Poet laureate and National Merit Award winner, Emeritus Professor Niyi Osundare has described Nigeria as a country that is very difficult to love for its disappointing and self-sabotaging ways.
Despite its failings, however, the country compels his love as it should other compatriots for the promise that it could yet realize its huge potential.
The renowned scholar said this in his remarks as special guest of honnour at the public presentation of ‘Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile’, a poetry book by a Nigerian-Canadian writer, Lola Fabowale-Male, on Zoom on Saturday, October 7.
He observed that many Nigerians, both home and abroad, were disillusioned and even angry that Nigeria has not worked and thereby has denied them a safe, conducive haven to live and realise their dreams.
This has driven the ‘japa’ syndrome or massive ditching of the country by the citizens for greener pastures in foreign countries where the systems worked, thus further draining it of the much-needed quality human resource needed for its development.
Said the don, “there are people in Nigeria whose minds are farther from Nigeria, from their locality than the minds of many of the people that are in America or Australia or in China.”
But Osundare said well-meaning Nigerians could not give up on the country but must continue to show it love and constantly engage the ‘poor’ leadership and other malefactors that draw it down.
He commended Fabowale, for enlisting in this corps of patriots with her poetry and writings, even as a diasporean.
He described her as: “a poet that is global, ecumenical, truly not just international but trans-national and… yet also very indigenous; not only indigenous… very ‘nativist’, while commending her “accomodationist, progressive temperament and impulse” as well as masterful style and treatment of the themes in the poetry collection, Fabowale’s debut, as a published author.
Speaking further, Osundare said: “I’m not a stranger to this book or to the poems. And if the poems could talk, like I’m doing, I’m sure, they will say the same thing that they are no strangers to me. What I mean is that I saw the poems in this book in the raw as it were, in a manner of speaking.
“And even at that stage, I could see, and feel and smell and touch their gravitas and grace. Now out of the desk’s drawers, out of the files, beyond the tip-tap, tip-tap of the keyboard, beyond the glint and glow of the computer’s screen, here we have the book in our hands!
“And I tell you, no matter what the proponents and exponents of the e-book might say, there is nothing still I find more pleasurable than holding a book in my hand. I’m one of those audacious people who believe the computer won’t be able to kill the book. Just as the video has not been able to kill the physical stage.
“Now the title of this book, ‘Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile’, when I came across it for the first time, as a linguist, I was really fascinated. I think Kole (Ade-Odutola) mentioned the word, code, code-mixing.
“So, you know that the author has not done it for fun. There’s a lot actually to the structuring and framing of this title that says virtually everything about the content of the book and the intent of the author, her dreams and also her fears. ‘Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile’. Why nostalgia and not memory?
“Nostalgia is a second cousin of memory, but there’s something about memory that doesn’t come with the sentimentality and some kind of negative connotation that nostalgia comes with. There’s something almost soporific about nostalgia.
“Now Orile, Orile Ede is what we call it in Yoruba. I have heard Kole say so many profoud things in Yoruba this afternoon that he couldn’t have equally said competently in English.
“This, as far as I’m concerned, is a study in the phenomenology of the diaspora. The diaspora has an instantiation of exile and also the different ways we react to the diaspora.
“This is one of the areas in which I’m doing active work. What does it mean, when you cross over from our own part of the world to this other side of the Atlantic?
“What does diaspora make out of you?
“Are you still able to remember anything?
“Do you have any nostalgia about the things that happened when you were very young?
“How do you react to those memories?
“I have come across so many Nigerians, I have visited all the continents, everywhere I go, I meet people who are very passionate about Nigeria, but I also meet people who say, “Give up on that country, that’s not my business I have only one life and that’s what I’m living here.
“The kinds of poems we have here are an antidote to that kind of pessimism.
“Here’s somebody who left Nigeria very young, I am surprised at the so many things she could remember!
“When I read ‘Alade Hu’wo’, my mind went back to my primary school days – that must have been 1957 or 1958, we read that story in Alawiye.
“And for a member of the younger generation to have remembered that and make such a beautiful poem from it is remarkable.
“And then, that poem which spoke about a ‘Crush, the word, ‘crush’ reminds me of two things yes, there’s something romantic about it, but there is also a form of crush you have, through the instrumentality of memory, for the country you love so much, to a culture you love so much, to a language you love so much. Although, there’s Spanish now, there is English and there is French, but there’s so much about Yoruba that I run into here: Isawuru, akan and so on. The choice of these words is deliberate. They are not just for mere cultural expression but cultural validation.
“This is the kind of thing you don’t find in many Nigerians, they’d say, “oh yeah, when you are in Rome, act like a Roman”.
“That’s a very lazy thought. There are times you are in Rome you cannot act as a Roman, no matter how much you try.
“There’s a way this book takes us back to our origin.
“The phenomenology of exile – what kind of exile are you talking about?
“There’s the here and there; then, there’s the once upon a time and the it came to pass, the temporal and the spiritual.
“What does it mean to be an exile?
“Many people talk about relocation, in many instances, if we really want to be factual, to be truthful to ourselves, relocation is actually dislocation!
“Every aspect of diasporic movement takes with it a lot of dislocation. There are so many things in your new place that remind you of your past.
“There are two ways of reacting to this – you either suppress them or you kill them.
“And neither of those two is really a choice.
“What I see in Lola, not just in her poetry, but in so many of the things I have read by her is a way of telling us, “where you are may not be the end all time, that exile is a state of mind.
“And I have met many people in Nigeria whose minds are farther from Nigeria, from their locality than the minds of many of the people that are in America or Australia or in China. So, it is a matter of the mind, the love you show for your country.
“And I must say that Nigeria, our country, is a difficult country to love, very, very difficult.
People who mouth patriotism, many of them don’t know what they are talking about.
“Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” Yeah, Mr. Kennedy said that a long time ago.
But he said it with the understanding and on the strength of the fact that America has done so much for Americans. So, he’s asking them to give back.
The question many of us ask is, what is Nigeria giving us?
In fact, Nigeria takes, takes and takes!
But, she’s still our country! She’s still our ‘Orile’. We cannot run away from this.
As people say, you are in the diaspora and you want to forget your roots? “Oh! I’m in Rome now, I want to be like Romans”.
There will be so many people who would remind you, that you may claim it, but you don’t have it (citizenship).
And as people say, no matter how long a drift wood stays in the lake, it can never become a crocodile.
What’s the solution?
The solution is in our culture – the Yoruba culture, the Igbo, Hausa, Xhosa and so many other cultures of Africa that I know of. I can’t speak for the whole continent.
African cultures are essentially pluralist. They operate through the medium of this and that, not this or that; that is, additive, not replacive.
That is to say, you can be in Canada, and that is what I see a lot here (referring to the book) – to be in America, Europe or Australia and still be an African. And still remember Orile!
No matter where we go, that Orile holds sway. Critical acceptance is what I call it, critical acceptance of the West – that’s what the poems are about.
Critical, because, yes, the West has electricity, water supply, it has many of the things we don’t have in Africa, but the West also has racism, it also has genderism.
But there is also the part two of the West – the beauty of the people who take you, who accept you the way you are.The people who throw their door open to you.
And this even extends to the seasons. That’s why one of my favourite stanzas come from the poem, ‘Winter in Ottawa’ on page 62.
(Reads poem): “Soon summer leaves will gaily gather/As if summoned to some/Sumptuous feasts at the feet of trees; /Heeding an exoteric dress code/Ranging from rich green, amber, wine to gold…”
You see, there is the cold touch of winter in this book that is also the friendly cool of the autumn or the fall, there is the energized heat of the summer.
Talking about the weather, talking about the environment there’s a lot about the environment and the people here.
Here’s somebody (referring to the author) who has a critical approach to culture wherever she is, just as she has critical acceptance about Nigeria, instead of rejecting Africa instead of rejecting Nigeria, despite its weaknesses. No, no, no, we know the weaknesses of our country I spent my life fighting those weaknesses and faults, but the more I fight those weaknesses, the more I love that country, the more I love Africa, because I have no choice.
This is the kind of thing I see here.
The poet we meet here is a poet that is global, ecumenical, truly not just international but trans-national and she’s also very indigenous; not only indigenous and very ‘nativist’ in quote.
So, we have a poet without frontiers, a poet without or beyond borders.
The kind of large-mindedness I run into in many of the poems of poets such as Pablo Neruda, Walter Whitman – “I’m large I contain multitudes” – this is the kind of accomodationist, progressive temperament and impulse these poems give me.
So after reading these poems, I came away with a stronger conviction in my recent essay, that is, my acceptance speech of the Bao Award in China.
And the title of the acceptance speech is, ‘Why Poetry Matters’
This is an instance of the kind of answer that, that kind of title raises. After reading this (Nostalgia and Tears F’Orile, I have stronger conviction that poetry matters.
Thank you very much, Lola. Owo e konigbe o. Iwaju, iwajulopaebiti n re si, iwaju lo o ma lo. Iwo to koeleyi, o okoimi. T’obaf’iyans’enuyo dun lenu re.
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