SaharaReporters Interview Exclusive: Achebe A Celebrated Storyteller, But No Father Of African Literature, Says Soyinka

Sahara Reporters, New York, Saturday, May 18, 2013.

Also: Why He Wished Achebe Had Not Written His Last Book; What He Told Ojukwu Before The War; Genocide, And Other Issues

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Africa’s most well known novelist, Chinua Achebe, as a storyteller who earned global celebration, adding, however, that those describing Achebe as “the father of African literature” were ignorant.  In a wide-ranging interview with SaharaReporters, Soyinka paid tribute to the late novelist who died on March 21, 2013 at 82. Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature, also spoke on his personal relationship with Achebe and other Nigerian writers; his regrets about Achebe’s last book, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra; and his attempt to talk the late Biafran leader, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, out of fighting a war. Soyinka also answered questions about Heinemann’s African Writers Series and scolded “clannish” and “opportunistic hagiographers” fixated on the fact that Achebe never won the Nobel Prize.

Below is the full text of the interview:

Question: Do you recall where or how you first learned about the death of Professor Chinua Achebe? And what was your first reaction?

Soyinka: Where I heard the news? I was on the road between Abeokuta and Lagos. Who called first – BBC or a Nigerian journalist? Can’t recall now, since other calls followed fast and furious, while I was still trying to digest the news. My first reaction? Well, you know the boa constrictor – when it has just swallowed an abnormal morsel, it goes comatose, takes time off to digest. Today’s global media appears indifferent to such a natural entitlement. You are expected to supply that instant response. So, if – as was the case – my first response was to be stunned, that swiftly changed to anger.

Now, why was I stunned? I suspect, mostly because I was to have been present at his last Chinua Achebe symposium just a few months earlier – together with Governor Fashola of Lagos. Something intervened and I was marooned in New York. When your last contact with someone, quite recent, is an event that centrally involves that person, you don’t expect him to embark on a permanent absence. Also, Chinua and I had been collaborating lately on one or two home crises. So, it was all supposed to be ‘business as usual’.  Most irrational expectations at one’s age but, that’s human presumptuousness for you. So, stunned I was, primarily, then media enraged!

Question: Achebe was both a writer as well as editor for Heinemann’s African Writers Series. How would you evaluate his role in the popularization of African literature?

Soyinka: I must tell you that, at the beginning, I was very skeptical of the Heinemann’s African Series. As a literary practitioner, my instinct tends towards a suspicion of “ghetto” classifications – which I did feel this was bound to be. When you run a regional venture, it becomes a junior relation to what exists. Sri Lankan literature should evolve and be recognized as literature of Sri Lanka, release after release, not entered as a series. You place the books on the market and let them take off from there. Otherwise there is the danger that you start hedging on standards. You feel compelled to bring out quantity, which might compromise on quality.

I refused to permit my works to appear in the series – to begin with. My debut took place while I was Gowon’s guest in Kaduna prisons and permission to publish The Interpreters was granted in my absence. Exposure itself is not a bad thing, mind you. Accessibility. Making works available – that’s not altogether negative. Today, several scholars write their PhD theses on Onitsha Market literature. Both Chinua and Cyprian Ekwensi – not forgetting Henshaw and others – published with those enterprising houses. It was outside interests that classified them Onitsha Market Literature, not the publishers. They simply published.

All in all, the odds come down in favour of the series – which, by the way, did go through the primary phase of sloppy inclusiveness, then became more discriminating. Aig Higo – who presided some time after Chinua – himself admitted it.

Question: For any major writer, there’s the inevitable question of influence. In your view, what’s the nature of Achebe’s enduring influence and impact in African literature? And what do you foresee as his place in the canon of world literature?

Soyinka: Chinua’s place in the canon of world literature? Wherever the art of the story-teller is celebrated, definitely assured.

Question: In interviews as well as in writing, Achebe brushed off the title of “father of African literature.” Yet, on his death, numerous media accounts, in Nigeria as well as elsewhere, described him as the father – even grandfather – of African literature. What do you think of that tag?

Soyinka: As you yourself have observed, Chinua himself repudiated such a tag – he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject. So, it is a tag of either literary ignorance or “momentary exuberance” – ala [Nadine] Gordimer – to which we are all sometimes prone. Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe etc. etc. literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity? It’s as ridiculous as calling WS father of contemporary African drama! Or Mazisi Kunene father of African epic poetry. Or Kofi Awoonor father of African poetry. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.

As a short cut to such corrective, I recommend Tunde Okanlawon’s scholarly tribute to Chinua in The Sun (Nigeria) of May 4th. After that, I hope those of us in the serious business of literature will be spared further embarrassment.

Let me just add that a number of foreign “African experts” have seized on this silliness with glee. It legitimizes their ignorance, their parlous knowledge, enables them to circumscribe, then adopt a patronizing approach to African literatures and creativity. Backed by centuries of their own recorded literary history, they assume the condescending posture of midwiving an infant entity. It is all rather depressing.

Question: Following Achebe’s death, you and J.P. Clarke released a joint statement. In it, you both wrote: “Of the ‘pioneer quartet’ of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced – one, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the novelist Chinua Achebe.” In your younger days as writers, would you say there was a sense among your circle of contemporaries – say, Okigbo, Achebe, Clarke, Flora Nwapa – of being engaged in a healthy rivalry for literary dominance? By the way, on the Internet, your joint statement was criticized for neglecting to mention any female writers – say, Flora Nwapa – as part of that pioneering group.  Was that an oversight?

Soyinka: This question – the omission of Flora Nwapa, Mabel Segun (nee Imoukhuede) – and do include D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, so it is not just a gender affair – is related to the foregoing, and is basically legitimate. JP and I were however paying a tribute to a colleague within a rather closed circle of interaction, of which these others were not members. Finally, and most relevantly, we are language users – this means we routinely apply its techniques. We knew what we were communicating when we placed “pioneer quartet” in – yes! – inverted commas. Some of the media may have removed them; others understood their significance and left them where they belonged.

Question: Did you and Achebe have the opportunity to discuss his last book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, and its critical reception? What’s your own assessment of There Was a Country? Some critics charged that the book was unduly divisive and diminished Achebe’s image as a nationally beloved writer and intellectual. Should a writer suborn his witness to considerations of fame?

Soyinka: No, Chinua and I never discussed There was a Country.  Matter of fact, that aborted visit I mentioned earlier would have been my opportunity to take him on with some friendly fire at that open forum, continuing at his home over a bottle or two, aided and abetted by Christie’s [editor’s note: Achebe’s wife, Professor Christie Achebe] cooking. A stupendous life companion by the way – Christie – deserves a statue erected to her for fortitude and care – on behalf of us all. More of that will emerge, I am sure, as the tributes pour in.

Unfortunately, that chance of a last encounter was missed, so I don’t really wish to comment on the work at this point. It is however a book I wish he had never written – that is, not in the way it was. There are statements in that work that I wish he had never made.

The saddest part for me was that this work was bound to give joy to sterile literary aspirants like Adewale Maja-Pearce, whose self-published book – self-respecting publishers having rejected his trash – sought to create a “tragedy” out of the relationships among the earlier named “pioneer quartet” and, with meanness aforethought, rubbish them all – WS especially. Chinua got off the lightest. A compendium of outright impudent lies, fish market gossip, unanchored attributions, trendy drivel and name dropping, this is a ghetto tract that tries to pass itself up as a product of research, and has actually succeeded in fooling at least one respectable scholar. For this reason alone, there will be more said, in another place, on that hatchet mission of an inept hustler.

Question: One of the specific issues raised constantly in recent Nigerian public “debate” has to do with whether the Igbo were indeed victims of genocide. What are your thoughts on the question?

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 2:53:47 p.m. [GMT]

Soyinka: The reading of most Igbo over what happened before the Civil War was indeed accurate – yes, there was only one word for it – genocide. Once the war began however, atrocities were committed by both sides, and the records are clear on that. The Igbo got the worst of it, however. That fact is indisputable. The Asaba massacre is well documented, name by victim name, and General Gowon visited personally to apologize to the leaders. The Igbo must remember, however, that they were not militarily prepared for that war. I told Ojukwu this, point blank, when I visited Biafra. Sam Aluko also revealed that he did. A number of leaders outside Biafra warned the leadership of this plain fact. Bluff is no substitute for bullets.

Question: Your joint statement with Clarke balances the “sense of depletion” you felt over Achebe’s death with “consolation in the young generation of writers to whom the baton has been passed, those who have already creatively ensured that there is no break in the continuum of the literary vocation.” How much of the young Nigerian and African writers do you find the time to read?

Soyinka: Yes, I do read much of Nigerian/African literature – as much as my time permits. My motor vehicle in Nigeria is a mobile library of Nigerian publications – you know those horrendous traffic holdups – that’s where I go through some of the latest. The temptation to toss some out of the car window after the first few pages or chapter is sometimes overwhelming. That sour note conceded – and as I have repeatedly crowed – that nation of ours can boast of that one virtue – it’s bursting with literary talent! And the women seem to be at the forefront.

Question: In the joint statement issued by J. P. Clarke and you following Achebe’s death,  you stated: “For us, the loss of Chinua Achebe is, above all else, intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter.” There’s the impression in some quarters that Achebe, Clarke and you were virtual personal enemies. In the specific case of Achebe and you, there’s the misperception that your 1986 Nobel Prize in literature poisoned your personal relationship with a supposedly resentful Achebe. How would you describe your relationship with Achebe from the early days when you were both young writers in a world that was becoming aware of the fecund, protean phenomenon called African literature?  

Soyinka: Now – all right – I feel a need to return to that question of yours – I have a feeling that I won’t be at ease with myself for having dodged it earlier – which was deliberate. If I don’t answer it, we shall all continue to be drenched in misdirected spittle. I’m referring to your question on the relationship between myself and other members of the “pioneer quartet” – JP Clark and Chinua specifically.  At this stage in our lives, the surviving have a duty to smash the mouths of liars to begin with, then move to explain to those who have genuinely misread, who have failed to place incidents in their true perspective, or who simply forget that life is sometimes strange – rich but strange, and inundated with flux.

My first comment is that outsiders to literary life should be more humble and modest. They should begin by accepting that they were strangers to the ferment of the earlier sixties and seventies. It would be stupid to claim that it was all constantly harmonious, but outsiders should at least learn some humility and learn to deal with facts. Where, in any corner of the globe, do you find perfect models of creative harmony, completely devoid of friction? We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation. But – “rivalry for domination,” to quote you – healthy or unhealthy? Now that is something that has been cooked up, ironically, by camp followers, the most recent of which is that ignoble character I’ve just mentioned, who was so desperate to prove the existence of such a thing that he even tried to rope JP’s wife into it, citing her as source for something I never uttered in my entire existence. I cannot think of a more unprincipled, despicable conduct. These empty, notoriety-hungry hangers-on and upstarts need to find relevance, so they concoct. No, I believe we were all too busy and self-centred – that is, focused on our individual creative grooves – to think ‘dominance’!

Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others. JP remains as irrepressible, contumacious and irascible as he was during that creative ferment of the early sixties. Christopher was ebullient. Chinua mostly hid himself away in Lagos, intervening robustly in MBARI affairs with deceptive disinclination. Perception of Chinua, JP and I as ‘personal enemies’?  The word “enemy” is strong and wrong. The Civil War split up a close-knit literary coterie, of which “the quartet” formed a self-conscious core. That war engendered a number of misapprehensions. Choices were made, some regrettable, and even thus admitted by those who made them. Look, I never considered General Gowon who put me in detention my enemy, even though at the time, I was undeniably bitter at the experience, the circumstances, at the man who authorized it, and contributing individuals – including Chief Tony Enahoro who read out a fabricated confession to a gathering of national and international media.

But the war did end. New wars (some undeclared) commenced. Chief Enahoro and I would later collaborate in a political initiative – though I never warmed up to him personally, I must confess. Gowon and I, by contrast, became good friends. He attended my birthday celebrations, presided at my most recent Nigerian award – the Obafemi Awolowo Leadership Prize. JP was present, with his wife, Ebun. What does that tell you? Before that, I had hosted them in my Abeokuta den on a near full-day visit. Would Achebe, if he had been able, and was in Nigeria, have joined us? Perhaps. But he certainly wouldn’t have been present at the Awolowo Award event. That is a different kettle of fish, a matter between him and Awolowo – which, however, Chinua did let degenerate into tribal charges.

Well then, this prospect that “my 1986 Nobel Prize in literature poisoned my personal relationship with a supposedly resentful Achebe” – I think I shouldn’t dodge that either. Even if that was true – which I do not accept – it surely has dissipated over time. For heaven’s sake, over twenty-five people have taken the prize since then! The problem remains with those vicarious laureates who feel personally deprived, and thus refuse to let go. Chinua’s death was an opportunity to prise open that scab all over again. But they’ve now gone too far with certain posturings and should be firmly called to order, and silenced – in the name of decency.

I refer to that incorrigible sect – no other word for it – some leaders of which threatened Buchi Emecheta early in her career – that she had no business engaging in the novel, since this was Chinua’s special preserve! Incredible? Buchi virtually flew to me for protection – read her own account of that traumatizing experience. It is a Nigerian disease. Nigerians need to be purged of a certain kind of arrogance of expectations, of demand, of self-attribution, of a spurious sense and assertion of entitlement. It goes beyond art and literature. It covers all aspects of interaction with others. Wherever you witness a case of ‘It’s MINE, and no other’s’, ‘it’s OURS, not theirs’, at various levels of vicarious ownership, such aggressive voices, ninety percent of the time, are bound to be Nigerians. This is a syndrome I have had cause to confront defensively with hundreds of Africans and non-Africans. It is what plagues Nigeria at the moment – it’s MY/OUR turn to rule, and if I/WE cannot, we shall lay waste the terrain. Truth is, predictably, part of the collateral damage on that terrain.

Yes, these are the ones who, to co-opt your phrasing, “diminished (and still diminish) Chinua’s image”. In the main, they are, ironically, his assiduous – but basically opportunistic – hagiographers – especially of a clannish, cabalistic temperament. Chinua – we have to be frank here – also did not help matters. He did make one rather unfortunate statement that brought down the hornet’s nest on his head, something like:  “The fact that Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize does not make him the Asiwaju (Leader) of African literature”. I forget now what provoked that statement. Certainly it could not be traced to any such pretensions on my part. I only recollect that it was in the heat of some controversy – on a national issue, I think.

But let us place this in context. Spats between writers, artists, musicians, scientists, even architects and scientific innovators etc. are notorious. They are usually short-lived – though some have been known to last a life-time. This particular episode was at least twenty years ago. Unfortunately some of Chinua’s cohorts decided that they had a mission to prosecute a matter regarding which they lacked any vestige of understanding or competence or indeed any real interest. It is however a life crutch for them and they cannot let go.

What they are doing now – and I urge them to end it shame-facedly – is to confine Chinua’s achievement space into a bunker over which hangs an unlit lamp labeled “Nobel”. Is this what the literary enterprise is about? Was it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by Eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to paper and produce Things Fall Apart? This conduct is gross disservice to Chinua Achebe and disrespectful of the life-engrossing occupation known as literature. How did creative valuation descend to such banality? Do these people know what they’re doing – they are inscribing Chinua’s epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations. I find that disgusting.

China, with her vast population, history, culture – arts and literature – celebrated her first Nobel Prize in Literature only last year. Yet I have been teaching Chinese literature on and off – within Comparative literary studies – for over forty years. Am I being instructed now that those writers needed recognition by the Nobel for me to open such literary windows to my students? Do these strident, cacophonous Nigerians know how much literature – and of durable quality – radiates the world?

Let me add this teacher complaint: far too many Nigerians – students of literature most perniciously – are being programmed to have no other comparative literary structure lodged in their mental scope than WS vs. CA. Such crass limitation is being pitted against the knowledgeable who, often wearily, but obedient to sheer intellectual doggedness, feel that they owe a duty to stop the march of confident ignorance. For me personally, it is galling to have everything reduced to the Nigerian enclave where, to make matters even more acute, there are supposedly only those two. It makes me squirm. I teach the damned subject – literature – after all. I do know something about it.

So let me now speak as a teacher. It is high time these illiterates were openly instructed that Achebe and Soyinka inhabit different literary planets, each in its own orbit. If you really seek to encounter – and dialogue with – Chinua Achebe in his rightful orbit, then move out of the Nigerian entrapment and explore those circuits coursed by the likes of Hemingway. Or Maryse Conde. Or Salman Rushdie. Think Edouard Glissant. Think Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Think Earl Lovelace. Think Jose Saramago. Think Bessie Head. Think Syl Cheney-Coker, Yambo Ouologuem, Nadine Gordimer. Think Patrick Chamoiseau. Think Toni Morrison. Think Hamidou Kane. Think Shahrnush Parsipur. Think Tahar Ben Jelloun. Think Naguib Mahfouz – and so on and on along those orbits in the galaxy of fiction writers. In the meantime, let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of “posthumous” conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition. It has gone beyond ‘sickening’. It is obscene and irreverent. It desecrates memory. The nation can do without these hyper-active jingoists. Can you believe the kind of letters I receive? Here is one beauty – let me quote:

“I told these people, leave it to Wole Soyinka – he will do what is right. We hear Ben Okri, Nuruddin Farah, even Chimamanda Adichie are being nominated. This is mind-boggling. Who are they? Chinua can still be awarded the prize, even posthumously. We know you will intervene to put those upstarts in their place. I’ve assured people you will do what is right.”

Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius. If he thought that dynamite was eviscerating in its effects, he should try some of the gut-wrenching concoctions of Nigerian pontificators. Please, let these people know that I am not even a member of Alfred’s Academy that decides such matters. As a ‘club member,’ however, I can nominate, and it is no business of literary ignoramuses whom, if any, I do nominate. My literary tastes are eclectic, sustainable, and unapologetic. Fortunately, thousands of such nominations – from simply partisan to impeccably informed – pour in annually from all corners of the globe to that cold corner of the world called Sweden. Humiliating as this must be for many who carry that disfiguring hunch, the national ego, on their backs, Nigeria is not the centre of the Swedish electors’ world, nor of the African continent, nor of the black world, nor of the rest of the world for that matter. In fact, right now, Nigeria is not the centre of anything but global chagrin.

Chinua is entitled to better than being escorted to his grave with that monotonous, hypocritical aria of deprivation’s lament, orchestrated by those who, as we say in my part of the world, “dye their mourning weeds a deeper indigo than those of the bereaved”. He deserves his peace. Me too! And right now, not posthumously.

It is not all bleakness and aggravation however – I have probably given that impression, but the stridency of cluelessness, sometimes willful, has reached the heights of impiety. Vicarious appropriation is undignified, and it runs counter to the national pride it ostensibly promotes. Other voices are being drowned, or placed in a false position, who value and express the sensibilities between, respect the subtle threads that sustain, writers, even in their different orbits. My parting tribute to Chinua will therefore take the form of the long poem I wrote to him when he turned seventy, after my participation in the celebrations at Bard College. I plan for it to be published on the day of his funeral – my way of taunting death, by pursuing that cultural, creative, even political communion that unites all writers with a decided vision of the possible – and even beyond the grave.

You may also wish to check this:

http://emotanafricana.com/2012/11/14/mohammed-haruna-vs-soyinka-tola-adenle/

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 2:54 p.m. [GMT]

[U.S. State of] South Carolina slave cabin dismantled for Smithsonian display – By BRUCE SMITH | Associated Press

Associated Press/Bruce Smith – In this Monday, May 13, 2013 photo, workers remove roofing from a slave cabin on Edisto Island, S.C.

EDISTO ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — As a cool sea breeze wafted across a 17th century South Carolina plantation that once grew prized sea island cotton, workers this week carefully disassembled, measured and numbered wooden planks from a dilapidated antebellum slave cabin.

Once one of about two dozen on slave row at Point of Pines Plantation, the cabin will be shipped north where it will go on display at the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of African American History and Culture when it opens on Washington‘s National Mall in two years.

“The reason we collect a cabin like this is it allows you to humanize the slavery experience,” said Lonnie Bunch, the director of the museum that has been in planning for a decade. “Often people think about the concept of slavery but they forget this is the story of men and women and children. So this allows us to personalize the experience.”

The plantation was carved out of the sea island less than 15 years after Charles Towne, now Charleston, was founded in 1670 about 45 miles to the northeast. The cabin is one of only two remaining at the plantation and the only one in its original location.

The museum looked at other locations throughout the South for a cabin before settling on the one found on Edisto Island.

“The sea islands are one reason we were interested,” said Nancy Bercaw, the curator of the museum, who was on the site Monday as the cabin was dismantled. “The sea island history is so rich due to the fact that communities are very, very, old and multigenerational here.”

Edisto Island is in the middle of the Gullah-Geechee Heritage Corridor reaching along the coast from North Carolina to northern Florida. A federal commission has been created to help preserve the culture of the descendants of sea island slaves.

When the Civil War broke out, there were 410,000 blacks living in South Carolina, the majority of them slaves, compared to about 290,000 whites. Along most of the coastal areas, more than half the population was black.

The sea island culture survived for decades after the Civil War because of its relative isolation. Now, however, it’s threatened by breakneck coastal growth.

Bercaw said researchers want to find out as much as possible about the cabin to tell its story both during the time of slavery and in the years after emancipation.

Toni Carpenter, the founder of Lowcountry Africana, a group that works to document the history of blacks in the Lowcountry from South Carolina to Florida, said an 1851 map of the plantation shows the cabin at its present site. An 1854 plantation inventory showed 75 people were enslaved there.

The researchers got a bit of unexpected help on Monday when 76-year-old Junior Meggett came by. He identified the cabin as one that his aunt and uncle used to live in when he was a child.

Meggett said he lived in another nearby cabin in the 1940s until he was grown. That cabin later was destroyed by fire. He described living in a two-room cabin with a wood stove and a small attic and opening wooden window shutters to catch the breeze.

“Boys and girls would sleep in the same room,” he said. “You were just glad to have a place to lie down.”

Workers from Museum Resources Construction and Millwork of Providence Forge, Va., carefully removed planks from the cabin roof, then measured them, numbered them and wrapped them with clear plastic tape for the journey north.

The cabin will be rebuilt at the company and then fumigated before being disassembled for a second time before it’s taken to the $500 Smithsonian museum and put on display, said Kerry Shackelford of the contracting company.

The cabin was donated to the Edisto Island Museum, which worked to stabilize the structure several years ago. The original plan was to move it to the museum several miles away, but there were budgetary problems, museum director Gretchen Smith said.

“We had given up on our chance of preserving it and then the Smithsonian came along and said they would love to have it,” she said. “We would be pleased to have it on our property where thousands could see it. But millions will see it in Washington and learn from it.”

Bunch, who spoke by telephone from Washington, said some people are still uncomfortable talking about slavery.

But at the time, he said, “slavery was the dominant institution in America — it colored religion, it colored politics and it colored expansion. It was an economic engine for both northern and southern prosperity. By not talking about it, we neglect a great understanding of who we are.”

Thursday, May 16, 2013, 6:51:40 p.m. [GMT]

As I’ve cried hoarse since 2002, more especially since Economy Director Okonjo Iweala started the mad borrowing spree despite her earlier posturing during the Obasanjo regime, I know little about these matters but I do understand enough to know that a bond is a loan no matter the supposedly “favorable terms” that Nigeria’s media always sing about.  I also do know that these loans – call them bonds or any other names – are perhaps easier to get through unlike those World Bank-procured loans through foreign donors.  Much as I’ve written against these since Lagos – which could and can – afford them to a greater extent than other states started the trend around 2003, the Bank-procured loans get supervision or “oversight” in modern parlance; bonds do not.

Unfortunately, the bonds are not, and that may be how it’s possible for various states to secure bonds that are flooding Nigeria’s states with these loans sizable portions of which will not be spent on projects for which borrowed, especially with elections in sight.

It’s win-win all the way, including the Citis, Deutsche Banks, etcetera which get handsome commissions – except the Nigerian citizens.

An important point I know and mentioned in a 2002 essay when I wrote “Governors Discover another mine” with Ekiti State under Governor Niyi Adebayo as the main subject in The Comet on Sunday about bond issuance to finance specific projects is that it’s not an unusual practice, but the practice is different in a place like the U.S.A.  A governor in the States cannot wake up and decide to issue bonds.  It would have to be included as an item to be check-marked during an election cycle with voters in the state or a county (local government area or even a city) given the opportunity to vote for or against the issue.  Do we want roads or overhead bridges within a town at a cost that generations down the road would have to be paying for or do we cut our collective coat according to fabrics we can afford?  The state legislatures  that are not cuckolded like the ones in Nigeria or County Board would also be there for the people or they get voted out next time they stand for re-elections.

When a home-owner gets a property tax bill in a county/town that has raised a bond issue, his/her share of the bond issue is added monthly to the bill until that loan is entirely paid.

With the era of unsupervised claimed-projects fuelled by unsupervised descent into manic borrowings at state and “federal” levels under a so-called Economy Director who is being indirectly cautioned – as I understand The Bank’s warning – by the same institution where she earned her stripes as an economic expert, Nigerians may have finally arrived at the slaughter slab of greedy handlers of their country’s economy.

Even though it is apparent that The Bank’s intention is not altruistic as it is not in the interest of Nigerians or the economy of their country – “subsidy removal” is high on its mind, the question remains:  what does Nigeria do with all the money it collects from oil if it has to borrow to finance deficit budgeting AS WELL AS raise petroleum products prices? 

And by the way, what of the farm subsidies to American and European farmers by their various governments?

The huddle led by “oil subsidy removal” expert from the IMF before President Jonathan’s New Year’s Message of doom and gloom to  Nigerians was delivered in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2012.  [Picture:  Linda Ikeji's blog]

UPDATE:  This essay was first posted yesterday as “

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World Bank To FG: Don’t Borrow To Finance Budget Deficit”.  As the copy is all mine, I’ve reposted to reflect that fact.  Links to the essays that prompted my comments are below.

TOLA.  Wednesday, May 15, 2013.  1:54 a.m. [GMT]

Related Stories:

http://www.punchng.com/business/money/fg-appoints-citi-deutsche-banks-for-1bn-eurobond/

http://leadership.ng/news/140513/world-bank-fg-don-t-borrow-finance-budget-deficit

I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E: Bank detain female customer 3 days for default in payment of loan – The Vanguard

 Crime Alert  Wednesday, May 8, 2013

*The Micro Finance Bank (Insert Mrs Rose Abbey)  advertisement

By Onozure Dania

A Petty trader, Mrs. Rose Abbey got what she didn’t bargain for when she was allegedly detained in a Micro Finance Bank at Ipaja area of Lagos, for failing to pay a weekly N2,000 earlier agreed on towards offsetting the N17,000 loan she borrowed from the bank.

It was alleged that she was abducted and beaten up before she was locked up in a room at the bank located at 170/ 172, Ipaja Road Baruwa on April 25. She was, however, released three days later. Before then, she was allegedly neither allowed to have access to members of her family nor given food. The housewife who hails from Edo state later regained her freedom, after her friend paid the N2,000 to the bank.

Narrating her ordeal the victim told Crime Alert that she borrowed N17,000 from the bank to run her small scale business at Gowon Estate and the condition was that she will be paying back N2,000 every week. She said she has been paying the money until the 25 of April, when she was unable to pay because of poor sales.

Poor sales

“When the manager of the bank confronted me about the payment, I told her that I could not meet up with the payment for the week because of poor sales. She insisted that I must pay the money and dragged me to their office and locked me up along with another defaulter till the third day.

They prevented me from contacting my husband and they attempted to seize my phone and only allowed me to contact a friend who brought the money before I was released. After my release, my husband could not believe my story when I got home. It was only after he confirmed it that he believed me.”

Police sources said the matter was reported at Gowon Estate Police station and the manager and two others were arrested and taken to the station for detaining the woman illegally. According to the source, the bank officials admitted that the mother of four kids actually slept in their office because she was not able to pay their money stating that she signed an agreement with the bank before they borrowed her the money. The source said that the bank Manager however, denied assaulting her adding that she was only trying to recover the bank’s money.

When Crime Alert contacted the victim’s husband, Mr Emmanuel Adeyemo Abbey on phone, he stated that the first thing that came to his mind when his wife came back was that she has gone after another man, adding that later, he had to listen to her because she has never done that before. “Initially, I did not believe my wife until later when she showed me the injury she sustained and her friend who gave the bank the money also confirmed it, before I believed her.”

He said he was not aware that his wife was owing such money adding that it was not an excuse to illegally detain her without informing the police. Lamenting his wife’s fate, the husband further stated that her children were left alone in the house and throughout her stay in the bank, they did not eat anything and were not taken proper care of because they could not tell about their mother’s whereabouts.

He alleged that after the issue was reported to the police, they are yet to do anything about the case adding that he doesn’t like the way they are treating that case and threatened to go to court to seek for redress if the police fail to take appropriate action against the bank officials.

Efforts made to confirm the story from the police failed but a source at the station confirmed the arrest of Adesuwa and her staff and said they will soon be charged to court.

Thursday, May 9, 12:17:00 a.m. [GMT]

While Nigerians are still reveling in the literary success of Chimamanda Adichie, here comes news of two young ladies with deep roots in the country.  Ghana, too, with her brilliant and sassy Ms. Selasi who also has Nigerian ancestry continues her tradition of literary excellence.  TOLA.

Photograph: Wikipedia

Cambridge-educated Helen Oyeyemi who, at the ripe old age of 26, has already had the following published works, including The Icarus Girl which was published while she was studying for her A-Levels!

Novels

• The Icarus Girl (2005)
• The Opposite House (2007)
• White is for Witching (2009)
• Mr Fox (2011)

Plays

• Juniper’s Whitening
• Victimese

Taiye Selasi, an Oxford-educated London lass with Nigerian and Ghanaian parentage. This newcomer has published – wait for this, Nigerians, and eat your hearts out – Ghana Must Go – a book that is receiving acclaim!

See the full list by clicking below:

GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2013

The 2013 Group.  BBC Picture.

Check out the link below to read a little more about the two young ladies, some on the 2013 Granta List and a few illustrious winners from the past who have lived up to the promise the Granta bestows:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Books/Zadie-Smith-Taiye-Selasi-on-Granta-best-young-novelists-list/Article1-1045074.aspx

Reblogged from emotanafricana.com:

http://saharareporters.com/news-page/former-deputy-governor-anambra-state-killed-kidnappers

wtatennis.com

DOHA, Qatar – Serena Williams will return to No.1 in the world on Monday, becoming the oldest woman to hold the top spot since the computer rankings were introduced in November 1975.

It will be the 31-year-old American’s sixth stint at No.1 and will occur nearly 11 years after she first claimed the top spot.

“I never thought I would be here again,” Williams said after her quarterfinal win over Petra Kvitova at the Qatar Total Open that assured her of the accolade. “I am so thankful that I have the opportunity to get back to No.1. It has been a long road back and it’s a great feeling. It has been a lot of hard work but I don’t want to stop here.”

“This is another amazing accomplishment for a superstar champion who has played an integral role, over the past 15 years, in solidifying tennis as the global leader in women’s sports,” said Stacey Allaster, WTA Chairman & CEO. “As we celebrate 40 years of the WTA this season, it seems fitting to have Serena, one of the sport’s all-time greats and global icons, return to the World No.1 ranking.”

A stellar 2012 season saw Williams claim her 14th and 15th Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon and the US Open, gold medals in singles and doubles at the Summer Olympics in London and the title at the TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships – Istanbul. She finished the year with a 58-4 record and .935 winning percentage, the best single-season record since 2007 (Justine Henin, 63-4, .940).

Williams began the 2013 season by claiming the title at the Brisbane International, bringing her career tally to 47 – the most among active players and 10th-most all-time. She followed that up with a quarterfinal appearance at the Australian Open.

Williams first ascended to World No.1 on July 8, 2002 at 20 years old, spending a little over a year there. She returned to No.1 in September 2008 after a more than five year absence, which remains the longest gap between stays at No.1 in WTA history.

Williams will be 31 years, 4 months and 24 days old when she starts her sixth stint at No.1, surpassing Chris Evert as oldest No.1. She was 30 years, 11 months and 3 days old when she was last No.1 on November 24, 1985.

Serena’s Weeks At No.1:
July 8, 2002-August 10, 2003: 57 weeks
September 8, 2008-October 5, 2008: 4 weeks
February 2, 2009-April 19, 2009: 11 weeks
October 12, 2009-October 25, 2009: 2 weeks
November 2, 2009-October 10, 2010: 49 weeks
February 18, 2013-?: 1 week (so far)

Oldest No.1s
Serena Williams: 31 years, 4 months, 24 days (February 18, 2013)
Chris Evert: 30 years, 11 months, 3 days (November 24, 1985)
Martina Navratilova: 30 years, 9 months, 29 days (August 16, 1987)