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CORA launches the 14th Lagos Book & Art Festival

Toyin Akinosho, Publisher of Africa Oil & Gas Report and Secretary General of the CORA Art & Cultural Foundation has announced the dates for the 14^th Lagos Book & Art Festival. The festival would hold from the 16^th – 18^th November 2012 at Freedom Park, Broad Street, Lagos Island with a pre-event Publishers’ Forum and Cocktail holding on the 15^th. A theme has also been announced for the Festival: The Narrative of Conflict- which focuses on how the written word and the literacy it engenders interrogates the different conflicts that surround our current existence and recent past. The festival is dedicated to the veteran artist Bruce Onabrakpeya who turned 80 this year and whose work and dedication to the arts continue to be a source of inspiration to generations of Nigerians.

The Lagos Book & Art Festival, or LABAF as it’s often called, is a landmark event on the nation’s culture calendar with sprawling book displays, exhibitions, live music and drama performances and of course, nuanced literary events that take time out to dig deep into the content of books. Says Akinosho- “LABAF is self-styled as Africa’s Biggest Culture Picnic because we don’t just put together a book fair, a performance concert, a literary festival or an art expo, what we do is a healthy fusion of all four in a festival atmosphere, and for the past 14 years, the festival has become an important destination for families, literary and art enthusiasts, culture producers, children and even lovers. We have had people who came as children years ago still attending now as young adults. We have also had people who met at the festival grounds for the first time years ago, still attending as married couples. What keeps them coming back is the way the festival allows them to engage with culture in a fun atmosphere, that is why it is Africa’s Biggest Culture Picnic.”

Set to hold this year from the 16^th – 18^th November at Freedom Park, 1 Hospital Road, Lagos Island, LABAF will feature over 10 book events, 3 music concerts, 2 theatre shows, 11 workshops for children and 2 visual art exhibitions. There are over thirty books being discussed at the festival including Fela: This Bitch of a Life by Carlos Moore, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White. Power, Politics & Death by Segun Adeniyi,Bitter-Sweet My Life with Obasanjo by Oluremi Obasanjo, A Measure of Grace by Akin Mabogunje, Bomboy, by Yewande Omotosho, Voice Of America, by E. C. Osondu,Stealth Of Nations: The Global Rise Of The Informal Economy, by Robert Neuwirth,Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Open Graveyard by Wale Osun, Out of the Shadows by Kayode Fayemi, Roses and Bullets by Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo and Witness To Justiceby Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah. Because the LABAF book events usually engage with books at a deeper level beyond the star power of the authors that produce them, most sessions are usually driven by robust discussion panels, some of the writers and thinkers confirmed for these panels include: Sola Olorunyomi, Bisi Arije, Femi Akintunde Johnson, Toni Kan, Femi Aisida, Toki Mabogunje, Odili Ujubonu, Tolu Ogunlesi, Wale Ajao, Derin Ajao, Tunji Lardner, Niran Okewole, Tade Ipadeola, Layiwola Adeniji, Eghosa Imasuen, Anwuli Ojogwu, Kayode Komolafe amongst others.

But LABAF is not just about heavy book events to get you giddy with book knowledge. The Childrens’ Programme coordinated by Children And The Environment (CATE) usually draws children in their thousands and will feature loads of activities, workshops, talks and performances centered around the festival theme of The Narrative of Conflict while marking the National Creativity Day and UN Child Rights Day.

In a tightly packed performance bouquet, The Crown Troupe of Africa would be staging Zainabu Jallo’s ‘Holy Night’ while the internationally acclaimed Renegade Theatre will also be taking the stage during the course of the festival. Add to that a Jazz Concert produced by Inspiro Productions, storytelling, spoken word, music and reading sessions produced by Pulp Faction, Image & Heritage and Laipo, a return of CORA’s Great Highlife Party in the biggest Highlife Concert in a long while, all rolled into a scenic venue with a captivating history then you know why Freedom Park is the place to be from the 16^th – 18^th November at the 14^th Lagos Book & Art Festival!

For more information on the festival and to contact the organizers, please visit:www.coraartfoundation.com

City Observations: Lagos/St. Louis

Lagos, it turns out, is not too far off as a twin replica of the city of St. Louis. The differences are huge, of course, but so are the similarities, top of which is the problem of security at certain times of the evening at certain parts of the town. A big difference, of course, is in population. Lagos Island, the most obvious equivalent to the City of St. Louis, according to the 2011 estimate, has a population of 318,069, while that of Lagos Island is 209,437.

Driving to Victoria Island, Lagos, a couple of weeks ago, I contemplated the similarities. Separated from Illinois by the Mississippi, the city of St. Louis boasts of a number of tall buildings, fancy restaurants, fast speeding cars, and the Gateway Arch. It is also arguably the most dangerous city in the country. The Lagos Island, Victoria Island, Lekki Penninsula (and other adjoining small islands in the state) are separated from the Lagos mainland by a set of bridges. The longest one of them, the Third Mainland Bridge, was built in the 80s during the military regime. If another regular traveller on the Illinois/St. Louis road were to be blindfolded, and suddenly open-eyed while on one of these bridges into Lagos, heading into the Islands, s/he might immediately start asking where the Arch went.

As a developing megacity with enormous potential for the 21st century, the government of Lagos is keenly aware of the need to keep up with the rate of growth, development, and migration. And as one of the most developed cities in the country, the weight of the responsibility is not more evident than in the near autocratic way in which its laws are being implemented so as to get the city into order. The Lagos Traffic Laws look like a governing manifesto of a North Korean administration. I exaggerate, of course. My experience has now ranged from the merely tangential floating via public transportation to work and back, to participant observation immersion in petty conversations with frustrated denizens.

It is a long way from Eldorado, but the city works on schedule as it should. For now.

CORA/NLNG Book Party

At the Freedom Park in Lagos today, the Committee of Relevant Arts hosted a few of the longlisted writers for the Nigerian Prize for Literature (sponsored by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas: NLNG). I dropped by for a good old fraternizing with the writer community, and came back with these few pictures.

The venue itself, now named Freedom Park, was an old colonial prison where famous inmates like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka spent some time in the early years of Nigerian independence. Across from the “Kongi’s Harvest Gallery” where the event was held stood a stage now used for musical/dramatic performance. According to Jahman Anikulapo (the head of CORA), that used to be a hanging scaffolding for the condemned inmates of the prison. Gleaming in the evening sun from afar, it now stands as a grim reminder of the constant presence of a not too distant past and the constant struggle for freedom and expression.

Present at the reading were some of the longlisted writers: Jude Dibia, Tricia Adaobi Nwaubani, Lola Shoneyin, Steve Shaba (a publisher), and Onuora Nzekwu (the author of Eze Goes to School). Other writers spotted there include Ayodeji Arigbabu also from Dada Books. The reading session was moderated by Deji Toye.

A Challenge of Fourteen Year Olds

The transition from teaching a set of kids already out of their teens in a university environment into teaching those just entering it in a high school, is not small, as I’ve realized. One set is mature (or maturing) while the other set is a horde of immature ones with an unrealistic appraisal of their own invincibility. Being all boys adds an interesting dynamic or a strong peer influence, less moderating influence of a female peer, and testosterone. At fourteen, I was probably just as terrible, and impressionable.

The memories are gone now, of the tiny youth that I was as a fourteen year old, but little bits of it remains in the marks that my teachers put on my flesh with the cane. The biggest offence then, of course, was disturbing the class. Overall, it stood almost on par with not getting the class notebooks up to date, or missing a crucial class period. There was one period when late-coming carried an equally grave consequence. A military administrator of the state came to the school, rounded up all the late-coming students, and made them do push-ups on the lawn, supervised by military men holding guns and live ammunition.

And so, back in the position as a teacher – no longer the willowy kid at the back of the class trying to get through the day in the best (and most fun) ways possible without getting into trouble – reality beckons: to treat these little ones as I would have loved to be treated, with respect and firmness, or with an attitude commensurate to the behaviour exhibited by individual student. This helps, to think of them as one would younger nephews at home to whom one has a limited responsibility of care. Like the principal of the school opined earlier in the week, the parents are the first and most important teachers.

Three weeks have now gone past, along with a series of classroom exercises, conversations, comprehension passages, question and answers about their new English teacher, sentence and essay types, and few confrontations with individually stubborn students to whom a new teacher is someone to test to the limit of his patience. I would ask, I said to myself some nights ago, if there are particularly helpful ways of dealing with students of this particular age.

Happy World Teachers’ Day

None of my students – or teachers for that matter – remembered the date, but I arrived home from work today to a beautiful drawing by my niece. She had been advised by teachers in her school to make a present for the teachers in her life. It had my name on it, wrongly spelled, of course. It was the best end to the already stressful day, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy Teachers’ Day to all those who spend their waking moments thinking of ways and strategies to impart good education in other people’s children, most times for very little pay. You make the world a better place.

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