ktravula – a travelogue!

art. language. travel

How Not To Brush Your Teeth in America

Since I forgot to bring my toothpaste from Nigeria, I had to get to the supermarket earlier today to buy one. After about an hour of loitering around the aisle, pretending to know where to find what I was looking for, I finally summoned the courage to ask the cashier who promptly referred me to the right aisle. And there they were, hundreds of different brands of toothpaste. I was looking for only three names: Close-up, Macleans, or Colgate. I didn’t care for any of the others.

And as I bent down to look closer, there it was: Colgate.

toothpasteNo, I mean, there they were:

Colgate Total Whitening
Colgate Total Advanced Whitening
Colgate Total Advanced Fresh
Colgate Total Advanced Clean
Colgate Whitening Oxygen Bubbles
Colgate Total Mint Stripe
Colgate MaxFresh with Mouthwash Beads
Colgate MaxFresh with Mini Breath Strips
Colgate Cavity protection
Colgate Whitening Paste

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Right!

I went for Close-up instead.
Luckily, there was only one kind: CLOSE-UP Freshening Red Gel.

I didn’t know what the “Freshening Red Gel” stood for, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Abeokuta’s Living History

WP_20140410_040The history of Abẹ́òkuta and the Ẹ̀gbá people is tied around a gigantic rock formation, with the transatlantic slave trade that thrived in West Africa featuring at a tangential angle. As usual, there was a war. No actually, a couple of wars. According to known history, the Ẹ̀gbá people (consisting at that time of the Ẹ̀gbá Àgbẹ̀yìn, also known as the Ẹ̀gbá Proper/Ẹ̀gbá Aláké, who settled around Ake; the Ẹ̀gbá Òkè Ọnà who were a group of Ẹ̀gbá people who came from the banks of the (Odò/River) Ọnà; and the Ẹ̀gbá Àgúrá, also called the Gbágùrá. A fourth group that now completes the Ẹ̀gbá Quartet is the Òwu people, formerly residents of Ìbàdàn, who came much later) all migrated to this present place over time, and over several displacements from previous settlements due to inter-tribal skirmishes.

The most recent recorded displacement, according to Johnson’s The History of the Yorubas, was in 1830 when, after a civil war of sorts, fueled by mutual suspicion and unrest, made their continued stay among the Ibadan people unsafe for them.  They escaped into the bush (leaving a couple of their women/daughters behind, many of whom later married Ibadan war lords) and found solace in this current location, many miles south-west of Ìbàdàn, then just a farm of an Itoko man. They called it Abẹ́òkuta because of the presence of large rock heads which offered a semblance of protection. It would become a more concrete and practical bulwark against enemies during future wars with other neighbours, especially the Amazons of Dahomey (Now Benin Republic) who actually sent warriors to invade in 1846.

WP_20140410_027The Dahomeyan invasion is a story of its own, since it is one of the recurrent tales told to any visitor climbing to the summit of the Rock. The Ògùn river, stretching from north (in Saki) to south (the Atlantic Ocean) had for years brought people and goods into Abeokuta and neigbouring towns. But when war became inevitable, it likely also brought with it fighters from Dahomey many of whom were women (The Amazons). Written history has it that, because the invaders were masked, it took a while for the Ẹ̀gbá warrior elders to know that they were mostly females. When they did, they felt quite insulted. Oral history from Abẹ́òkuta citizens says that there were “many” of such wars with the warriors from Dahomey, but the History of Yorubas by S. Johnson said there was just one, an invasion of 1846. Mafoya Dossoumon, a Beninois friend of mine, verified the story of such “wars”, as he was told in his high school history books. The wars were not just with the Ẹ̀gbás but with a lot of towns and neighbouring nations. It was also quasi-slave-raiding, of course. Most most importantly, they were a warlike people who enjoyed fighting. There is an unstated irony, of course, in the fact that History as a subject has now been struck from textbooks in Nigeria. Expect more amnesia to follow.

The Olúmo Rock by default, and by reason of being the biggest and most remarkable rock formation around, became the chief refuge. It was a vantage point to spy on enemy lines, and the geological mascot of the new town. But because of earlier evolution of the Ẹ̀gbá societies as small townships without one central king or ruler, the nation never united under anyone person. The closest they got to that was under Sódẹkẹ́, a warrior under whose ceremonial leadership the nation settled down in the present day Abeokuta in 1830. Sódẹkẹ́ himself died in 1844, after many years of playing advisory and spiritual roles as the father of the new nation. Subsequent evolution of the town vested (informal) political primacy in the Ògbóni cults of spiritual elders rather than on the kings (or chiefs) crowned by the now four large Ẹ̀gbá subgroups: The Aláké, The Ọshilẹ̀, The Gbágùrá, and the Olówu.

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A darkly fascinating aspect of these migration and settlement patterns is the underlying presence of slave trade which – at that time – provided sufficient motive for most of the inter-tribal internecine wars. Spoils of the wars included not just herds of cattle but able-bodied men and women that were sold for a profit to the slave traders on the coast. Before 1820, according to Digital History, the number of Africans in the United States “outstripped the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of 3, 4, or 5 to 1.” They were slaves. But by the middle of the 19th Century, the Trans-Atlantic slavery was abolished by The British Empire and many of the Africans still in slavery, as well as those still on the waters, had to be accounted for. Those in the United States couldn’t come home, being “properties” of their owners. However, a number of them were already living free in England and other places. Plus a few others that recently got their freedom, they were put on a ship en route to the continent.

But since many of them couldn’t find their ways to their original homes where they were forcibly stolen as children, they headed to two locations on the West African coast set apart for that particular purpose. First was Freetown, a town in Sierra Leone founded by Britain as colony for emancipated slaves in 1787, and to Liberia (founded in 1822 by the American Colonization Society for the same purpose). Those people form what is known in Liberia as the America-Liberian people, and in Sierra Leone as the Sierra Leone Creole people. A number of them retained their Yoruba (and other ethnic names) names, while still carrying the Christian/English names that they had acquired from slavery through their masters. Most of them remained in these places, creating new generations and new identities. But there were a few who, after landing in these places, weren’t satisfied, and kept on seeking for the lost homeland.

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Take Daniel Olúmúyìwá Thomas, for instance – a man taken forcibly from his hometown in Ilesha while he was eight years old, and sold into slavery. His baptismal name, Daniel, and his adopted last name, Thomas, were names adopted in slavery. According to the account of his grandson in an authorized biographical book This Bitch of a Life (Carlos Moore, 2001), Felá Anikulapo Kútì narrated how, after being set free as a grown man, along with other returning slaves, Thomas embarked on a journey (most likely on foot) to return to his home village. He entered what is now Nigeria, but decided – on reaching Abeokuta – that he was no longer interested in making the rest of the journey (most likely just a few days more) to Ilesha. He settled in Abeokuta where he married and gave birth to modern Nigeria’s famous woman: Olúfúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome Kúti (born: 1900).

Another famous returnee from Sierra Leone was Andrew Desalu Wihelm, an evangelist and translator who – on discovering a chance to bring the CMS mission to Abeokuta, his home town, after spending most of his post-slavery adult life resettled in Sierra Leone, jumped at it. Along with Henry Townsend, a European Missionary, he returned to Abeokuta to preach the gospel and lay the foundation of the country’s very first church at Aké. But not all returnees became famous, nor did they all contribute in the same manner and form to the development of the new country, though many did become quite notable. A number of other returnees settled in many other parts of Nigeria, notably on Lagos Island, bearing names like Williams, Pinheiro, DaSilva, Savage, Lewis, Thomas, Crowther, Macaulay, George, Moloney, Boyle, Berkley, etc.

WP_20140410_056It is interesting, for me at least, to realize that around 1863, while the colonial government in Nigeria was consolidating its hold on their newly found colony, trying to settle the number of inter-tribal wars threatening to set the colony on fire, Abraham Lincoln, many miles across the sea was preparing his Emancipation Proclamation to set free 3.1 million (out of about 4 million) black people who, over three hundred years before, had become entrenched into the system of slavery. About twenty-three to thirty percent of those people, according to different estimates, came from Nigeria. We don’t know how many of those came from Abeokuta, but the legacy of wars around Yorùbá kingdoms during those times, and the proximity of South Western Nigeria to the Atlantic Ocean gives us an idea of the mix of people who today define the African American population.

…and the Caribbean population.

In one famous chapter in Wole Soyinka’s definitive memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn, the author found himself in a country town in Westmoreland, Jamaica, named Bẹ́kuta. Surprised at the close proximity of the town’s name to his own hometown Abẹ́òkutahe asked around. The town, like the author’s own hometown was surrounded by huge rocks in all places. After having run out of luck with the local population of young and modern citizens with no care in the world for why anyone would care about an old name, he eventually ran into an old woman who remembered why it was so called. The first residents of the town – freed slaves who worked as indentured workers – felt that only one name captured this place that reminded them of where they (or their ancestors) were captured from: Abẹ́òkuta, or later, Abẹ́kuta, and eventually Bẹ́kuta (and later, Kuta), all meaning the same thing: the town under the rocks. When the author returned to the town, the woman had died and no one else in the town had any memory of the stories from which the town’s name came. (A cursory online search shows that the memory of the story actually survived.)

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Visiting the original Abeokuta today, with nothing much left but a rustic town, a few colonial and traditional landmarks, and the tour guides from every step towards the summit of the Olúmọ Rock telling where the town has been, one walks again in the corridors of living history. The rock lies there still, in stoic silence, a witness to all that had transpired for centuries before. All the other connections are there in plain (and rock) sight.

____

All photos courtesy of the blogger. 

Edit (15th September, 2015): I’ve fixed some of the dead links in the post by referring to earlier instances of the articles via the WayBackMachine.

Update (13th October, 2015): This piece was recently “highly commended” at the 2015 CNN/Multichoice African Journalist Awards.

Learning about Nigerian Libraries

This was written in early 2020 and it was never published — in part because of the global pandemic that started shortly after, but mostly because it was supposed to be a private record of my trip to learn a bit more about the state of libraries and documentation in my country while I worked as a research fellow at the British Library in London. I’d always been fascinated by libraries and their role in the preservation and reinforcement of culture and history (Here’s one of my last visits to the best small library in America in 2010) so working at the BL brought many of my questions and curiosities to the fore. I went back to Nigeria to connect some dots that hadn’t yet made sense. I found the report in my drafts yesterday and I realised that it does stand alone as an important record. Still not satisfactory of all the queries I had then, it remains important as a guidepost to anyone else interested in the issues. Also, since then there have been some new private efforts in documentation in Nigeria, one of which is Archivi.ng, which gives me hope for the future.

***

I spent much of my time in Lagos between February 12 to March 1, 2020, learning about the library and archival culture in Nigeria. Until my fellowship began last September, I did not even know that there was a National Library in Nigeria, where it was located, or whether it was accessible for use. This was partly because I never looked, and also because — if it existed — enough work hadn’t been done to make citizens aware. 

When I was in high school, the closest ‘library’ around me was a private one, run by the Association of Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH) which owned the building in which it was located. They had made contact with my school as a way of introducing teenagers to information about reproductive health. So after school, we went to the building, where we could borrow books, spend some time in the reading rooms, join reproductive health clubs, and participate in a number of activities that complemented our learning in school. If there were public libraries in Ìbàdàn at the time — and my knowledge now shows that there were — I had no idea. At least in Ìbàdàn, there is a state library, a publicly funded library open to everyone. But it was centrally located and far from where my school was.

But on return to Lagos this February, I was more interested in learning about the National Library, which I believed would be the equivalent of the British Library in the UK — an organisation which collected all the books published in the country, which ostensibly had a record of all the books that have ever been published, had accessible reading rooms, and served about the same purpose as the BL does in the UK. 

Through social media, I found that there was an office located in Yaba in Lagos. So I drove there on February 21. It was located off Herbert Macaulay Road, in an alcove that made it easy to miss from the main road. Even the sign had been obstructed by a half-broken fence and an electric pole. Still, there it was. The compound was big enough to allow for parking. The building itself was spacious and the visit looked promising. Outside, by the fence, were a couple of students reading on small tables. 

At the National Library branch in Lagos

On my way in, I noticed shelves and cupboards placed outside, and in positions that suggested that some renovation was going on. This would be confirmed later. The Library was out of service on this day. Some renovation was going on that would not be complete for a few weeks. So only a few skeletal services were available. Even the director was not around. But I found two officers who would speak to me and answer some of my questions. 

One of the things I was curious about was Legal Deposit, the law that mandates that every book published in the country be sent to the National Library for keeping and archiving. I knew, by having read up on it (some links are online here, here, and here), that the law existed in Nigeria, but I didn’t know how it worked on the ground. I was also curious about how it was being implemented. 

In Nigeria, the law mandates at least three copies of books to be sent to the National Library in the state where the book was published. There are 27 branches of the National Library though more are being considered for the other states. The plan, according to the person who attended to me, was to have a branch in each of the 36 states in Nigeria. These three copies are then sent from the local branch to Abuja, the headquarters, where a bibliographic record is made, after which one of the copies of the book is retained in Abuja, one is sent to the Kenneth Dike Library at the University of Ìbàdàn, while the final one is sent randomly to any one of the 27 branches around the country. 

The Nigerian Legal Deposit law, it seems, stems from the fact that the Nigerian National Library is also the source of all ISBN numbers issued for books about to be published. This is not the same in the UK. So maybe the thinking is that publishers hoping to continue to get ISBN numbers will hold up their own part of the bargain by continuing to send in published books as required by law. I was surprised to find that, in spite of this, there are still some publishers who either forget or choose not to send in their required legal deposit. The woman who spoke to me said that there are some enforcement mechanisms to take care of this. Visits are often made to these publishers to remind them of their responsibilities.

So, because copies sent to the branches are selected randomly, no branch in the country has all the titles published that year. And none can boast of having copies even of the books published in the state. I found it interesting. I was also fascinated by the new discovery that the library in my alma mater, the University of Ìbàdàn — called Kenneth Dike Library — had copies of all the books published in the country since the establishment of the National Library in 1964 or even earlier. The suggestion was that even colonial legal deposit materials would be there. And so I arranged to visit it. But I was also interested in visiting the Ìbàdàn branch of the National Library, if only to compare the services, the environment, and the structure. I was also interested in at least making a connection, for the British Library, with the curators there.

At the National Library Branch in Ìbàdàn

The Ìbàdàn branch of the Library is at Iyaganku, across from the Customary Court of Appeals. It had a wider compound. The building used to be a residential house for one of the country’s earliest leaders and politicians. It was said that Anthony Enahoro once lived there. Even the compound of the Customary Court once hosted the second Premier of the Western Region, Chief Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá, who was murdered there during the first coup d’etat in January of 1966.

On the fence on my way in was the poster for an event that happened many months earlier inviting the general public for a sensitization workshop “on Legal Deposit Compliance and ISBN & ISSN”  Inside, after parking, I got in, and met a number of workers there who showed me the reading rooms, the storage rooms, and answered a number of questions I had about the challenges they have with running the place, attitudes of users, the state of libraries in Nigeria, and other things. They also asked me about the British Library, what I did there, and how to better create a collaboration between the two institutions.

The director wasn’t around on this day either, so I arranged to return, especially after seeing Kenneth Dike Library in Ìbàdàn.

At Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ìbàdàn.

KDL, as we often called it, is as old as the university itself. I had spent some time there as an undergraduate between 2000 and 2005. I just hadn’t known that it was also a library of archival records. Its role as a repository for all legal deposit materials was a revelation that I was interested in exploring.

Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ìbàdàn

I secured a meeting with the Head Librarian for a conversation. There was a strike action of non-Academic staff on the day I went there on February 25th, so she had some free time. We talked for almost an hour, some of which were productive. Mostly, she appeared either unfamiliar with the role of the Library as a legal depository for books from the National Library, or not understanding of my questions and follow-ups about where exactly one could find those books. The focus of the Library, she said, was on academic publications. Acquisitions are done only for publications that would help the students and professors in their research. All other materials — including fiction, history, or other “irrelevant” ones — are regularly pruned from the shelves to make way for these important ones. She also did not know much about colonial legal deposits, which I had been told at the Iyaganku branch of the National Library should also be in the holdings of the Kenneth Dike Library.

After a generally unhelpful conversation, I proceeded downstairs to speak to someone she had recommended had sufficient knowledge. This was Seun Obasola, who happened to have been my predecessor at the British Library as the Chevening Research Fellow. If the last hour had been frustrating, the next three were the opposite. Obasola, who had worked at the Library for over ten years, knew its ins and outs. She knew that KDL was, indeed, a repository for legal deposit materials from Abuja (and had an idea of where I could find them). She also admitted the already obvious fact that many people who currently work in, and occupy high administrative positions in, the Library might not always be the most knowledgeable about the location of many of its holdings. She pointed to me the storage areas where many archival and historical materials belonging to the Library from way back were stored, sometimes in terrible conditions. She is currently applying for an EAP grant to catalogue and digitize some of them. The sad fact, she said, was that there was just too much, and too little manpower. Thus, over time, materials just get piled up with no one knowing where they are or what to do with them. More funding, and more manpower would be very helpful. Not helped, also, is the fact that she herself was just about to begin another two-year fellowship in Canada, which may take her even farther from a place that needed her competence so badly.

Inside the KDL

It was a delight to hear that the catalogue records of KDL — at least of the materials that have been found and properly stored — was almost all available online through the online public access catalogue. Like the BLExplore page, one could search for any item in the KDL catalogue even without being on the physical premises. This is not the same for the Nigerian National Library, where manual cardboard catalogues are still being used. I was told that the Abuja office had an electronic record, but it just wasn’t online. It seemed unhelpful to think of a national library without a nationally-accessible catalogue, but that’s where we currently are. I have harboured the hope of one day meeting with the National Librarian, Professor Lenrie Ọlátòkunbọ̀ Àìná, whom I have been told is a progressive-leaning administrator, to discuss these questions. 

The Biggest Issues

It seems, from my experience during this visit, that the biggest issues in public library administration are funding allocation and management. 

The 2020 budget for the organisation was 2.9 billion naira (£6.12 million). This looks small compared to the annual budget of the British Library which is currently at £142 million but for what services it can offer in Nigeria, that is a lot. It is perhaps not efficient to have 27 branches (while aspiring to have 9 more). Current overhead costs are 227.9m naira (£480,965.24) which could probably be better used for acquisitions, digitization, storage, and other expenses. The capital expenses cost 1.6 billion naira (£3.37 million). From what I saw in Ìbàdàn and Lagos, which should certainly be the two most prominent centers apart from the HQ, that money is terribly spent. The computers don’t work. Those that work aren’t being used by students. The catalogues are still manual. There is no electricity or inverters to provide power. The generators are rarely on, and people who use the reading rooms are often in quasi-dark environments. The library’s branches do not pay for their own acquisitions, and often even turn their backs on donations, for lack of space to store and preserve the materials being donated. I would be interested in knowing what capital expenses were made with £3.37 million every year!

National Library in Lagos. The condition of book storage.

The other, of course, is leadership. Until I speak with the National Librarian, I will have nothing particular to say here. But I hope to in the future. He apparently has a home in Ìbàdàn, and comes around often, every few months. Putting the right directors at each center — who know what is right, and who are capable of better managing the funds allocated there — might be a way out. One, of course, needs transparency about how much is being allocated to each branch. None of this information was made available to me, for the obvious reason of my non-insider status. But there were insinuations, particularly by the lower members of staff that I talked to, that mismanagement was also a part of the problem.

Everyone I met had mentioned the Olúsẹ́gun Ọbásanjọ́ Presidential Library in Abẹ́òkuta as one model of a decently managed and decently run library in Nigeria. It was founded shortly after the tenure of the man in whose name it was built, who had then ruled Nigeria for the second time as a civilian president. It turned out that Chief Ọbasanjọ́ himself had been instrumental in securing the land for the permanent site of the National Library in Abuja, and was a passionate advocate for proper archiving and documentation in Nigeria. So I was intensely curious about meeting him. Unfortunately, my time in Lagos had run out by the time the necessary arrangements were made, and I could not make the trip to Abẹ́òkuta. I intend to do this on my return from the fellowship. The Presidential Library, according to those who have visited it, boasts of a number of relevant records in Nigerian political and social history, and also the life of its patron as well, who was imprisoned in 1995 on the accusation of being an accessory to a fabricated coup. He was freed in 1998 as part of the amnesty programme of the subsequent military administrator. He became a candidate for office that same year, and was elected president in 1999.

One of the limitations, I believe, in getting sufficient funding for the Nigerian National Library is the ban on fundraising. All the funds for running the Library is given by the government. The act setting it up also prohibits any fundraising of any kind. So people can use it “free”. The result of that is that if the money disbursed from Abuja is insufficient, the library and the books suffer. At the British Library, at least one could pay to become a member, or use venues in the Library, or buy food at the public cafeteria. The BL also gets private funding, for activities such as the Endangered Archives Project or the Eccles Center. Those help support the Library as a public institution. I saw no sign of any such public-private partnership with the Nigerian equivalent. Perhaps changing the laws to make this possible, and allowing the branches to make money through small services, will help improve their use and competence.

Conditions at the National Library in Lagos

There are a number of grants that have supported library work in Nigeria. A sign at the Yaba branch says “This e-Library Project is supported by the Universal Service Provision Fund.” In Ìbàdàn, I learnt about TETFUND, which is a fund dedicated to helping tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Kenneth Dike Library got some of it. EAP at the BL has also been named as a potential funder for some documentation projects. These and many more can be helpful if properly managed.

Other Libraries, Comparisms, Conclusions

In Nigeria today, especially in more metropolitan places like Lagos, private libraries and reading spaces are springing up. In the same Yaba, about a kilometre or so from the National Library, there is a new private library renovated by a private bank and used to host readers and other enthusiasts. Some public events have been held there as well, including the famous one where a Guinness Record was made in 2018. There are also state-controlled public libraries which, very likely, suffer from the same problem as the federal one. One of my favourite places to go in Lagos, of course, is the Ouida House. It is not a library per se, but a bookshop with a public-facing side. It also has a reading room that is accessible. 

A private library and reading space in Lagos Island

But in all, the library I found closest in ambition, scope, capability, and history, to the British Library is the Kenneth Dike Library in Ìbàdàn. With better funding and management, it might do even better. I suspect that the Hezekiah Oluwasanmi Library at the University of Ifẹ̀ comes real close, but I never got a chance to explore it either.

____

Thanks to Budgit for some of the budget figures I used here.

“Professor Wole Soyinka and the Economy of Language” – A Guest Post by Onyeka Nwelue

In 2019, Professor Wọlé Ṣóyínká had a fascinating conversation with Christiane Amanpour of CNN. When he was asked about the right to give and take offense in a democracy, he said, “We’ve got to learn to give offense if we believe that we are on the right side of history.”

I recreated his relationship with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, in my film, Other Side of History, which he has seen, set before Nigeria’s Independence.

I am Igbo. I am openly a supporter of Peter Obi. I am also a Soyinkaphile.

I want to say, it is, sometimes, difficult to understand the cryptic words of Nobel Laureate, Wọlé Ṣóyínká.

When he talks to me, I listen attentively, so I don’t miss anything he says. When he sends me an email, I go back to read it. At least, three times. Could this be what I call the economy of language?

The Wọlé Ṣóyínká I know is Igbo-centric and is a vital force for the inclusive fight for humanity in general. No matter the current heat, I must plead with young Nigerians and supporters of Peter Obi, to believe me, when I say Professor Soyinka supports Peter Obi. In private and even in public, he always stressed how it is important to have an Igbo President or let the Igbo have their own country. He also wants a competent person to lead the nation.

If you had two people, an Igbo and a Yorùbá, come to Professor Ṣóyínká for help, I can tell you, without mincing words, that he will attend to the Igbo first. He may not like this, but I found out over the years. A Yorùbá friend of mine once described me as ‘Soyinka’s gatekeeper.’ It didn’t end well between us. We practically stopped talking, because of that appellation.

Just weeks ago, he broke his silence and came out, publicly weighing in on my imbroglio with the British educational establishment. It was after that, he started speaking to the press. It was because of this Igbo boy that he left the quietness of his life, to speak to the media. People were genuinely shocked that he would attach his name in defense of me. I was also shocked. It brought me to tears. I will remain eternally grateful to him.

In 2021, I visited Frederick Forsyth in his hometown. We spoke about Ojukwu. The moment I asked if he met Wọlé Ṣóyínká, he brightened up: “Is he alive?” He asked me. I said yes and he asked me to do a video and send it to Professor Ṣóyínká. After making that video, which I sent, Mr. Forsyth told me, that the last time he saw Ṣóyínká, was in Biafra. That they sat under a tree in Biafra and talked.

I have stories to tell you: on February 9, 2019, Professor Ṣóyínká, while ‘recruiting’ people by himself, to get on the Campaign Team of Professor Kingsley Moghalu, wanted me to do a documentary on Professor Moghalu, whether in Igbo or anything. I had never met Professor Moghalu then. So, Professor Ṣóyínká said to me afterwards: “Regarding Moghalu – I’ve let him know that you’re available to do a documentary for him but it turns out his team already has an on-call documentarist, so I’ve left them alone.” He took the Moghalu Project seriously. We would have asked why.

Wọlé Ṣóyínká loves Igbo people. Sincerely. If we are going to label him a ‘tribalist.’

Right now, we are all emotional. I understand why. But, I want you to remember that Professor Ṣóyínká said he was in touch with Mr. Peter Obi. Perhaps, there was a tangible reason why he didn’t ‘endorse’ him publicly. The Ṣóyínká I know, is a fierce loyalist. When he loves you, it is hard for him to turn his back on you.

Let me plead with Obidients – and every lover of Peter Obi – that, it is impossible that the great Nobel Laureate is against them. Knowing Wọlé Ṣóyínká – having followed him personally as a child, he stands for liberation from dictatorship and anarchy.

Ṣóyínká speaks from a place of love and concern for our democracy. If we could listen to his voice of rage, he talked about investing his energy in the ‘new kid on the block.’ I remember him saying his dream was to see an Igbo President before leaving this world.

At 88, Wọlé Ṣóyínká is technology savvy. He uses his iPhone and MacBook efficiently. He is the most modern man I know. He can defend himself, but I want to assure every supporter of Peter Obi, that as tribe goes, the Nobel Laureate wants an Igbo President and as political movements are involved, he is also not against the Obidient Movement. I can strongly assure you that!

Someone asked me yesterday: “What are you going to do about the attacks on Wọlé Ṣóyínká? Did you see the posts by David Hundeyin?” I replied: “David can decide to attack me tomorrow if he feels like. He is not 16 years old. He can’t be compromised.” It’s the democracy we all want, where we can agree and disagree.

Many of Peter Obi’s supporters are not Igbo. They are Yorùbá, Hausa, Fulani, Nupe, Edo – from all tribes. His fierce supporters like David Hundeyin, Rinu Oduala, and Aisha Yesufu are not even Igbo. I tell you, Kongi is not against us. If anything, he wants the ‘new kid on the block’ to be President.


Onyeka Nwelue is the author of The Strangers of Braamfontein

Is Akátá a Bad Word?

Every once in a while, a conversation returns to my timeline about the meaning of ‘akata’, the origin, the use, and other social dimensions of its existence in the relationship between Africans on the continent and those in America. Discussions are had and the issue goes away, only to return in another form at another time. Yesterday was one such event when, shortly before going to bed, someone tagged me on Twitter about the meaning of the word again. I shared photos of the entries in two of my dictionaries and thought that was all. 

I found out, later, that the invitation came from a bigger context: an apology by my colleague and language professor, Uju Anya, for using the word in the past in different twitter contexts. The debate that followed was whether the word was a slur in the first place, whether she had the reason to apologise, whether those calling for her resignation were overplaying their hand about an issue of no relevance, or whether certain words are allowed a pass if the intentions are pure. 

This time, I thought it best to put my thoughts down on what I know about the word, what I think about the perennial controversy. This essay draws from my experience as a linguist and lexicographer, native speaker of Yorùbá, and a scholar of history, especially of transatlantic slavery and attendant consequences.

What is akata?

Let’s start with the three meanings recorded in the Yorùbá dictionary:

From the CMS dictionary from 1913
  1. n. Jackal, same as ‘Ajako’. Source: A Dictionary of Yorùbá Language by CMS (1913).
  2. n. Civet-cat. Also “ajáko ẹtà”. Source: Dictionary of Modern Yorùbá by R.C Abraham (1958)
  3. n. A type of bird which eats ripe-palm nuts. Source: Dictionary of Modern Yorùbá by R.C Abraham (1958)

As far as we know, the word doesn’t exist in any other Nigerian language.* It is a Yorùbá word — at least in its origin.

Is it a slur? 

First, let’s start with history. Growing up in the eighties in Nigeria, I heard the word only as a descriptive term with no pejorative intent. 

It was just any word, to refer to a certain demographic. We had òyìnbó for ‘white people’ (similar to muzungu in Swahili or onyi ocha in Igbo, or  gringo in Spanish/Portuguese); we had akátá for Black Americans; we had Gambari for northerners in Nigeria (Sulu Gambari was the name of a famous Yorùbá-Fulani king in Ìlọrin); we had Tápà for Nupe people many of whom had intermarried with Yorùbá people; and we had kòbòkóbò for almost everyone else that didn’t speak Yorùbá.

Of all the terms, kòbòkóbò was the only one that seemed to carry a negative intent, because it referred to someone who, in the imagination of the Yorùbá person using the word, was not cultured enough to understand the language. The people we referred to with those words knew they were called that, and it never — to my knowledge — carried any negative blowback. It was used in film and popular culture.

There was a famous fuji music album by Àyìndé Barrister from the late eighties or early nineties in which he sang the following lines:

Akátá gba ‘jó

Òyìnbó gba ‘jó

Yorùbá gba ‘jó o

Translated:

American blacks danced to my song

American whites danced to my song

Yorùbás also danced to my song. 

The album was one he waxed shortly after returning from an American tour, so it was a celebration of his popular appeal across different demographics. No slur in sight.

How did akátá even come to refer to African Americans?

No one has found any verifiable answer, but a plausible one goes like this:

In the sixties and seventies, African Americans channelled their social and political rebellion through the Black Panther movement, claiming an African cat as a symbol of their struggle for self-actualization. Yorùbá Nigerians in the States at the time, perhaps happy to participate, referred from then on to African Americans as akátá. It was not the exact Yorùbá word for panther**, but it was close. Whether that initial use was meant to be derogatory is something that needs to be researched, but there is no substantive proof of that, and many notable African scholars of Yorùbá extraction have written favourably about the Civil Rights Movement and all that came with it in the African-American struggle.

When/How did it become a slur?

It was when I became an adult that I started noticing different ways in which the word was used. Not just akátá, by the way, but also gàm̀bàrí and the others. You would hear someone being called gàmbàrí because he didn’t pay attention to instructions or appeared slow to act. Or for any random reason. This would be in-group conversations, particularly when no northerner was in sight. So it was not directed at the outsider, but at a Yorùbá person as an insult. The insult was to the Yorùbá target, not the northerner (even though the secondary insult to the northerner is also implied, but not overt). It is possible that akátá also then took on this character as time went on.

Such that almost every time I heard it from the early 2000s, it had a non-positive character. It was not a slur in a way that the n-word or even gàmbàrí was, that is, it was not a word that was used to insult a person to their face. In fact, I don’t think I recall any instance in which someone used akátá as a weapon. You can’t stand in front of someone and say “you bloody akátá”, it doesn’t quite work. But when it was used to refer to African-Americans, the meaning seemed to have changed. It could be about crime rates in the US, about any other unsavoury characteristic, or even about a normal or even friendly conversation. Which of those black people standing there do you want me to call? The akáta one? Okay. In fact, not many people today even know that it referred to a certain cat or bird — either of which are likely extinct anyway. You hear akátá and you think African-American. Not Obama, but Jesse Jackson. African parents could mention not wanting their children to “behave like those spoilt akátá kids” Or a man could tell his friend that his new girlfriend is an akátá; not as a pejorative but as a descriptor. Maybe it was the fact that such a word exists at all that referred to our black cousins on the other side of the Atlantic that brought the pejorative colouring; or maybe because people started saying it meant “wild animal” or maybe it was because of the conspiratorial way in which I’ve heard people use it as if in a secret code to prevent the subject of the conversation from knowing that it’s them to whom the word refers. There was just some othering seemingly implied in the common contemporary usage that perceptive listeners started to decry. The word itself had not changed, but it was no longer possible to call it just a descriptor.

But as with when meanings of words change everywhere, there are still people in Nigeria today who knew the word only in its first cross-continental non-negative use. People of my parent’s generation fall into this category. In normal everyday conversation, they will use akátá to demarcate an African in America from an African-American. They do not know it any other way, because we never found another word for that demographic. There are also other people, who don’t speak Yorùbá, who have only encountered the word from other Nigerians or from other Africans, and just continue to use it. 

Does intention matter?

This is where the debate gets interesting: the question of whether one should mean to denigrate before the meaning of a word is called into question. This is a big ongoing debate. Not just with the n-word but also with words in other domains. Even the word ‘òyìnbó’, which I mentioned earlier, got me thinking a few years ago, after a white student asked me in class if it was a slur. I knew that it was not, but I realized, in explaining to her, that I couldn’t successfully convey all the contexts in which we use it without raising her suspicion that I was hiding something. I wrote an essay instead, but the response I got to it, especially from Nigerians, showed me that even the question of whether the word could be derogatory in certain contexts was not one that people wanted to have. “If we don’t mean it to be offensive, then why should we listen to you who say you find the usage uncomfortable?” the argument went. If you told my mother that akátá was derogatory, when she had not used it in that way, she would strongly object. I can point her to African-Americans finding it objectionable, so she might not use the word in public, but it won’t be because she believes that she’d done something wrong.

Recently, Beyoncé conceded that her use of spazz was ableist and she had it removed from an album — even when she didn’t have such an intention from the start. The word ‘negro’, which started as being just descriptive, is no longer in fashion today, because of the other connotations it took on in the hands of a more powerful culture. Shouldn’t akátá suffer the same fate?

I’m of the opinion, knowing how I’ve seen the word used, that we lose nothing by no longer using it for anything other than the animals. But I am also sympathetic to those who recognize their past usage, and apologise for doing so. I don’t expect that every Nigerian knows the origin of the word or the ways in which modern usage seems to have perverted it. The only thing we know is that African-Americans do not like it as well, and that should be enough, especially if the purpose of the conversation is to improve relations across the pond. 

But the word won’t go away, because not every Yorùbá speaker lives on the internet or care about language-based social crusades, and because words don’t just disappear. Gringo and mzungu will continue to be in use, even if we can point to instances in which their usage is problematic. All we can do is continue to have the conversation. 

Should anyone who uses it be cancelled?

No. As with many things, intent matters. So does knowledge, and one’s response to new information. We continue to evolve as a society, and so will our use of language and interaction with each other. Not every African-American is insulted by akátá either, perhaps because not every one of them has heard it, and some who have don’t care, unless they encounter it first through an online essay in which the meaning of the word is put as “cotton picker”, which it has never been. But many deeply resent it, either because of what they think it represents or just because of the othering implied in the way it has been used over the years. This is valid, and Africans should absolutely take it into account when they speak. My recommendation is that we stop using it totally to refer to anything but the animal. But I know that I’m not in the majority. If this is your first time hearing the word, all you need to know is that the origin is benign, its growth in use is muddy but complex, and that there are people from the language community where the word originated who never use it, just as there are some who don’t have any other way, but mean absolutely no harm. 

____

* I’ve been informed on Twitter that there’s another “akata” in South-south Nigeria, which is a common personal name.

** Update (August 20): The entry for ‘Panther’ in A Dictionary of Yorùbá (1913) lists these two answers: n. àmọ̀tẹ́kùn, akáta

Further reading