dominant on the Internet. Perhaps in widening the audience (hopefully) through English, I also get many non-Igbo to appreciate Igbo thought in proverbs! Other things I am able to achieve are:

(a)   Commenters provide variants of the proverb in their own languages or cultures, further assisting my learning of other languages, dialects, and cultures.

(b)   Commenters make observations on the translation of the proverb and may offer better translations.

(c)    I inadvertently mount a Focus Group Discussion, actually coming close to the idea of the use of Facebook as a context of research.

I know that Facebook is many things to many of its users.

(a)   It may be understood as a playground. As a playground, it may have bullies. Some may like to bully others through useless argument or argument for argument-sake, even when they have realised the sound points that others are making. They may just wrestle with the other, for the sake of displaying their intelligence (which amounts to their idiocy!).

The bullying could be in various forms. They may bully the other through tortuous reasoning. In this case, they are merely taking the other in a Tom-and-Jerry race round the house, breaking things and breaking relationship networks.

They may choose to bully the other through language, especially professional variety that isolates the other, or makes the other a stranger to the new world of knowing. It may be a profession that likes sprinkling latinisms on the English text. OK, you are using English but you can’t understand me. You won’t understand me. Learnedness requires an initiation through language. You are an outsider, therefore a non-knower. A non initiate. It may even be post-structuralist language. You are simply alienated again, even in the periphery of peripheries. There is a difference between those who have mastered this language and those who are tied to porous peripheral expression. It is English but not the same English, my friend!

Well, the bully can bruise your nose because it is hide-and-speak, even if the person armed with an android and is online is a mere beggar, literally. But the bully can bruise your image in many other ways: it may be just to undermine your fellowship of friends – make some begin to dislike you. You have been bruised. You have bought it cheaply! Yes, at the playground where a fight can be a play because the very teeth the dog uses in fighting are the ones it uses in playing. No other. It doesn’t go borrowing other harmless teeth!

So, be careful when you are on this playground. Maybe you shouldn’t be here and do not know how to be here. Maybe you still have your physical reality, your importance, all around you. Look, ilo Facebook, as Pa Ikhide calls it, does not recognise your “sir.” One reptile somewhere (or even a virus) can throw sand at you or into your eyes. This ilo Facebook could be a leveller. You get into problems when you want to bring your real-world conditions into this virtual ilo!

(b)   Of course, I have not forgotten that ilo Facebook could be and has been used by some as a marketplace. Sellers and buyers. Sellers of buyers. Buyers of sellers. But like any marketplace, you need to de-babelize; the buyers and the sellers have to understand the transaction fairly well.

(c)    It is in this comprehension of transaction that my proverb lore is smuggled in. Oh, smuggled in? It must be a contraband that Customs Service is sniffing around for along Lagos-Benin highway in Nigeria! And sometimes, it is seen as one. You have to see us and the road before your lorryload of proverbs can  pass!

 Generally, the sharing of proverbs to friends who could be from different cultures and languages could be seen as an infringement on their right or desire not to be imposed upon, what more when the proverb is understood as a symbol of identity or pride. You see, Facebook as part of social media helps advocacy. Political advocacy. Human rights advocacy. Language advocacy. Cultural advocacy. Religious advocacy. Et cetera. In this case, proverbs from a given language or culture may be shared to a group or friends as a way of advancing a common interest or a targeted interest. It is placed in our faces or gaze where we can see it! So, it easily becomes an imposition to those not interested!

(d)   Of course, as noted earlier, the ilo is also a context of research. I could turn my writing on proverb lore on Facebook into a survey, either asking a question directly and using the comments or supply a link to my survey instrument. To make it brief, while some are bullying and giving the other a red nose, I am carefully collecting my data.

But, let me return to the issue of sharing proverbs (created by the sharer or taken from a  culture). Is the sharing of a proverb or of any material not an argument? If it is specifically a proverb, I must have constructed or presented myself as a kind of revered knower. Indeed, every person is gifted with the ability to think, to produce thought that is considered profound. No proverb has come from Heaven; it is part of the software installed into the human head at creation. It is an evidence that we can think, and tied to our signifying system. Indeed, we share something with our Maker and should give it full attention. When I share proverbs, therefore, as part of the polyglossic nature of my medium, I am doing something with knowledge with people. I am presenting myself as a knower and inviting others to that deeper part of our signification.

When there is the credit and testimonial (maybe of cultural origin of the proverb), this presentation of the source as thinker is advertised. It is a group that is the author or it is used in building up the image of the group. This is not that bad, anyway. Did anyone prevent you from presenting that of your group, so that the local will forever have a presence in the global? Did anyone debar you from being able to read your own very language? Look at you asking for a translation! Into English! So that forever the imperialist can argue its relevance: “You see, I am the imperialist but the unifying factor!” United through deprivation. A Justification of colonisation! And by the way, your ancestors waited for the colonialist to look for an orthography and to start writing your local language for you!

So, I may be helping the linguistic other to understand the proverb that I have shared on Facebook, but I am not really helping the other. Maybe I am helping so that the grave would be deeper and more challenging. Maybe I am helping mental laziness through translation. Maybe I am fighting on the side of the colonizer without knowing it!

When next I share and translate Igbo proverbs on Facebook into English, think about that help that I must be giving you at the playground, whether it is not a red nose!

A Father’s Language of Hatred; a Mother’s Language of Love

By

Obododimma Oha

There is an Igbo children’s playtime song that identifies a father’s attitude as being remarkably different from that of a mother in terms of the delay in the father’s display of affection, even though both may be clear attempts to show that their agents care (not all fathers are guilty of delayed affection or display of lack of love and not all mothers show love to their children as assumed in that folksong). The song, which is also a game, goes this way:

Nne na-enye mgbe o ji agụ m o

Nne na-enye mgbe o ji agụ m 

Ma nna na-enye m ọ-gụbiga

ọ gụbiga o were wetaya o!

(Mother gives me when I hunger for it

Mother gives me when I hunger for it

But father gives after-the-hunger-has-died-down

When the hunger has died down he brings it)

Well, you can see that mothers are in favour and do carry the day. In the child’s consciousness (he or she may grow up with this brainwashing!), the mother is, comparatively speaking, idealized as more caring than the father. Her show of love is not delayed! But the father delays his. Maybe he is weighing things. Maybe he wants the child to have it maximally. Maybe there are other reasons; not mere poor attention.

David G. Maillu’s novella, Dear Daughter, an East African publication, demonstrates this this difference between paternal response to a serious domestic issue, and a maternal type, in an interesting epistolary narrative. The four letters that constitute the narrative (from the father to his daughter, from the mother to her daughter, from the daughter to her mother, and from the daughter to her father) are like the moves in an interaction, according to Malcolm Coulthard’s structuring of classroom discourse (Initiation, Response, and Follow-up).  But the exchange is not exactly as in Coulthard model. There is a response from the daughter, Juliet Kamuya, to her father, Obadia Kivelenge, but is delayed (as a way of building suspense), so that it becomes the last letter. Maybe the absence of her father’s response, more than an authorial handling of plot, indicates that there is nothing to respond to, that her allegations are indubitable! It may also be a dignified silence (an indication of fear, that this may open more cans of worms).

Dear Daughter is surprising, right from the outset, because there is nothing endearing in the father’s first letter to her. There is rather a deliberate attempt to make her get hurt in the type of language used. Her father  does not hide this weaponization of language in his letter, even though there is that irony in his opening, “Dear Daughter.” Is he just following a stereotype in letter writing opening or trying to make her realize the demise of endearment? Maybe so. In his letter to her (for which he would not want any reply), he disowns her quite clearly:

(1)    If you were my child, you would have tried to live like my child and kept up the standard of morality in my home. Go away, I don’t know you (p. 10)

And much later, also says:

(2)    No, no, no, Kamuya, you are not a child from my blood. Possibly your mother conceived you with another man either through rape or by agreement (p.12)

His intention to hurt her, the goal he is pursuing,  is made clear right at the beginning:

(3)    If you find this letter bitter, and I intend it to be so to you, you should also try to see why, being your father, I am driven into being furious like this. And I want you to keep it in that your small raw head that I do not get any pleasure out of writing to you. I am even going against my will and committing a sin in doing so. (p.7; underlining mine).

The endearment then cancelled out, he proceeds to unleash his venom in language, even to the point of being vulgar. The following are some of the expressions with very offensive meanings in his reference to his daughter who has become pregnant before marriage:

(4)    A devil

(5)    A living evil spirit which took shelter in my home

(6)    Your evil mouth

(7)    A wild child, too difficult to be loved

(8)    A prostitute

(9)    A sensual pig itching in the anus to be fertilized by all the dogs of the village

(10)A female child of mine who has thought it in order to piss on my Bible

(11) An adulterous evil-filled person

(12) A sheep that would wound you one day or a dog that would bite you one day

(13) ... you prowled through the village with your legs wide apart with the result that you got yourself impregnated.

The hate in him, as revealed by these expressions, is undisguised. We are not even surprised that the reply from Juliet is delayed. Wouldn’t she do some thinking and decide whether to use an equally hurtful language (i.e. letting him taste his own medicine) or not? The reply can wait. Good thinking in the plotting. One is even reluctant to cite the examples above, but for the need for evidence.

Obviously, Odadia Kivelenge wants to create a distance between him and his daughter in language, not just physically driving the poor girl away from his house. The offensive expressions are face-threatening clearly, particularly her fellowship face, the desire to be included or to be seen as an insider. She is labelled, a prostitute, an evil spirit or its agent, and even animalized. In fact, the animals in the metaphorization are culturally despicable ones – pig, dog, sheep! This is an obvious way of saying: “Please, avoid her! We are not surprised to read the impending doom he has predicted for her:

(14)What devil had courted your mother for your birth? The world would witness the ruination of your life. And I want you to die alone wherever you will die (p.9)

Yes; his use of language shocks and we can’t help wondering what kind of father he is. But we should not be much surprised for it all springs from his idea of love for offsprin. He writes:

(15)To me, to love a child is to give him food, a home, and education. Whatever else above that is a demand too big for me to meet (p. 16). Nsogbu dịkwa (There’s a huge problem, you could exclaim in Igbo, if you know the street language).

Unlike Obadia Kivelenge who has allowed his religious fundamentalism and his difficult personality to overtake him in his affection for his daughter, his wife shows good understanding for the poor girl’s condition and the unborn baby who has not offended anyone by wanting to come into the world. She, in her letter, avoids her husband’s kind of offensive language, shows her pregnant daughter that she cares, and encourages her to rise above her situation, instead of thinking that she is ruined and finished. Hers is the use of language as a balm, not as a weapon, unlike her husband.In fact, we witness this right from the beginning of her letter. Unlike her husband who addresses the girl as just “Dear Daughter, “  her own is “My dearest daughter,”dearest child, “ and “dear child.” What a clever way to disarm her and to reassure her? It is clear that she tries to draw closer to her to make her feel loved, and to ask her to minimize this psychological distance created. She writes:

(16)First of all as your mother I embrace you with lots of greetings, concern and love. And this, dear daughter, I am doing in tears. Your absence from this home is something like your death  to me. If only I could see you for a minute and touch your head! It is my hope that you are well, and if you are well, I am still anxious about your health and state of mind (p. 19).

Juliet draws his father’s attention to this refusal to provide that psychological power of love, that welcome and healing from parent:

(17) But I fell into grief and even you, my true father, cannot console me!Never mind, the world will console me. An orphan calf soon learns to live on grass and stand on its own. Life must be lived, be it bad or good. ....Father, I expected some understanding from you.... (p. 53).

Private letters, tenor-marked,  give the impression that they are strictly for a specific audience, even when fabricated or written as a literary rhetoric. Well, but those privacies may be undermined when cross-reference or quotation (as evidence) is made. Today, is the letter written many centuries ago by Paul to the people of Corinth not read in a Nigerian church as if the writer is just one General Overseer at Cannanland, Ota. Juliet refers to her father’s offensive letter in her reply to her mother. And that is for a good reason:

(18)I do not know whether you are aware of the letter that father wrote to me. It seems as if he is just as hot in the head as he always was. The letter was very mean and nasty. Many people would have burnt it immediately, but I didn’t.  I want to kept it as a piece of history and perhaps when my child has grown up I will show him the kind of letter his grandfather wrote to me after learning that I was pregnant. It is actually very difficult for me to understand father – very difficult. (p. 34)

Yet, she would not want her father to know that she has been communicating by letter with her mother (and discloses to her that she has replied her father); her mother wants a minimal distance; her father wants the maximal! She is her confidante (as many mothers would) but he is her terrorist, pretentious fanatic, and hypocrite, both in language and in action. In fact, in her reply, in which she avoids insulting him back but confronts him with the facts, she draws his attention to how his offensive language amounts to deliberately pushing her away:

(19)Father, if you thought it in order to call me a sensual pig instead of telling me, at least, something to back a little hope to me – then I wonder, what I am in your eyes! Father, you were my only hope on earth besides my mother. I had been thinking I had a home when things went wrong , I could come for shelter. ... I didn’t know what it felt like to have no father. Now I do. And I tell you father, it is not easy for me to live like a child who has no father, when I know that my father is still alive somewhere....  (p. 46)

Juliet, in her reply to his letter, responds to the offensive references in (4) to (13) above, showing how each does not truly capture her dispositions. The root of the problem is her gender difference, her education or father’s investment in her, a purely economic thing. Even her pregnancy is a man’s opportunistic sexual exploitation of a young girl deceived into believing that the young man, who has gone for further studies in the United States, would marry her. Indeed, she is torn between disappointments in the hands of two selfish men!

Although Juliet tries not to use the same offensive language of hate deployed by her father in his letter, he nevertheless reveals to him (if it would shock him) that she is aware of the following misdeeds of his:

(a)    Impregnation of a girl early in life and refusing to marry her (the daughter of Luusa) and many other girls that came his way;

(b)   His promiscuous love affair with Nziva, a barren widow; and

(c)    What happened to his first wife!

As we would expect from a normal human being, she does not hide her objection and feeling to the father’s offensive language, especially the denial of her paternity:

(20)Why did you think I am not a child from your blood, and that, possibly, my mother was raped by a drunkard who should have fathered me? What a statement! Did you have  to write any  vomit that came into your mind?You did not even try to choose the right word to write to me.If my mother was raped by any drunkard at all, that drunkard was you because I look like you! (p.55)

It is indeed a vomit, no matter where it has come from! Her reasoning about the drunkard being her father is well in order, her evidence verifiable. But what is particularly important is that she is teaching Obadia her father what he should know: a loved one or loving one is absent in his choice of language in his letter. Relatives writing to relatives or friends writing to friends try to be present lovingly in the language they use. It is from this language they can imagine them and construct a good or loving relationship. Hard formality, distancing , or hurtful remarks erase loving presence from these intimate forms of communication. A wife who receives a letter from her husband is right in looking for him in his choice of words, and vice versa.

Interestingly, Juliet’s closing address indirectly accuses him and leaves him with regret. She concludes by identifying herself as “Your loving daughter”! Which love is still there, you could ask. Well, she still loves her father. What is obvious in her attitude and reply is that she tries not to respond in a way to warrant him hanging on a justification that she is, indeed, a bad daughter, but gives him a surprise through a different style to make him live with regret.

Reference

Maillu, David G. 1976.Dear Daughter. Nairobi: Comb Books.

A Plagiarized Poem

By

Obododimma Oha.

Next level
Of hardship
Of pain
Of death

Next level
Sorry
Next devil
Sorry
Next evil

Now you know
When government farts
You say God bless you
When opposition farts
It is terrorism

And I tell you
I don't know how and when and where
To end
This plagiarized poem...

Seeing Fiction as Fiction: Nollywood and Our Unfortunate Superstitious Selves

By

Obododimma Oha

One had an encounter with the reach and power of Nollywood films while on a taxi at Legon, Ghana.  The feeling that Nollywood may have gripped the whole of West Africa, and even the deep South of Southern Africa, may first sound like a mere speculation, but while in that conversation with my cheerful taxi driver at Legon, I had to start thinking about it seriously. The taxi driver’s observation stimulated my mind to race from Plato’s theory of mimesis through Abrams’ The Mirror and the Lamp to the folk contribution made by my ancestors in the form of the proverb, “Ka e jiri nwamkpi maa atụ, a sighị agụ buru ya” (That a he-goat is used in citing an example, is not to suggest that the leopard should devour it). The taxi driver said: “Chei, you Nigerians could be bad, very bad”! I was shocked at his boldness and forthrightness, but summoned courage, between anger and curiosity, to ask him why he said so. “Don’t you see what you do in your films? Heartless killings here and there! Many rituals involving human beings! Charms, even among educated people!” I laughed and laughed and laughed. At a stage, he did not know whether I had gone insane or I was laughing at his  driving or whether he had said something funny. As far as he was concerned, he was certain about what he just said and could cite a couple of Nollywood films to support his claim. I  reassured him that he was driving well and that what he said could be seen as the street perspective, but that I looked at it differently. I told him that a Nollywood film involving human ritual and killing was mere fiction, and was like the fiction of Efua Sutherland’s Edufa. However, people get carried away while watching the film, and may think they are watching real-life occurrence! Well, he was surprised, just as I was. I thought that, maybe, he felt that I said that to defend or protect Nigeria, since I was a Nigerian being flogged  in a clean taxi by a Ghanaian, and must be looking for a way of escaping!

But the encounter narrated above set me thinking about how many people who watch Nollywood films may be thinking that fiction is reality and that the situations in the films may, in some way, affect our behaviours, especially fears for our safety in a Nigerian world. Could it be that, in consuming these films that feature superstitions, we unconsciously become more and more superstitious so that reality begins to mimic fiction (instead of the other way round)? How does the frequent consumption of these films on rituals affect our interpersonal or even inter-group behaviours? I think that this demands a well-planned study, with a sensitive experimental design, or at least, a correlation, for I am beginning to speculate, like my Accra taxi driver, that these films may be injecting a behaviour into us, consolidating fears, dividing families, and setting one group against another through their simple metanarrative of seeing is believing!

But this may be a simplistic way of looking at the problem. Why, in the first place, do some film makers go for scripts that present these ritual killings and superstitions? First, they are businesspeople. They could just be exploring and exploiting what the audiences (or customers) might predominantly prefer. If two million (ignorant) people are led to believe that what they are watching is reality, or satisfies what they prefer to watch, good for the business. Who cares about cultural nationalism and patriotism? African cultures are a huge carcass and businesspeople (and not vultures) can feed on it to their liking!

In other words, the focus of the films is based on the film-makers’ study of the market: its preferences, desires, and what constitute a hot hamburger! There maybe, of course, newcomers who want to rush in there, to have a piece of the hot hamburger.

But, as one Igbo proverb says, “Ewu nụ na ibe ya amụọla, ọ n’akaghị aka,” (When a goat hears that her colleague has littered, she would go into premature labour). Goats of Nollywood (Is that too hard?) may rush in because one Nollywood film-maker has made a great success with a ritual film. But, as another proverb says, “Oke soro ngwere maa mmiri, ọ kọọ ngwere, ọ ga-akokwa oke?” (if the rat joins the lizard in dancing in the rain, when the lizard gets dry, would the rat get dry?). Of course, many newcomers dancing with Mr. Lizard in the Nollywood rain are shivering with cold!

Further, apart from this search for a fertile ground, there is also the exploration of aspects of local culture, to maintain friendship and grip on the African cultural market. As businesspeople, major Nollywood film-makers should know how to maintain their territory. Some businesses have territories; even airlines have their routed which are rooted in divide-and-pocket. Nollywood film-makers may be negotiating territorial control through exploration of "sellable" stories.

Some film-watchers in Nollywood that are already carried away by what Hollywood features predominantly may not like this. Those submerged in high crime (of the Al Caponne type), or lady in trouble delivered by a cowboy who is a stand-up guy, science fiction explorations of space and crime fighting that is exemplary, may be looking for some reinvention in Nollywood to accommodate their interest. Major Nollywood film-makers looking for a way of doing something different in a crowded market, might start engaging some aspects notable in Hollywood, which entails crossing of territory or inevitably being swallowed up by major Hollywood marketers through patronage and repurchase.

Fiction will remain fiction in the film industry and may end up becoming one way of measuring the cognition of backward societies – those still living in the Hobbesian state of nature and could easily mistake fiction as reality, opinion as fact.

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.