 Good evening everybody, and a very warm welcome to the British Library. My name is Marion Wallace, and I'm the curator for African Studies here at the British Library. So, that first of all, I'd like to say that we are truly delighted to be hosting this event with Professor Wallace-Oyntger tonight. We're honoured to have you with us. Before handing you over to the people you really want to hear from, I would like to briefly mention two things about the British Library's collections and activities. The first is that, as you may or may not know, the British Library has extensive collections of African literature. We have Professor Shoenka's works, and beyond that we have big collections of published books, novels, poetry, drama, literary criticism, in English, in African languages, in French and Portuguese, and we also have large numbers of relevant sound recordings. These collections belong, of course, to you, the public, and you are welcome to come and use them. Just one word about that. If you don't have a reader pass, you'll need to get one first. Just have a look at our website. Secondly, just to let you know that we're currently preparing a major exhibition on West Africa. We'll be focusing on the power of the word in its many manifestations. Arabic manuscripts, symbolic systems, oral literature, modern creative writing, to name a few. And we'll be telling stories from across West Africa. The exhibition opens in October 2015 and runs until February 2016. We invite you all to put the date in your calendars. Word about mobiles, if you could make sure the sounds turned off please. And Twitter handles for those who know about such things are on the slide. Finally, I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone who made this event possible, particularly our partners, the Royal African Society. I now hand you over to their director, Richard Dowden. Thank you very much, Mary, and welcome to the British Library and this wonderful event to celebrate. My name is Richard Dowden, and as Marion said, I'm director of the Royal African Society. And just briefly what we do, we see ourselves as the big tent for Africa. We have an academic base with African Affairs, our academic journal, and our aim is to get a better understanding of Africa in Britain and the world. We have a huge meetings programme, something like 70 meetings a year. And we work in Parliament as well to make sure all those MPs and ministries are well informed about Africa. We administer the Africa All Party Group. We also work with business because business is now moving into Africa with the African economies booming. So we try and make sure that they know where they're going and what they're doing and how they should behave when they get there. So we run quite a big programme for businesses. And we try and get all this out globally on our websites, the Royal African Society website, but also African arguments, which is a debating website discussing and analysing the current issues. And also we list all the events that are happening on Africa in London and even broader than that on Gateway to Africa. So those are our three websites. We also worked on a programme engaging the diaspora to make sure that the Africans in Britain's voices heard on African matters. And our two big fun events are Film Africa, which we hold in November, about 70 films over 10 days, look out for it, and the Book Festival African Rights, which is, this is its opening meeting, though the main event won't happen until July. But it is London's biggest festival on African writing. And this year we have the, and it'll be held in July, on July 11, 13. And it'll be the, we'll have the Cain Prize, shortlisted writers, Africa in translation, poetry in emotion, which is a symposium exploring the works of African poets, including Wanguwagoro, Vuzi Mchunu, and Gabriel Okunji, and many others. And also a session Reclaiming the Feminine Voice, which is a poetry evening featuring an all-female group of poets, including Worsan Shirei, Belinda Zawi, Rybka Sibatu, and Chinwe Azubwike. Our headline event will be with Amma Atta Aidu, the leading Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, academic, and former Minister of Education, who's written many books. So that'll be the big event, which, and it will all be held here. And there'll be a book fair for children here and workshops, family activities. So do join up, if you're not already a member, and so you can follow all this on our website. Now, to the main event. My job is simply to introduce the chair tonight, Margaret Busby, who I'm sure most of you, all of you know. I asked her if she minded being called the godmother of African literature in the UK. And I got the impression she didn't like that very much. She's very modest. I would say she was the fairy godmother of it, because wherever there is a literary event, Margaret's always at the heart of it. And she's on the board of all the awards and started her own publishing company, Alison and Busby, back in the 1960s, and it's still going strong. So thank you for coming, and Margaret, take it from there. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Good evening. It's my pleasure to introduce to you our guests of the evening, Professor Wallace Joenker. I was going to say he needs no introduction, but I'm going to give him one. I'm going to try and sum up a wonderful life in a few words. Professor Wallace Joenker is one of Africa's foremost literary figures with an international stature second to none. He was born in Ache, a Biokuta, western Nigeria in 1937. So this evening is part of an ongoing celebration of his 80th birthday, which will be in a couple of months time, unbelievably. He was educated in Nigeria, including at the University of Urbano and in the UK, where he gained a degree in English Literature at the University of Leeds. He began writing plays in the 1950s. His plays from that decade include The Invention, The Swamp Dwellers, The Lion and the Jewel. And he spent some time working as a script reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where his first play was staged in 1957. Correct me if I'm wrong with everything I say. Before returning to Nigeria to study African drama and subsequently becoming a university lecturer. Wallace Joenker has played an active role in Nigeria's turbulent political history, spending nearly two years imprisoned in solitary confinement, recounted in his 1971 book The Man Died Prison Notes. His criticism of Nigerian governments has often exposed him to great personal risk and resulted in periods of voluntary exile abroad. Apart from plays, he has published novels, The Interpreters in 1964, Season of Anomy in 1972, Memoirs, notably Akei, The Years of Childhood in 1981. I can't believe I had the audacity to abridge Akei for Radio 4 20 years ago. Anyway, and most recently I think your memoir You Must Set Forth Dawn in 2006. As well as many significant collections of essays such as Arts, Dialogue and Outrage in 1988 and Poetry including Mandela's Earth in 1988 too. And his work has won international acclaim for its deployment of rich poetic language steeped in European mythology and the Yoruba spiritual traditions of West Africa. A playwright, poet, novelist, essayist, memoirist, editor and much else, filmmaker, songwriter, translator, actor. Rainmaker. Rainmaker. Wale-e-Shawinka in 1986 became the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among many other awards and recognition he has been accorded including several honorary doctorates in 2005 the Lumina Foundation established the Wale-e-Shawinka Prize for Literature in Africa which is awarded every other year. Now that's a brief summary of a wonderful life. And I'm going to field a few questions to you and I know there are some that are going to come up but I'm going to start from the beginning. Akei, your childhood memoir is notably very revered. It's a classic of autobiography. Now what led you to write that book about your first 11 years I believe? I never set out deliberately to write Akei. I was on my way to something else. I wanted to capture a very special period which was disappearing. This was that colonial period which everybody politically wants to get rid of but which was very rich in so many ways, a kind of transitional atmosphere. I felt it was disappearing and I felt a need to capture it. I wanted to capture it through a biography of my uncle, the Reverend I. O. Ransom Kuti. In other words, Fela Anikulakpo's father. And then when I came back from studying abroad I met him. We spoke and he agreed that we would work together on this. And then he died on me. So I just shelved it and said that that's it. And then one day just came back, just came back to me that whole period and also the sort of mental composition I'd already done, rudimentary writing which I'd done in my head. Not one word, you know, on paper. And so I had to write it and that's how Akei happened. I never really set out to do it. In that book you give your parents nicknames while Christian, your mother and Essay, your father. How did that come about? What does that mean to you? Well, the Essay one was filial enough. It wasn't quite as, I was surprised when people said, how could you possibly give your mother while Christian? But then they didn't know her. Essay was what my childhood hearing made out of the initials of my father, which was Essay. And so when his friends came along, Essay, Essay, Essay. And so he became Essay in my mind. And he was a school teacher and a bit of an intellectual. And I saw him as a kind of embodiment of an elegant, well-composed, well-written, well-thought-out Essay. And so everything was perfect. So he put it perfectly. He did just perfect. Now my mother, she was wild. When you talk about Christianity, hers was really, really deep Christianity. She believed that everything that she did was the work of God, the instruction of God. She poured water in a glass and a bit spilled over. And she looked and said, my hands are no longer as steady as they were. That's the punishment of God for something. And since I wasn't that much of a Christian and she did her best to convert me, she beat the living shit out of me. And she was wild. She clobbered me and decided that I was going the way of the devil and she was going to bring me back by hook or crook. And so I said, this woman is wild. I called her Wild Christian. She was angglican. Your father was angglican minister as well, was he? She was sort of. Angglican? Angglican, yes. Protestant, Anglican. That's right. St Peter's, that was the name of our church, patron saint. Yes. OK. Well, you've summed up your parents. Now, what characteristics do you think you inherited from each of them? I think that I must have inherited my curiosity about things from somebody. And I have a feeling that that must have come from my father, intellectual curiosity, et cetera, et cetera. Curiosity, not from my mother. She wasn't curious about anything at all except to pertain to God, to Jesus Christ. From my mother, I think I inherited a dramatic flair. She was very dramatic in her nature. For the rest, an uncanny and rather dangerous patience I also inherited from my father. If you committed some infraction, you pretend you never saw you. Until evening time, wallet, going to bring the stick. That's it. It's a mixture of the two of them, I think. So you had this Christian upbringing. And how did the Yoruba side of your value system come in? That was part of the problem. My grandfather was an out-and-out Irish man, pagan, to use the Christian expression, a very proud of him. Eventually he also fell on the missionary zeal, which made me even more angry against Christianity. That side, that traditional side of my upbringing, of my environment, was something which I valued enormously. I was drawn to it naturally. For me it was more poetic, richer, more colourful, more mysterious. There was nothing left in mystery. It had been imparted to me through the stick, the attempt at conversion. That side of my spirituality, if you like, came through my grandfather. That really shaped my sensibilities in many, many ways. My sense of myth, sense of community, et cetera. That came from my grandfather's side. Where did your political consciousness come from? When did that emerge? It came from everywhere, but I think largely in terms of a sense of the imperative of activism, not merely of studying a political situation, but being active in that situation. I took that from my great aunt, Mrs. Ransumkuti. She mobilised the women against the feudal despotism of the Alakie of Abelkuta. She mobilised the market women. I liked her sense of organisation, her teaching. She was also a great political teacher. I also inherited some of that from my uncle, Ransumkuti. They were both anti-colonial forces. They were quite at ease with the colonial officers, British officers, but politically they were very much aware of their being interlopers and impeding in some ways the development of the African society in their own way. So then you decided to become a playwright at what point? When did that happen? I don't know that I decided. I just started writing plays. I began with short stories, but simultaneously I think as a child, I was also fond of putting together my siblings to enact short stories. It all started very early. What sort of age was that? As far as I can remember, as early as you like, maybe as soon as I could listen to short stories and understand the short story, there was always a tendency to want to enact them in one way or the other. Can you remember what first play you wrote? I believe it was a radio play. BBC was coming into West Africa, Nigeria, and there were all kinds of funny sounds coming from that, which signified human beings doing unusual things. I used to listen to those plays and eventually I think I sent a play to the local NBC radio, and I believe that was the first radio play in Nigeria. That would have been in the mid-fifties? Yes, I think that was mid-fifties, correct. I was still in school in this marvellous just to hear my play on the radio. So when you came to Britain to study, you began writing plays that were being staged. Sorry. No, go ahead. I was going to ask, how did you feel when you actually saw your plays being elected on the stage of, say, the Royal Court Theatre? Very dissatisfied. It didn't turn out to be quite what I expected. All kinds of, you know, string things happened in that production at the Royal Court Theatre. George DeVine, by this time I'd sent plays, someone I'd make to the Royal Court Theatre. And while waiting for the opportunity to stage this play, George DeVine had this marvellous, progressive idea of bringing together young playwrights. This was the time when John Osborne was breaking through the mould of British theatre. George DeVine of the Royal Court Theatre wanted people like Arnold Wesker around him, Angelico, and then instituted the Sunday Night Theatre, which is part reading, part performance. After being a playwright, a play reader, he would then try out their plays in sort of a rough and ready form at the upstairs theatre. And it was the invention, I think, which was for stage there, and all kinds of disasters. What sort of disasters? The climax, the bomb didn't go off in time. Technical hitches. Technical hitches is what I said. It's not what the play should be like. But anyway, it was very good exercise for me. But when Nigeria became independent, you had a play that was performed at the celebration there, The Dance of the Forest. How did that come about? It was a competition, I remember, organised by Encounter magazine. I think this was done for every country that was just becoming independent. I sent in the play to the judges and it was accepted for the Nigerian independence play. But when it came to the sponsoring of the play by the government, and these were the conditions that whichever play was selected from whichever country the government would present it back it all the way, somebody then pointed out, pointed out is wrong to say pointed out, because that means it was there, what was pointed out. Let's just say that somebody then told them that this play was subversive. That this was The Dance of the Forest. Independence was supposed to be joyful, joys, and celebrated. It was supposed to be a party. And then he said, there is a subversive message in that. The gathering of the tribes is critical of the post independence generation. It went into history, but the history was supposed to be a kind of paralleling of the dangers which we mostly unconsciously were entering into, given the nature of the first generation nationalists, what I already saw and embedded in the play. These very clever, clever civil servants in the cultural department. And so the government said, no, we're not going to touch it. But the prize money was reasonable for the time. And so I used it to stage the play anyway. As you mentioned the word subversion, that seems to be a theme through most of your life. Many people don't understand the words. You tell the truth and they say you're being subversive. What can you do about that? You've been very critical of many of the governments of Nigeria. How did you find yourself in the position to... You kept putting yourself in personal danger because you spoke out. Was that something that you thought about consciously? No, it... Remember this is a period of very heady and turbid also struggle for independence. And at that stage we weren't really looking, I'm talking about people of my generation, those who were politically conscious of where, of what was going on in the world. We were not even thinking in terms of our own nations mostly. Africa was focused on South Africa, on Kenya, on what you might call settler colonialism, as opposed to surrogate colonialism, which the British operated through, obas, chiefs and so on. So you didn't really feel you were being robbed in a very visceral way. In the case of the Rhodesias, South Africa, where the racism became for us a personal rebuke, a race, an act of racial disdain. And we felt that our mission, our destiny in life was to go down and liberate Southern Africa. So the mental preparation and other forms of self-preparation was in the direction of Southern Africa, which we were waiting eagerly the day the whole of Africa would go down and liberate Southern Africa. And then we began to encounter the first generation leaders of our nation. And we saw that they were more concerned with liberating, with occupying the shoes of the departing, the chairs of the departing colonial powers, that they would come to England ostensibly to hold meetings, serious meetings. And we saw that they were more interested in just having a very good time. So we turned our gaze inwards and said, listen, we better liberate the home front before we go down to Southern Africa. That's how I became involved in internal politics of Nigeria. You say we, but quite often you're acting in a very individual way. Well, let's say I felt things a bit more deeply. Now some of my colleagues, far more deeply. I'm thinking, for example, of the time when you famously, was it held up a radio station? Listen, I was put on trial and I was acquitted. I just want to hear your version. I want to hear your version. Well, actually, I give the game away a little in your mouth set for that dawn. I felt sufficient number of years had passed for me to give a hint of what may have happened at the time. You're something of an action man, actually, in a lot of ways. I mean, there are other occasions where you've got yourself into scrapes. What would you say, do you see your writing as inextricably linked to your political activity? I would say so because most of my writing has political coloration. But then I don't set out deliberately always to write political plays. And there are plays of mine which are not political, which are mythological, historical, in which I actually try to replicate what happened historically, sticking as much to the facts as possible, taking only dramaturgical licenses, not being motivated by making a political statement or anything of this sort. I believe that there's so much tumult in life that, and also at the same time, there's quite a lot of beauty in life that one also wants to transmit in one's own words. You've written in many different forms. Is there one particular form that you feel closest to? I expect you to say plays, but I mean you've written poetry, as I've said, you've written essays, you've written novels and other fiction. Which is the genre that you feel closest to plays? Absolutely right. I like not just writing the plays and visiting it as it would be on the stage, on the board. What about your acting ambitions? I never had any. If you saw me on stage acting at any time, circumstances caused somebody who has dropped out of the last moment, I'm directing a play perhaps, somebody who has dropped out or more likely have thrown somebody out. I can't find replacement in time, so I have a moral obligation to step on stage or before the camera. But acting, no, not in front of acting. Can you tell me something about the Mbari writers group that you're involved in and how that came out, what its aims were? I came back and there were answers. I had interacted with a theatre here. I had seen a coffee theatre. Remember it was during that period where that group called themselves, I think that Jan Osborne was one of them. During that period you saw the birth of the equivalent of Street Theatre, this coffee theatre. Somewhere in Seoul there was this coffee theatre which eventually led to this magazine, Irreverent magazine, whose first name I cannot remember. Anyway, I saw both at the Rockwood Theatre and in that coffee theatre setting. I saw the Marvelous project coming out through the interaction of artists, musicians, designers, playwrights, and so on and so forth. So when I went back, before I even got back, I had envisaged the creation of something similar. I began looking for premises, if I had the name that I gave it at the time, it was something of the tall mind. Then came this Austrian wanderer called Uli Bayer, and his wife, an artist called Susan Wenger, who came to Nigeria and was spitten completely by Joruba Couto. Uli wanted to start something along those lines. Uli travelled out, came back and said that he'd found a foundation. Who could assist in this, and that if I could get some artists, writers, creative people together, that he felt he could get us the money. I said, don't you worry about that, it's there, it's already, it's just awaiting money. And the ability just to pay rent and pay it so confused to some artists. And that's how the Embari came about, gathered the artists, Mabel Shagun, Chinua Chebe, JP Clarke and Debasson Woco, the artist, the designer, and it began to hold workshops, and we had a bar, and there was a Lebanese restaurant, just a very important part. And so it became a community of artists, experimenting, branching up in different ways. Eventually, I think, came from a shobu. Saw what was happening, in fact, he was invited to take part in a dramatic repertory and brought this marvellous music tragedy of his oba cosu, which later toured the world. And he went back to shobu and set up a similar club, which he called Embari Embaio, after he made a pun on Embari, and that was the first branch of Embari outside of it. How long did that last, the Embari adventure? It lasted virtually till the Civil War, you know, and struggled on, fit fully, tried to keep on its feet after that, but it was never the same again after the Civil War. You mentioned the Civil War, how did that impact on your life personally? It impacted, first of all, in the sense of a loss of an artistic community, basically. We all scattered in different directions, the Biafrens went their own way, some left for other countries. My friends, colleagues, were on the other side. It was one of the motivations for my, you know, trying to do everything to stop the shooting actually beginning cos I knew where it would eventually end, if it ever ended. I think that was the main thing, that sense of loss of community, the shrinking, shall we say, of the creative spirit in terms of collaboration was the main thing. I know you've probably spoken a lot about what's actually happening now in Nigeria with the abduction of the girls and Boko Haram. Would you like to talk a bit about that and say what your view is of how the situation has been dealt with, what needs to be done, what the government is doing wrong? Well, the first thing I would like to emphasise to people, especially outsiders, is that it shouldn't be taken in by any notion that Boko Haram began just a few years ago. Boko Haramism, if you like, began many, many years ago when politicians began to use religion as a means of attaining power, began to corrupt the minds of youth after having neglected them and indoctrated them in extreme religion, religion, religious adhesion, began to build around themselves armies of the Al-Majiri. The Al-Majiri, that's the name for youth in the Islamic religion who sit at the feet of mullahs and virtually imbibe knowledge by root. They have a tunnel vision. The entire existence is focused on attaining benefits in the afterworld. They go out to beg, spot and parcel of their religious training, they believe. They depend entirely on the benevolence of their teachers and they do not allow, they brought up in a way in which they have no alternative view of life. As politics became hotter and hotter, the politicians took over these, shall we say, homeless armies and began to twist their minds even further. They virtually told them, your enemies are non-Muslims and they are to be treated as spiritual enemies, in fact. Religion became mixed with politics in their minds creating a toxic brew that poisoned their personalities completely. Now, whereas before in my childhood, we lived harmoniously with other religions, as you know I was raised in Christian home, and the Christians would celebrate the various Muslim festivals, Eid, Ramadan, the whole lot. Some Christians would have been fast during the period of the Muslim fast, gesture of spiritual solidarity, and vice versa, others in Easter. That is Muslims in Easter. If they didn't receive a piece of turkey or pudding, it was sent to the other. What's wrong? Similarly, the Christians didn't receive the haunch of a slaughtered ram. They would say, wait a minute, we've cooked the rice, where's the meat? This is the way we relate it. Then one saw this, just degenerate, a separation which grew wider and wider and wider, a gulf of hostility in which people would tell their children, don't go and play over there. Although there was always a little bit of that there, non-Christians don't go and play with them. The others would say, watch these Christians and so on. On that very trivial level, which even people with that notion, we rebukes, there'd be other Muslims who rebuked the extreme Muslims. There'd be also correctives on the Christian side. It was not hostile. It certainly did not result in homicidal tendencies. Then gradually, we watched this degenerate, until you'd find attacks, let us say, on Christians, during their couples' Christie marching down the streets and so on. Then as the political divide stiffened and militant Islam began to overtake the world, you can date that from any time you want, but I know that the development of real violent religionism was not detached completely from what was happening in other parts of the world. The period of Ayatollah Kobeni, who felt that he had the power of life and death of anybody, especially writers. That kind of thing becomes infectious. It becomes infectious. People became surrogate Ayatollahs in their little religious ponds. Then, with the evolution of Al Qaeda, training outside became commonplace. The culture of impunity became rampant. In other words, you could have your head cut off, your throat cut, simply because you are suspected to have insulted Islam, one way or the other. We had numerous cases like that. In even Muslim areas, you have the Sabangari for pagans like myself. In Sabangari, you can do what you want. It's recognized as a place of strangers, and strangers are welcome even in solidly Muslim areas. Then, the division got wider and wider. Is there a reason that the division got wider? The division between Christians and... Is there a reason for that? Politics mostly, and also mimicry. Everybody likes to mimic power wherever it's been exercised elsewhere. It becomes a question of, wait a minute, why are they killing people over there? We are not killing people here. It's as crude, I'm afraid. It's as crude as that. That sense of, you must dominate the other side. You must show that your religion has authority over every other kind of religion. That if you did not, and then the interpretation of scriptures to conform with your lust for power over others. Very selective, you must do this, you must do that. You must treat the other side like eternal enemies. Living the other side to be dealt with by your God, when you all get to the other side, you wanted to administer that punishment. It's a very crude form of power mentality. Unfortunately, power and sense of creative domination rules much of human relations. I don't know how that started. Maybe anthropologists can tell us, but I find that that sense of power is inculcated in most human beings. So then, impunity, people could riot, cutthroat, destroy, even invade the capital, destroy, kill and go away. Not one single prosecution, not one single. A school teacher who's invigilating a class in religious knowledge, that is religion of, I mean study of our religions, can be and was, not just was, set upon by her pupils. This particular insult is very gruesome. She just said, you're cheating. Looking into your scriptures, bring that over here. She puts it aside and they run home and say, she's insulted the Quran. In the meantime, the others started beating her, stripping her, put a tie over her neck. She runs into the principal's house for protection, pushes her out. This woman is dismembered openly. We do not hear of any punishment being admitted. I don't know how many cases I can cite. I just don't know how many. So society became deteriorated into one of arbitrary death, arbitrary lynching on religious grounds, real or imagined offences. But the government refused to take action, to show that only one law applies to the entire nation. Now, this is where Boko Haradism began. It didn't begin when a governor in a secular state declared his state a theocratic state. In the midst of a multiple religious society. Yes, these were defining moments. But Boko Haradism, that culture of impunity on religious grounds, where, for instance, a legislator, a legislator, in fact he began with as a governor, could indulge in transborder pedophilia. Be a member of a lawmaking assembly, after he left office as a governor, declare a fatwa, a call to murder, a killing fatwa without consequences, in himself be guilty of importing underage girls from another country, a Muslim country, Egypt. I have the nerve to say, I can do what I want, because my religion permits it. The point is the constitution and the law do not permit it. And it gets away with it and you have numerous cases like that. So the mentality of a certain section of the country is guided towards kind of supremacy over the rest. And so when the politicians, the politicians built on this, used these brainwashed al-Majiri, and of course this became connected with international fundamentalism, militant and killing fundamentalism, these al-Majiri were being sent to Somalia to be trained by Alshabab. Some of them went to Afghanistan for training, some went to Mauritania. The country became divided. And this is when they grew bold enough that this is extremist, to actually call themselves an act to dismiss any other structure of knowledge, structure of human relationships, community, etc., which did not conform to theirs. But we now have a situation which is a critical change, because those who were trained to commit mayhem eventually turned against their mentors. As you have one sharia state after another, and you have nine sharia states altogether, with this unwashed army which was prepared to do anything, had a bidding of their masters, as they went for training they became more and more radicalised, and then they came home and were telling their mentors, you are not sharia enough, you deserve to die. This is when the killing, what people call indiscriminated, killing began, but it is not indiscriminated. It is that they now saw even their mentors as sinners worse than the non-fundamentalists. That is the situation we are in today. Law had broken down, law was disdained. If a legislator can say, I am not bound by your laws, I can kill, I can rape, I can do what, and he is sitting and earning a salary in the very house, making the laws which he then says, do not apply to me. Of course, please follow us, take the example from him, and then say, we will go even further, and get to the point where it is not just that you are going to schools, and you are cutting the throats of teachers, you are cutting the throats of parents who dare send their children to school. You are not going to say, ah, wait a minute, what about those schools, do not let them just kill them, let us abduct them, and go and sell them as slaves. That is what is happening today. Mwhoramism did not begin ten years ago, goes back 15. Many people are not even aware of the fact when it began on a small scale, and police stations were taken over, and they were named Afghanistan, and they were named Iraq, and so on. The army moved in, managed to destroy it, and destroy them. It began all the way back. It began keeping the seeds of wrath which had been laid by the mentors, the seekers after power. You have been speaking out for half a century about the political ills and wrongs as you are doing now. Do you see any successes, what are the successes you see in the campaign that you have been involved with over those decades? I do not know that one can even talk about success. The important thing is to curb it, to make the phenomenon manageable. We should never have allowed it to reach the level it has now. It is a level of defiance of content for the rest of society. You saw the latest leader of Mwhoram boasting about abducting children. We are going to sell them as wives and concubines. We should never have arrived at this point. We had a head of state, for instance, when the first governor declared his state, a theocratic state. That was an opportunity missed. In fact, I hold such people responsible for failing to say to them, listen, some people don't like to hear secular state. So let's say multi-religious state, but that one thing binds everybody, and that's the constitution. Those are the protocols by which we all agreed to live together. Either you accept that or you treat it as a pariah of state, instead that particular head of state was so busy, determined, very determined, desperate to earn a third unconstitutional third term in office. So he began to woo those sharia states, the governors over there, so that they can back a change in constitution. That is the reality which many people are running away from, that neglect, deliberate neglect, encouragement of impunity for small selfish political ends. It is what made this Boko Haram balloon, this many's balloon, to condition that we're now asking for international help. Oh, I hope we are, because we cannot handle it alone anymore. Is this something you're going to be writing about? Writing about, at this point, when things reach a certain stage where your daughters are being abducted, you just have to concentrate on the means of getting them back, those who dared to inflict this anomaly on the state are caught and punished. Then, simultaneously, however, you start planning for the future, the rehabilitation, not merely of the brainwashed, hundreds and thousands working out educational system which will ensure that they never again get their minds poisoned. You should start planning what you do for these girls after they've been rescued, because they're going through a trauma at the moment which is unimaginable and which we know will affect them for the rest of their lives. So, those are the priorities right now. Literally, we might get around to writing about it. I'm not sure whether it's time yet for questions. Yes? Okay, we're going to open up the floor and there's a microphone that's going to be going around. So, if you raise your hands if you have a particular question for Professor Florenta and perhaps say who you are, this one there. Hello. Good evening. My name is Michael Irwene. I'm studying PhD in creative writing. I just wanted to ask you a question about myth in contemporary African writing. Do you think oral tradition is being used by contemporary African authors enough to retain African tradition? There's no question at all in my mind of the natural cohabitation of oral literature and written literature. First of all, in many cases, the oral gets transcribed. What does it become? Then technology, radio, et cetera has ensured that this line of creativity is preserved and preserved in the closest form that you can have next to performance of oral literature, whether the epics or the jala, for instance, in Yoruba, the poetry, which is used in a contemporary way during political upheaval, as you know very well, the oral tradition comes into play from the traditional artists, very effectively, perhaps even more so than the written form. Good evening. My name is Sakina and I'm a master student at the LSE. Thank you so much for providing a very rich historical context of Boko Haram. My question is what do you think people who are young like me and in the diaspora, what do you think we can do? How do we get our voices heard? How angry should we be about this? How can we make a change in our countries? Well, if you listen to the criticisms, for instance, of the president of Nigeria in terms of acting very late, not sufficiently, with sufficient resolve that can achieve results, I think that the diaspora can assist in the sort of demonstrations we've been seeing all over the world in making Nigerians themselves understand that this is not just an Nigerian problem, that a crime against humanity has been committed and it becomes the total responsibility of the entire global community, but with special emphasis on Africans in the diaspora. Whimsically, but not entirely whimsically, I believe we are moving to a situation where there's a culture of aggression, confidence, arrogant aggression going on and I think maybe it's about time we began thinking of creating forces which will assist, which will go to the rescue of societies which find themselves in this kind of condition. You hear of black widows, maybe it's time we have some brown widows who actually take it on themselves to match the culture of self-defence by whatever means, because this attitude of sometimes supine-ness, not actually supine-ness, but just the inability to respond in kind or proactively to what we are witnessing today. I think we might get to a stage where freedom squads, freedom teams take on their own defence and are assisted in the kind of expertise needed to respond to what we are undergoing today on the African continent. It's a kind of political response that is necessary. A sense of global solidarity which takes forms, as I said, like demonstrations, etc. The readiness to embark aggressively on a counter indoctrination approach and finally, we may even reach the point where we actually train people to respond to those who feel that they have a divine right to mess up our lives. Mutala Ture's my name. My first point, I think one of the anomaly in Nigeria, Amagambian, by the way, it's the constitution that makes that constitution between Indians and citizens. A Nigerian citizen can be a foreigner, so to speak, if it's not an injury of a particular state. I think that's kind of the seed for this unity, this ethnic tension in Nigeria. The second question is, how does a Wale Sheik a day look like? Do you have a set routine? For an 80-year-old man, I think you look very good. I just missed one critical word, I think. How does Wale Sheik a... You're there. You're routine. You're routine. You're routine, like in the morning, what you do up to night. Well, I can't mix it up, because I thought you were talking about Indians and citizens. The next moment is what you see. First of all, I think we need a constitution which, if you really want to be one nation, then without losing your culture, without losing, I'm talking about Indians now, without losing their culture, without trying to create a kind of synthetic national culture, identifying yourself, being proud of what you are, as an Indian, you should also have, as an Indian of a natural, a national space, or as a crossover, you want to nationalise, become a citizen, obviously. Culturally, yes, one can lay emphasis on Indians, but as a citizen, I think culture becomes a little bit problematic to insert in a constitution. So once you are born in a place, or you migrate, you want to settle there, you become a citizen. And once you've nationalised and you should be treated as such, there's also the problem of multiple citizenship, internal, internal, in which, for instance, you find some states that say you are foreigners in this state, therefore you cannot hold a job. You cannot enjoy the scholarship in a state even if your parents have been living there, have worked there, contributed, paid tax and so on. For me, this is pernicious. Anyone who has settled somewhere who is paying tax in that piece of real estate is entitled to the full citizen ride of the totality. That's what I thought you were actually on the track to once. Now, routine. I have none. I've none because it's constantly been disrupted. My best late plans always go awry sooner or later. Something crops up as everybody knows and the next set of flying southwards are flying northwards. So I've given up. I'm at the mercy of everybody here because I was expected somewhere else and here I am sitting here. You're all guilty. Good evening sir. This is such a honour and pleasure to be in your present tonight. I just wanted to ask you, reading your autobiography, it's so richly vivid and there's a particular scene that actually stayed in my head when you were describing your auntie when she visited you and her love for Moe Moe and how you described the fact that she actually loved to eat the pads that are wrapped in the leaves. They actually made me go back to think about how I ate my Moe Moe and the next time I was eating one I actually tried to imagine that thing and I just wanted to know when you were writing it, were you back at home because obviously you were writing about your very early formative years and I can barely remember my teenage years let alone the first 11 years of my life so it just really struck me when you were having your book and I just wanted to kind of get your thought process behind that, thank you. Well, that's where the writing about K becomes very interesting because when my uncle died and I said okay, I'll wait until I refocus my mind and imagination and recollection that took a while and actually I wrote the first because I wanted to write it now since I wasn't writing about adult life the politics of the period in an analytical way I felt that the only approach I can have is to try to re-enter with vivid internal recollection from the point of view of a child what that period really meant to me and when I began I was able to write the first three chapters and then I lost it it just disappeared the mood which I felt had I was re-seeing, re-viewing things with the eyes which I had at the time and it just disappeared and I didn't go back to it for about for about three years three years I couldn't go back to it and then one day something, an image a passage, a piece of music I can't remember what now but something just triggered off that period and I re-entered it and virtually wrote the whole thing all over again and the interesting thing was that I decided to start all over again and when I by accident or the other when I compared the first three chapters I had written with the new ones I had written it was almost word for word I thought as a writer obviously an interested writer it's it's quite a miracle of recollection it was almost word for word Is it true that you have a photographic memory? Yes I do have that as well I do have that actually I was astonished about two thirds way through my life I was discovered I was astonished to discover that not all people have photographic memories I couldn't believe it I thought it was everybody was like me but I do have a photographic memory that's why I hate cameras Hi my name is Madani Wanyaki I'm a Kenyan and I work mainly in human rights I'm just curious you talked about what it felt like belonging to an artistic community especially before the Civil War and you we all know about your engagement with sort of the political I'm missing a lot of that I have also some hearing problems Am I talking too quietly You talked about what it felt like belonging to an artistic community especially before the Civil War and I guess we all know you've been involved in a political community since I'm just wondering if you could share your reflections on the relationship and overlaps or distances between those two things an artistic as opposed to an activist or political community that's one and then second thinking of sort of the new wave of African writing that's come up and all the young fabulous voices not just from Nigeria but across the continent if you follow that work and their trajectory what are your reflections given your generation on what you think the themes they're engaging with and their own engagement with their own societies and state at this point in time The relationship between the artistic community and and the more political activists community sometimes they overlap sometimes they don't and I'm just wondering your thoughts on that for your generation and then your reflections on that looking at the next generation or the current generation of young African writers well the artistic community in any society is never static very fluid always changing drastically but you're bound together in any case by one common cause and that's creativity an artistic community which is which is which never fights within itself will be a very boring artistic community I think we spark of one another and the sparks sometimes become embers if one is not careful but it's always manageable because there's a common goal now politically for instance you can never have everybody with the same ideology in society there are those who who whom you might call artists of the establishment but at the same time they are creative geniuses you know one level or the other and I think almost not the main thing is not to try and create and establish sort of a unicellill thinking artistic community as variety as much variety as possible what keeps it alive and so it's not surprising that when you have to confront the political community when you feel very committed towards confronting political community you'll find others who defend what you are trying to destroy or who are just comfortable with it who feel why rock the board or mission is to be creative to write poetry and so on and of course the right and there's no reason why the two cannot cohabit it's when members of an artistic community range themselves against what you consider progressive to the extent that they become activists on behalf of the enemy that's when the problem begins disputations for me is a normal disagreements even over the means to to obtaining change to transforming society all this for me are quite normal but sometimes from time to time we find those who actively take the side of establishment the political establishment the reactionary establishment then there is trouble to disintegrate and there's no point trying to keep it up my name is Chibwndu thank you for your work sir your talk sir I'm going to ask you about your afro I I don't know if you are aware but there's a band called Show Incas Fro and just in general your person in itself is iconic every roadside painter in Lagos of your faith to advertise their skill and I wonder how you interact with this iconography of your person well it's a nuisance sometimes quite frankly the nuisance because you like your anonymity as much as possible you know that some is already lost because which we might call a public figure but to carry literally this burden on your head it's a level of masochism I didn't think I was capable of and of course it's also a danger because during the season of Sonia Bachar princes I couldn't comfortably never could relax outside in the public place sitting in cafes and so on and so forth I had I think a total of I think I had more hats than the average woman and they are the ones I usually see carrying boxes, pill boxes with their hats each hat constitutes a luggage by itself and I didn't think that men had so many hats but I had lots of head covers including the rasta you can picture me in a rasta during that period and then I could relax outside I think I should hold a patent to it it might earn me more money than royalties from books I think about that Thank you for your presence it's an honour to be speaking with you and everyone I want to say that you provided a very rich deep insight of what is happening back in Nigeria as someone that spent 20 years of my life growing in that part of the country I mean I identify with everything you said my question is do you have anything planned to make sure the Nigerian government sees this initiative now that the eyes of the world is on Nigeria and plan like how you went with JP Clarke and Chino Achebe on behalf of Maman Vatsa back then and also a second question is what's key advice will you give to someone who is a writer and is writing on basically historical fiction let me take the second one first write prepare to collect your rejection slips log them up in a drawer and continue to write and send out your manuscripts test them out on the literary pages of newspapers literary magazines and so on don't wait until you created the master the definitive work before you try to see them see your works in one form or the other in the public domain then also don't feel now I am talking personally about the way I work don't feel frustrated or constrained by the fact that if that is the case that you cannot sit from 8am in the morning to 2pm in the afternoon or 8pm at night feel like that unless you work in a continuous and broken fashion you will never be a writer sorry you have to snatch whatever moments you have very often and just put things together right when inspiration comes right when you feel you are compelled to finish what you have begun but don't force it at the same time those are the only advice I can give you now the other one you thinking of the time when Chinua up period when we could attempt collectively to influence the decisions or the policies of government yes those times possible I would love to see writers for instance, the young writers because the baton has been passed on to them I would like to see them coming together to attempt to influence a situation like this our commitment was not was not a structured thing we responded to critical moments such as the life of people like Watsa at the hands of the military at the time I would like to see the young generation of writers taking the initiative and saying no we cannot stomach this anymore and we are going to come out using whatever legitimate means we can to try and influence policy I think by now we should stop looking in this direction for for leadership I think by now we should produce your own leaders hello sir, my name is Ade Awuqeia and I'm an aspiring writer my simple question is what gave you the inspiration to translate Fagunwa's forest of a thousand demons into English inspiration, I've always loved the first of all the use of language of Fagunwa, Dio Fagunwa, the European novelist he's asking about I don't know and also the the wildness of his imagination so from school I always said one of these days I would translate Fagunwa and when I came back from studying abroad side by side with writing my own I began to to translate to fulfil this ambition is a wrong word because this desire this passionate desire to to make the works more accessible to other people by the time I finished the first novel forest of a thousand demons I realised that was the end of my mission because that man's Yoruba it was so tough finding equivalence in English for his Yoruba it took too much out of me I said I will never write my own work if I continue translating this man so I put that particular plan of action aside but since then thank goodness I've been able to find time to translate two more I think yes I believe so I didn't really translate it to others but I just wanted to get that work out that's the main thing Can I ask you do you have plans what you're going to do next what your next book is going to be yes as a matter of fact I'm engaging some work at the moment not entirely not fiction but I never talk about what I'm working on I thought you'd say that there's a couple of questions at the back okay my name is Lukman Sanisi from BobbleSFM I'd like to take us back to the political scenario in Nigeria as you've mentioned Eluron that there are various levels of impunity in Nigeria including self-denial the case of the first lady comes to mind she doesn't even believe that these girls have been adopted and then she called a meeting and even have the representative of these demonstrators arrested so the question is I don't know when the office of the first lady was established in the first place in Nigeria that it became so powerful that it can stop anybody in their track including overriding the decision of a sitting governor what is your take on that broth you're trying to draw me Nigeria is a land of wonders it's a land of many many firsts and I'm as mystified as you are mystified this level of impunity is one I've commented on and whatever it is you think of it believe me I share your thoughts can we keep the questions quite short so that we can get more in Good evening Professor I just want to thank you for what you've shared with us tonight my name is Akeu Ietadi I want to ask what your experience was working with Professor Akeu Miishola in the translation of your Arcade to Yoruba because many people would like love to read many of the great works in Yoruba he did this work with you and I want to see what was your experience of doing that linking it with what you said about working on Fagunga's work thank you no I never work with Akeu Miishola on the translation I know Akeu Miishola I know his works he's also a playwright and he's written some poetry as well in Yoruba and was to leave the work entirely to him and to intervene only if he asks me any question and it's interesting that when he was asked the question what was it like translating such a play as Death and the King's Horseman this critical interest literary interest I think and he said it was no sweat at all he said what he did was to translate back into Yoruba a work which I had thought in Yoruba and I think that's a remarkable comment for any translator to make he said as far as he was concerned this was a Yoruba play and that so all he did we just bring it back to the language in which I thought it out so that's the question Can we take a couple at the same time and then perhaps we can get Professor Schoenker to answer Good evening so happy birthday in advance my name is Peter Dovan I live and reside in UK I've got two questions quick questions for you so the first one is in today's world of technology in today's world of Facebook, Twitter how best do you think we can preserve the African history which you've actually mentioned today about its richness how best do you think we can preserve it for the coming generation and to educate other ethnicities around the world about how we can preserve it for the coming generation and to educate other ethnicities around the world about how we can preserve it around the world about how rich the African culture is and secondly someone mentioned about your Afro I remember your picture in your book Trials of Brother Gerald it hasn't changed it's still it was dark in the picture of Trials of Brother Gerald but it's a bit grey now which is understandable but what led to this identity you've created for yourself over the years what have you done or what motivated you to keep this identity over god knows how many years now thank you last bit last few words last over over 20 years 30, 50 years now can we have a question next to you first good evening sir my name is Evangelist Alex and the question I want to ask is obviously you're a great writer around the world and you've got a lot of readers and audiences but I want to know how you actually felt when you first had your first publishing deal I'm a man that's been writing for a long time and I've sent my manuscripts out to publishers and I haven't seem to have got anywhere but I'm not giving up but when I look at someone like you it motivates me so I just want to know because I know one day I'm going to get a publishing deal myself and secondly I can't keep these questions in my head can we just allow Professor to answer those because we have to wind up in a second and secondly the question I want to ask we'll take the questions we have already and we'll leave that one to later okay please you can ask too many questions I'll forget the first ones by the time I let me deal with let me deal with once I remember history how do we teach others how do we spread the word should we say the history and the culture presumably African heritage etc first of all history also can be transmitted through fiction as you know using the material of history in theatre in film especially in film and by film I'm not talking about that one two three four five that nine letter word which I find very difficult to auto I begin with the N but real serials imaginative films which utilises material and through paintings plastic arts you can study a lot of history through the the sculptures of any people the paintings through their artistic work their music all of that now how do I how do you preserve the character of brother Jero brother Jero is constantly evolving brother Jero of the 60s is not the Jero of today brother Jero today has private jets doesn't travel like the rest of you the rest of us no no no has built universities comes up the expressway between Ibadon and something every Friday and every religious day you know reduces everything to a crawl runs businesses all over the place is received like royalty in some other countries where brother Jero I think has an empire in London an empire in London and occasionally brother Jero gets jailed thank goodness so that's the first of life then the third question that the first one the gentleman asked what was it now that's what kind of asking too many questions at the time technology preserving what is the first question they gave I oh yeah remind us after this thing we should stick to more excuse me I know I want to quickly sum that up one more question good evening sir Professor Wale Shoyinka the question I want to ask is because like as an evangelist I'm a man that's written loads of manuscripts and I send my work to and I send my work to various publishers but I don't seem to be getting anywhere so the question I wanted to ask you was as the great writer that you are with audiences around the world and readers I wanted to know how you felt or how did you get your first publishing deal I remember the second question I wanted to ask sir can we deal with that one thank you let me deal with that one oh yeah let's oh yeah the reaction my response to holding the first published book in my hand was like the taste of a wine you've never encountered before it's as rich as that it's just something marvellous no matter how it was a slim volume but that somebody had taken it on presented it between book covers and taken the trouble to actually launch it you know invite people to come and share that particular moment marvellous moment now script I said earlier you must be prepared to collect your rejection slips there's no other way than to to feel committed that despite setbacks you want to continue to express that there's something inside you that you want to express obviously it can be discouraging that you get your rejection slip especially if it's followed by another some people solve it by by self publishing whether you have to have some money in your pocket because they charge you for it there's just no other way if it's a play it turns around and read the manuscript read the text and just listening to it in fact this applies not just to plays it applies even to prose poetry and just hearing it and watching people's reactions you can teach you quite a lot because writing is not a finished business ever it's a continuing process and just participating in something you believe in for me is already half the remaining half comes as I said before when you get that sip of wine which is equivalent to a new publication in your hand after a while of course you can get blasé but that first publication believe you me it's purity unfortunately we have no more time so thank you all for your questions I'm sorry we didn't manage to get in all the others but Professor Schoencker has other things to do unfortunately so thank you very much for the conversation thanks for answering the question