In Ikhide’s world, oporoko is not italicized. Neither is dibia and panla. Readers genuinely interested in Nigerian literature will do the research. “Sandwich” however gets a gloss, sourced directly from Wikipedia. If you didn’t know what that word meant before now, here is a golden chance. There’s a fascinating prospect to this revolt, and the writer points us again in that direction. It was just a few days ago when my twitter timeline lit up with many highly motivated commentary by young angry Nigerians to whom the new intention to teach (with) indigenous languages in Nigeria by Yoruba lawmakers represented a move back into the stone age. All of a sudden, an earlier blind delusion of this writer that the upcoming generation from the country are well rounded enough to stay away from attitudes that perpetuate regression went out of the window with a depressing whimper. To quote one of the most alarming responses, “We live in a global world. Yoruba is useless outside Nigeria.”  In another tweet, indigenous language learning was equated with illiteracy.

My grandfather would not agree with any of those, by the way. He reads, writes and speaks perfect Yoruba and lived a very successful life by any standard. He’s not an illiterate. But to even take it more broadly, neither are the very many people whom we have all come across whose cultural literacy trumps anything that just English language learning provides. Don’t get me wrong, English has come to stay, but all arguments for the denigration of multilingualism fails a basic test of reason. Luckily, I woke up two days ago and found a more elaborate defense of my position from no other person than a columnist in the UK Guardian. A more refreshing news news is that Twitter will now someday be available in Yoruba, among very many other world languages. It is also great to know in the end that the fate of our indigenous languages will not be determined by one ignorant person with a twitter handle. What is emere in English? I don’t know, but literature does. Read Toyin Falola’s A Mouth Sweeter than Salt. I can’t tell you what a leprechaun is in Yoruba either. And yet, in the interaction of language and thought across geographical distances, we continue to evolve into more refined agencies of truth.

Reading Vivekanand Jha’s three poems was a travel exercise in thought, because we only know in which language he writes. The language in which he thinks is his own secret, although we can conjecture from his name. Beyond that are gems of some beauty lingering behind the words. Award-winning writer Igoni Barrett delights us equally with a short story of a certain loss. In the writer’s brilliant narrative of a complex and dysfunctional family, we find a common humanity. Dimié, the hero of the story, could as well be any young man growing up in some part of a developing country. It is Igoni’s characteristic style that weaves the reader into needed empathy. Earlier in the week, Emmanuel Iduma’s revision of his thoughts on the wasted opportunity of Occupy Nigeria came through his essay in The Ordinariness of a Matter.

And so here we are at the end. Nothing else needs to be said. Please enjoy the offerings.

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Please send your poems, ideas, short stories, short memoirs, non-fiction pieces, essays, reviews, art, and short plays to us. If you have questions about form and word limits, send inquiries to the same address. That is litmag@nigerianstalk.org. Follow us on twitter @NTLitmag.

So there I was, all alone in an evening reverie when the email came in from the publishers. Would I like to become the Literary Editor of Nigerianstalk? It all sounded strange and grandiose. “What is a Literary Editor, and what does he do?” I inquired back. In a second, it was explained: “He gets a fancy office and a fancy car, rides about town and looks cool to awon omo ele. When he is not doing so, he tries to think up interesting literature-related stuff and get people to write about them. It could be book reviews or something like that.”  Aaaah, that was it. And somewhere in the shape of the empty bottle of… water in front of me, and the smell of rain out of the window, the idea coalesced with one I had nursed for years: an avenue to interact with new literature (Nigerian-related or not) from all around the world. So here I am.

I want to welcome you to the NT LitMag, a fresh point of literary outlook on today’s world. As editor, it will be my pleasure to serve as a conduit of fresh new voices of letters, art, and poetry that will grace these pages as from February. The work will be yours. We shall showcase poetry, reviews, photography, fiction, non-fiction, essays, and drama from all around the world. Submissions are therefore welcome (in droves).

The rules are simple: it must have been written. That’s it. If you have ever written anything (no matter how far back into your old school books you have kept them hidden), we want to read them. Yes, they must convey an aesthetic perspective. And yes, you may let us be the judge of that. I will also now have to drive my fancy car all over the internet to bring to you new and old voices from wherever they are. Shock, delight, surprise, journeys of many pleasant sights. The only overreaching aim of this literary section is to capture the beauty in the words of this living generation (interpret “generation” loosely).

And there it is, my return to the “word.” That may not be all that matters, but it will always be a good place to start. Watch this space.

Please send your poems, ideas, short stories, short memoirs, non-fiction pieces, essays, reviews, art, and short plays to us. If you have questions about form and word limits, send inquiries to the same address. That is litmag@nigerianstalk.org. Follow us on twitter @NTLitmag.

A crush once told me that her mother warned her to beware of Nigerian men, before politely qualifying it with more information about how the warning wasn’t different from the warning the woman also gave regarding other men from her own country. Don’t worry, she’s not American, but that hardly changes a fact: there is a perception out there that makes for good comedy, or malice, that whenever there is an international scam involving emails, there is a Nigerian somewhere close to it. This, to be fair, is rooted in some fact. Between 1985 and 1999, Nigeria was ruled by some of the most corrupt, most morally bankrupt, must brutal military dictators who rendered extinct a thriving middle class. Along with their looting of the country’s coffers, they also rendered to waste the hitherto reputable social conscience, and ethics. A nation that thrived on hard work and equal opportunity turned to one of vanity and hopelessness, and a futile chase of wealth by all means at the expense of dignity replaced the ethics that once made the country the hope of the continent.

By the late 90s, majority of young (and at the beginning, mostly educated) citizens embraced the new opportunities that the internet brought, and to put it to the use best suited for the loneliness and hopelessness that the situation provided on the ground in the country: for crime. Thinking about it now, I doubt that crime was the real intention of the first people to take advantage of the powers of internet communication. I imagine someone mistakenly discovering that from his apartment building in Lagos, he can have a real romantic relationship with someone as far away in the world as Chicago, or Adelaide, or Brisbane. And then, another one discovered an idea that e-relationship could become a profitable venture. I do not claim to know how this began. I can only guess. I was nineteen years old in 2000 when I entered the University of Ibadan as an undergraduate and I had used email for the first time only one year earlier.

So naive was I of this scamming phenomenon that had, by then, become quite lucrative (that every internet cafe had at least one person using the computers there to send scam mails to unsuspecting people around the world) that when I first came into contact with a sender, I thought that my life was at risk. I worked for a few months between January and September of that year in an internet cafe where emails were still first written on paper, then typed onto the computer, and then sent massively. It was like fax, or telegrams. Only a few people had personal email addresses, and those who did still had to have their emails typed out on the computer in the cafe before they logged on to the internet to send them. My job was to get those typing done, and help customers trying to reach their loved ones. One of the customers we had however was a hairy man of around 33, well built, tall and spoke Hausa, English, and pidgin English. All the emails he had me type always began with “I am the nephew of the late General Sani Abacha, the recently demised Nigerian Head of State”. It went on to say how many millions the late General had stashed somewhere and pleaded to the reader of the email to contact him so that they could transfer the money together to some other account, and share it.

For those familiar with Advance Fee Fraud, this is usually the catch. There is a bogus amount of money somewhere, usually very large and tantalizing. All the reader had to do is to show interest in being an accomplice so that the sender can share some of the loot with them. It usually never works out like that in the end, of course. The unsuspecting responder would be asked to send his/her account number, and then some advance fee to “process” the withdrawal of the loot, and then the criminals go for the kill. By the time the responder discovers that there was no loot in the first place, he/she has already committed a large amount of his/her personal funds and will not be getting it back. There are other variants, of course. A man pretends to be in love with a woman he meets in a chat room. He makes her fall in love with him and then he feigns poverty and the woman starts sending money and gifts to him until he decides that he’s had enough. Sometimes he gets her to loan him a large sum of money, and then disappears. The woman then shows up in Nigeria and makes the front page of a newspaper. She’s looking for so-and-so person who she fell in love with. In many cases, the man had used a fake name as well…

Back to the story. At the moment of typing the said emails, the only thing in my mind was that I had finally met my nemesis. Relatives and family members of Sani Abacha were known to be brutal. People had disappeared and many had been shot for opposing his reign as a military dictator. So here I was talking with his nephew and helping him send emails that detail a series of large financial transactions with foreign correspondents. I was knowing too much and my life was about to change for the worse. I would not know until very much later that my fears were unjustified, and that there was no need for me to have immediately started avoiding the man for fear that he would soon want me dead for knowing his secrets. He was most likely not related to anyone relating to Abacha. All he was doing was trying to swindle whoever was stupid (and greedy) enough to respond to the email.

Of course, in the intervening years, I have also realized the very fine line between romantic scams and real love that transcends distance. I met and dated for a few years someone that I met online who has remained my friend and colleague ever since. I have also discovered the very many scams that dot the internet landscape, including ones that trick you into signing up for “free trial” products only to charge you a month later, or ones that tell you that you’re their “50,000th visitor” and try to get you to sign up for offers that you don’t need and that might either cost you, or clog your email bandwidth. There are thousands. Telemarketers call you with polite requests that you provide your address and then sign you up for magazines you didn’t want who send you the check in the mail a few weeks later. Credit card companies put hidden fees in fine prints and surprise customers across the country every day (with a sustained backing by the conservative political right who insist that banking regulations that look out for consumers are “job killing”.). In short, access to the internet and its many possibilities brought about as many negatives as positives.

Today, as it has been even before the internet came, fraud, by very many political names, have taken over the world – from a criminally-minded Nigerian (and non-Nigerian) youths aiming to swindle greedy western businessmen, or thieving marketing gimmicks aimed at the unsuspecting internet user. The “Nigerian Prince” variety however takes the cake, of course, because everyone at one point or the other has received such a mail claiming to be the relative of a recently dead corrupt politician, be it Saddam Hussein or a recently removed one, like Hosni Mubarak. Not all of those emails are Nigerian nowadays, of course. I know for a fact that regulatory efforts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has made it hard to commit internet fraud in the country and go free. The “product” has been exported to other parts of Africa and the world. That doesn’t mean that the jokes will go away, but that Nigerians will – and should – begin to laugh with it as it goes on. According to Jon Stewart, they now also have Sarah Palin on their side.

First published on KTravula.com

There is enough to debate about the presence of Nigerian citizens residing legally or illegally in a war-torn country (and the Nigerian government has a duty to protect them as well, to the best of its ability), but a so-called revolution aimed at liberating a country from tyranny should not turn itself into one – at least not so soon – at the expense of foreigners. The fact that they are targeted for their skin colours – as the report states – makes it even more alarming, and worrisome.

In post-Apatheid South Africa a few years ago, a similar thing happened where foreigners (also mostly Nigerians) became a target of xenophobic behaviour by citizens looking for scapegoats in a poor economy. It didn’t matter that just years before then, most of those other African countries had provided asylum for the freedom fighters running away from the oppressive Apatheid government. A similarly disgusting thing happened right after the Egyptian revolution succeeded, when Gael Ghonim – the acclaimed IT mastermind of the whole movement tweeted this. (At least he didn’t have a gun to someone’s head.)

A pattern has emerged here that should be roundly condemned.

The book, called The Help written by Kathryn Stockett is the basis for a new movie now playing featuring Cecily Tyson, Emma Stone, Mike Vogel, Bryce Dallas Howard, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Allison Janney. The book has been published now in 35 countries, stayed on the NY Times bestseller list for 100 weeks and has sold 5 million copies. That would be more impressive if read alongside the fact that it was rejected by at least 60 literary agents before Susan Ramer agreed to represent Stockett. I saw the movie today, and I can say that it was an experience. I suspect that a series of prestigious awards await the director and the actors for a brilliant performance.

Most contemporary commentaries on the situation in the Jim Crow old South usually omit the complexity of the human relationships that defined those times. What the movie provides if not altogether new is a look at the extremely complex and nuanced relationships between southern belles and their housemaids. Every household in Mississippi in those days had at least one maid that helped raise the little white children of the house for very meagre payment. Many of them lived however under a more hostile work condition that was as complex as it was illuminating of the mutual dependence that defined the relationships. The movie did a brilliant job of illustrating the complexities with as much humour and passion as it deserved.

It is an important new addition to the dialogue among generations of people brought up under segregation and racial tensions of the sixties. It showed also that the South was not just one homogeneous society of racist people but a collection of real humans with varying levels of courage, passion, wickedness, indifference, and hope. One question I asked as I left the fully packed theatre to a sight of an even longer line of people waiting to come in for the next showing is whether the message of the movie is received the same way across board. As much as it moves us to emotions and to laughter with the scenes and dialogues, it might be good to ask if the message blacks and whites take away from the theatre are the same. I wouldn’t know. There were only a handful of black people in the cinema.

As regards race relations, the movie doesn’t say anything new. It only offers new perspectives, but that is already controversial. Some people have already advocated boycotting the movie on the basis of its being written by a white person and portraying old black female stereotypes. Last weekend at another house party, I asked one of the women who had initially sparked my interest in the story whether she was going to go see it now that it is in the movies. “No,” she said, “but I’d be thinking about it.” She didn’t read the book either. She said she had grown up in Mississippi in the 60s and would not need a book to tell her how bad it was. What is not in doubt is that this is an important addition to the racial dialogue in the country.

The author, the director, and the actors deserve commendation for their brilliant work.

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More reviews of the work below.

Talking with Kathryn Stockett. (Daily Mail)

Book Review at the USA Today.

Help with History (Miami Herald)

“The Help” Surprises. (Sun Times)

“The Help” spans two worlds (NY times)

NYSC Members

Tragedy is a depressant, often leading people overcome by emotions to the wrong  and often very hasty resolutions. Like all observers of the aftermath of last week’s presidential elections in Nigeria, I was saddened by the loss of innocent lives in the north as a result of a mad frenzy of sadistic unemployed youths convinced that their candidate won. In the process, many lives were lost, including a current serving member of the NYSC Ukeoma Aikfavour whose last status update on April 17 reads as follows:

Na wao! This CPC suporters would hv killed me yesterday, no see threat oooo. Even after forcing underaged voters on me they wanted me to give them the remaining ballot paper to thiumb print. Thank God for the police and am happy i could stand for God and my nation. To all corps members who stood despite these threats esp. In the north bravo! Nigeria! Our change has come.

The exact details of his death is not yet known, and it doesn’t make it less sad, or less a grave indictment on the supporters and leaders of CPC who wanted to win the election by do-or-die. Ukeoma paid the ultimate sacrifice which by now we have resolved to make sure was never in vain. (I’m aware of Facebook pages now calling for a rally in his honour on May 29, as well as calls for the government of Goodluck Jonathan to reward his family, and immortalize his name – all very good, very important steps to offer support and solidarity to those ordinary people who do extraordinary things everyday on behalf of all of us.)

Then there are also the cynics whose only lesson from this unfortunate event is that the NYSC has outlived its usefulness and should be scrapped, or that corp members should be deployed only to their home states. Here is one of such recent examples. Nothing could be more unfortunate than a thought process that finds this as the best alternative to a system that has allowed us to understand each other more than any other in the country. In civilized countries, the lessons from tragedy is not usually an about turn with tails between one’s legs, but a courageous pushing on with a resolve to tackle the problems that makes the tragedy happen in the first place. Nobody can quantify the loss of a human life. But attacking the structure that has – for over thirty years – moved people around the country in order to learn and to contribute at the grassroot level is a bad idea. It is like trying to cure a boil with an invasive laser surgery.

The National Youth Service Corps needs a lot of changes, one of which is the amount of stipend that each corp member gets every month. Another one is that they should be well protected and should never be left to their devices in situations when their security is at risk. Like soldiers defending the country from attack, each corp member is a representative of all of us, and we owe it to them to make sure that they return home safely. But to suggest that they should not be given the chance to experience that diversity that their country is made of is, again, a bad idea that we should never encourage. If they need to live in police or soldier barracks to make them safer, we should encourage that. Not that they should go and serve in their home towns. All that would bring is a future Nigeria where all everyone knows about the country is all they see within miles of their own home. And what good is that for nation-building or for a safer future based on understanding?

The new president, Goodluck Jonathan has such tasks on his hands, to unite the country again, and make such situations unlikely where the call for dividing the country will be a better alternative to working to find safer and more challenging ways to forge a future based on respect and understanding. Meanwhile, people like Aikfavour Ukeoma make me proud to have been an NYSC corper. May his sacrifice remind us of the high price of integrity, the frailness of our current national experiment, the futility of violence, and encourage us to work for a better, more secure future for ourselves.

Link: Top 100 women around the world

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We the undersigned condemn in the strongest possible terms the murder of Mr David Kato the Ugandan gay rights campaigner. We wish to state emphatically that homosexuality is neither a sin nor a social or cultural construct. It is a biological given. Homosexuals are human beings like everybody else.  Scientific research has been helpful in clearing the fog of ignorance entrenched by some religious texts in regards to homosexuality. Our opinions of homosexuality must change for the better just as our opinion of slavery has changed even though it was endorsed by those same religious texts. All violence against gays and people deemed to be gay in Africa must cease forthwith.

We call on the government of Uganda to find and prosecute all those involved in the murder of Mr Kato, including the newspaper that called for the hanging of gays. We also call on African governments to learn from the South African example by expunging from their laws all provisions that criminalize homosexuality or treat homosexuals as unworthy of the same rights and entitlements as other citizens.  African states must protect the rights of their citizens to freedom and dignity. Homosexuals must not be denied these rights.

Undersigned

1. Wale Adebanwi, PhD, University of California, US

2. Diran Adebayo, Writer,  UK

3. Kayode Adeduntan, PhD, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

4. Biola Adegboyega, University of Calgary, Canada

5. Shola Adenekan, Editor, The New Black Magazine, UK

6. Pius Adesanmi, PhD, Carleton University, Canada

7. Akin Adesokan, PhD, Indiana University, US

8. Joe Agbro, Journalist, Nigeria

9. Anthony Akinola, PhD, Oxford, UK

10. Anengiyefa Alagoa, Writer, UK

11. Ellah Allfrey, Deputy Editor, Granta Magazine, UK

12. Alnoor Amlani, Writer, Kenya

13. Ike Anya, Public health doctor and writer, UK

14. Bode Asiyanbi, Writer, Lancaster University, UK

15. Sefi Atta, Writer, US

16. Lizzy Attree, PhD, University of East London, UK

17. Damola Awoyokun, Writer, UK

18. Doreen Baingana, Writer, Uganda

19. Igoni Barrett, Writer, Nigeria

20. Tom Burke, Bard College, US

21. Jude Dibia, Writer, Nigeria

22. Chris Dunton, PhD, National University of Lesotho, Lesotho

23. Ropo Ewenla, PhD, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria

24. Chielozona Eze, PhD, Northeastern Illinois University, US

25. Aminatta Forna, Writer, UK

26. Ivor Hartmann, Writer, South Africa

27. Chris Ihidero, Writer, Lagos State University, Nigeria

28. Ikhide R. Ikheloa, Writer, US

29. Sean Jacobs, PhD, New School, US

30. Biodun Jeyifo, PhD, Harvard University, US

31. Brian Jones, Professor Emeritus, Zimbabwe

32. Martin Kiman, Writer, US

33. Lauri Kubuitsile, Writer, Botswana

34. Zakes Mda, PhD, Ohio University, US

35. Colin Meier, Writer, South Africa

36. Gayatri Menon, PhD, Franklin and Marshall College, US

37. Valentina A. Mmaka,  Writer, Italy/South Africa

38. Jane Morris, Publisher, Zimbabwe

39. Mbonisi P. Ncube, Writer, South Africa

40. Iheoma Nwachukwu, Writer, Nigeria

41. Onyeka Nwelue, Writer and filmmaker, India/Nigeria

42. Nnedi Okorafor, PhD, Writer, Chicago State University, US

43. Ebenezer Obadare, PhD, University of Kansas, US

44. Juliane Okot Bitek, Writer, Canada

45. Tejumola Olaniyan, PhD, University of Wisconsin, US

46. Ngozichi Omekara, Trinidad and Tobago

47. Akin Omotosho, Actor and filmmaker, South Africa

48. Kole Omotosho, PhD, Africa Diaspora Research Group, South Africa

49. Samuel Sabo, Writer, UK

50. Ramzi Salti, PhD, Stanford University, US

51. Brett L. Shadle, PhD, Virginia Tech, US

52. Lola Shoneyin, Writer, Nigeria

53. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate for Literature

54. Olufemi Taiwo, PhD, Seattle University, US

55. Kola Tubosun, Writer, Fulbright Scholar, United States

56. Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Writer, Nigeria

57. Abdourahman A.Waberi, Writer, US /Djibouti

58. Binyavanga Wainaina, Writer, Kenya

59. Ronald Elly Wanda, Writer& Lecturer, Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute, Uganda

60. Kristy Warren, PhD, University of Warwick, UK

When Awolowo died in 1987, I was only six years old. Not technically though, since the man died around July – I think. My sixth birthday was to be in September. The most memorable thing I remembered from that day was lazing around my father’s living room and watching on television the lying-in-state of the man that came to define Nigeria’s postcolonial political history. The corpse laid in a glass casket. He had his wig on, and a pair of glasses. I also remember someone asking how they intended to inter someone with his spectacles on. I was too young to make sense of it all – the man’s political dominance and influence – but I heard his name a lot. It would take me years of research (reading his memoirs which my father gave me, among many other publications) to know all I needed to know. Father also made a record album in honour of Awolowo a few months later.

Now in 1993, I was much older. I was twelve and in secondary school. Much of my political consciousness came from rhetorics of elder brothers and their friends, and the media. MKO Abiola, the most popular candidate, had promised to abolish poverty – sort of like promising to make it snow in Nigeria. When his election was annulled by the military dictator, and riots broke out, school was closed, and students spilled to the streets in protest. University students led protests and came to get us out of our schools. We all spilled in the street and fought with police and military men. It was exhilarating for me. I didn’t have much political consciousness to have been able to take sides, but the crises charged me up. We were tear gassed, and shot at. We walked great with friends and fellow rebels from school back home to the embrace of worried parents. It was the best of times for a curious almost teenager. It was also the worst of times for the country. A year later, there was a change of government, from one military dictatorship to another, and darkness descended on the country.

In 1998, I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Sani Abacha was dead, and I didn’t believe it. He had after all survived many rumours of death. A day before, Pope John Paul II had just left Abuja after a state visit (and also to plead for clemency for the lives of a bunch of military men sentenced to death for plotting a coup d’etaat.) The Pope wore white. Abacha wore black. They were both was on the NTA network news and Abacha looked as sick as Tell Magazine of a few weeks earlier said he was, but he looked strong and resolute as well, and mean. But he died. A few hours later, all the suya sellers were nowhere to be found. Their stalls and sheds had been destroyed by happy citizens giddy to be finally free from military dictatorship. Exactly one month later, MKO Abiola, the presumed winner of the election had died of poisoning after meeting with Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations and some other “American” visitors. Conspiracy theories abound, but by the end of the year, it was clear that the campaign message “Hope” from 1993 had gone forever.

And 1999 came, time for the new gentle looking military man to go. He had set machineries in place for democracy to return. I was out of secondary school. I was teaching in a primary school in Ibadan earning the lowest payable wage for that position and qualification while I waited for news of my admission into the University. The candidates were Olusegun Obasanjo (a former military ruler and a UN/Africa statesman), and Olu Falae, an economist: both Yorubas chosen to appease the region after the 1993 annulment and subsequent miscarriage of justice. The South-West voted for Falae. I wasn’t eighteen yet, so I didn’t vote, but I hoped that Falae would win. He didn’t. Obasanjo won from votes from all the other parts of the country. Again in 2003, Obasanjo won again for the second term. In 2007, he handed over to Yar’adua whose deputy was Goodluck Jonathan. Yaradua died last year in Saudi Arabia after a protracted illness. Goodluck Jonathan took over and has since consolidated his hold on power. I am here in the United States as a graduate student.

Last night, as I listened to the result of the votes in the primaries of the country’s largest political party, I was reminded of the memories of my participation in the politics of Nigeria: the sweat, the riots, the rhetorics, the fiery but always independent media, and the national obsession with the figures and players. It isn’t “Hope ’93″ all over again, because now I can discern and see through songs and slogans of “MKO: Action! Abiola: Progress!! Na im be the hope for better tomorrow!!!” or Abiola=good and Tofa=bad etc. The coming election that will likely find me in an American class discussing language and society will be between candidates that we hope to get a chance to question, and examine. They will get to power again through our votes, but for the first time, I hope to get a chance to take them to task on what they will do: about Jos, about electricity, about health and higher education, and about a better environment for the people of the Niger Delta and other ethnic minorities. I have come of age, and so has my vote, and I am not giving it away for free, if I’m giving it away at all.

I’m proud of the progress taking place in Nigeria today and I hope that there would be public televised and online debates to listen to the candidates as well as town hall meetings to question them as to how they plan to solve problems. If I could go back in time, what a pleasure it would be to relive those experiences again, rebelling, challenging authorities and paying my dues of youth on the streets of a country that I dearly love.

With an array of opinions and ideologies as many as the tools of translation available to linguists, it is already difficult to prevent one work from misinterpretation. (Orwell’s Animal Farm was translated into two different ideological interpretations in East and West Germany respectively during the cold war.) However, the pleasure of being able to read works written in the native thought and tongue of the writer has aways been unquantifiable, as can be seen from the feting of writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Naguib Mafouz, Gunter Grass, Mario Le Clezio and very many others including recent Mario Vargas Llosa who have all written in their local languages. If Ngugi Wa Thiong’o had won the Nobel this year, he would have been deserving of it, not just for the depth of his creativity, but for his contribution to the development of Gikuyu by choosing to write in it. We can only hope for more of those kind, and not less.

Many of the books I read as a child were in Yoruba and I can’t say it enough how much it helped my appreciation of English and all the other languages I have learnt to use. If tomorrow I choose to write in Yoruba – which I have certainly considered, I would represent an important a voice in literature as someone who decides to do it in Igbo or Swahili without care for English as an international language as long as I stay committed to the craft and say something new (or even something old, in a new voice and style) and say it well. We’ll have literary translators to do the rest. To make the case for English as the only medium of creative process is easily one of the many flaws of her essay, and a disingenuous take on the African literary present, and future.