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Three Days of Madness at the University of Lagos

By Péjú Láyíwọlá

I was first captivated by the posters and then I was warned not to watch the play because of the high level of vulgarity shown on stage. I braved it and opted to watch it on the second day of the three days that it was shown at the Main Auditorium, University of Lagos. Truly, if you survive the first few minutes of the play, you are likely to sit through this very captivating and bold attempt by a talented young playwright, Otun Rasheed, to shock, provoke, challenge, incite, and stir all manner of emotions through this breathtaking 70 minitues play. Given the very diverse critique of this play, one thing remains clear: sex is a tabooed topic in Nigeria. People prefer to talk about it in private spaces and not see themselves on stage.

You must be mad, Yes You! is the title of the play. While some might quarrel with the title, I think it is apt because really we live in a very mad world! It is a world full of paradoxes. The play was laden with foul language. The stark show of sexual pleasure and the rigorous scenes of obscenity and eroticism would make you cringe! But the message is loud and clear at the end: the level of promiscuity in the Nigerian society is high but largely ignored. Parents delude themselves by thinking their children are ‘holy’ and would not indulge in sex in this highly virtual and visual world of the internet. Infidelity, fornication, incest, pornography have become the order of the day. The level of incest within families is so high that you would be shocked. A few years ago, I attended a popular monthly camp meeting. When the altar call was raised, I was shocked at the number of people involved in incestuous relationship come out for prayers.

The cast comprised students of the Department of Creative Arts. Otun Rasheed is a lecturer in the department. What great mentorship! But does he represent the views of the Department or does he make any reference to it in any way? No! It is unlikely that such a play would see the light of day were it presented as an academic project. It is also not likely to receive a research grant. Yet, the academy should be a crucible for such phenomenal thinking.

Many thoughts crossed my mind while watching. Some of these discussed below reflect, in part, views of some of my colleagues when we discussed.

Why are people more likely to accept visual images of eroticism rather than a play with a similar theme? What role does sound and movement play in accentuating a message?

A bit of diversion: About eleven years ago there was a half nude life-sized female figure in the courtyard of the Visual Arts unit of the department. She was bare chested and wore a very well sculpted g–string that had a butterfly as motif on what I would consider the most significant part. A former Head of Department (also a visual artist) could not understand why that work should have been made. We all lived comfortably with the work for a long time. Over time there were signs of wear and tear on the nipples and lips of the figure. Several months later, the work collapsed. When I asked the students what happened they jocularly said. ‘She was raped and murdered last night and the case had been reported to the state CID’. Investigations are still ongoing till now.

Ọ̀tún Rasheed. Photo taken from Encomium Magazine

Religiosity and fanaticism becloud our judgment. I was told that some of the staff in solidarity rushed to watch the play only to run out after five minutes. They couldn’t handle it. Jesus! Armageddon! This is Satan at work! The devil is a liar! This playwright must be mad! Yes, Otun Rasheed is mad! We were told in our elementary theatre class that theatre is make-belief. Yet, there is a meeting point between reality and fiction. Outside the performance, can I look at the most vulnerable of the cast without casting my mind back to the acts of violation on stage? Perhaps the change of cast for each production helped mitigate this.

Tunji Sótimírìn is concerned about the very graphic scenes and the perception of parents who are only just accepting theatre arts as a field of study. Are parents likely to allow their daughters study theatre arts after seeing such a play? As a former Head of Department, I have come to realize that the passion for some of these students far outweighs the choices of parents. I have seen students cry when offered courses other than theatre arts. Every new entrant into the Theatre Arts Department believes, and rightfully so, that he/she would succeed and surpass the achievements of former alumni and alumnae of the department. Several of them abound – Moceda, Stella Damassus, Fẹ́mi Brainard, Mercy Aigbe, Dáre Art Àlàdé, Fẹ́mi Oke, Wọlé Òjó, Helen Paul, Ọmọ́wùmí Dàda, Sambassa, Sẹ́gun Adéfilá and others too numerous to list. The successful careers of their forbears in the entertainment industry looms larger than the sentiments expressed by some parents. We are thankful for such great mentorship since the days of cultural studies. Both students and lecturers have enjoyed such great tutelage from Prof Ẹ̀bùn Clark, Prof Dúró Òní, Prof Àbáyọ̀mí Barber, Prof Délé Jẹ́gẹ́dẹ́ , Prof Alagoa, Prof Anthony Mereni, Prof Bọ̀dé Osanyin, Alaja Brown and Túnjí Ṣótimírìn. It is from this tradition that Otun Rasheed has emerged.

Many questions arise, a number of which I cannot answer: What role does theatre play in the society? What was the message of this play. Was it meant to be a corrective measure? Must theatre always have a message? To whom was this play directed? What binaries does this play throw up.

There are many points at which this play succeeds:

a. The use of space was amazing. Like an owl, the audience found themselves turning three sixty degrees. Many of the cast were seated amongst the audience and the audience were literally brought onto the stage. The stage could not contain the depth of actions Otun Rasheed offered. I also like the use of light and the special effects on the stage particularly in the opening scene.

b. Great publicity. Every day was a new message urging you to watch the play. The t-shirts and posters added pep to the show. The visuals were simply amazing! Social media aided publicity for this pay. Gone are the days when crude publicity was done by hiring a rickety university based cab with speakers mounted on it, while announcement are made round the campus through unfiltered microphones.

c. There was great synergy between members of the theatre unit and the students in bringing this idea to fruition. For this, I congratulate both students and staff of the theatre unit. Otun entertains much as he shocks his audience. His main aim is to call for the censorship of plays just like it is done with films. His personal experiences of taking his under aged children to watch adult plays without knowing it inspired this work. You must be Mad, Yes you! was rated 18+. Tickets were not offered to underage undergraduates, but a few still managed the gain entrance. That is the very point this play tries to address. How careful can parents be in bringing up their kids? What should be told them and what should be left for them to discover on their own?

The play lasted for three days. In my mind, it lasts forever. The final day had the main auditorium full to capacity. My only regret was that the madness was not sustained for a full week. Much as I like this work of art, I would like the directors to temper some of the violent scenes, particularly those couched within the audience area.

I salute your courage Otun Rasheed for bringing this play to the university environment. I look forward to watching it over and over again. I hope it would be viewed in a more pubic theatre and receive the sort of commendation it deserves. Did I hear you say condemnation? It is left for you to decide because you must be the only sane person in this very crazy world.

_________

Péjú Olówu Láyíwọlá is an artist, painter, and sculptor. She lives in Ibadan. Full text culled and edited from her Facebook page, with permission.

A Three-Book Review

I’ve just finished reading Joe Muto’s An Atheist in the Foxhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media. It is the third of non-fiction books that I read over the last two weeks. And for some reason, they all happen to revolve around a certain preoccupation: politics, especially in the right-wing quarters of the United States. The other two are Bob Beckel’s I Should Be Dead: My Life Servicing Politics, TV, and Addiction and Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency. They also happen to have notable dissimilarities.

What they all have in common, though, other than aforementioned similarities and that they are all non-fiction – which always gets my attention every time, is that they were all written by people who either are current (O’Reilly) or past (Muto, Beckel) employees of the Fox News Channel, America’s enigmatic but highly successful conservative television channel; a business enterprise of Rupert Murdoch, an Australian billionaire.

Muto’s book details his train-wreck adventure as a liberal-minded employee through an eight-year career in America’s most right-wing media company, a career that ended in ruins when he turned into a mole for the website Gawker in April 2012. More than giving a rare insight, with notable anecdotes, into the working of the media house, its politics and successes, it also portrays a sympathetic image of the employee himself. Like many others in the company, and in perhaps many other such organisations around the country, the writer didn’t start out being conservative or in any way supportive of the employer’s political and business viewpoints. He only wanted a job in a tough economy, and a chance to build a life with his girlfriend whom he had brought into New York from a small town. And through a series of justifiable (and sometimes hilariously contrived) compromises meant to keep him in the good graces of his employers, he worked his way from a Production Assistant to an Associate Producer for the channel’s most highly-rated programme. Then blew it. Publicly. What was to be learnt from reading the book other than how to throw away an eight-year career in the most ignoble manner? Not much, but it was nonetheless a good account that read like a fast-paced thriller. The writer may not be glad about the way his career ended, but he was sure glad to have left as we are of his decision to write the book. He had a keen eye for details, and his observations, especially of his former colleagues, seemed fair and measured.

In Bob Beckel’s book, one lives through the civil rights era of 60s America through the unlikely journey of a child from an abusive alcoholic home who, in a few short years, became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Jimmy Carter White House and later the campaign manager of a presidential candidate (who lost 49 out of 50 states, no less). The book details not just the notable events of these times and the author’s personal successes, but also his failings and struggles with drugs and alcoholism, and his eventual redemption. I first knew Bob through The Five, a roundtable political news conversation show at 5pm on Fox where he was the resident liberal against four conservative hosts. His geniality, unconventionality, and resilience as he held his own successfully against the usual misinformation and sometimes just merely surly temperament of his co-hosts was stuff of legends. It was easy to root for him: a lone sane voice in the wilderness. He, of course, notably got just as surly himself, ending up as a butt of brutal jokes when he advocated for the ban on muslims coming into the US, a suggestion apparently not risible enough for Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner to eventually picked it up many years later. Bob’s attempt with this book however is one of honesty and courage in telling a story that is at once self-reflective as it is self-incriminating. The subject is both its conquering hero as its remorseful villain. The reader leaves its pages understanding the causes, cost, and cure for alcoholism and addiction. And, more importantly, gaining sufficient empathy for its victims around us. It is certainly a book to recommend, and I do so, strongly.

The third, a biography of sorts, was Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Reagan which revisits the assassination attempt on the president’s life in March 1981, just two months after he was sworn in. The book details not just the former Hollywood actor’s rise to fame and mythology from a humble mid-western (and liberal) background, but also the effect of the assassination attempt (and his Alzheimer’s disease which was said to have started a little bit afterwards) on his presidency and legacy. Fascinating, also, was his relationship with his wife Nancy (whom he married after the failure of his first marriage to a fellow Hollywood star, Jane Wyman) and who turned out to be his rock-solid companion and shield (and, as some insinuated, manipulator). Not only did she endure the loneliness of his last years when he lost the ability to recognise her or anyone, she also had to live twelve more years alone without the man she had loved for most of her life. It was a well-written story, which introduced the former president to anyone curious about his life and legacy. The book wasn’t without its critics, however: some Reagan loyalists and other reviewers thought that O’Reilly exaggerated the effect of the disease on the president’s performance in office, among other untruths. Bill, for some reason, continues to dominate not just cable news with his O’Reilly Factor but also the Bestseller lists with his Killing series. Like Killing Kennedy, Killing Lincoln, Killing Patton, and Killing Jesus, before it, Killing Reagan continues the trend of entertaining (and informing, I must admit) readers through the non-fiction medium, sometimes through dubious or exaggerated reportage, but always with a single-mindedness of purpose.

A figure that stood out of these three books, like a brooding shadow, was that of Roger Ailes, Fox News’ boss. It was he who is reputed to have built the cable channel out of nothing, discovered and made its on-air talents into national figures, and continues to drive liberals crazy around the country with his enigmatic and unapologetic successful conservative persona. But in the three books, Dr. Ailes is a number of different people. Joe Muto’s Mole dedicated a notable space to describing how his micromanaging style, and politics, ensured that all those who worked at Fox took care to either tow the party line as true believers, or fake their way into promotion and prominence by appearing to be as conservative as desired: an image of a paranoid invisible puppeteer. In O’Reilly’s Killing, he was a genius who kept Richard Nixon’s administration television-friendly, thus minimising the damage it would otherwise have got earlier on. He, it was, during the re-election campaign of Ronald Reagan, who (as a hired political consultant) came up with the killer response that damaged the Mondale Campaign (and, by extension, Bob Beckel’s campaign career) in 1984. More than that episode, for Beckel, Roger Ailes was also the man who – after decades of failure and impending ruin – offered a lifeline by giving him a job on Fox News as a contributor, and eventually as a co-host on The Five: a smart but benevolent operator who holds no grudges against former opponents. The portrayal of his genius (or deviousness as the case may be) has now driven me to buy this promising biography of his, written without his support or approval.

These three books were a delightful, and surprisingly easy, read, as most non-fiction works tend to be in my experience. They were worth each cent, and gave me a deeper peek into the workings of the US media, politics, and journalism in general. It certainly delighted the part of my brain that has always wanted to write a memoir or someone else’s biography in the future, though not necessarily the part in search of a clever turn of phrase or some delightful serving of English prose in its literary glory. Still, not a wasted time in the company of lived history.

POEM REVIEW: Musings of Something Colourfully Sweet

by Joyce Odukoya (@joyceodukoya)

Title: Musings of a Tangled Tongue

Author: Yemi Adesanya (@toyosilagos)

Version: Kindle & Paperback (POD)

I haven’t read a book of poems since I left secondary school, years ago. So, when the author of Musings of a Tangled Tongue, Yemi Adesanya, told me she had written a book of poems, I looked forward to it because I had read her poems on twitter and thought they were really creative and well written. I wasn’t disappointed when I finally got around to reading it.

The poems reflect the author’s delightful and interesting personality as captured in my interactions with her on twitter. If I was to compliment the collection of poems in one word, I would say that it is “fresh” (check urban dictionary or think of will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas using the word in approval for The Voice contestants!)

The author’s use of a rich metaphor to convey her messages in the poems is evident from the first poem, Here Lies Lust. It creates a vivid imagery in the mind of the reader and reveals greater truths about the subject matter of the poems.

The poems cover various subjects including; love (Love in Designer Threads, I Want to Love You, Love in Vine and Wine) unrequited love (Cold Steel: “Get a life babe,” he whispered, “I have no time for love”) lust (Here Lies Lust, Jack and Jill and Dear Fred), secrets (Zara’s Secrets) growing old (Old Number) and staying young (Forever Living: Who wants to live forever and a day, Nature would groan if all avoided this fate) and everyday issues like Sleepless Nights, Snoring is the Devil’s Chorus and Monday Madness.

Random musings about Loafday, which the author hopes will one day be a word in the dictionary (On Saturdays, I laze away…) and about (Mc) Hunger (And bulging bloodshot eyes match my bank balance).

In Was Born in Sin, the author explores the Christian faith and reveals an inquisitive mind not afraid to question the status quo. I loved reading every last line of the stanzas which was written in Nigerian Pidgin.

Mind Mirage is about inane lines. My verdict…absolutely bonkers!

Special Characters which is about grammatical punctuations reveals the author’s vivid imagination and creativity.

No Kidding reads like the lyrics of a rap song. It’s one of my favourite poems. Holla!

The poems are full of unforgettable lines such as “Like death of a wanted infant before its Christening” in Crackles of Soulful Melody and “Dance this day like the groom is not a dick” in Bless This Day, a poem about the days of the week.

Nothing is off limits with the author, in Gray Valentine Shades which is a sad poem about relationships, there is a stanza about sadomasochism (hello, Fifty Shades of Grey). The sadness of Gray Valentine Shades is balanced by the joy in Bright Valentine Shades a few poems later.

My favourite poem is Halleluyah, which the author states could be sung to the tune of “Halleluyah” by Leonard Cohen. Its stanzas cover relationships, the state of Nigeria’s economy and its last elections and even zebra crossings. I sung the poem, of course.

I would recommend the book Musings of a Tangled Tongue. It is a wonderful collection of poems which includes traditional poems as well as a contemporary take on poetry. For lovers of poetry, it is a treat and for those who don’t ordinarily read books of poems, it is a gentle introduction into reading poems once again.

_________________

Joyce Odukoya can be found on twitter at @JoyceOdukoya

Soundbender: Music, Mathematics, and Poetry Fused

Soundbender Cover

Artiste: Beautiful Nubia
Album: Soundbender
Record label: ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Music and Publishing
Number of tracks: 15
Year of release: 2015
Category: Contemporary Folk Music

For a performer who has consistently released albums—and not just studio works— for over two decades, no one would be surprised by the plus ultra of the rhythmic and lyric refinement on Beautiful Nubia’s latest album.

Beautiful Nubia, Nigeria’s foremost contemporary folk artiste (he is erroneously described on an MTV Artistes’ profile page as a reggae artiste just as Salif Keita is too), is the doctor of sounds performing auscultatory diagnosis of the communal ailments and revealing the socio-political infirmities of the continent on his 11th studio album titled Soundbender.

Beautiful Nubia draws the strength of his music from the Yorùbá copious corpus of folktales, folksongs and proverbs. This musical evangelist presents the wisdom, the impeccable understanding, and the wonderment of Yorùbá culture to the world, preserving the rich legacy of the Yorùbá inheritance so that the world benefits and appreciates it. Another artiste worthy of mention for performing similar service to the world is the Fuji music icon, Saheed Òṣùpá.

The understanding of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the philosopher, on music and mathematics when he said, ‘The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic’ is apparent in the album. On the album, the poetry of musical mathematics is palpable to the listener. Beautiful Nubia bearing his musical calculations in mind imbued the album with terpsichorean notations calculable to the listeners as they respond to the tune. Certainly, mathematics is mankind’s first language, and mathematical aesthetics can be discerned on the album. The algorithm coded in traditional percussions and classy instrumentals in rhapsodic cadences, deeply mellisonant, corroborates that.

The artiste has again affirmed that there is just a thin line between music and poetry – and that thin line is performance. In the track, “Lights of Spain” for example, a listener may easily want to tag it a poem because of the figurative expressions on the lyric. And in a way, it is. You can count the stanzas, the feet and meter on the lyrics. His poetic lyrics are simple yet rich and set him aside from the noise-making artistes who shout empty words at listeners. And the steadfast accompaniment of the Roots Renaissance Band enhances the album.

As with the traditional king’s messenger bearing message and armed with his instrument for attracting attention, the album is more than a message delivered on an errand for a king. It sums up the different shades of understanding, the contemporary hopes, difficulties, and aspirations of the people, using rich Yorùbá folkloric and language to preach continental messages.

The 15-track album opens with ‘Àrà. The track is a call to dance and pays homage to his fans. ‘Outsider’, ‘Akáwọ́gbékùn’ and ‘One Good Soul’ ring out the pain of an alien in a foreign land and also exhort good people to be steadfast in their convictions. ‘Dreaming (On a Breezy Night)’ is laid in dialogic metaphor, in trance-like manner the Yorùbá water deities, Olókun and Yemoja, are invoked in the song for sustenance to the wearied hearted. ‘Ìrètí-ògo’ is almost a gospel. It prophetically awakens hope and enjoins the virtuous never to yield to doubt. ‘Yọ’wọ’ is a warning to the malevolent ones who bask in evil to desist from evil ways. The soft tune and vocal solemnity of the song is enough a warning. ‘Lights of Spain’ travels through the Sahara and Mediterranean with migrants that seek hope on the other shores. Like in Jùmọ̀kẹ́ Verissimo’s poem, “Sighs of the Mediterranean Sea” in Migrations edited by Wọlé Sóyínká, this track accounts the hardships and horrors that this type of migrants’ experience on their sojourn of fleeing and becoming.

Other songs on the album include ‘Ten Lashes’, which condemns the pseudo-activists who promote their selfish interests while pretending to be fighting the oppressed causes. ‘Abukéọshin’ and ‘Songs of the Trickster’ are free adaptions from the many Yorùbá folktales about the notorious trickster, Ìjàpá. The two tracks say much about the political tricksters of today, too. ‘Anyone, Everyone’ is a track that engulfs the soul in anguish. ‘Lékeléke’ has featured on one of Beautiful Nubia’s albums before, but the perfection he seeks has led to it featuring anew on this album. Anyone who has been to any of his concerts will know that the song is very dear to him. Partly spiritual, partly metaphorical, the sacred bird that lends its name to the song title flutters helplessly in the face of man’s wickedness. ‘Paean to Sorrow’ is a satire condemning wars and glorification of the so-called super powers. It reminds us of the place of ordinary folks who get entangled in such wars. The displaced refugees of Sudan and Syria readily comes to mind. ‘Àkọ́jáde’ completes the album with a reminder that none shall outlive the earth.

Soundbender is a message against the tyranny of the wicked and confronts many evils in the land, speaking the complaints of the oppressed. It has a relevant social analysis of the configuration of the world-society. It challenges and urges us to work out collective solutions to the inequities of the current configuration. It is an album that is local in thematic preoccupation, yet global. Beautiful Nubia’s use of deep Yorùbá words that are fast going out of usage and various Yorùbá dialects proves him to be a cultural revivalist.

The ẸniỌbańkẹ́ cult must be given credit for the album. The tri-musical-angle that is made up of Beautiful Nubia and his Roots Renaissance Band, deserve accolades for their consistency, for their masterly compositions and renditions, and of course, the ever-growing cult of fans around the world. The fans complete the triangle and should be appreciated for sustenance and receptivity to the positive messages of Beautiful Nubia’s music. It’s like what Brian Eno described as “scenius” when he said genius is individual while scenius is communal. The communality of his music endears him to his audience and fans because of the collective emphasis of the album. So, in a way, it can be safely said that ẸniỌbańkẹ́ is scenius.

However, the artiste’s Yorùbá words are without ‘akiset’, to use the English of Àlàbá, a character in Wo̩lé S̩óyinká’s Alápatà Àpáta. The tonal marks that help to distinguish meanings are not used in the album’s liner notes. And it is not the first time Beautiful Nubia is guilty of this. His official website, where there are Yorùbá words, and his previous albums, which have Yorùbá titles, lack tonal marks. Readers who do not have a deep understanding of the Yorùbá words are likely to confuse or misunderstand the words. The marks are a feature of Yorùbá language. And to write without tonal marks is to disrespect the language. You won’t find Spanish, French or Dutch without their distinctive accent markers. It should be emphasised that Yorùbá is not inferior to these languages. In fact, Yorùbá is richer than some of these languages in clarity of expression.

Beautiful Nubia does not feature other artistes on his albums. This is deliberate and perhaps, needs re-evaluation. Although his music is somewhat personal, there is the need to feature, maybe, emerging artistes to encourage them into his musical genre and to contribute more to the music industry. Also collaborations across Africa with the likes of maybe Angelique Kidjo, Youssou N’Dour, or even Salif Keita is now necessary. Such collaborations would reach out to more of his francophone fans.

And, on a last note, one sincerely hopes that music videos of the songs on Soundbender will be made and will enjoy as much airplay as his other songs, which have been enjoying steady airplay in Ottawa, New York, (even China) and other cities of the world, on MTV and other top international music channels.

________

BIO

The Favourite Son of Africa is the pseudonym of Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke. He is an editor, literary critic and poet from Ibadan, Nigeria. A member of WriteHouse Collective, Tope assesses manuscripts for publication and is one of the organisers of Artmosphere, a leading monthly literary event in Ibadan. Also, he is the administrator of the Kofi Awoonor Memorial Library in Ibadan and is a book reviewer at Wawa Review of Books, Abuja, Nigeria. He enjoys travelling and cooking.

Beneath the Black Ass is a Continent

Title of the Novel : BlackAss

Author: A. Igoni Barrett

Nos of Pages: 302

Publisher: Kachifo Limited. 2015 (Under its Farafina imprint)

Review by Femi Morgan ___

Furo Wariboko wakes up and begins to come to terms with his new identity. He was a black man yesterday and he is a white man today. Furo is born again without confessing away his blackness totally, his black ass is the constant reminder of the disappeared melanin. This Kafkaesque novel is about the metamorphosis of not only Furo but also Furo’s people in a postcolonial state.

Furo lives in a cosmopolitan landscape which despite its aspiration to compete with its western counterpart fails in the infrastructural, socioeconomic decimals of true metropolis. The author splendidly subdivides Lagos using the perspective of exotic prediclection towards white people. The people who live in Ẹgbẹ́dá, where Furo lives, are not conversant with a white man walking on the streets and hustling up and down. Furo, therefore must find a way to escape the eyes of people. Areas like Victoria Island and Lekki have white people jogging in the early hours of the morning. White people live within these scapes as expatriates, government personnel and as facilitators of linking the values of the west in the globalisation project of Africa. Igoni Barret captures the nuances of Lagos most accurately. He spares no time in explaining the rich as well as the struggling transits of the city. His exposition on Lagos is successful because it is a subtle brush on the landscaping of the exciting narration.

Furo begins to receive an umbrage of responses to his new personality. A white man is shown exceptional favour at the detriment of a fellow black man, a white man conveys the aspiration of so many poor Africans and therefore taxi men and transporters hope to get a piece of the dollar-pie by jerking up the price. Many people hold conversations with him, asking him about the places he has never been, the places in Europe and America.

Furo is a white man with a black soul. He is expected to negotiate this displacement of identity with a certain ingenuity that may make or mar him. These postcolonial reactions of reverence, of hate, of anger and of fear stem from a deep postcolonial malaise that has been enhanced by stories of the great west as against the low global north. Thus the author satires Africa, it is a continent that kneels in the presence of its western personas.

The thirty-three year old Furo earns a job that he had sought for 10 years. He is given the benefit of doubt when he bungles a crucial question at an interview and he is placed in a rather uppity position in Haba! a failing enterprise, because of his white status. Arinze, the CEO of Haba! says in an interview with Furo, ‘I will be frank with you, we need a man like you in the team’. Meanwhile, despite the change of skin and hair, Furo is a typical Nigerian. He hardly reads for leisure or for self-education, he is an educated ‘good for nothing’, a half-literate whose chances in life has improved not because he is intelligent but because he is now white. Yet, his Nigerianness haunts him, he is an African who is unable to reach the fullest of his potential, he is an educated rag who is fighting a ‘postcolonial war’ that has long been lost.

I do sympathise with Furo because I realise that the older one gets, the more he realises that he has shed those dreams and gifts of his childhood. A jobless 33-year-old will often be misunderstood because he has not crossed the essential threshold set by society. In Nigeria, a child is like a cheque that must never bounce, he must make the parents proud and must become the symbol of ancestral progress.

Furo understands that no family member will understand his metamorphosis and this leads to his departure from home. He struggles with his new identity, the necessity for departure and the nostalgia of motherly love. Mothers subtly own their children by sheer investment, so much that they become the essential mention in the cannon of one’s personal narrative. Furo’s father is typical. A man overwhelmed by failures, losing his pride as he tries to be faithful to his family. The novel explains that despite his dehumanisation by circumstances beyond his control, his staying will be vindicated in the memories of the hereafter. Furo’s father lives by a certain mechanical routine of hopelessness, a television addiction and a dictatorship that stems from his inability to provide for his family. These postcolonial times calls manhood to question, the manhood is shrivelled because it often times has failed to be successful and has failed to meet the expectations of family and friends.

Now a white man wants to eat fufu at a buka for disoriented black people. It reminds me of Bright Chimezie’s song about the musician eating Akpu in the streets of London. The Europeans invited the police to rescue Chimezie from committing Suicide. Furo is a victim of the eczema of modernisation, yet he is watched as a circus, while he expertly swallows lumps of fufu. He is favoured against his fellow black man with an extra meat for his exotic performance.

Igoni is a splendid storyteller whose sense of observation leads his story to those existential paradigms that we often fail to acknowledge. He is not preachy, not assertive, he tells a story that pulls you in. Igoni’s work is a classic, a story that stays in your subconscious and becomes part of your memory. You walk the streets with Furo, you experience the sun shining on his face, you make love to Sycreeta, you become his alter ego. You ask yourself, is it better to live an interesting, conspiratorial life than to live a life of a cockroach?

Igoni brings to fore a new prism of narrative for contemporary writing, it is close to reality because the conversations transit between the cadences of English, popular lingo, tweet-speak and introspective expressionism. Igoni’s prose gives the reader an impression that storytelling is an easy craft, but a second look at how he wields the story and how he brings himself into the story, you realise that Igoni has painted a monumental Chiaroscuro with words. He tells a story of a failed cosmopolitan ideal as he creates parallels and binary oppositions that make the work come alive. Sycreeta and Tósìn are women who want different things from Furo, Arinze and Yuguda, Lagos and Abuja, Furo and Frank Whyte, black and white. Igoni is not the storyteller in the book, ‘he’ is in the novel, changing to a ‘she’ with a dick between her legs. Nevertheless, I come to glean the authorial intrusion of the writer whenever he postulates about existential ideas in the novel. This however is a trademark of the many classic novels that predicates on explaining the workings of modernity and life, like James Joyce’s A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

There is a realistic sense in which many of the characters are trying to transition from a certain physchological in-betwenness to a full knowledge of their persona or an attempt at accomplishing their dreams . The reader becomes aware of the way of the world from the novel. The things we shy away from using the veneer of religiosity are challenged by the comprehensible raison d’etre of the characters. There is Sycreeta who understands the prize of a white man’s worth and plays a game to win, there is Yuguda, Arinze and others who realise the impressions that a white man can bring to their firms, their NGOs and Ad Agency. So the jobless 33 year old becomes the most sought after. There is Victor Ikhide and Ehikhamenor in the novel, a resonance of reality meeting fiction. Ehikhamenor retains the high status of being an artist while Victor Ikhide is a talkative, loud-mouthed driver. Yuguda is clearly the Dangote of the novel.

Furo’s changes is in continuum, he becomes more opportunistic and begins to negotiate his identity and to create the money spinning perception that lands him a better deal. Furo tries to be complete in his whiteness but it is left to Igoni to let him achieve his new ambitions as a white man.

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Femi Morgan is the co-curator of Artmosphere, a leading Arts and Culture event in Nigeria and a co-publisher at WriteHouse Collective. He is a co-recipient of the 234Next Fashion Copy Prize and was longlisted for the BN Poetry Prize in 2015.

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