Angelique Kidjo performed on 28th September (see article from Friday, above) at London's Barbican Centre as part of the Passage of Music season - and following the release of her latest CD, Djin Djin. I wasn't at the Barbican but I did see Kidjo in concert at the South Bank centre in London (after her last CD, Oyaya!) in early 2005 and reproduced below is my piece on the show, published 2 years ago in the Lagos Guardian.
I am currently reading Biyi Bandele's novel, 'Burma Boy'. I asked my son to fetch me the book from the room some days ago and the child corrected my pronounciation. "BURMA - it's got an 'R' in it!" Insult upon injury, I thought as I rolled my eyes at him...
Lagos public transportation: that’s a sight rare as hen’s teeth. The Nigerian literacy rate is low, estimated at fifty-seven percent. But, worse, actual literary habits are inculcated in very few of the so-called literate. I meet only a small number of readers, and those few read tabloids, romance novels by Mills and Boon, or tracts that promise “victorious living” according to certain spiritual principles. It is a hostile environment for the life of the mind. Once we pass the fly-over at Ojota, the rush-hour congestion eases. The speed we are gathering on the road means the journey is surprisingly cool. The breeze through the open window is constant. The man next to me folds away his newspaper and begins to nod. Everyone else stares into space. The reader, of whom I can see only scarf and shoulders, reads."
I sometimes buy Nigerian ‘Soft Sell’ magazines. Soft porn in words if not necessarily in images, is what they are. If you want to know the low-down-dirty about Nigerian ‘high’ society and the desperately aspirational, it’s on the pages of these magazines you'll find it. They specialise in lurid headlines backed by salaciously vague details. There is room for everything – from sexual deviations to financial misappropriations to the fashionably clueless celebrated as trend-setters to the macabre. Some seriously criminal things are presented as tittle-tattle and the responsible reader is left wondering, 'Shouldn't the police be interested in this?' - see the headline about an Army Captain who allegedly bathed his children in acid ('Hey, I am the law!' the Army Captain would no doubt retort). 
their faiths.
Take this half page devoted to someone I would call an ‘aspirant celeb’, a lady by the name of Naomi David Gowing who is also known as ‘Lady Blue’. It is rumoured that some social climbers actually pay to have similar profiles written up about them, which explains why you'll suddenly see a whole page on which the 'biggest' lace seller in some market talks about her life and 'success'. Back to Gowing who is said to be a “fashionista and leading fashion merchant” (how it must infuriate true fashionistas to be lumped in the same category as Lady Blue). She relocated from Ghana because, according to her, “Nigerians are more fashion conscious than Ghanaians”. She has a boutique (every self-respecting 'Big Girl' has a boutique, though often the money to fuel expensive lifestyles comes from other, less visible means). Gowing once represented Ghana in an international modelling competition and trained with the ‘Super Modelling School’ in Accra. Or so she claims. There are whispers apparently that ‘Lady Blue’ is a lesbian. The lady replies, “So what?! I can’t answer that. I am not a Lesbian. People are just going about saying what they don’t know. I am married, I am happy, I have a child, so where does Lesbianism come in here? It is mischievous of people to call me names just because they see me hang out with my good friends... Now write this in capital letters, I am not a Lesbian!”
c when it comes to the Soft Sells. One did a piece on the musician’s ‘new release’ – a baby. Or several, if City People is to be believed. Femi Kuti had 2 kids by 2 different women in recent months. Not surprisingly, Fela’s son doesn’t want to talk about it. “I don’t talk to anybody anymore. I just do my thing and get on with my life... I just do my own thing and God blesses me.” And God blessed Femi with a third baby by a third woman. This latest mother comes with some pedigree. She is Bola Ajala, daughter of Adebisi Ajala, the man immortalised in song by Commander Ebenezer Obey. Remember how it goes?
To more sober, or sobering, news. There is a piece on the political scandal swirling around the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Etteh, a woman who gives a new meaning to the Yoruba term “etekete”. Though she’s only been in the post a short while, Etteh is alleged to have squandered 5 million dollars of public money to redecorate official houses that were virtually new, acquire a fleet of official cars and lay on an extravagant birthday party for herself and friends in the US. The shit’s hit the fan and she’s been heckled “Ole! Ole!” (thief! thief!) on the floor of the house. 'Honourable' male members in majestic agbadas have fought like motor-park thugs in the house over her. What a woman. Madam Speaker is now said to suffer sleepless nights. What kind of low-rent scoundrel celebs are these? Sleepless nights? Someone please tell Mrs Etteh that self respecting troubled celebrities check into rehab rather than suffer “sleepless nights”.
Monarchs aren’t exempt from the Soft Sell treatment, as the fetchingly youthful Dein of Agbor has found. Years on the throne of his fathers, and he remains unmarried, somewhat controversially, according to City People. Apparently His Royal Highness must marry a virgin, and they aren’t easy to come by these days. What interested me about this piece is how, in the UK, such an article would function as a way of introducing certain strains of speculation into the persona’s continued unmarried status...
walked around Lagos dressed like this! The image is reproduced here. Take a look at her orange-nippled breasts straining against that cheap white netting and hurl.
Update - Stills from Prince's performance, shown live on television earlier tonight. Prince, his band and 'robotic' twin-sisters dancers performed Chaka Khan's 'I Feel For You' and the Purple one's 'Controversy'.
photographers from the concerts. Tonight's free Sky New live stream promises to include songs that Prince has vowed never to perform on stage again.
Key Literary Events
Colloqium * Not yet confirmed.
"The reason we are here today is to see that theNLNG continues the prize, in particular the Literature award." 
corporate executivers. The Theme of the workshop was "The Social Environment of Business: Cultural Promotion As Corporate Social Responsibility (The Nigeria Prize Experience)". Papers were presented at the workshop, and there was a panel discussion moderated CORA's Deji Toye, a wrtier. Panelists included: Mobolaji Adenubi; Wunmi Raji, a writer and lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University; Toni Kan, writer and Bank executive; Nike Adesuyi, Poet, Literature activist; Grace Daniel, ex-chairperson Women Writers of Nigeria,WRITA; Folu Agoi, Chairman ANA Lagos; ChikeOfili, poet, Journalist and Marketing Specialist and Ropo Ewenla, member CORA and a Culture Activist.
The Name of the Prize - At the onset of the award, the name of the prize was NLNG Literature Prize. However the decision by the NLNG to register the name of the Prize as The Nigeria Prize for Literature generated some controversy in certain quarters. While two former ANA Presidents, Professor Femi Osofisan and Professor Olu Obafemi did not see anything wrong in this move, another former ANA President, Odia Ofeimun kicked against the decision. In his well publicized article 'The NLNG Literature Prize Controversy; Before The Nigerian Prize', Ofeimun referred to the decision to register the prize as "selling national patrimony for a mess of pottage". As he put it, "Even if we are all now in the age of liberalization, privatization and deregulation, our identities have not yet been so privatized,
liberalized and deregulated to the point where we must celebrate a private company's right to use the state apparatus outside the dictates of market forces to over-ride the capacity of other companies to compete with it." In saying this, Ofeimun emphasized his belief that any organization that has excelled in the promotion of a country's literary prize could be chosen by that country as its prime definer of that country's interest. This however in his view should be done after 'the proof' of such excellence and not 'by a crude resort to legislation outside due process'. In looking at both sides of the argument, it seems to me that what the critics of the Legislation of the Literature Prize as epitomized by Odia Ofeimun wanted was an input by all Literary Stakeholders before the final legislation. This to me will be akin to the Public Hearing that is usually conducted by the National Assembly before a bill is passed into law. My take on this issue is that since members of the advisory council on the prize represented to a fairly good margin a cross section of the Literary sector in the country, one cannot accuse the Gas Company of having not consulted this very important sector of the Nigerian public. Secondly, before a company or name is registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission in Abuja, there are certain procedures that must be closely followed. One of these is the placement of a notice of intention in two national newspapers for a certain period of time in order to allow any criticism against such a move. It is also expected that the names of the Board of Directors and other officials of the proposed Prize body should also be listed. Once this is done as I expected it must have been done by the NLNG and no opposition was raised against the registeration exercise, then, the Gas Company can be said to have followed due process in registering the prize. Not being an act of parliament, registeration of names of companies and organizations are not expected to involve anything more than the aforementioned.
Limiting Contestants to Writers Based in Nigeria - Another contentious issue about the prize was the decision of the organizers to limit the prize to writers resident in Nigeria. A sizeable number of Nigerian writers and critics have advocated the inclusion of foreign based writers in the competition. While such arguments may have their merit, it is an established fact the world over that many Literary Prizes are instituted and administered for specific groups as such, the NLNG cannot be faulted for adopting its present stance.For example, a cursory look through the Writers and Artists Year book in 2006 showed that out of the 180 prizes advertised for that year, more than 150 (about two thirds) were for specific writers writing in specific countries. An important prize such as the Orange Prize for fiction is awarded for a full-length novel written in English by a woman of any nationality and first listed in the UK while the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize is given to an English Language writer of any nationality under the age of 35 years. The Somerset Maughan Awards are also for writers under the age of 35 who are British subjects by birth and ordinarily resident in the UK and Northern Ireland. This same specificity exists in the Literature, Marketing and Places, the American version of Writers and Artists year book. Closer home, the Olaudah Equino Prize recently inaugurated in the US is meant forNigerian writers based [abroad / outside Africa]. If part of the aims of the NLNG to endow the Nigeria Literature Prize is to encourage and improve the local content of Nigerian literature, why must be the prize be opened to writers who are not based in the country?
The Aborted Reading Tour - At the inception of the Nigeria Literature Prize in 2004, about thirteen writers on the 'Long List" were taken on a reading tour of the country. Apart from the publicity that the tour gave to the competition, the tour also enabled members of the public to become more interested in Literature. In a country with a perceived poor reading culture, the tour improved to some extent the interest of the public in Literature. Unfortunately, this aspect ofthe competition has since been discontinued. It is hoped that with proper repackaging, the reading tour if reconvened, will go a long way in improving the overall success of the prize. It is also important to mention the issue of the Poor Reading Culture in the country. Literary observers have given several factors for this development. These include, high cost of books, disconnect between the writers and the reading culture as well as competition between reading and other recreational pursuits among our youths such as football, home video and the internet. In the last few years the ANA as our own contribution to stem this ugly development a few years ago organized some Literary Campaigns all over the country. The project which involved reading sessions among secondary school students in the country as well as donation of books to school libraries unfortunately could not be sustained due to financial constraints. It is hoped that more stakeholders will continue to assist the government in this onerous duty of improving the reading culture in the country through the provision of books to schools and community libraries as well as organization of Literary campaigns all over thecountry.~ * ~
Petina Gappah is also in the same issue of Per Contra, with her short story, The Annexe Shuffle. A young woman is incarcerated on a mental ward on the orders of her father and must get her life back on track in order to resume her law degree course.
Excerpt - In her room on P corridor at Swinton, she announces to no one in particular: ‘I am going to keep a journal. I am going to write down everything that happens to me. Today I ate my banana,’ she says, ‘so I will write that down.’
‘I ate my banana,’ she writes.
Only it comes out ‘I hate my banana,’ and, seeing this, she laughs hysterically. Then she sees that this is not so funny, this is, in fact, a sign that everything is against her, she can’t even trust her own pen, her own hand, her own thoughts, her very actions betray her, everything is against her, everything is wrong, so wrong, nothing will ever be right again.
She dissolves into tears.
It is as she cries that the Dean of Students and the Warden enter her room to take her back to the Annexe. ‘I know my rights,’ she says through her tears. ‘I am a law student.’
In anticipation of the eagerly awaited second issue of African Writing, here's a little retropective of its debut - the publication's report of Monica Arac de Nyeko's Caine Prize win back in July.
Zadie Smith wrote about Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God in Saturday's Review, ahead of the publication of a new Virago Modern Classic edition (Hurston remains on the ascendant; I have a 2003 Virago Modern Classic of the same book. It's to be a VM classic for the repeated time, it seems). Smith contends with the potential limitations of critical perspectives on Hurston, which insist that only a black woman can fully identify with her writings. Smith seems bent on departing from the path taken by Hurston champions like Alice Walker, talks all around it, and then concludes that in fact, her own very personal reaction to Their Eyes Were Watching God - is precisely because, like many have argued in the past concerning Hurston, "She is my sister and I love her."
to be known as a "soft", carefully measured stylist. The publisher Muhtar Bakare actually describes the Kaduna born scribe as "restrained and.. subtle". But first impressions aren't always a complete take. Afolabi's just published first novel, Goodbye Lucille, about another immigrant in Europe, begins with a furious pace, such that four distinct characters had shown up by the second page; Vincent, the struggling photographer who is at the heart of the story; his girlfriend Lucille who he left behind in London to hustle in Berlin; Marie, the magazine editor and Henrich Henkleman, the politician whose murder sets much of the tone of this 308 page narrative. And in less than 1,000 words, all of these characters are already sufficiently described we can picture what they are. Farafina's decision to publish Goodbye Lucille is in sync with its tradition of seeking out Nigerian winners in publishing houses in Europe and America and giving them audience at home. The same principle informs the company's release of the Nigerian version of Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy and much earlier, Chimamanda Adichie's Half Of A Yellow Sun. Such strategy certainly serves a socially responsible purpose; a growing tribe of Nigerian writers live and write abroad and they are getting the attention of European and American critics as they beat western writers hands down in contest for some of the most important literary awards. But it is easy for these authors not to be known in their home country, as the publishing houses don't think very highly of having outlets in the supposedly dark continent. To the extent that most of these stories are essentially Nigerian, Farafina fulfils the need of letting the home audience get more than a glimpse into life in the diaspora. In November, these sort of stories will form the basis for a panel discussion: Writing In: Tales From The Diaspora, which will feature readings, reviews and discussions around Afolabi's Monday Morning, Biyi Bandele's The Street, Chimamanda Adichie's That Thing Around Your Neck, Diana Evans' 26A, Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl and Diran Adebayo's Some Kind Of Black. This conversation is one of the main events of the 9th Lagos Book And Art Festival, holding at the National Theatre from November 9-11.
Visit the stylish new website for the book, Celebrated - Nigerian Women in Development, written by Ayona Aguele-Trimnell (Toyin Sokefun Bello took the portraits in the book, published by Kachifo Ltd).
Here's one reason why many will never forget the 2nd International Sable Litfest (13 - 15 July 2007) which took place in The Gambia. Straight after the litfest, on 16th July, the 
organiser & publisher of Sable Litmag, the 
irrepressible literary activist Kadija George married Dr Wayne Edge - on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. As well as a conventional wedding ceremony, the couple also performed an old African American marriage rite, the 'Jumping of the Broom'. The high point perhaps, was when the bride's mother broke the kolanut and shed tears of joy as she called on the ancestors to bless the union. The bride's sister, Saffi Haines, was the Maid of honour.
up a large number of wedding guests. Among them were: Ja
ck Mapanje, Dorothea Smartt, Judy Buckrich (chair of the International PEN Women Writers' Committee), Blessing Musariri, Courttia Newland, Doreen Baingana, Binyavanga Wainaina, Rommi Smith, Jessica L. Huntley, Andreah Enisuoh etcetera etcetera. 
