S.A. David's Blog, page 5

O PRECIOUS LAD by S. A. David

Category: threnody, elegy, dirge
(For Precious Avbuluimen, 1988 – 2011)
Lysosome drop’dAs you hop’dFar into the earthA place with filth
If I am confessorI’d confess the last enemyTo be your instant resurrectorThen he’d be no more an enemy
If I am wizardI’d turn back timeGet you out of earth’s gizzardAnd give you eternal smile
If I am warlockI’d cut the staff of deathGet you out of sheol’s lock
If I am seekerI’d swim down the underworldGet you out on a flyerAnd forever seal the vain world
If I am mord sith, with my agielI’d repel death’s magicExtinguish him and all his many an angelAnd forever they’ll n’er play any trick
O Precious, my tears escaped my eyesReality staggered me to my rootWish I could illuminate your eyesAnd see you walk to me on foot
You were abducted from me and usEbemen, I was put in mourningThough hope is, I began to fussBecause I lack faith in resurrection morning.

FACT? by S. A. David

Category: epigram
I wish I wasn’t going to dieIn my great life of fortune and fameWhatever I conceive is great lieMan is destined to cease in torture and shame
Life is sweet and scaryIn one moment, a jollyIn another, a fairyIndeed, it’s beautiful and folly

Wole Soyinka: "A Name Is More Than The Tyranny Of Taste"

First, permit me to unburden myself. A little bit of carping is essential to mental balance and, the Arts are no exception to this principle of psychological release. Indeed, that is an understatement. I should have said: the Arts especially are the supreme example of that truism. You and I know that there is no other human preoccupation that so readily provokes either suppressed or exploding feelings than this singular expression of the human imagination and inventiveness that we call the Arts.  Within the prolific field on which we are gathered here today – the cinema - there is a word that has become current, one that I still find difficult to utter. It sets my teeth on edge, this hideous child of lackluster imagination. And yet it appears to be a source of pride to the practitioners it implicates. What one would have regarded as a singular aberration, a regrettable moment of a verbal infelicity, has developed into a child of competitive adoption, sustained by a number of would-be surrogate parents. One shudders to imagine how many other variations can be squeezed out of the original banality, as each nation evolves a cinema industry and strains to force the original horror into the tube of its own nominal identity – again, with pride!  
Do I speak objectively?  Of course not.  I readily confess my subjectivity in these matters. Acknowledging this in advance makes it easier to for me to wear the badge of verbal fundamentalism without the slightest embarrassment.  Having conceded that much, I also have to state, on my own behalf, that it has not been for want of trying that I have failed to reconcile my tongue to each new offspring of a nomenclatural misalliance. My main trading commodity, as you all know, is largely in words, so it is not surprising there are some sounds that I find difficult to mouth – not simply in their own being, but on account of their histories, their association and their limitless capacity to proliferate and people the world of words with new infant monstrosities. This is said matter-of-factly. In addition however, I do propose that words are allied to images.    
Now, I wouldn’t go as far as Richard Ford, the American writer who, in declaring himself a dyslexic, adds that he actually sees words as images. No, I wouldn’t make such a far-out claim. However, I do subscribe to the view that words have shapes, which are in turn evocative of more than the mere sound of them or their literal meaning. Indeed, one can claim that some images become eventually attached to words with such intimacy that they can no longer be prised apart – hm, I appear to be getting closer and closer to Richard Ford.  All right, let us simply try and sum it up thus:  the power of suggestion goes beyond mere suggestion.  A word can distort the palpable reality that your own senses have already determined. Where such a word is deployed as values and summation, as a category of phenomena, even as a loose umbrella for a family of  products, it can distort other entities under that umbrella completely, influencing their apprehension in our minds. Where we are concerned with creative activity, the word can contract the scope, or reduce the quality within the overall undertaking. In short, a word can inhibit or expand imagination. It can prove a curse or a blessing.   
 Regarding the creative process, let it be understood that I am not necessarily speaking of originality. I have read critiques of artistic works that appear to make originality the benchmark of creativity, blithely dismissing such a work on the grounds that it is not ‘original’. Some masterful works – in all genres – have been produced that are based on deliberate imitativeness. Or plagiarism. There are different kinds of plagiarism, some can actually emerge as a new product of its kind, a kind of creative provocation, or a commentary on the original, sometimes a sleight of expectations or attribution – what is sometimes called signification – especially in American literary discourse. So, we are not speaking here of originality.   
We all share – with variations – a basic culture, and that culture places a heavy premium on – for instance – child naming. ‘The child is father of the man’, as the poet William Wordsworth reminds us. We can add, however that, for African societies, ‘the name is father to the child’ – such careful thought, sense of history, hopes and expectations ride on the name we decide to give a new human entity we have brought into the world. Child naming, on this continent, is itself a creative act.  Only this last Friday, February 22, the following observation appeared in the Nigerian journal, The NATION, on the back page weekly column, Comment and Debate,  an impeccably timed contribution to this address:  “Naming in Africa, especially in Yorubaland, is special gift that the ancestors as progenitors of the nation bestowed on the elders. Names have meaning, and – as they would have us believe, names push their bearers to actualize their encoded meanings. (Oruko a maa ro omo) – literally – The name may mould the child. So you don’t find any Yoruba parent giving to their babies names that embed evil meanings”  
Let it be admitted however that all we do is play variations on existing naming templates, not that we strain to be fully original. The same process applies, as stated earlier, applies to the creative process - styles, themes and even – very often - content. Actually, this merely provides me an excuse to veer off and comment on a recent cinema controversy - the subject and directorial approach – but one that does concern us here most intimately.    I am sure you have all heard of this film; it seems destined to become what is sometimes known as a ‘cult film’, and largely because it so successfully plays variations on established genres. I am speaking of  DJANGO UNCHAINED, starring the actor Jamie Foxx, with a superlative, though underrated performance in the role of the revolting, Uncle Toming  race traitor by Samuel Jackson.  Its theme is Slavery, a subject that touches the historic sensibilities of virtually all of us assembled here. Now, just as an aside – one cannot ignore certain other aspects of the controversy it has stirred up. Slavery is a very serious, even solemn subject. Such a weight of history, of race recollection rests upon it that one cannot think of any aspect of that traumatic passage that lends itself to humour.  AMISTAD, even The Birth of a Nation with its open derogation of black slaves etc etc. – these films conform to the expected treatment of that subject - heroic, tragic, indicting, inciting, racist etc – certainly not mock-heroic.  One’s instinctive response to the subject is that it would be indecent and insensitive to extract any shred of humour from Slavery, except perhaps what is known as gallows humour.  Long before DJANGO, there was the stage play Purlie Victorious , later made into a film, starring Ossie Davies and Ruby Dee.  The same complaints made about Purlie Victorious are what I have read during the past few months –  that is, at least four decades later – by some black critics, among them, Spike Lee, a leading black American cineaste. This is a trivialization of my history, complained Spike Lee.   
That commentary leads us conveniently back to the thread of our main theme  - that criticism was based on a misconception – the director of that film was in fact doing what we have identified as ‘signifying’. He was signifying on a number of cinematic genres, familiar clichés, not least of which was the Western, the Cowboy film. Beneath the spoof, there was serious thematic business. Even the sinister Ku Klux Klan was spoofed, and everyone knows that there was never anything remotely amusing about those Knight Templars of the trilogy of Lynch, Castrate, and Dehumanize.   By my reckoning, the film is most intelligently crafted, very much in the manner of Mel Brooks’ BLAZING SADDLES, only, this time, our film is set in a slave plantation with opulent trimmings,  generous close-up helpings of blood and gore, and flying flesh. The ‘N’ word, that contempt ridden version of the neutral word ‘negro’, was also in over-abundant usage, a feature that also offended some sensibilities. I found this complaint rather strange, since it indicated a refusal to take into account, not only the fact that the word was historically accurate, but that its proliferation in the film was deliberate, tripping glibly off the tongues of the blacks themselves than off the white masters’. If excessive application has ever been claimed to take the sting out of the offensive, DJANGO was definite proof of this.  
So, we are speaking of an original work of art that is anything but original, filled with borrowings from so many genres. My complaint therefore is not against borrowings and adaptations as a principle, but against the lack of originality that translates as plain, unmediated imitation, or a tawdry, unenhanced borrowing that is conceived and delivered on the very edge of the pit of banality, and out of which it has no wish to clamber, once it has fallen in. It indicates a pre-set mind, a basically unadventurous mind dressed up in cast- off clothing, of which nothing can be expected except as a breeding ground, a reproductive automatism of its own kind – especially in taste.  We move closer to the substance of my complaint - that of another unspeakable ‘n’ word that has taken such a hold on our home- bred imagination. This ‘N’ word constitutes a mutative explosion that I consider most unfair to others in the same creative field - the cinematic - more especially as there have been predecessors who impacted on our cinema world without burdening themselves with such a verbal albatross. Again, I must hold you in suspense for just a little longer while I skirt around the subject, although I know that a number of you have guessed by now where I am headed.  
I still recall the first Negro Arts Festival in Dakar, which marked the formal outing of contemporary African cinema even as a rudimentary exploration of the genre. Yes, some of the products were amateurish, but they already bore the stamp of genuine exploratory minds at work, interrogating the new medium. Even the clumsiest was refreshing, and of course the more skilled were inspiring. If my memory were not so clotted, I would reel off new names.  I recall the young  Djibril Diop however, and – I think - Oumar Sissoko from Mali. What remain fresh in my minds are snippets of scenes - such as the satiric use of the tro-tro, the passenger lorry, to ridicule the pretensions of a figure of the Europeanized black sophisticate – that species that is known in Nigeria as Johnny Just Come, or Ajebota. (Weaned on butter.) This figure of fun considered himself unfortunate to be compelled to ride in the same conveyance as peasants, workers and other ‘uneducated’ beings. It was a simple but hilarious film, I recall, that introduced the viewer to the makeshift existence of semi-urbanised life, a picaresque work filled with incidents along a journey that covered the gamut of daily survival and challenges, inducing the passengers of the tro-tro transportation into a transient community. Our principal, played  by the young Diop himself, was reduced, coat-tails and all in that suffocating Sahelian heat, to push the tro-tro when it broke down.   
Don’t ask me why I recall that scene so vividly after so many decades, but I wish that the young aspirants to the cinema trade would have the opportunity to watch such films, if only as a basic lesson of extracting a film nearly out of nothing, on what must have been a shoe-string budget, bringing reality to life without the ponderous injection of excess craftiness. Beginnings can be very instructive, especially beginnings that are deceptively artless.  They strike at recognizable truths without the cluttering of over-laboured techniques. Perhaps, at the back of my mind was recollection of one of my all-time favourites – Fellini’s La Strada, with the unforgettable performance of Giulietta Massina  in the archetypal role of the tragic clown. I am not making the same claims of accomplishment for both – by no means. They are both variations on the same theme – the many faces of The Road , my own favourite foraging ground, admittedly - and there the comparison ends. That touch of creative innocence however – perhaps that is what sticks so charmingly to the mind.             And then of course, there was the already socially dedicated hand of Ousmane Sembene who grew in self-assurance as he tackled increasingly demanding historical, and contemporary social themes – one and all were gathered in Dakar, brimming with confidence in multiple disciplines, a churning magma of artistic forces of a post- independence generation.  It is evidently too late now, to appeal to those who have embraced -  yes, we come close to the ‘n’ word, I am gearing myself  to utter it – yes, those nationals who have fallen for the hackneyed short cut to their own naming ceremonies. Even more thankless than preaching to the converted is preaching against the converted.  When so much time has passed and a habit become deeply engrained, what forces of persuasion can one muster to undo that mind? As we say in Yoruba -  t’ewe ba pe l’ara ose, oun na a d’ose. If the leaf wrapping of soap sticks too long stays too long to the soap, that leaf also turns to soap. So, peace unto all upon whose sensibilities I have certainly intruded. This drawn out exposition is not really addressed to them; rather it is a simple entreaty to those who have not yet succumbed to the lure of the soap and leaf. To you, I plead: Imagine if the then putative film venture that made its organized debut in Dakar 1966 had been lumbered with the name - Dollywood?  Every ensuing product is already doomed in the mind with its associated baggage of infantilism, even before its exposure. Just imagine the annunciation of - A Dollywood film festival. Or perhaps ‘Sellywood’ for Senegal? Nothing could be sillier.   
 If only it stopped at subjective revulsion?  However, there are more provocative questions, such as: Does the branding influence the product? If you give a product a deleterious name, does it affect, in advance, the consciousness of future producers? If, on the other hand, a propulsive, challenging name, one that even intimates more than it presently is, would that provoke in the artiste a tendency towards adventurousness, experimentation and originality? Or are we merely indulging in self-flagellation? If the pioneers of 1966 had grouped itself around the formulation – Dollywood - would we have produced today’s Suleyman Cisse, Ola Balogun, Kola Olaniyan, Bello, and the rising generation of cineastes?  Consider this, following the mentality at the base of this, FESPACO, because based in Burkina, would be Bullywood. Or perhaps, since that is so close to Bollywood – Bellywood. Try and think – just one more!-  of anything more ghastly, more ghoulish than the contribution from Ghana – Ghollywood! Well, you know where it all started. However, do the emerging Nigerian new breed still deserve to be associated with that commencing second-hand clothes market tag , or with an evolving designer cut production, catering, not for the lowest common denominator in taste but for more discerning audiences, and/or raising – and surprising - expectations in their limited scope.  Even a casual study of current film making indicates that the Nigerian film occupation is rapidly by-passing the stage of such retarded infantilism. So why should the films of such artistes continue to be classified under that unprepossessing monstrosity of a verbal shroud known as – here it comes at last! –Nollywood?   
How do we extricate – both for internal and external references, including potential markets and consumers - the grain from the chaff, the silkworm from the congealment of the pupae?  See what the Indian film industry has churned out so prodigiously since it succumbed to the perverse name of Bollywood. Thousands of films emerged, mired in that same bollywood mush. It took a Satiyajit Ray to plot a truly original path through the morass with his masterful Pather Panchali, the first of a trilogy of ordinary lives that opened the eyes of viewers to the vast world of mundane rhythems, East and West Africa. See what toll this has taken in the conditioning of audience tastes, expanding to southern,  and West Africa. We must point out however that there may be a correlation between the product and the environment that brought it to life in the first place.  Each phenomenon of naming is not unrelated to the social space of that naming ceremony. The social, political, business, religious….indeed the entire interactive environment of Nigeria, birthland of Nollywood - unpredictable, raucous, egotistical, callous, sentimental, irrational and pugnacious all at the same time  - the manifestations that make up Nigerian reality are so grossly improbable that it sometimes appears to me that all you have to do is set up a camera in an office, in a market, in the motor garage or indeed any street corner, go away for lunch, and return several hours later and – voila! – a film has already been shot, ready for only a little editing here and there, but virtually ready for release as a truthful reflection of Nigerian life. This, by the way, is not entirely speculative. Some Nollywood products have been made that way.  
Indeed the very material raunchiness of Nigerian life does create a tendency to reach out towards improbabilities. Nigerian social actualities are of such a nature that the film-maker’s creative mind feels a compulsion to top it with excess in order satisfy the demands of novelty. In other words, life around the contemporary film maker, where the grossest excesses take place every day but are treated as the norm, forces imagination to reach outside and beyond reality to convince itself that it is at work, that it is not merely imitating reality. Everything is oversize in the birthplace of Nollywood – oversize consumption, oversize class distinctions, oversize exhibitionism, oversize egos, oversize superstition, oversize dehumanization, oversize corruption, oversize inflation – both human and economic - oversize national real estate, oversize pugnacity, oversize garbage heaps, oversize decay, oversize media, oversize foreign investments, oversize churches and oversize mosques, oversize consumerism by an oversize elite, even oversize First Ladies with oversize vulgarity, oversize rapacity, avariciousness and overreeachiousness.  You will not find that last word in the dictionary, but I happen to come from the land of Nollywood, where, if an expression is outside your non-existent vocabulary, you have the licence to make up your own.     
 As a dramatist, I think I can sympathize with the artistic representation that goes after the grossest aspects of the environment with a sheer oversize productivity at the expense of quality. After all, when I wanted to capture the sheer brutishness of existence under one of our most notorious dictators, did I not reach for the Theatre of the Absurd – in Alfred Jarry’s UBU ROI? I proceeded, quite deliberately, to try and top the already grosteque excesses of Jarry’s adaptation in my creation of King Baabu. Reality could no longer suffice. The same creative process probably affected those early video lords. The Nigerian creative mind opens his newspaper day after day and what lurid headlines confront him? with the headlines: RITUALIST CAUGHT WITH FRESH HUMAN HEADS, BODY OF ONE MONTH OLD BABY WITH MISSING VITAL ORGANS  - MOTHER IN CUSTODY, KIDNAPPERS INVADE CHURCH, ABDUCT OFFICIATING PRIEST ; BOKO HARAM KILLS SEVEN HEALTH AIDF WORKERS; BOKO HARAM ABDUCTS SEVEN CONSTRUCTION WORKERS; TWENTY-SEVEN BODIES WASHED ASHORE ON THE BANKS OF RIVER BENUE; PROPHET ARRESTED WITH FIVE HUMAN SKULLS AND A BABY FEOTUS…. and so on and on.  These are not made up headlines. Is it any wonder that the film-maker goes for the horror genre where the staple news is that the local chief is cooking up his subjects piecemeal, order to make millions or win a local government election.    An inclination towards accommodating foreign models of the sensational then follows, faced with such gargantuan proportions of societal reality begging for expression – and where is this to be found but in the ready-made formulae of cheap Hollywood? Cheapness calls to cheapness. Where what are generally valued as social assets – and that includes human life itself – are held so cheaply, the artiste may consider it beneath him or her to expend more than the cheapest representational responses. The precedence is not lacking.  The early contemporary African- American black directors rode to cinematic prominence on the shoulders – in case we have all forgotten – of what came to be known and early described as BLAXPLOITATION Movies, films that exploited Blackness, albeit in a stereotypical and imitative genre, substituting black actors for Grade B white actors, black environment for white, but catering equally to what was considered low taste – Richard Rowntree in the SHAFT movies, and even, BLACKULA instead of that classic horror genre of limitless exploitative potential – DRACULA, all blood and gore, only black blood this time, albeit red. What is the difference between Blackula’s fangs fastened on the jugular of a prostrate black victim and, the fangs of the insensate ruler fastened on the life-blood of a prostrate generation?  
All that conceded, the objective of art does not exclude transformation, and by that I do not mean simply – societal transformation. Indeed, you may have observed that I do not say – the objective of art is to transform society. No, I deplore that familiar, ideological but dictatorial demand of art. The objective of art is also -  among other purposes  – Revelation. Whether Revelation leads to transformation or not, is a different issue. The primary objective of Art is to constantly transform itself, its own modes of expression and representation. The objective of Art is also to be chameleonic and protean – that is, to change shape and colour at will, to supersede both reality and expectations.  Yes indeed, the goal of transformation is not only desirable, it is an integrated element of what art does.  We do not want us to get bogged down with that ancient, ragged discourse based on a one- track, reductionist relationship of art to society, what the artiste’s obligation is etc. etc. Writers have put themselves through this wringer, especially during the phase of ideological self-bashings that all societies undergo, and in particular societies that have been victims of imperialism and colonization – including cultural degradation from external forces. Film makers should please understand that that discourse is daily overtaken by events, and we should now primarily interest ourselves in how the cineaste, as artist, transforms the material at his or her disposal. What applies to the writer, painter, musician, sculptor, even architect is just as pertinent to the film-maker.    
Nonetheless we must acknowledge that there is a kind of imagic immediacy that is more applicable to the cinema than to other forms of expression, including even theatre. Cinema is a powerful tool for transformation, no question about that. However, just as in literature, the cinema can easily become a medium of crude propaganda that is totally devoid of artistic solace, blaring out an ideological line as a substitute for creative rigour.  Art is is own rigorous master; it makes demands, and the primary responsibility of the artist is to fulfill those demands. This, for instance is what makes Sembene Ousmane a cineaste of great versatility, one of the most consistent that the continent has produced – his ability to embed a social message in a work without sacrificing its artistic vision. I have singled out Sembene Ousmane because the same kind of artistic integrity is apparent in his writings – God’s Bits of Wood – for instance, as in his films -  CEDDO or XALA.   
Must films carry a message? My answer to that is: does Harry Potter carry a message? All we know is that those films – like the book itself – carry a wallop and generates envy in the minds of most film makers. Nothing wrong with envy, by the way. Indeed envy can actually be a good motivator.  Even the Vatican is not free from it. About four or five years ago, the Vatican issued a condemnation of the film series as a dangerous endorsement of Satanism. Well, my reaction was – oh-oh, here comes the green-eyed monster eyeing the greenbacks flowing into the box office. After all, has the Church, ever since its mammoth success with the bible, ever come up with another literary success story? To rub pepper in the wound, each time some lavish, money-spinning  production from the scriptures takes place – like The Ten Commandments, with the over-muscled Charleston Heston in command –   the Church gets no royalties whatsoever.  I think we should simply dismiss the Church’s demonizing encyclicals. Fantasy is a different matter. Each time I see news coverage of mile-long queues winding round a cinema theatre where a new Harry Potter book is being launched, and the same endless queues when the next Potter film is due to open - grandparents, parents, children of all ages – I fantasize about meeting Madame Multi-billionaire Rowlings in a dark alley where there are no witnesses.  As that opportunity became less and less likely, I began to think seriously of matching skills against hers, but based on our own African mythological resources. Needless to say, the very first step of the creative idea is always the easiest part – which is to think to oneself – hn-hn, that seems to be an interesting idea. Then the second step forward is – hn-hjn-hn, that is a very good idea. Then the third, which is of course – wait a minute, that really is a brilliant, creative idea. After that, other distractions intervene, and a dead-end looms in view. I know I shall never even succeed in setting down even the mere film treatment of a Harry Potter success. Others can, however, and should. Why should a Bambara equivalent of the Potter series not also take the world by storm?  If anyone here has a new idea on the subject – but without the Nollywood stamp - let me announce right here that I am open to propositions. But don’t even bother to get any ideas on the subject unless you have the preliminary, capital idea – which is how to raise the capital.  
Motivation is a question that any serious artiste must face – and do note that I use that expression deliberately - ‘serious artiste’. Artistic seriousness is not a contradiction of material success – all it requires is honesty, the courage to come to terms with the question – why am I in this occupation?  Why did I choose to go into it? If it is to make money, then you must study the consumerist trends, and apply yourself to them. But then, if you are also a serious artist, you decide whether you wish to indulge that taste by remaining on that same level or - take it to a higher state, however slight, even though your starting blocks are set firmly on that track known as popular appeal. Creativity lies in advancing the level of one’s artistic choices. Yes, the practical question of even ‘breaking even’ is not to be pushed aside – whether we like it or not, no serious film artist can blithely ignore the economics of taste – and there lies the tyranny. Taste in itself is a very ambiguous, indeed vexatious issue. Taste, one has to acknowledge, can be a snob affectation, or elitist consciousness. How does one define good and bad taste?  Is minority taste necessarily the most refined, while the majority is despised as the fodder of the masses? Taste? The pulp video producer would probably sneer. Taste? The only taste I know is the taste of food and anything that puts food in my mouth – that’s good taste!  
Yes, taste. The often intolerable weightiness, yet lightness of taste! Even censorship, ever opportunistic, cashes in on Taste – this or that is in bad taste because it goes against African – or increasingly, religious – culture, as if culture is static, not dynamic and evolving.  
This is what many advocates of culture fail to understand.  The extreme policy choice of outright and extreme censorship in the name of cultural purity – most notable in societies that are infected by the virus of religious fundamentalism  - banning or controlling the means of reception – such as video cassettes, satellite dishes and even – books. are of course, futile and retrogressive. The incursion of the negative or dubious alien cultures, values and tendencies, is best countered by the strengthening and exposure of indigenous cultures, ideally in innovative ways, not by creating a hermetic society, closed to all external development. Even BIG BROTHER AFRICA, a series I thoroughly detest – suitably overhauled - is not, as format, without cultural and transformative possibilities. To be able to watch, for instance, a group of young people – christian, moslem, buddhist, traditional believers such as the aborisa – interacting as normal beings, worshipping in their own way day in day out, indifferent to the frenzy of religious extremists, within an intimate environment – now that may speak meaningfully to viewers regarding  one of the most devastating crises of cohabitation that currently confronts us  – the crisis of the aggression of faith, now ravaging swathes of our continent.   
Images are the most powerful ambassadors of the cultural exchange, and thus, the cinema and video can affect modes of thinking, perception and - most pertinently - human regard.  The temptation for the African film-maker is to attempt to be a Stephen Spielberg when it is possible to make a small classic of memorable dimensions. Such gems exist, manifestations of the claim: Small is beautiful. Having served on quite a handful of film juries since the sixties - African, Asian, Latin American, Eastern European and others, I do confidently assert this. It should not suffice to display only new films on occasions such as this. There are some modest but inspired works that require to be made more accessible, films that were made when Africa had greater leisure, when internecine wars had not worn out the creative resources of the younger generation,  driven into exile, lodged in dungeons for expressing dissident views through their art, turned into child soldiers or driven underground by the rampaging virus of bigotry, and vulgar, murderous religious fundamentalism. Courage is constantly on call.   
Try and recall the number of film makers – in company of writers, painters and other creative individuals – whose lives have been snuffed out for attempting to actualize their vision of humanity, and I am not simply speaking of cases that made international headlines, such as the Dutch film maker, Van Gogh, who was gunned down in the streets of Holland for a film that denounced the oppression of women under narrow, twisted, chauvinistic interpretations of scriptural texts. Before van Gogh, film-makers had been routinely cut down in their prime during the fundamentalist upsurge of Algeria – in some cases, sent into exile. I recall the case of one film-maker who resisted all efforts to by concerned friends and colleagues to make him relocate to Europe for his own safety. He however made a habit of spending at least two months  a year away from the Algeria of that time, as a therapeutic regimen, simply to decompress, to ease off the  tension of daily survival in his homeland. These are themes that you will confront sooner or later. You will be confronted with life-impacting choices. The video cassettes - DVD, CD-Rom etc - are our allies.  They are handy weapons in the battle for creative freedom – let us not hesitate to use them. It is only a matter of time – if it is not happening already – when we shall be able to download entire films via satellite onto hand-held phones, escape into a transformed vista of humanistic possibilities, uncensored, snatching hours of refuge from the agents of mind-closure, from criminal minds masquerading under religious fervour.   
Let us not mealy-mouth about, or underestimate the enemies of creative life – they are in reality no more than brutal, unconscionable replacements for the old order of political repression by alien imperators, from which our nationalist pioneers have laboured and sacrificed to extricate our humanity. If you made a film today about paedophilia in Nigeria, and the plight of girl children who, victims of so-called religious permissiveness, end up as pathological wrecks of vestico-vaginal fistula, be sure that you will incur the ire of those perverts who, exposed as confirmed, serial paedophiliacs, actually sit at the apex of your law-making structures – as in my own Nigeria. They will team up with the homicidal deviants of the religious mandate and attempt to snuff out your existence, be they called Boko Haram or whatever else.   
We are all living on the edge or daily survival – if you are still in the exemption zone, if you think you are immune, take it from me, you soon will discover different. It is a virulent contagion. And so you must make up your mind but - make your choice. In the early days of this now notorious insurgency, a television newscaster was deliberately shot and killed by one such group. Deliberately, I said, with murder aforethought, since the killers sent a message afterwards that this was a collective punishment for journalists who – in their view - had distorted accounts of their activities – as if it was possible to distort a pattern of activities already more bestial than anything the Nigerian people had encountered in post- colonial times.  So just think what the risks are when you confront such retrograde interests with stark, realistic moving  images of their anti-humanist mission. The creative founts are being shut off everyday, and the mere business of survival is driving potential talent off the abundant terrain for the flowering of their genius.  Reminders of what was produced in African film immediately before, and during the continent’s early energized burst of creativity, that inspirational surge from the flush of independence, should always be made available as yardsticks of the possible, and the relevant. This is what guarantees continuity, and continuity in the Arts is as essential as the DNA spiral is to human evolution.   
Themes change, as does fashion, but art is constant. If you asked me what is the pressing theme of this moment for us on the African continent – for those who feel compelled to be socially relevant, who do not feel artistically comfortable or fulfilled unless their lenses are directed inwards into the anomalies of society - permit me to isolate that perennial theme that weighs us down on this continent. It is an answer you should have discerned from the foregoing, but let me spell it out even more succinctly by calling your attention to events that are undoubtedly very fresh in your minds.   The literary treasures of Timbuktu are invaluable. As a writer, I experienced days, weeks of anguish when the neo-barbarians of our times invaded Mali, with the avowed mission, already brutally executed in other places – such as Somalia and Northern Nigeria - of resuming an age of censorship that one thought the world had repudiated at least a full millennium before. Valuable as these manuscripts are however perhaps filled with hitherto unheard-of narratives for the jaded film-maker seeking to break new grounds – but never mind even if they are devoid of such - they mainly serve as a solid, prideful foundation, as heritage. They are monuments to the past, the measure of a people’s creative, and potentially transformative signposts of the future. That tangible future however, is what we read in the products of the contemporary artistes, and most especially those artists who employ the most contemporary medium of expression – the cinema.  Then, ask this question: what is the social condition of such artistes? What would have been their fate if the zealots had been permitted to retain and consolidate their asphyxiation of culture in Mali. There is no need to speculate. Simply demand of the Suleyman Cisses, the Oumar Sissokos of that nation, ask them from which direction they encountered the greatest obstacles in the practice of their trade – directly or indirectly - over the past decades of cinematic engagement? I am speaking of those entrenched censors constantly spreading their shadows over creativity. Enquire what themes, so pertinent to the present and the cause of full artistic expression, have raised the hackles of the religious irredentists of society, to the extent that governments have often been obliged to ban the screening of such films, in order to appease such atavists.   
 Yes, indeed, if you seek the iconic images of our time, you will find them in the plight of women who are being lashed publicly for showing off an inch or two of bare flesh above their ankles. They are to be found in the disfigurement of individuals whose hands have been amputated, equally on account of stealing a loaf of bread as for shaking hands with a human being of the opposite sex. You will find them in those blood-drenched pits where women have been buried to the neck and stoned to death by a public for the crime of giving their bodies to whomsoever they please. They proliferate in images of men awaiting execution for yielding to the impulses of that biological make-up that responds only to others of the same sex and result in homosexual relationship. You will find them in the ruins of the heritage of the past as well as the rubble of the centres of leisure and enlightenment – the theatres, the artiste clubs, and the cinema houses. We cannot all, and for much longer, evade the call of re-constructed images of nine female health workers, shot in cold blood for the incredible ‘crime’ of inoculating our youth against the polio scourge that fills our streets with human millipedes crawling in between vehicle wheels in traffic, eternal beggars from the leftovers of our indifferent elite. Yes, you, our front-line film makers from West to Southern Africa, who have used these very images of the cripple, the blind, the amputees, the stunted, the twisted and mangled from birth to press your message of responsibility on society, or even simply – as in Ghollywood, Nollywood, Bellywood etc.  – to pander to the thrill of the grotesque in  voyeuristic audiences , maybe it is time to delineate a cause-and-effect between the prevalence of those unfortunates on our streets, and the brain infection that leads to the deaths of nine health workers, women who are dedicated to preventing the very ailments that produce such malformed humanity. Or the three foreign doctors from North Korea whose throats were slit for no other crime than that of ministering to the ailments that must beset a people with a grossly deficient proportion of medical practitioners per populace.    
 Yes, these are impositions from the hands of the latest in the line of internal neo- colonialists, and their backers, the external imperators.  And such pressing issues of our post-colonial times, alas, are obscuring the battle against corruption, camouflaged dictatorship, social marginalization, hunger, lack of shelter, and the brutal alienation of political practice – that urgent issue is easily summed up as bigotry, intolerance, the degradation our own very humanity in the name of antique interpretations of sectional scriptures. The prime issue of our time however remains painfully the same, the ultimate battleground, as ancient as it is eternal: that battle is one between Power and Freedom. Power as exerted, not this time by the state but by quasi-states, without boundaries, and without the responsibilities of governance.  History demonstrates however that Power is transient, while Freedom is eternal. Let our film practitioners engage in this battle – but only if battle is in their blood. If not, do not despair or burden yourself with guilt: simply, make films.   But films need capital. They require subsidy. For the younger generation, a fraction of what governments waste, what politicians steal, what civil servants divert, the total value of the holdings of two or three indicted or fugitive governors from Nigeria or elsewhere on the continent, stored in offshore businesses with their mattresses stuffed with cash in place of cotton or kapok, the sum of off-shore properties, of which more and more are being confiscated - thanks to a slowly evolving conscience of some European nations - and occasionally restored to national ownership…..a fraction of all this is more than enough to turn the African continent into – do excuse yet another neologism - the Fespascene – or perhaps the Fespacity of the world. Or whatever.  A veritable film Valhalla, if you prefer, only anything but, absolutely not yet another exocentric, dumbing down, brain-dead cliché such as - Africa’s – Allywood!    

LAST ENEMY by S. A. David

Category: ode, free verse

Enemy of Angelina Jolie
Enemy of age
Enemy of always
Enemy of answers
Enemy of Ali Nuhu
You’re not a friend!

Enemy of Bimbo Akintola
Enemy of boom
Enemy of beauty
Enemy of brains
Enemy of blood
You’ve been marked for the end!

Enemy of Chinonso Chigbundu
Enemy of courage
Enemy of charisma
Enemy of confidence
Enemy of creation
You’ve been called to answer!

Enemy of David Akpojotor
Enemy of dance
Enemy of destiny
Enemy of devotion
Enemy of diligence
You’ve gone too far!

Enemy of Enebeli Elebuwa
Enemy of effort
Enemy of efficiency
Enemy of energy
Enemy of enthusiasm
You’re doomed for elimination!

Enemy of Fortune Akpojotor
Enemy of faith
Enemy of flourish
Enemy of fame
Enemy of fearlessness
Your end is come!

Enemy of Genevieve Nnaji
Enemy of Gift Akpojotor
Enemy of generation next
Enemy of geniuses
Enemy of gentleness
You’re wicked and cruel!

Enemy of Halle Berry
Enemy of hopes
Enemy of hearts
Enemy of heads
Enemy of hands
You’ve been amputated!

Enemy of Ini Edo
Enemy of ideas
Enemy of instruction
Enemy of immortality
Enemy of insurance
You’ll soon be mortal!

Enemy of John Iniovo
Enemy of Justus Esiri
Enemy of Josephine Agbonmwanre
Enemy of Joy Akpojotor
Enemy of jewels
You’re a foul thing!

Enemy of Kofi Adjorlolo
Enemy of Kayode Olarimi
Enemy of kisses
Enemy kola nuts
Enemy of Kanye West
You’re sinister!

Enemy of Liz Benson
Enemy of Link Edochie
Enemy of love
Enemy of life
Enemy of length
You’re going too far!

Enemy of Michael Jackson
Enemy of Monalisa Chinda
Enemy of Mercy Johnson
Enemy of Meshack Akpojotor
Enemy of melody
You’re heartless!

Enemy of Ngozi Ezeonu
Enemy of nomenclature
Enemy of nobility
Enemy of newness
Enemy of nature
You’re simply unjust!

Enemy of Olu Jacobs
Enemy of oaths
Enemy of ordinations
Enemy of orderliness
Enemy of Oxford
You’re game for extinction!

Enemy of Patience Ozokwor
Enemy of Pete Edochie
Enemy of peace
Enemy of prosperity
Enemy of posterity
Your days are numbered!

Enemy of Queen Elizabeth
Enemy of Queen Idia
Enemy of Queen Nzinga
Enemy of Queen Amina
Enemy of Queen Neferiti
Your death is come!

Enemy of Richard Mofe Damijo
Enemy of Ramsey Noah
Enemy of Rita Dominic
Enemy of Rachael Oniga
Enemy of recuperation
Wait for your pronouncements!

Enemy of Sam Loco Efe
Enemy of Stephanie Okereke
Enemy of Steven Spielberg
Enemy of Sarah Akpojotor
Enemy of souls
Lick the dust!

Enemy of Teco Benson
Enemy of Tchidi Chikere
Enemy of time
Enemy of togetherness
Enemy of truth
Hush!

Enemy of Uche Jombo
Enemy of understanding
Enemy of up
Enemy of unity
Enemy of unison
Stay away!

Enemy of Van Vicker
Enemy of vision
Enemy of victory
Enemy of value
Enemy of verve
Prepare to die!

Enemy of Wura Oritsegbeni
Enemy of work
Enemy of water
Enemy of wishes
Enemy of ways
Nothing for you!

Enemy of Xavier Francis
Enemy of xylophones
Enemy of xylem
Enemy of XX
Enemy of XY
How ruthless you were and are!

Enemy of Yakubu Gowon Salami
Enemy of Yul Edochie
Enemy of yuletide
Enemy of youths
Enemy of yesterday
You will soon be no trouble!

Enemy of Zack Orji
Enemy of Zule Zoo
Enemy of zealots
Enemy of zygote
Enemy of zenith
Your end is inevitable!

But hush a second;
Can we kill this foe?
Is this enemy an adversary?

S. A. David: "The University is a Distraction."

One would agree that the quest for university education in +Nigeria in the past decade until now is of a ravenous nature; like greedy children jostling for a limited volume of chocolate. Nevertheless, the number of secondary school graduates who fight for the attainment of university education – or other higher institutions of learning- do so for a myriad of intentions, with a very high percentage of that myriad of intentions being ulterior.
One must needs not be surprised when one’s ears learns of the innumerable ulterior intentions or reasons: one must go to the university so as to earn a lot of money after graduation; one should strive to acquire a degree so that one can have more opportunity in the labour market; one should strive for university admission so that one can have a better opportunity of meeting with the children of the society’s crème de la crème; one should go to college so that one can live a healthier and happier life…and the list continues.
 It is not a warped idea if one wants to earn a six-figure fixed regular wage; and neither is it wrong to be ambitious nor aspire to work closely with people who are different in terms of religion, ethnicity, politics or other orientation- which in turn endows one with the skill of being able to survive in several environments later- and never will it be wrong under the firmament for one to want a utopian life.
Alas, it is not the case! Going to the university and acquiring a degree is vaguely a means to an end. Being a university graduate does not guarantee one being the richest one under heaven. It is not an assurance that one would escape from the enclave of a seemingly never-ending unemployment. It will never be a warranty that one would be healthier and happier. Moreover, there are people with all manner of qualifications who still earn below the scale. Countless youths who have bagged a university degree, or degrees, remain unemployed in our dearly delightful country where opportunities abound. And it is unempirical to assert that going to the university improves one’s health or assures a happy life.
Now, time for brief real-life references: Oscar-winning actress, +Halle Berry, never attended a college or university. After high school, she moved to Chicago to pursue a career in Modeling. Billionaire and founder of Virgin Atlantic Airlines and other Virgin enterprises, +Richard Branson, was a high school drop-out at sixteen. +Adele, or +Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, singer and multi-instrumentalist, intended going to college but signed a recording deal just after high school graduation. Founder of Dell Computers, +Michael Dell, dropped out of the University of Texas to run the company.
One would be quick to denigrate the previous paragraph for being replete with Western Personalities domiciled in a totally different sphere where things work; and ostracized from this age.
Looking into our sphere where things do not work: there is +Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who gave up studying Medicine after eighteen months for a degree in Communications and Political Science, and later Creative Writing, and she is successful in all. Yes, in all! +Okechukwu Anthony Onyegbule studied Agricultural Engineering in the university and turned out to be actor and comedian- +Okey Bakassi- and in October 2008 to August 2011 he was Senior Special Assistant, or SSA, on Entertainment to the Governor of Imo State. There is +Linda Ikeji, an English graduate, who after several unyielding adventures became a media entrepreneur and blogger. Is it +Frank Nneji who abandoned his Biological Sciences degree which he bagged from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and founded Associated Bus Company, or ABC Transport? Or +Jason Njoku after graduating with a second class upper degree in Chemistry and abandoned it to found +IROKO TV- a web platform which provides Nigerian movies, free and unpaid, on-demand? Or the dental surgeon who abandoned looking into patients’ dental cavities for a better option of making them shine their teeth when he sings? He is +Sidney Onoriode Esiri or +Dr. SID.
“But these ones saw the four walls of a university!” One would be rapid in snapping. And the answer is yes. They did see the four walls of a university which failed to shape their future- the university whose certificate could not contribute, in a sense, to what they turned out to be. In this light, one would be right to concur with +Sharon Daniels, author of The World of Truth, when “[she] came to conclude that [she] could not find real knowledge in academic life, only hierarchies of knowledge that led, ultimately to more hierarchies, not to more knowledge. [She] began to see university learning as limited, human and relative. What was absolutely up-to-date and not infinite and timeless.”
Yes the university is perhaps a distraction. Imagine the years it sapped from the aforementioned graduates who - after working their heads to the grey and white matters - had to find another means to an end. Those years, if they were spent on what they later turned out to be would have yielded something tremendous. Here, one would be right in agreeing, to an extent, with Stella’s lines in the 2010 youth culture alternative movie, +Kaboom. She said: “[the university] is just an intermission between [secondary school] and the rest of your life. Four years of having sex, making stupid mistakes, and experiencing stuff. It’s a pit stop, and not the coming of the messiah.”
This piece is not a demonization of the university but to show [her] her place. Good things can still happen to one if one goes to university. Getting a degree will help one get a job but it does not do much to help one create jobs; and in the world as of today, those with the real money are those who create jobs. One cannot learn all what one needs to know in the university but one can learn enough to form a framework for the future with the seemingly unnecessary knowledge gained. After all, no knowledge is a waste. But one must have in mind that the university will not deliver to one what one needs the most.
And what do we need the most? 
Creative answers to the challenges that bedevil us today and now.

+Wole Soyinka: "Mission the Future"

Mr President, Governors and Friends, it's great to be back in the transformed City of +Asaba. I have titled my address 'Mission the Future'.  
I must begin by thanking you for the honour of this invitation to address you. I am glad that I did not have to decline, pleading the truthful excuse that I am, unfortunately, still saddled with a heavy load of unfinished business elsewhere. In any case, I have come to accept that it is a condition of human existence to be saddled with this particular affliction - unfinished business – that sense of an incomplete mission. The difference between one individual and the next is perhaps that some know this, while others do not. With individuals, this distinction does not matter a great deal. We go into retirement with a sigh of mission accompli, convinced that one‟s self-imposed, fortuitous, or mysteriously transmitted mission in life has indeed been fulfilled.  Or perhaps we simply shrug our shoulders in resignation, saying, „Enough is enough, let others take over from here.‟ No matter the variant, we are still buried with our own self-assessment, accurate or misconceived. 
A sense of mission and the identification of such a mission varies from individual to individual, from institution to institution, from community to community, with or without relationship to one‟s social status or formal responsibilities. For instance, you might read that the United Nations is sending a fact-finding mission to the Sudan to check on al-Bashir‟s compliance with its latest directives. Or that Amnesty International has sent a fact-finding mission to Burma, to see whether the Burmese military dictators were truly easing up on their stranglehold on Burmese democracy, ensure that the mere concession of an electoral exercise, or the release of the opposition leader Aung Suu Kyi, is not mere cosmetic, an excuse to clamp others down into detention or retain despotic powers by other means. Peace missions, or peace initiatives – sometimes known, in the latest Nigerian parlance as Peace Advocacy - are also just as commonplace. A former head of state in this nation went on what he considered a peace advocacy mission to a group of rampaging psychopaths who had laid siege to the nation. We may argue from here to eternity about the appropriateness of that mission, especially its timing, but at least he had some credentials for his undertaking, and it would appear that the proposal came anywhere from those who thought over there– rationally or with pathetic naiivette – that he might play a useful role in stemming the tide of blood.  
The former Secretary General of the United Nations, +Kofi Annan, was sent on a mission to +Syria, in an attempt to stop the Butcher of Damascus using his people for target practice, and endeavour to bring both sides to the negotiating table. Peace missions - or advocacy - come in various shapes and guises. Quite a number of them are self-ascribed. Many successful ones, such as for instance that undertaken by a little known Irish group, worked quietly, unpublicized but effectively to bring an end to the decades long civil war in Mozambique. By contrast there are others which only end up afflicting their target areas with all the bristling paraphernalia of war, who appropriate to themselves a disproportionate amount of the security resources of a nation to inflict peace on a perfectly peaceful environment, and with maximum gaudiness and ostentation. Variously also deflected as a thank-you mission, they move from state to state with all the extravagant baggage and panoply of feudal potentates visiting vassal states. They seize up traffic in throbbing commercial capitals, bring all motion to a halt, insisting on a gift of peace on a state which never evinced any indications of warfare nor asked for peace evangelism. The places where the nation may be said to have be at war are known all over the world, not just within Nigeria, but they do not venture there. No, it is to states which are in the throes of peace, which evince no need of peace healing, that the ministrations of such peace physicians lead what end up memorably as carnivalesque caravans of disruption. 
Traffic is tied up, Security is tied up, Productive motion is tied up, Commerce is tied up, Governance is tied up. Individual, corporate, even leisure schedules are tied up - all to pander to bristling head-ties tied up in a floating parade of gorgeous fabric, sterile, provocative and contemptuous of the rights of others on their own desperate mission, the mission of generating the life-sustaining morsel for family and self. A vanity parade born perhaps of boredom or a feeling of neglect, this banal extravaganza, which attained obscene heights with the military, has transferred to our supposedly democratic environment under various pretexts, guzzling funds and guzzling up productive time of others. Productive motion is held to a standstill and citizen rights are trampled upon. This disrespectful misappropriation of public space that exists primarily for the movement of goods and humanity, especially by the unelected, by mere appendages to constitutional power, has become a culture of spousal aggression and can only beget a response of disrespect and ridicule from those it most affects. There are numerous, far more creatively effective ways of bringing the train of peace evangelism to places in need, or not in need, and these do not involve the usurpation of the daily mission of millions by the mission of any one individual. 
Where were we? Oh yes, we were embarking on the theme of missions.  Every individual does have, or is entitled to have his or her own self-assessment of the level of achievement of a life mission – it does not matter in the least what that mission might be. The sense of satisfaction in the fulfillment of that mission, or regrets about its non-fulfillment remains primarily an individual assessment, and one that accompanies each individual to his or her grave. With nations however, there is little room for such indifference, and the reason is simple: individuals vanish but nations endure – at least in one form or another - and nations impact on the quality of existence of each transient occupant. Each occupant therefore has a stake in the fortunes of the nation, a stake that, proportionately speaking, equates the eternity that we have optimistically conceded to the life-span of the nation. The unfinished business of nation being is thus not one to which we, as individuals, can afford to remain indifferent. In many more ways than we like to admit, the nation defines its citizen. This means that the citizen remains unfinished, a creature in the limbo of identity, leading an improvised, unsecured and uncertain existence, until the nation itself can boast of a recognizable and functional identity. 
I do not refer merely to unfinished business as in governance business -  policy making, planning, execution, and so on. No, I refer to that far more fundamental, unobtrusive, but nonetheless comprehensive seizure of nation being. Some nations are wise enough to acknowledge their state of incompletion, and take steps - even while the business of governance remains uninterrupted - to tackle this essential business head on, addressing the very history that brought them into being and examining the factors - both positive and negative - that have shaped their existence since they began to recognise, and conduct themselves as nations. Others muddle on, immured in an impenetrable carapace of complacency. They list their achievements, both internal and external - economic buoyancy, a prestigious foreign policy, low level of unemployment, a highly literate society, eradication of diseases, uninterrupted electric power, potable water and other indices of enhanced civic life, even IMF and World Bank approbation etc.- as proof of the claim that they have “arrived”, and can confidently assess themselves as nations, beyond the mere naming. They refuse to recognise that some at least - not necessarily all but some part - of a suppressed social malaise or political fractiousness can be traced to the basic issue of the unfinished aspect of their self-constitutive process. This includes those who cannot boast of even these medals of achievement, those who, long after any self-respecting nation should have been weaned, continue to insist that their endemic negative symptoms are merely “teething problems.” Such nations are clearly on a self-destruct trajectory. 
Permit me to cite as analogy the ordeal of one my children who, one day, during a routine basketball game, collapsed and passed out. Until then, he had experienced intermittent breathing problems – they were put down as mild attacks of asthma and allergy – you know, increase in pollen counts with seasonal changes and so on. Until then however, nothing as drastic as an actual faint had ever occurred. Fortunately, one of the paramedics who were called to the scene felt that this was more than a mere asthmatic attack, or equally benign incident – and so began a series of tests which merely increased the bafflement of the diagnostic clinics and their specialists.  A period of round-the-clock monitoring was prescribed. He was banned from any further sporting activities and was strapped to a gadget that communicated directly to an emergency centre for any sign of recurrence. No matter where he was, a fully equipped ambulance was on call, ready to rush him to a clinic in case of a life-threatening recurrence – all this, while various images of his heart, lungs, full body and brain scans were subjected to analysis. The trouble was that some of these scans gave off contradictory images, which simply drove the doctors to distraction. 
In the end, the mystery was solved. His condition was a heart tumour, but not just any tumour. It was that uncommon type which has a habit of sinking back into the wall tissues of the heart, and then pulsing outwards, so that sometimes the instruments showed only one, but at other times, two or three growths. Evidently these extrusions would sometimes impede the regular flow of blood, which had led to his passing out in the first instance. In one of these sophisticated machines, one could actually watch the tumour change shape and contours, flattening back invisibly into the wall. The option had already been decided upon - open-heart surgery – but it was necessary to do a thorough study of the behaviour of this pulsating growth before embarking on the drastic process. 
That decision was only the beginning. The surgical team had to go back to school – that is, they were compelled to look up prior cases, consult surgeons who had carried out similar operations. Video recordings were exchanged. Finally, D-day, it was, I must confess, an unnerving experience to see your son‟s heart taken out of his body while he was attached to an artificial heart that kept the blood pumping to his system. As if that was not enough, we learnt that, after the heart was re-attached and resuscitated, it suddenly stopped beating. Injections, administration of electric shocks – the surgeons did what they were trained to do and he survived. 
Now, why have I bothered to go into details? Simply to ensure that you do not overlook the mission that has –  I presume – brought  us here today. The realities that compelled you – again, presumably – to demand of yourselves what is missing from the delivery of responsible governance and thus, seek strategies for their fulfillment. You know that if that youth had been in our part of the world, he would be long dead. And that applies to many deficiencies that your citizens face – not merely in terms of the quality of life they lead, but even the very threats to survival in numerous fields of routine activities. 
That is Lesson One. Many here have at least one such story of deliverance, of an extract from real life that barely escaped tragedy. Others were not so lucky. The stories they have to tell did not have such a happy ending. We must not however lose sight of the analogy, which goes deeper than the incidental vagary of the health of one individual, but concerns the corporate body. Even the greatest pundits can be wrong about the health of any organism - human, institutional, or national. I am speaking here of the deceptiveness of appearances – those of you who are soccer addicts would have read recently of the collapse and death of an Italian player – my eye caught the news because the story reached backwards to refer to similar tragedies, sudden deaths of other athletes who had evinced no sign whatsoever of a weakness in their anatomy.  It happens all the time. This nation must surely recall the shocking case of Kanu. Institutions are no different – just see how the banking system in the most advanced countries suddenly collapsed, creating a domino effect that saw seemingly robust economies collapse one after the other. But here again, we are still speaking simply of parts of a functioning totality, not the entirety.  A deep malaise may defy the most astute diagnostic minds, leading to a complacent reading of its state of health. If however, there is a sound, fundamental structure that holds the totality together, that totality will override flawed mechanisms of the parts – this is what is pulling many European nations out of the rut. Lucky, therefore, is that entity that is urged from time to time to examine and re-examine the very walls, tissues and muscles of the heart that pump blood into its system. That it is beating sturdily does not mean that there are no tumours embedded within its very interstices, waiting its moment to strike while bounding confidently from one field of undertaking to the next, overriding one hidden trauma after another, but progressively weakened by each trauma inducing experience. 
Most mortals do need to be left alone to find their feet after any traumatic experience. The nation is no different, the most enfeebling traumatic experiences in the Nigerian instance being both the civil war and years of military rule. There is also the affliction of illegitimacy – the dubious legitimacy of a large percentage of representatives of the people‟s supposed political will at the centre, at the federal and national assemblies and even in the lodges of executive governors. The percentage of occupational illegitimacy did admittedly decrease over the last elections but, we still do know, and they know that we know, that even in a seventy-five percent perfect election, properly conducted, a vast number of the present „honourables‟, senators and governors, could never have caught the sheerest whiff of the wood varnish on the seats they now occupy. Some of these are the most vociferous, most assiduous in their denunciation, indeeed demonisation of the very notion of a genuine convocation of peoples, that is, a convocation outside the sanctuary, privilege and self- interest of the homes of illegitimacy, the convocation of a people who wish to examine their present and decide their future. 
Let me declare here that I have taken a decision never again to add my voice to that call, having joined with others  - two of whom are now dead – to let the judiciary pronounce, at the very least, a symbolic judgment on whether what now passes for a „people‟s constitution‟ is indeed any such product of a people‟s will, or yet another product of illegitimacy hung around the nation‟s neck like a noose. That I shall no longer add my voice to that call however does not mean that I abandon the right to examine, even if only as a contextual exercise, the antecedents of that call, its provocation, the distortions it has endured, and continues to endure, the potential consequences of its rejection, and perhaps the true motivations of its opposing or evasive voices. 
Northwards from this very spot where we are gathered, a daily decimation of our  humanity pronounces its diabolical judgment on the structure that still struggles to deserve the name nation, calling in question, through its fiery monologues, the very legitimacy of our nation being. Let me take this opportunity however to stress to us all within the nation that this ongoing catastrophe is not the burden of any one part of the nation by itself, but a fight of survival for the totality of its humanity. The antecedents of the present national crisis may seem particularized, the carnage concentrated on a geographical sector – at least for now - the solution nonetheless remains the responsibility of the entirety of the constituent parts. There is an immeasurable gulf between taking up arms against the state and declaring war against humanity. 
I recall a cry from a stricken heart – metaphorically speaking this time –  when the United States of America invaded Iraq under the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction. The Arab League happened to be holding its session at the time, and its Secretary-General was reported to have exclaimed: “the inhabitants of hell have been let loose”.  Several members of that League thought he was merely being alarmist. The US president, George Bush certainly thought so too, especially once he had overrun the defences of the deluded tyrant Saddam Hussein. Several years after, not merely the Middle East, but the entire world is still attempting to cope with the rampages of the successors of those fiends from hell, unleashed through past global defaults admittedly, but also ministering to their own innate demonism, determined to drag the rest of the world down into their own private and collective hells. 
What applied to +Iraq is both pertinent to, and apparent in Nigeria – evade it how we will. The rejects even of hell have indeed been let loose, but many prefer to shy away from the question: who let them loose. How long was the present scenario in preparation? For how long was the mind-set of its direct perpetrators nurtured, for how long were impressionable minds doctored, warped and then homicidally re-focused?  Was it through secular ideological indoctrination – let us say, a Marxist revolutionary orientation?  Or was it through the theocratic, serving however the power obsession of a minority? This is a basic enquiry that should precede all else. However, the nation has elected, in the main, to climb aboard the conveyance of evasion, bound for the bunker of denial. Those who unleashed the denizens of hell are among us, they did not come from outer space, they are known, and they know where their myrmidons retreat while they prepare their next outrage on the populace. I invite you to take a hard look, for instance, at the photos of those killers of the Italian and British hostages, finally trapped in Kaduna. Do you seriously think that they – and hundreds like them - are independent actors in the on-going rampages? Does anyone still believe that they sponsored themselves to training grounds, on this continent or outside, in some infernal regions, for their deadly mastery of weapons of human evisceration? Their sponsors are not phantoms. They are real. They exist among us. But, phantoms or not, today, they are afraid. Their own agents of destruction have turned upon them, demanding evidence of preparations of the theocratic utopia that was dangled before them, a utopia founded on theocratic myopia that nerved them to acts of total disregard for fellow humanity and a passion for self-immolation.   How do we disable such forces? Let me insist on the negative – not by appeasement. Not by utterances or gestures of appeasement. Those who seek to dominate others do not understand the language of appeasement. To them it translates as endorsement, multiplies their self-righteousness and urges them to even greater acts of contempt for humanity.  Dialogue is a cultured, always commendable device – in principle. However, I must call attention to a fervent contradiction – within this general field of dialogue - that appears to have escaped certain among our pundits of dialogue at all costs. Here it goes: 
On the one hand, those very voices are on their knees urging dialogue on the assailants. On the other, those whose call for dialogue – but on a wider, national scale - holds out the possibility, at the very least, of a holistic apprehension of the far-reaching causes and prescriptions for remedial action for the guarantee of a future, are told to go and have their heads examined. Therein lies the contradiction. A force for blind violence comes to the fore, a force that manifests utter contempt for that very civilized facilitator of co-existence called Dialogue, yet, hardly has the first prickle of blood been drawn before the chorus goes up - let‟s invite them to sit down and talk. Tell us what you want and we‟ll see what can be done. And even before that, there were already calls for Amnesty. The sequence is important – let us keep this in mind. Now, what is this supposed to indicate? That only through the language of terror can one make oneself heard? 
One side says, let us sit down peacefully, as free peoples, and work out a new order of internal relationships and overarching governance. The other says, I already have my own unilaterally concluded order of internal relationships, divinely ordered, beyond questioning by mere mortals, subject to no tests of rationally, equity or experimentation. To the first, the response that hits their ears is  – nothing doing. To the other however – at least from those responsible for the health and survival of the nation, the response is, „please, come and talk to us.‟ And for their pains, what has been the constant reward? A few hundred souls in their daily routine of scraping a living from the sales of basic, life sustaining products of farm and manufacture, and yet a hundred more, gathered on their okada motor-cycles, waiting to transport those market men and women to their farmstead and homes, workers to their factories and homes, are unconscionably blasted to eternity. Thus comes into being the ordination of two competing sovereign states, one pleading for dialogue, the other contemptuous of the very word. 
Yes indeed, „sovereignty‟. The sovereignty of the nation, we are lectured, is non-negotiable, and that mystic possession – sovereignty - would be imperiled if the constituent parts of the nation do indeed embark on a dialogue of free peoples. It‟s a very portly word – sovereignty – mouth-filling, and chest expanding. It is designed to stop all arguments. Merely pronounce that a form of action is a threat to the illusionary banquet called sovereignty and the world is supposed to go into seizure from sheer surfeit. One can only marvel at what happened to this patrimony of „sovereignty‟ when a Buhari, a Babangida or a Sanni Abacha terminated preceding sovereign claims with a mere radio announcement accompanied by a martial tune. Some of the more hysterical among our current voices, opposed to a people‟s dialogue, did not wait for the military spittle to dry out on the air-waves before they vanished into the obscurity of their villages. In this case however, today, Dialogue as a voluntary undertaking, an operative stage in nation-being, as an expression of collective will, increasingly voiced even in hitherto unexpected sectors, is being derided. 
Sadly, one can sometimes understand causes for the vilification of this recourse. Only a few days ago, the clamour for Dialogue – the genuine kind that is – was joined by one of the most nauseous and obsequious, self-ingratiating servitors of the repellent dictatorship of Sanni Abacha. Such incidental bed-fellows make one despair but, as we say, this is a democracy, and even those who seek to sanitize their past by a cynical revision of a history through which we all lived and survived – thank goodness - must be given a hearing. The message, not the messenger – that must be our meager consolation. 
I merely play the devil‟s advocate. I have lost all interest in the call for a National Conference and, at the very end, my prescriptions shall be made plain. For now let us also offer a material solace to those who are morbidly afraid of a national dialogue. In the highly unlikely event that such a mythical National Conference concludes its work with a rational agenda that garners the approbation of an overwhelming majority, leading to a clamour for instant implementation, such demurrers would only be bowing to the clearly articulated will of the people, as opposed to a bunch of adventurist individuals in uniform. This, of course, is only an extreme speculation, designed to douse the dismissive, unreflective, more sovereign- than-thou, what-we-have-we-hold, what-exists-is-holy mentality that has corrupted the reasoning of some of these opposing voices. 
It is actually a liberating position, abandoning the chimera of a National Dialogue. It leaves one free to confront one prospect, the most challenging prospect of all – the future. Where else does one look at this stage? The future naturally, leapfrogging the chancy route of what a dialogue might bring, seizing the future by the throat and demanding of ourselves – what can we make of that future, with or without dialogue? But first, what do we see when we do turn to that future? Yes, let us first direct our gaze at that future, which means – let this present speak to the future. So, what does it say? I urge that we address ourselves dispassionately, not fantasize, not simply project the future of our escapist desperation.  We shall let our present interrogate that future, and what does it spell? Peril. An imperilled future, and that means – an imperilled generation of a nation‟s humanity. 
We obtain a preview of a future that is finally divested of the surviving scraps of the opportunities that many of my generation enjoyed when we were indeed pronounced as that future that is now our present. In practical details, what the present projects objectinely as its offspring, is a vista of brain wastage, thanks to unstable tumours that peek and vanish, undetected, and when detected, are left uncorrected. A future that is very much in doubt, a future tarnished and devalued by a succession of incontinent, irresponsible leadership, decked in both civilian and military outfits, but mostly of the military. A future where the intangible yet reinforced pillar of civilized society – such as justice - has become available on the open market. I am making no new assertions and, do not take my word for it. Revert to internal motions for reforms such as the Justice Eso Commission of enquiry into the judiciary and also call to mind various pronouncements of the National Bar Association. Ask yourselves how it comes about that one of your former members of this very governorship consortium is currently basking in immunity, having succeeded in obtaining a judicial injunction against prosecution for his crimes against the future, perpetrated while in office. Do we need to point out that as a nation we are covered with shame that it took an external court of justice, of the former colonial masters, to finally put an end to the costly shenanigans of another of your former brother governors, one who held the forces of anti-corruption at bay, led them a merry dance all the way to Dubai until he was plucked out of his imagined sanctuary? 
And what of that judge, the judge who freed him of over a hundred and fifty criminal charges here, in this very nation, pronounced him innocent of blasting the very future of the generations under his watch by a career of systematic, unconscionable robbery? Why are we surprised therefore to find ourselves faced with a future where all sense of community has all but evaporated and only predators roam the streets, making their own laws of survival as they proceed. Yes, they make their own laws, for even these know that without law, written or unwritten, there is no community, and without community, all talk of nation is vain. Nations are built on the palpable operations of community; otherwise they are empty, artificial and hollow. They collapse with the tiniest pinpricks of unrest, they drift into oblivion with the slightest winds of external pressure. So, that learned judge held the strings of community in his hands, the judge who pronounced our elusive governor free of all blemish, that custodian and administrator of justice,  our question today is - is he still passing judgment in this nation, or has he proceeded on retirement leave to Dubai? 
We must resume our path of enquiry into the two faces of dialogue that confront us in the present. Let it be inserted in the memory of our countrymen and women - some did anticipate this very present. Simply as a general framework of deductive intelligence, projection and concern, the democratic alliance that fought Sanni Abacha did call upon the stop-gap regime of General Abdusallami Abubakar to set up an Interim government, side by side with a Sovereign National Conference. That conference would debate the future of this nation. Civil life had been deliberately panel-beaten - to resort to familiar parlance - thoroughly panel-beaten during the reign of Ibrahim Babangida, then the hobbling, rickety vehicle was conclusively crashed under the tyranny of Sanni Abacha. The nation, we insisted, required a recovery space, a period for stock-taking, during which the ruptured interstices of civil life would be stitched together. Then, and only then, should we commence a systematic democratic resumption. We could not advocate a so-called democratisation process that was built on a privatised constitution. That succinctly argued recourse was not followed. It is still being brushed aside as preposterous. Is it any wonder that a group of people are writing their own constitution in the streets, in the markets, in motor garages, in churches and mosques, a constitution that is being scrawled in the blood of innocents? The writing on the wall is no longer a mere biblical metaphor, it refers graphically today to the spattered grafitti of blood on the walls of our homesteads, schools, offices, sanctuaries of worship and children‟s nurseries. That writing is the universal language of nations, on the road to perdition. 
Permit me to recall an exercise in a minor key in one‟s seeming obsession with the future which, of course, I continue to see as the immutable responsibility of the present, otherwise, what is the present all about?  In the early years of the return of the nation to civilian rule, I was invited to take part in a rather imaginative form of mentoring, initiated by a Japanese Television station, loaded with the grandiose name – Super Teachers.  It involved having a selected group of teachers – not necessarily teachers by profession – take a group of school pupils under their wing for a number of weeks. Those teachers were selected on the basis of having attained some prominence in their disciplines. They were free to decide on a school, and from that school extract a class, or a group of pupils across classes, then expose them to aspects of their own calling. Science, technology, architecture, the performing arts etc – virtually all disciplines were represented, and the entire mentoring interaction was filmed.  What I privately relished in that project – this is just by the way - was that it enables me till today to boast that, for a few weeks at least, I was on the same payroll and salary as Bill 
Gates. I know that he would not have touched his honorarium – if at all they dared offer him such pittance. However, as a man whose field is virtual reality, he would be the first to concede to me when I claim that, virtually speaking, we were earning the same salary from a shared project! So much for vicarious living. The programme, I was about to elaborate, allowed for the pupils to be taken anywhere that related to, or could enhance the imparting of knowledge – within the station‟s budget of course. 
Thus, in the process of selecting a school, that school understood that it was obliged to release the pupils to accompany the mentor wherever – I recall that the American pupils were flown to some part of North Africa where the archeologist in the Super Teachers team was working on an excavation site. In my own case, the producers agreed that I would travel with my students to other parts of the country –  it was an opportunity to  expose the pupils to the nation‟s diversity - religion, culture, history, the arts – whatever came under the rubric of Humanities. Now, as It happened  at the time, I had also received invitations from two or three legislative houses to address them, and so I seized the opportunity to induct my pupils into the work of law makers. We began with Lagos where I off-loaded them on the public gallery of the House of Assembly. Afterwards, they were free to ask questions, make observations, and we would exchange views on their experience. I want you to listen carefully to the following extract from my address to the Lagos House of assembly: 
“I invite you, honourable members, to look up at that gallery. You will observe that you have some rather unusual visitors. I have brought them here to observe how law is enacted, but more importantly, to see how their future is being shaped.” 
I proceeded to provide the house a brief summary of the Super Teachers  project, recommended it to the them as a possible model for emulation on some level or the other, but then I went on to say, and again I quote my very words on that occasion, words that placed my mission in the context of the nation‟s realities, the context of some portentous events that came to dominate the news at that very time. I said: 
“Now imagine if we had gone, let us say, to Kaduna state just about a month ago, during those days that are for ever branded on the memory of this nation, days of horror when some of the desperate politicians of this nation fomented an artificial upheaval in the name of religion, a conspiracy that led to the loss of over a thousand souls all over the nation, some in the most gruesome circumstances, both from the initial execution of meticulously planned massacres, and in retaliatory acts that took place in scattered places across the nation. Among the victims were innumerable schoolchildren who were led out of their schools and slaughtered like rams for the very guilt of innocence. Imagine if I had led these innocents into such an inferno - tell me, just what kind of explanation would I have made to their parents. What treasure of the learning experience would I claim was worth such a horrifying ending to promising lives? 
“It was a period that brought out the worst, the worse than bestial from our human landscape, but also the best - let us note this carefully - it also brought out the best, thanks to  a handful of that same humanity, who risked their lives to protect their fellow beings from the initial mayhem, and from the retaliatory rage that was being exercised by their own kin and neighbours. Yes indeed, this did happen - as is the case wherever the outbreak of the virus of insanity is recorded - but how pitifully meagre is this consolation beside the depravity that overwhelmed the entirety of the nation.” 
It is twelve years since I uttered those words, and it reads like a lament that anyone could have uttered yesterday or today – only the choice words would have to come out far with greater rage, born of the recurrent extrusion of that hidden tumour in the very walls of the heart, a tumour that merely alters shape, contours and size but a tumour nonetheless. And it is not merely religion that I have in mind. My busload of schoolchildren clanged forcefully on the walls of my mind only some weeks ago when I read of a similar busload, in my own state, filled with the designated future of the nation, this time from a girls‟ school. That bus was waylaid, its occupants robbed, assaulted and raped – that is the level of  depravity to which the nation has been brought. On that road of the pupils‟ matyrdom was re-enacted the continnum of the history of this nation: Violation. Rape. 
And who are have been the gang-bangers of the nation‟s future? We can bypass the military – we know them already. Those are defined, not only by their uniform, but by their uniform arrogance, their unbridled rapacity and their uninformed propensity for sterile interventions. Are there no others?  Of course there are, and because they tend to lack open identification, they are especially dangerous. But we do know them, and so do you. They are the ones who, even while claiming to defend the rights and entitlements of their own constituencies, do little more than defend the rights and entitlements of their privileged existence. They are the generator contractors in whose interest it is that the national electric system never works. They are the minority who conspire to run down the health system of the nation, since they can divert its allocation to their own, and their families‟ excursion to Wiesbaden for annual checks and fly to New York to cure a toothache. They are the ones who systematically destroyed the educational system which we took for granted throughout our own past that has engendered this present. They are the petroleum moguls and long-haulage monopolists who have ensured that this nation has never enjoyed the cheapest form of transport ever invented by humanity -  the railways. 
These agents are the ones who see government solely as livelihood, and who engage in every dirty trick in the books to ensure that government remains in their hands since they know of no other way to survive, have never understood that a nation‟s economy must be generated, not printed at the Central Bank or simply diverted from the oil wells and central handouts, These enemies were the inventors of the Rice Importation Scheme, the Cement Importation Scheme, the Import Licence Scheme, the Counter Trade and numerous other scam schemes that were designed not to generate productivity and ensure employment for generations, but to amass, in the hands of a few, the entire wealth of the nation, from which they dole out pittances to a zombie followership. But sooner or later, zombies turn, recognize that they are also creatures of flesh and blood – then they demand their pound of flesh. 
They call themselves leaders and claim to fight for their people but, today, they are indeed afraid. They have sat long upon the masses but today, they go about in fear. And such is the nature of this fear – it is no longer those who were routinely denounced as outsiders to, and hate filled critics of their way of life that they fear, but their own restless masses who have seen through their deception, their hypocrisy, their incontinence and their will to dominate. For this minority, serving a constituency means, not the elevation of the social condition of their people, but the enclosure of such a constituency within the walls of dependency.  The sense of existence of such leaders is fulfilled only if, on sauntering out of their homes, they are surrounded by a constituency of beggars. Their self-fulfillment lies only in the non- fulfillment of their immediate, impoverished community. But their lies have been exposed and they have become frightened. And this exposure has taken place despite the pogroms that they periodically launched against scapegoats and innocents – in preliminary softening- up surges on their environment, based on manufactured or distorted incidents - utilising their armies of zombies whose horizons are firmly, deliberately limited from birth to a meagerly space, horizons whose circumference was, quite simply, the rims of their bowls of beggary. 
The demand – and here come my last words on the subject, a necessary summary of the past – the demands from multiple and varied directions for a National Conference is as old as political consciousness. Nor is it a demand that has been solely born out of a crisis. It is a demand that is born out of the recognition of an unfinished business, and that business is the business of nation-becoming. Many people have acknowledged, in various forms, that Nigeria is not yet a nation. It is therefore only intelligent to see the demand for an encounter among peoples as a response to this awareness, one that is shared by millions but is often conveniently camouflaged.  A crisis is merely the immediate triggering cause for the resurrection of the idea, but a crisis is not the underlying motivation for such a recourse. We do acknowledge however that after a civil war, after military interventionism that has interrupted, and virtually subverted the creative tempo of true national building, after the inordinate consumption of a hegemonic but vastly tentacular minority – and I repeat – a minority that has destroyed trust among the peoples of this nation, it is time to resume our quest towards nationhood. 
To all legislators and indeed executive heads who are so jealously protective of their so- called sovereignty, may I end this reprise by reminding them that the call has always been: carry on the task for which you were elected. Nothing in what was ever proposed contradicted such functions. Simultaneously with such functions however, the people demanded a forum for a mutual encounter among those who do not have an eye to the next election, who are not fearful of losing a luxury existence that bleeds the treasury of its life- blood, those who are not constrained by horse-trading and back-room „settlement‟ for the passage of some bill upon which the functioning of the nation depends. Let us bear in mind however that it has always been within the rights and prerogatives of any group of people to engage in strategies for facilitating such an assemblage of minds. 
All that has been said, all that has been argued and, in my view, there need be no further call for such a conference, only a clear understanding of the multiple causes for its constant resurgence. It is however time to stop barking up a wrong tree, and envisage instead what motions would have characterised such a conference were it to have taken place. In other words, it is time to act the national conference, not summon it. And I believe that this is what we are participating in today, a continuation of former initiatives, in the ongoing encounters of regional groupings. There was the earlier one in Lagos a few months ago and, hopefully, these will be followed by others, all the way eastward and northward all the way towards Maiduguri and Kano when those beleaguered sectors have ridden themselves of the horrors of the mindless insurgency. My reading is then is as follows:  
Central to these gatherings will be the very antithesis of that word „central‟ – decentralization. Engaging in policies and strategies of development that progressively renders the centre reduced in its ability to impede – for this is what has been the norm – impede the pace and quality of development of the constituent parts of the nation. The constitutional envelope that currently holds the parts together should be pushed as far proves possible without it actually bursting, leading to a vibrant competition – and collaboration - among its constituent parts. It is then left to the courts of arbitration to interpret those areas where it might appear that the envelope has been pushed too far. And let no one imagine that this is still the aberrant season of that Third Term Desperado and Denier who defied the courts in their decision over the illegal seizure of the statutory revenues of Lagos and some other states.  The people now know what to do, and have proved it. Lagos stood firm. Leadership is half the battle but followership must also prove its mettle. Each regional grouping should, by its policies, declare an uncompromising developmental autonomy – I repeat, Autonomy - leaving the centre only with its competence provenance – foreign policy, national security and inter-state affairs - including peace subversive Peace Advocacy – but minus its propensity for inflicting heart seizure on productive human concourse. 
There need be no further calls for a national conference. Let each regional grouping with compatible ideas of the ultimate mission – the future of the humanity for which they are responsible – begin to call the shots, and relegate the centre to its rightful dimensions in any functioning federated democracy.  Let each state call its own conference of peoples to articulate in just what direction they wish to direct their leaders and relate to the centre and other states. Let each regional grouping and its member states single-mindedly project and pursue their strategies for the enhancement of the quality of life and the dignity of their peoples, quarry into their resources to extract the material required for their very existence, material that they can exchange among one another based on their spatial developmental advantages - in short share among themselves areas of specialization, substituting strength for the weakness of their partners, expertise for deficiencies in one member or the other. 
Such collaborating states need not even be contiguous, what matters is a community of interests, no matter how physically distanced from one another.  Nigeria has proved too large and inefficient for the centralized identification and management of such human skills and material resources, the centre having become self-aggrandizing, bloated, parasitic and alienated.  Now is the time to put into practice that ancient saying: Small is beautiful. We must return to the earlier days of creative rivalry that pronounces that vanishing past an interrupted project of promise, creativity and productivity. Then, it may be possible for your generation to say contentedly, even while the harvest is still distant but the soil is cleanly prepared, the seeds implanted and germinating: Mission? Accomplished!  

Rhapsody of Realities For Early Readers

Rhapsody of Realities For Early Readers is just the exact literature for children and teens. They could not have gotten a better book that has the power to educate, enlighten, entertain, renew and transform their lives.
Authors of Rhapsody of Realities For Early Readers - +Pastors Chris and +Anita Oyakhilome - birthed the +Rhapsody of Realities for Early Readers out of a burning desire to make imbibing God's Word easy and simultaneously filled with fun. Each edition of Rhapsody of Realities For Early Readerscomes with a letter from the authors - Pastors Chris and Anita - addressed directly to the early readers. In the letter, they tell the children all the beautiful and wonderful things to expect.
Pastors Chris and Anita organize the ideas of Rhapsody of Realities For Early Readers into a very captivating Table of Contents where the kids, children and teens see the mind blowing items in line for them. As they read an entire edition, not only do they come face to face with the word of God which they need for a successful childhood, they are also to discover some Bible Facts which they have not come across; and if they had come across them before, a new dimension of understanding is unlocked in them.
Every day the children learn God's word and also say a prayer and confession which ensures that they do not forget their identity, location and rights in +Christ.
All concepts are well defined. The language is clear and convincing, inspiring to set children in the part of victory, success in life.
They also participate in a variety of games such as Bible Search, Word Search, Puzzle, Crossword Puzzle and much more. The benefits of these games cannot be overemphasized. Not only will they not miss their +Avatar, +Ben 10, +Spiderman and +Batmancomic characters; the games will make them smarter and more capable. The games would play a huge role in developing their motor skills as it would encourage their manual dexterity, enhance balance and aid them in coordinating their bodies with their brains. The children's focus will be improved and their attention span lengthened.
The authors' style of communication is suitable for the children. An imagery is built with each sentence and this would go a long way in improving upon the children's creative ability which is their imagination.
Another beautiful feature is that Rhapsody of Realities For Early Readers is friend with technology. The book can be read in whatsoever format from – Kiddies LoveWorld Store, Google Play Store, Smashwords, the Amazon kindle, and Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, among others. Whatever eBook store the ebook is gotten from, one thing is sure and that is a 'wow' digital experience for the early readers.
And just as the best things are kept for the end, the Prayer of Salvation is at the end of each edition to enable children give their lives to Christ.
Kindly get Rhapsody of Realities for Early Readers by visiting these online stores via these different Links.  Google Book Store or Apple Store or +Smashwords or +Amazon.

Visit Kiddies LoveWorld website by clicking here.

PATHS TO GOD by S. A. David

Category: ode

They search for the supreme
Many paths lay before them

Pantheism declared God in all a thing
Agnosticism suspended verdict on God’s being
Yi king says gohdt is in her transformation
Atheism found out God’s hiding
Vampirism says God is in her
Taoism supports Yi king
Confucianism married Taoism
Shinto kissed Confucianism

Deism rejects theism and endorses deism
Druze found a tender in submission and wisdom
Eckankar is light and sound
He is neither male nor female
Gnosticism hid her in secret knowledge
Scientology kept the lion in her domain

They continue in their quest
The paths are seductive

Judaism kept the mighty one in an ark
Christ sings undeserved love for all
Islam prays the total submission
Buddhism walks on the eight-fold path
Jainism believes in the pure thought
Bahai faith says God is in one nations free from war
Zoroastrianism claims she is the first monotheism
Creativity movement in the issue of old

Wicca’s scripture is the wind and rain
Hinduism kept the omnibenevolent in the mandira
Hare Krishna isn’t divorced from Hinduism
Caodism exclaims formless and nameless
Yazdanism is the custodian of the pearl
Druidism is the child of Taoism
Vodun is magic
Bless your friends and harm your hates

Sikhism joined the ladies;
God is in the brotherhood of humanity
Satanism jumped on him;
Love those who love you
Witnesses climbed the cliff;
She excerpted the synagogue and cathedral

The quest continues
The paths are multiple
Which is the true path to God?
The true path lies beyond our blind sight
The narrow path of truth
The invisible path of the spirit
The accurate path of reasoning.

SHE by S. A. David

Category: haiku

I love her so much
Without her I do nothing
She’s simple, complex

She’s an enigma
She inhabits all a terre
Solomon can’t know

We glean just her might
She moulds sapien into shape
She’s a life-giver

She drinks seventy
She’s a must for rich and poor
Friend to men, women

Dwells with devils, saints
She was dear to a Christ man
She loves Mohammed

She sustained Buddha
Yes she’s not for Forbes alone
She purges us all

Kisses our fashion
She’s ruthless some a time, yes
Feels for ignorants

She loves an egghead
She’s a no colour goddess
Without her is doom

She’s irrational
She oversteps her bounds yet
She she she she she

Sustainer of life
She’s gossiped, yes everywhere
And yet not puffy

A graceful diva
For plant, animal and man
She’s Lady Aqua

DO YOU? by S. A. David

Category: lyric

You say you exist
With a big fist
Your start you can’t explain
Yet, you stare from your plain

To you we pray
Jumping like the dray
To find your better stay
In the end we slay

For you we’ve killed
For your mother we’ve distilled
We then wait for our prize
Yet, you’re still to rise

Every a day we kill your adversary
Praying all of a lengthy long rosary
This adversary still wins
Taking to his side all kins

You’ve deceived us
We all, in a fuss
Yet showing your face
Staring us in the face

For you, we’ve died
For you, we’ve lied
Yet no hope
For you hold the rope

Bring down the book
Remove the nook
Give us the leader
Remove the character

Quench the sulfur
Be kind to the fur
Break your silence
Quench the pestilence

Love us all
Even when we fall
Take us to the holy state of nature
Exercise control over all of nature

You say you exist
In all of the mist
I ask you
Do you?