Positive strike for culture, education

Chief Afe Babalola, left, Dr. ‘Bayo Adebowale,
Founder, African Heritage Research Library
and Cultural Centre and Yeye Akilimali Funua
Olade, chief librarian of the centre.
Photos: Tunde Babajide

With the inauguration of a rural community services building he donated to the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre, Ibadan, eminent lawyer, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), makes a case for the preservation of Africa’s culture, education and philanthropy. Akintayo Abodunrin reports.

I appeal to all Nigerians to imbibe the laudable spirit of giving... Giving is a virtue. Ignoring the poor and acquiring all the riches that are available for your family alone is not only immoral but sinful”.

This was part of the address of eminent lawyer and philanthropist, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), at the inauguration of the Rural Community Services Building he donated to the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre (AHRLC), Adeyipo village, Ibadan, recently.

Adeyipo, a serene village in Lagelu Local Government Area of Oyo State, and a toast of many Yoruba home video makers, was sent agog by eminent Nigerians who came to witness the occasion that Thursday morning.

Governor of Oyo State, Chief Adebayo Alao Akala, led other individuals of goodwill like his deputy, Alhaji Taofeek Arapaja, the Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland, Alhaji Azeez Arisekola Alao, chairman , Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII), Chief Yusuf Akande, a former Secretary to the Ekiti State government, Chief Ade Alofe and wife, Mr. Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) and Chief Dosu Babatunde to the event.

However, it was not a show for politicians, administrators and ‘shons of the shoil alone’. The literati was also represented by the likes of Professors Akinwumi Ishola, T.A Awoniyi and Femi Osofisan. Pa Adebayo Faleti, Dr. Remi Raji and Public Relations Officer (South) of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Ebika Anthony, were also present. Cultural groups like Egbe Agbasaga, drummers and griots which Adeyipo is renowned for, also, were not left out.

Established in March, 1988 at Ila- Orangun, Osun State to serve the educational needs of students, researchers, scholars, documentalists and archivists in Africa and all over the world, AHRL, as it was then called, moved to Adeyipo village, the birth place of its founder, Dr. Bayo Adebowale, author and former Deputy Rector, The Polytechnic, Ibadan, in 1992.

Presently with about 100,000 volumes of books on all branches of knowledge and having grown to include an African Talking Drum Museum, a Music of Africa Auditorium, African Orchard and a Writers’ Enclave, the centre also serves the socio-cultural needs of the local community people whom Chief Babalola specifically built the building for.

Expected to serve the educational and social cultural needs of the rural community; function as the centre for the adult literacy programmes of the AHRLC; raise the awareness of the community people and prepare them for positive roles in the development and improvement of their immediate environment; and to link AHRLC up with the international community and seek for it, cooperating partners from all over the wolrd in the fields of education and culture, the building’s facilities include a multi-purpose mini hall, library for all categories of students, a children’s library, audio-visual room and staff offices.

Founder/ Director of AHLRC, Dr. Bayo Adebowale, in an address at the event, said it was heartwarming that the centre had grown over time “to become a citadel of knowledge and cultural innovation taking adequate care of educational yearnings of researchers, scholars, documentalists as well as satisfying the cultural needs of the rural community populace”.

He disclosed that the centre owed its growth to the support given to it by Nigerians, Africans and companies, adding that the inauguration ceremony was an opportunity to acknowledge the donors and Babalola “who has singlehandledly raised the stature and profile of our centre with his wonderful donation”. He promised that the building will be put to effective use and that the centre will keep on improving daily in the discharge of its responsibilities to the public.

“It is the intention of our centre to keep on improving by the day on the level of our performances as we endeavour all the time to serve citizens of Oyo state, Nigeria and Africa better in the fields of education and culture,” Adebowale, who further solicited for public and government’s assistance in the provision of facilities like electricity, pipebrone water and tarring of the road to the community said.

President of the CCII, Chief Yusuf Akande, in his remarks, underscored the importance of books in knowledge acquisition, information dissemination and storage. He commended Chief Babalola for donating the building to AHRLC and advised the Adeyipo community to maintain the library. Chief Akande equally asked publishers and authors to donate more books to the library.

The donor’s citation read by Ebika Anthony and musical entertainment from the Agbasaga group preceeded the donor’s speech which stressed the importance of philanthropy and developing rural communities. Chief Babalola began with tributes to Governor Akala. He described the governor as ‘a man of the people’ and ‘a most respectful person’ who granted his request that he (Akala) attend the inauguration and grade the road to the village. Babalola equally had kind words for Alhaji Arisekola Alao and the Chief Librarain of AHRLC, Yeye Akilimali Funua Olade. Arisekola Alao, the legal titan said, “is simple, humane, respectful and generous to a fault”. Of Olade, the founder of Emmanuel Chambers said, “she is a tireless visionary and a highly enterprising lady. She is a firm believer in humanity, progress and preservation of our heritage”.

Explaning why he undertook the project in AHRLC which he disclosed he became aware of in 2002, Babalola said “it is a laudable project which I was sure would benefit everybody in love with knowledge acquisition any where in the world”. He thereafter spoke on the importance of developing the rural areas . “Nigeria will never grow or see ful development until the wealthy, the comfortable and the middle class acknowledge the relevance and importance of rural development”, he said. Like Adebowale, Babalola requested the Oyo State government to provide amenities for Adeyipo and environs.

In an address laced with humour, the Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland, Alhaji Azeez Arisekola Alao, argued for preservation of Africa’s cultures and values. He said Nigerians shouldn’t abandon their roots because of the received religions of Islam and Christianity.

In his remarks, Chief Akala commended Dr. Adebowale for his vision and comittment to the development of Africa’s culture and values. He said Babalola had demonstrated by his action that Africa’s culture should be held in high esteem and not to be relegated to the background because of western influences. The govenor noted that the donor had etched his name in gold in the history of Adeyipo and that of AHRLC. He then appealed to wealthy Nigerians to emulate Babalola’s gesture by embarking on community projects that will “improve the social and economic well being of people and not only in the rural areas but in the state in general”.

Akala explained that because of government’s limited resources and competing demands, “wealthy citizens should collaborate with and complement government effort by providing amenities which will improve the living standard of our people” The governor who enjoined the people to protect and use the facility well didn’t disapoint the people. “Within the next two weeks, we are going to sink a borehole here, and the tarring of the road will be given very speedy consideration,” he said to applause from the crowd.

Love must not be forgotten

From left, Chike Ofili, Chairman, Association of
Nigerian Authors (ANA), Lagos State chapter,
Dr. Gbenga Coker, Mrs. Mobolaji Adenubi,
Towunmi Coker, winner of the ANA/NECO
Teenage Author Prize and Hyacinth Obunseh,
at the presentation ceremony of Coker’s prize
held in Lagos recently.

A review of Razinat Mohammed’s A Love Like A Woman’s by Wale Okediran.

When the great master story teller, Sidney Sheldon, was asked why many of his books had female protagonists, his reply was that women make better characters than men.

As he put it, “make a woman the main character in a book and the story comes to life.

While one may predict what a man may do in a story, the same cannot be said of a woman. Within the twinkling of an eye, a woman can change her mind, and as such change the course of a story. With women protagonists there is no dull moment”.

It was as if Razinat Mohammed had Sidney Sheldon in mind when she set out to write her short stories collection, A Love Like a Woman’s and other Stories. Out of the 11 stories in the collection, women were the chief protagonists in nine of the stories.

Thus we have Afi in Something to Live For, Kulu in Sterile Water and Dife in A Love Live A Woman’s. Laila in Laila, Mary Rose in The U-Turn, Erika in Erika, Nina in Beasts on Rampage, Hajo in Acquaintances, and Furera in Official Touts.

Out of these nine stories, the women protagonists suffered at the hands of their male partners in seven of the stories. While Kulu in Sterile Water and Dife in A Love Like a Woman’s died at the hands of their husbands Laila (Laila) Mary Rose (The U-Turn) Fuurera (Official Touts) Erika (Erika) had no choice but to swallow all the indignities thrown at them by their unappreciative husbands or partners.

The author in the above named stories succeeded in portraying her male protagonists as inhuman, cruel and in the case of Abbas (A Love like a Woman’s) psychotic and murderous. None of the men in these stories perhaps for the exception of Bassey Johnson (Erika) and Mamudo (Official Touts) showed a tinge of human feeling for their spouses.

In Sterile Water, Samaila in spite of his joblessness and his wife’s zeal in catering for their children single handedly, refused to accede to Kulu’s request for family planning. Even worse was the unethical behaviour of Vendi, the patent medicine dealer who connived with Samaila to trick Kulu by injecting her with sterile water instead of the injectable contraceptive he had promised her. The result was that Kulu who thought she was safe got pregnant and later died from the trauma of the unwanted baby.

In A Love Like a Woman’s, 19- year- old Dife’s marriage to Abbas, a spoilt and self indulgent drug addict ended tragically. While it may be true that Abbas’s family did their best to protect Dife from the psychotic Abbas, their inability to seek medical treatment for their son is highly instrumental to Dife’s death.

While Laila, Mary Rose, Furera and Erika in the other stories earlier mentioned did not lose their lives like Kulu and Dife, the humiliation and trauma they suffered in the hands of their male partners is almost as bad as death.

What came out very strongly in all these stories is the unflattering portrayal of man as a dangerous and egocentric human being whom the women folk should avoid like plague.

Whether this is a correct assessment of the men folk by the author is left for readers to fathom. The only consolation is that the author portrayed most of her male protagonists as very handsome.

In two of the remaining four stories, Beasts on Rampage and Acquintances, although the protagonists were female and were also badly treated, they did not suffer their own indignation from the men folk but from their female colleagues.

In spite of the seemingly bad reception these ladies received from the hands of their lovers, the truth still remains that the man/woman relationship, as old as creation, will continue to dominate our consciousness for long. As Zhang Jie, the famous Chinese female writer once observed “When you are young, you don’t always know what you are looking for, what you need, and people may talk you into getting married. As you grow older and more experienced, you find out your true needs. By then, though, you’ve done many foolish things for which you could kick yourself. You’d give anything to be able to make a fresh start and live more wisely”

Also, Sylvia Path, the well known American poet once observed that “There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears. It is an endless game, the search for a perfect partner, that is, the man who will be intelligent, yet physically magnetic and personable. If I can offer that combination, why shouldn’t I expect it in a man?”

The sum total of Path’s and Jie’s observations is that whatever may be the negative effects of falling in love, the love game will forever continue. And that however traumatic the man/female relationship may be, love must not be forgotten!.

Interestingly, Mohammed’s strength seems to lie in her ability to weave stories round her female protagonists because these stories were easily the best in the collection. It also appears that the only stories where the protagonists were male – Mysterious Disease and One Good Turn were the weakest in the collection.

In this collection, she has shown that she has a very powerful interest in human problems, particularly those of women and their relationships. Her courage and insight to touch sensitive problems in today’s male dominated Nigeria should be commended.

While she may appear outspoken and controversial, she still writes with sympathy and zeal, a style which is certain to appeal to her readers. This observation could then mean that Mohammed is certainly a writer/activist for the female gender. This development if correct will certainly group her in the mould of some other female writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Zaynab Alkali, Lola Shoneyin to mention a few.

It is gratifying that apart from being the “voice of the voiceless”, Zainat Mohammed has through this collection of short stories assisted in resuscitating a dying art. It is my hope that with this very bold and lucid publication, more short story collections will soon be produced. This way, a very important literary gap would be filled.