₦airaland Forum

Culled from Page Turner.

Religion is close to theatre; much of its power comes from the effects of staging and framing. And in a play about a preacher, theatre easily becomes religion. The performance of Wole Soyinka’s 1964 farce “The Trials of Brother Jero,” which I saw recently in Lagos, was not dissimilar to my experience at a Pentecostal church about two weeks later. “The Trials of Brother Jero” centers on a prophet, one of the many freelance Christian clerics of dubious authority that have proliferated in Nigeria. Charlatans are not charlatans all the way through: if they didn’t believe at least a little in what they were selling, it would be difficult for them to persuade others. “In fact, there are eggs and there are eggs,” Brother Jero proclaims in his first soliloquy of the play. “Same thing with prophets. I was born a prophet.”

This element of make-believe is true of both prophets and actors, and so in a play like “Brother Jero” the point is doubled: both acting and religion have an imprecise relationship with the truth. The performance I saw was at a beautiful independent theatre called Terra Kulture, on Victoria Island, an upscale neighborhood of the city. Brother Jero—“Velvet-hearted Jeroboam, Immaculate Jero, Articulate Hero of Christ’s Crusade”—was played with slinky, mellifluous deviousness by Patrick Diabuah as equal parts Hamlet and Wile E. Coyote. The play was fast, funny, wordy, and physical, and it sent up deception for the two-way street that it was: an eyes-half-open transaction between the deceiver and the deceived. “Go and practice your fraudulences on another person of greater gullibility,” says one of Jero’s marks shortly before he, too, is flattered—drawn in with sweet words and gleefully defrauded.

Nigeria, too, is in a season of drama, and words are flying freely. In Rivers State, in the oil-rich Niger Delta, there is a power struggle. This struggle is entirely within the People’s Democratic Party, which is the party of President Goodluck Jonathan, and it centers on the elections of 2015, which the President is interested in contesting. The First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, is from Rivers State, and she has been vocal on one side of the dispute, acting as the President’s proxy. The governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, widely liked and seen as an insurgent within the party, is on the other side. President Jonathan has been condemned by Nigerians for being ineffectual, for having a make-believe Presidency that promises much and delivers little, but the Dame (as she is called) has been even more a figure of fun. Her command of English is unsteady: she once addressed a gathering of widows as “my fellow-widows.” A cause for more sustained resentment has been her ostentatious personal style in what is still a desperately poor
country.

In early July, a maneuver by the Dame’s supporters to impeach the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly devolved into mayhem. In the ensuing brawl, one member of the House, Chidi Lloyd, attacked another, Michael Chinda, with a ceremonial mace, breaking his skull and critically wounding him in full view of television cameras. In the wake of this attack, Dame Patience made a conciliatory statement in which she described Governor Amaechi as her “son” (the difference in their age is seven years). Newspaper commentators found her appeal hypocritical, since she’d been widely credited with a major role in the state’s crisis. After all, she had recently been in Rivers State on an eleven-day visit, with the full security apparatus of the Presidency. Her visit was so disruptive and intimidating that the governor had been pinned down in his lodge, unable to move around his capital city, Port Harcourt. And in the House of Assembly there was a group of members so fanatically loyal to her that one of them, Evans Bipi, had declared to the press, “Why must [Governor Amaechi] be insulting my mother, my Jesus Christ on earth?”

Loudest among the voices of protest raised against the Dame was Wole Soyinka’s. He took her to task for imposing herself on the people and for acting like a “parallel head of state.” Soyinka called a press conference in Lagos and built his case against the President and his wife around an extended and unexpected metaphor: the twelfth-century persecution and murder of Thomas à Becket by the agents of Henry II. Speaking about the way a king might tacitly condone crimes and, thus, making pointed reference to the way Governor Amaechi was being stripped of power in Rivers State, Soyinka asked, “Are we not moving towards absolute monarchism? There are many worrying historical parallels.” A written statement he gave to the press had a more ad-hominem quality, ending with the line “You can extract a hippopotamus from the swamps, but you cannot take the swamp out of a hippopotamus.” This was generally interpreted as an ungentle poke at the Dame, a woman of considerable size. Even some of Soyinka’s supporters squirmed at the analogy.

Political activity has always been as central to Soyinka’s work as theatre has. He was uncensorable right from the start. He was imprisoned for twenty-two months in the late sixties, during Nigeria’s civil war, for his attempt to negotiate a peace between the Federal and Biafran sides. He spent much of that time in solitary confinement, an experience that he wrote about in a memoir, “The Man Died.” In 1994, he fled Nigeria when the military regime of General Sani Abacha threatened his life. His passport had been seized, so he went across the land border into the Republic of Benin, and from there he made his way into exile in the United States. He agitated for a return to democratic rule and was charged with treason in absentia, in 1997. But he returned home after General Abacha died, in 1998, and he lives in Nigeria now.

He remains one of the country’s most fearless defenders of human rights, speaking out on issues from the Boko Haram insurgency to the aggressive legislation curtailing the rights of gays and lesbians. He is famous and respected, and perhaps better known to the ordinary Nigerian for his political activity than for the linguistically intricate and thematically complex plays—among them “Death and the King’s Horseman” and “Madmen and Specialists”—that won him the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1986.

Word of Soyinka’s July press conference reached the Dame, and she was not amused. Three days later, she issued a statement in which she called Soyinka “an embarrassment” to Nigeria. And it was this unexpected turning of the tables, this swerve into the theatre of the absurd, that I wished to ask Soyinka about. I got my chance a few days later, when I visited him in Abeokuta, about an hour north of Lagos, in his bucolic home at the edge of the woods. The house was cool, shadowed, and quiet. It had none of the ostentation that one expects from a Nigerian “big man”—no security fence or luxury cars or marble floors. Instead, there was indigo-dyed hand-woven aso-oke cloth on the windows, and there were phalanxes of African sculpture, both Yoruba and otherwise, standing in watchful groups around the living room. It was a reassuring place, a suitable lair for a man whose name, soyinka, literally means “the daemons surround me.” I was reminded of another one of the epithets for him: “child of the forest.” He lived up to this designation as well, often going out hunting and bearing in himself a more congenial relationship with traditional religious belief than most Nigerians, converts to Islam or Christianity, would entertain. Soyinka is a devotee of Ogun—the god of iron and “the first symbol of the alliance of disparities”—and his “Myth, Literature and the African World” is a learned exploration of the links between epic theater, Yoruba ritual, aesthetics, and ethics.

My visit was about a week after his seventy-ninth birthday. He looked vigorous, effortlessly handsome. His famous afro and beard, both a vivid white, looked less like signs of age than evidence of some unending efflorescence. “So, what does it feel like to be an embarrassment?” His eyes closed with mirth.

“It is not only the end of farce. It is the end of all the genres.” Then, still laughing, but with more fight in his voice, he added, “She was unelected—and it is irrelevant if she’s a man or a woman—she is a mere appendage of power. If there’s someone she doesn’t find embarrassing, there must be something wrong with that person.”

Teju Cole is a photographer and writer. His novel “Open City” won the Internationaler Literaturpreis in June. He contributes frequently to Page-Turner.

If reports from Paul Hayward of the Daily Telegraph are actually true, then Mr. Wenger will be ending his 17-year reign as manager of Arsenal FC. Reports from the aforementioned source has it that he will be moving to the french soccer leaders PSG. If he really does move, I will personally miss him. What do you think?

Bros na this Eket where I dey you say better pass Uyo? Na wa o.

Emmadani: guy u dnt even knw wat u are sayin,dnt jugde wat u av not seen.Go to ikot abasi,ikot ekpene,abak,itu,eket al dis town as no difference wit d capital city,it is as developed or even more developed dan uyo....U ar talking trash.

Abuja and Lagos (Island) should top your list based on your indices. Enugu town, Calabar, Uyo should be there. Development in Nigeria is mostly non-existent. Infrastructural development (which I believe the Op means) is mostly focused in capital cities. Port-harcourt should be far from this list.

easy4beno: Some1 shld pls respond to denice comment na..

Check the career page on www.nbplc.com at least once every fortnight.

xpizzy: I got a letter from NB on the 31st of DEC saying I would be informed abt the next Step of the process. They didn't say I was successful or otherwise. Anyone with similar case

It means be patient. When the induction for the new intakes is over, there is a high possibility you will be called. It happens all the time in NB.

One of the things that saw me through this stage was the information dundy and co supplied. Go back to previous pages, study it intensely, u can't go wrong. Be very confident. It is well...The questions are quite sensitive, for instance, you may asked, "do you take alcohol?" If no, how do you intend to sell. I have colleagues who said no and are doing very well here. There are no right or wrong answers just your ability to drive home your point. Be concise, think briefly before answering, never be in a hurry. The panelists are quite friendly so relax. Good luck.

@poby is right. three weeks gap between stages. Questions on NBplc will be asked, so visit the official site and study everything about them (products, directors, scope of operations). Remember you have been pulled out of a crowd and you are here, this is the easy part, just believe. Good luck guys.

[color=#000099][/color]The only reason the thread went cold is because of the suspense. Thank God everything has been laid to rest with the offer letters for Thursday. Congrats peeps, see you there.

@trae_z. Pls can I get ur email. Want to ask u something. Cheers.

Just checked, it's there. Praise God. Congrats peeps.

@Poby. Haven't heard from them o. This thing na wa o.

3

Th

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it is responding real fine, thanks my brother,

s.

@ Okusanya.
chairman, you are not the only one ooooo, so don't bother yourself. From what i hear with the text msg you've received you should be alright. success.

my people, i have been invited for both the gt bank and nigerian breweries tests on the same day, the 1st of march. though the time schedule for both exams are quite apart (Nigerian breweries 8am and gt bank 1:30pm), i'm confused because the mail sent to me by gt bank says that we should be prepared to spend all day with them, does my day with them start from 1:30pm or is really ALL DAY. i need someone to help me out. Thanks and all the best.

We are currently recruiting for the following positions:

Flight Deck

Ticketing and Reservation Agent - Warri & Benin

Turn Around Coordinator - Warri & Benin

Ground Services Analyst

Airport Manager - Warri & Benin

In-Flight Services Quality Controller

Duty Manager - Warri & Benin

In-Flight Services Food/Product Development Controller

Safety Manager

Quality Manager

Cabin Safety/ Training Manager

To apply for any of the above positions, simply send an email with your CV attached, to the following email address: careers@virginnigeria.com (if necessary you can copy and paste this address into your email). You should use the job title as the subject of your email.

For more info on the jobs visit www.virginnigeria.com/en/ng/careers.html

hello pple.
just wanted to send a BIG shout out to all nairalanders and most especially to Mr. Oluwaseun Osewa. I believe everyone will agree that he has indeed been a positive influence on each and every one of us. God bless you bros. If you feel the same way i do about big brother seun abeg, post your shout out to him. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY AND MAY OUR GRACIOUS FATHER IN HEAVEN MEET OUR NEEDS ACCORDING TO HIS INFINITE RICHES. AMEN.

while i sincerely appreciate the way the aptitude tests and interview were carried out in the most organised fashion, the current way of releasing names in batches is really causing me and my guys heart break. Haba First BANK, wetin sef. we all wrote exams in a space of four days, why can't you guys just release the successful candidiates list once and for all so that we'll know our fate. ABI NO BE SOOOOOOOO.

Belushi, na wa ooooooo. me self dey wait, but that doesn't mean u should leave all the eggs in just that basket oooooooo. Abeg, try other places for now.

Adejoh, congratulations on your recent appointment. May as much pple in the nairaland forum find their feet the way u've found yours. Pls could you in a few word describe how d interview was like

bros, thank you very much for this important info

God Bless,

chairman, don't concentrate on just the exam you wrote for oceanic. the results and procedures do take time. i suggest you continue applying and gatecrashing for other banks. i wrote the test too and i'm yet to receive any info concerning it. all da best

i don't stay in lokoja any more, i served there though. left after the service, well, take care, later.

hello everyone. please i just got an IV for an interview with first inland in LOKOJA, please could anyone in the house who has been through this process before help tell on what sort of questions to expect? especially tpumpin who just got in. Thank you,

i

so much frustration and anger vented on a small kid that is crazy, na wah for the full house ooooooooo. Na small pikin now, wey no get sense.