Soyinka Illiteracy Prize
Toyin Falola
Biko:
A tiny question for you:
Is it polite to label as “illiterates” those whom we disagree with? And after the label, do they send you flowers?
Superior arguments should be enough!
My memoirs have been interpreted by some the ways I don’t intend---is it not their right?
You need to talk to Esu—I have his address!!!
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7222 (fax)
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Rex Marinus
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 2:52 PM
To: Usaafricadialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Soyinka Illiteracy Prize
Biko Agozino
Toyin Falola
Apologies! I thought he was critiquing others as illiterates!
As you all know—I don’t like people abusing one another but to present arguments and let others decide.
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
This is a profound, illuminating, literary critique. It throws new light on Soyinka's 1975 work,
"Death and the King's Horsemen." I would prefer a title such as "Biafra, Death and the King's Horsemen"
or something to that effect.
To: Usaafricadialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Soyinka Illiteracy Prize
Chidi Anthony Opara
Please, I seek your permission to post this on "African Literature Forum" a Facebook group I administer.
CAO.
Chidi Anthony Opara
I believe so too, thanks Biko.
CAO.
Biko Agozino
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Biko Agozino
Biko Agozino
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More info On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 1:02 PM, Toyin Falola<toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Biko Agozino
Cornelius Hamelberg
Not unexpectedly, I did have semantic dreams after watching Chapter 15 of 15 in the series “The Great Philosophers” ending with Ludwig Wittgenstein - John Searle & Bryan Magee on Axess TV last night which accounts for my reading with some post-nocturnal attention this morning and observing that with or without our permission we can afford to be accused of being too pedantic when we notice a word missing in the very title of the play which Biko gives in his essay as “Death and King's Horsemen”. But that is but a minor detail which may not affect the interpretation of the contents and subject matter below the title to the same degree ( in legalese) if we were to add a “the” in UN Security Council Resolution 242 “ Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict") nor should the missing “the” (“ the territories”) imply the same legal consequences to “King's Horsemen.” I note with satisfaction that if like Samson Agonistes, Biko Agozino can make a minor mistake, he sure can make a major one too.
There seems to be so much excitement about this new reading that one wonders , are we possibly talking about a Revaluation of the seminal stature of F.R Leavis ?
Biko Agozino's assessment/ evaluation/ revaluation of Soyinka's Death and the King's Horsemen - at this stage, seen by some as a “ radical “ interpretation” presents a unique challenge to some of us – and that includes me , “to discover anew - a new dawn rising” (McMunn) - so, if only I could achieve a tabula rasa , return to the play more than forty years later and approach it as if I had never read it before and decide for myself, all over again, this time whether or not Biko is not stretching it a little, this
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” ( William Blake : To see a World
It's probably easier for Biko to see what he sees - to see all that he sees with the alleged genocide in Biafra still burning in his heart. He who feels it knows. I quite understand that in the realm of literature we are perpetually in the realm of the suggestible – heck – I read the first few chapters of the Book of Mormon and that night my dreams were bathed in gold – like that Biafra sun as in, “But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,. Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill” ( Hamlet) - as in “the gentle dawn is rising, dappling the sleepy eastern” ( Much Ado About Nothing)
A parallel situation more of a concession took over in the performance of Soyinka's “Kongi's Harvest” which I saw staged by the Arts Council of Ghana, in Accra, early in 1970 - in which Kongi was a stage incarnation of Kwame Nkrumah – the play was interpreted to adapt to local reality , given a Ghanaian colouration, the Osagyefo replete in his Maoist tunic etc etc, even Ghanaian accents.( "August")
The term “ illiterate!” or “illiterates!” has a certain negative resonance in West Africa where illiteracy is rife and can even be a class thing - especially ( in West African English) where along with “idiot!” it serves as an all-purpose expletive. Moving away from any brutal – literal, denotative and functional meaning of “illiterate” with reference to an alphabetized mind ( as in Illich and Sanders' “The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind”) it could I think , in a Western context ( from the point of view of someone who had a minimal liberal arts education and is current with the relevant updates , “ illiterate” could refer to a “cultural illiteracy” versus cultural literacy a definition that would vary from culture to culture. Of course, relatively speaking a chap with a few dozen PhDs in his bag could erroneously believe that Shakespeare or indeed the Prophet of Islam ( S.A.W ) was “illiterate”. George Bernard Shaw after all is credited with having said
“With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his. “ (George Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare)
More George Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare
In this thread Marxist criticism has been lamented as having been in abeyance at a certain showing of Biodun Jeyifo and his choosing to sing “God save the Queen” or “God save the monarchy” at the time .
Once a student, always a student ( even of Marx) and as a student one was acquainted with Arnold Kettle's deliberation on an English Novel or two ; in the sociology of the novel , African literature from Chinua Achebe, through Wole Soyinka to Jacob Zuma sure invites some Marxist analysis
Biko Agozino
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Biko,
Forgive me. I should have had the alleged in invested commas., as "alleged" genocide. As I wrote in this forum five days ago, “every time I see the name Biko Agozino and his always commendable engagement with the decolonisation of the criminal justice system world wide, of course we think of his namesake Steve Biko whose blood is still crying out for Justice.”
I lived with and was close to Igbo people throughout my four years in Nigeria (1981-84) and as far as witness testimony goes, I have heard much about what actually happened , some of it too gruesome to repeat here. I suppose that that's one of the reasons why Jesus of Nazareth as a sacrificial lamb has such sway over the Igbo nation. Of relevance to genocidal starvation, these two questions posed by Jesus of Nazareth: If your brother asks for bread, will you give him a stone? If your son ask you for a fish, will you give him a serpent instead?
Whether we are talking about The Shoah or Biafra Genocide I am aware of how painful Holocaust denial and “genocide denialism” is and that it must burn all the more intensely in the hearts of those who know and feel. that what actually happened is denied as having happened at all, by others , usually others who were not victims or related to the victims and in some cases such genocides are being denied by the perpetrators themselves, and their ilk...
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More info On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 3:58 PM, Windows Live 2018<yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Windows Live 2018
Not unexpectedly, I did have semantic dreams after watching Chapter 15 of 15 in the series “The Great Philosophers” ending with Ludwig Wittgenstein - John Searle & Bryan Magee on Axess TV last night which accounts for my reading with some post-nocturnal attention this morning and observing that with or without our permission we can afford to be accused of being too pedantic when we notice a word missing in the very title of the play which Biko gives in his essay as “Death and King's Horsemen”. But that is but a minor detail which may not affect the interpretation of the contents and subject matter below the title to the same degree ( in legalese) if we were to add a “the” in UN Security Council Resolution 242 “ Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict") nor should the missing “the” (“ the territories”) imply the same legal consequences to “King's Horsemen.” I note with satisfaction that if like Samson Agonistes, Biko Agozino can make a minor mistake, he sure can make a major one too.
There seems to be so much excitement about this new reading that one wonders , are we possibly talking about a Revaluation of the seminal stature of F.R Leavis ?
Biko Agozino's assessment/ evaluation/ revaluation of Soyinka's Death and the King's Horsemen - at this stage, seen by some as a “ radical “ interpretation” presents a unique challenge to some of us – and that includes me , “to discover anew - a new dawn rising” (McMunn) - so, if only I could achieve a tabula rasa , return to the play more than forty years later and approach it as if I had never read it before and decide for myself, all over again, this time whether or not Biko is not stretching it a little, this
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” ( William Blake : To see a World
It's probably easier for Biko to see what he sees - to see all that he sees with the alleged genocide in Biafra still burning in his heart. He who feels it knows. I quite understand that in the realm of literature we are perpetually in the realm of the suggestible – heck – I read the first few chapters of the Book of Mormon and that night my dreams were bathed in gold – like that Biafra sun as in, “But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,. Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill” ( Hamlet) - as in “the gentle dawn is rising, dappling the sleepy eastern” ( Much Ado About Nothing)
A parallel situation more of a concession took over in the performance of Soyinka's “Kongi's Harvest” which I saw staged by the Arts Council of Ghana, in Accra, early in 1970 - in which Kongi was a stage incarnation of Kwame Nkrumah – the play was interpreted to adapt to local reality , given a Ghanaian colouration, the Osagyefo replete in his Maoist tunic etc etc, even Ghanaian accents.( "August")
The term “ illiterate!” or “illiterates!” has a certain negative resonance in West Africa where illiteracy is rife and can even be a class thing - especially ( in West African English) where along with “idiot!” it serves as an all-purpose expletive. Moving away from any brutal – literal, denotative and functional meaning of “illiterate” with reference to an alphabetized mind ( as in Illich and Sanders' “The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind”) it could I think , in a Western context ( from the point of view of someone who had a minimal liberal arts education and is current with the relevant updates , “ illiterate” could refer to a “cultural illiteracy” versus cultural literacy a definition that would vary from culture to culture. Of course, relatively speaking a chap with a few dozen PhDs in his bag could erroneously believe that Shakespeare or indeed the Prophet of Islam ( S.A.W ) was “illiterate”. George Bernard Shaw after all is credited with having said
“With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his. “ (George Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare)
More George Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare
In this thread Marxist criticism has been lamented as having been in abeyance at a certain showing of Biodun Jeyifo and his choosing to sing “God save the Queen” or “God save the monarchy” at the time .
Once a student, always a student ( even of Marx) and as a student one was acquainted with Arnold Kettle's deliberation on an English Novel or two ; in the sociology of the novel , African literature from Chinua Achebe, through Wole Soyinka to Jacob Zuma sure invites some Marxist analysis
On Friday, 13 July 2018 18:57:14 UTC+2, Biko Agozino wrote:
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Sent: 13 July 2018 17:22
To: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Soyinka Illiteracy Prize
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 2:52 PM
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Salimonu Kadiri
Between May and June 2018 a topic titled, The Death of Monarchism was debated on this forum. The horror of monarchy was exemplified by Elesin who refused to die with the King in a Wole Soyinka's play, Death and the King's Horsemen. In his engagement with Toyin Falola on 11 June 2018, Biko Agozino fired the following salvo, "The issue raised by Soyinka is more contemporary : why did the Yoruba enthusiastically participate in the genocidal killing against the Igbo when the Igbo have never participated in the genocidal killing of their Yoruba brothers and sisters?" Feeling perhaps, reluctant to be drawn into the debate about the Nigerian civil war, Toyin Falola did not respond to Biko Agozino's interrogation. The following day, 12 June 2018, the relentless Biko Agozina in his submission addressed to Toyin Falola wrote, "You can do all the Africadabra you like but you will never avoid answering the haunting question posed by Baba Sho (Soyinka) :How could you lead the genocide against your own brothers and sisters or be the cheer leaders of genocide and still call yourselves intellectuals or even human beings?" Thereafter he directed Toyin Falola thus, "Oya, answer Soyinka, Why would you not join him in denouncing genocide against the Igbo and demanding reparation?" Since it was my first time of reading the statement attributed to Soyinka on the Yoruba active participation in genocide against the Igbo, I asked Biko Agozino in my post, of 12 June 2018 on this forum, to please inform me in which book or media he read that Soyinka accused the Yoruba of participating in genocidal killing of the Igbo. Biko Agozino never responded to my request. Moreover, I asked him to no avail, to tell me in which International/National Tribunal or Court was it decided that genocide was committed against the Igbo and that Yoruba participated in the said genocide. Now a month later, Biko Agozino repackaged 'Death of Monarchism' to present it as 'Soyinka Illiteracy Prize'. The unsuspecting gave him back-patting for what they term illuminating critique of Soyinka play, 'Death and the King's Horseman.' The main issue that the back-paters of Biko Agosino have forgotten is that in his posts of 11th and 12th of June 2018, he stated that Wole Soyinka had asked about why the Yoruba had enthusiastically participated in the genocidal killing against the Igbo when the Igbo had never participated in the genocidal killing of their Yoruba brothers and sisters. Soyinka, according to Biko Agozino, had accused the Yoruba of leading and being cheer leaders of genocide against the Igbo even though Biko did not disclose when and where Soyinka made the accusation against his own tribe. Now we know better as Biko Agozino has confessed to be a professional decoder of Soyinka's play, Death and the King's Horseman.
The self-styled decoder wrote, "...… the play was published only five years after a tragic genocidal war in Nigeria, in which Yoruba elites played a leading aggressive role, along with other ethnic elites in Nigeria. This play, in my lay opinion, is better understood as part of the soul-searching by Wole Soyinka after he was released from solitary confinement for opposing the genocidal war against the Igbo. Why were highly educated Yoruba leaders the ones who cheered on the genocide against the Igbo in Biafra? Biko Agozino is forcibly and fraudulently imposing his lay opinion, that the Nigerian civil war was a genocidal war against the Igbo, on Soyinka. In support of the fraudulent genocidal claim against the Igbo, Biko Agozino referred readers to Chinua Achebe's swan-song, There Was a Country, published in 2012. Continuing, Biko wrote, "I offer the original interpretation that Soyinka was referring to the genocide against the Igbo, which was the theme of the novel …. of how fellow Nigerians hunted down tens of thousands of innocent Igbo men, women and children and massacred them in a pogrom that led to the secession of the Eastern Region and the intensification of the genocide." In support of his interpretation of the claim that Soyinka was referring to genocide against the Igbo, Biko referred readers to Hubert Ekwe-Ekwe's book, Biafra Revisited , published in 2006, where the author claimed that 100, 000 Igbo were killed in the North prior to secession that took about 3.1 million Igbo lives. No person should be killed/murdered for any reason but there are people like Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe who believe that murder is not horrible if it is not perpetrated in tens of thousands. From where did he get the figure of 100,000 Igbo women, men and children killed in the North during the riots in the Spring and Autumn of 1966? Ojukwu was the head of government of Eastern Region that published a booklet titled pogrom. In the foreword to the booklet, Ojukwu gave the number of Igbo killed in the Northern riot to more than 7,000 dead. At the Aburi meeting in January 1967, four months after the riots in the North had subsided totally, Ojukwu said that 10,000 Igbo were killed in the North during the riot. While addressing his so-called Consultative and imploring them to grant him power to declare a Sovereign State of Biafra in May 1967, Ojukwu claimed that 30,000 Igbo were killed in the North. Finally, in his Ahiara Declaration on 1st June 1969, Ojukwu claimed that 50,000 Igbo were killed in the North during the riots there. Six months later, Ojukwu abandoned his soldiers and fled to Ivory Coast and his Biafra crumbled. Thirty-six years after the war had ended, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe wrote a book in which he asserted that 100,000 Igbo were killed in the North in 1966, implying that fifty-thousand more deaths occurred than what Ojukwu, head of the government of Biafra, had declared. Herbert must have been a professor of lies and malicious propaganda. Although, Ojukwu varied his Igbo death casualties in the North for war propaganda purposes I consider it ridiculous that comical decoders are still not only touting Ojukwu's Igbo death tales in the North, but they also double the casualty figures.
If the riots that occurred in the North from May to early October 1966 and which resulted in the killings of the Igbo should be considered as genocide, it must be recognised that the Federal Military Government as at May 29 to July 28, 1966 was Major-General Johnson Thompson Aguiyi Ironsi. The riot in the North was sequel to his abolishment of Regions and federal system of government in Nigeria and replacing it with Unitary form of government with power concentrated at the centre. One must take note too that the NCNC party had, from its inception, had unitary form of government for Nigeria in its manifesto and it was a common knowledge in Nigeria that the NCNC was an Igbo party. Ironsi had appointed Francis Nwokedi as one-man commission of enquiry on unitary form of government, of which he reported positively to Ironsi at the end of March 1966. Ironsi's Attorney General, G. C. M. Onyiuke, advised him to implement it. Thus, on 24 May 1966, Ironsi in a broadcast to the nation announced the introduction of unitary form of government for Nigeria through Decree No.34. On May, 29, 1966, riot broke out throughout Northern Nigeria in protest against Unitary government and in which Ironsi kinsmen, the Igbo, were targeted. The riot continued up to and after 29 July 1966, when he was overthrown and killed by Northern Army Officers together with his host in Ibadan, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi who refused to abandon his guest. For the sake of those who often talk of Northern Muslim coup, it is remarkable that the capture of both Ironsi and Fajuyi was executed by fellow Christians from the North, namely Captain Theophilous Yakubu Danjuma assisted by Second Lieutenant Jeremiah Useni. When the riot broke out in the North Awolowo was still in prison and both in January and July coups, persons of Yoruba origin were among administrative and death casualties. So who then were the cheering Yoruba leaders of pogrom against the Igbo in the North.
The decoder and interpreter Biko wrote further, "The novel depicts the Marxists …. who failed to recognise the revolutionary situation in the country and instead rallied in support of the genocidal military dictatorship, rather than turn the civil war into liberation war." The liberation war was what Lieutenant Colonel Victor Adebukunola Banjo wanted when he allowed himself to be released by Ojukwu from the unlawful detention he was placed for criticizing Ironsi for his theft of the Majors' revolution and accepting to serve under Biafran army. Equally, Lieutenant Colonel Emanuel Ifeajuna, Major Philip Alale and Sam Agbam wanted a liberation war, which did not conform with Ojukwu's desire and he snuffed life out of them just before Enugu, the capital of Biafra, fell into the hands of federal forces on 29 September 1967. Major Adewale Ademoyega who was among the 15 January 1966 coup plotters was detained in prison in the East and remained there until the end of the war for refusing to join secessionist and reactionary Biafran Army. Mokwugo Okoye and Dr. Chike Obi were thrown into Biafran prison for opposing bourgeois and secessionist Biafra. Ojukwu wore the beards of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro but he acted and behaved like Moise Tshombe, who led the failed secession of Katanga from Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1960s. By upbringing he was not expected to lead revolution. His father, Louis Philip Ojukwu as he was known in the 50s, was one of those who co-operated with the British colonialist and was rewarded with trucks and contracts to supply laterites to the then Public Work Department (P.W.D.), thus becoming rich in comparison with most Nigerians. When in 1944, Nnamdi Azikiwe appointed him as a Treasurer of the newly formed N.C.N.C., Louis Philip Ojukwu declined because he did not want to offend his bread winner, Britain. Before independence he was knighted by the Queen of England whereby he added to his name Odumegwu. Emeka the son was a right wing opportunist, and he joined the Nigerian army not because he had any intention to shed his blood in defence of the nation. but to make career. The chance came when the 15th January revolutionary Majors struck. His appointment as Governor of the then Eastern Region by Ironsi was tragic, not only for the Igbo but, for the entire Nigeria. In the Army hierarchy, date of promotion to a rank determines seniority and as at 15 January 1966, five officers from Eastern Nigeria were senior to Ojukwu in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. They were, Wellington Umoh Bassey, U.O. Imo, George Kurobo, Philip Effiong and Hillary Njoku. If any of the senior Lieutenant Colonels to Ojukwu had been appointed the Governor of Eastern Region in 1966, there would not have been life and property wasting civil war in Nigeria.
Biko Agozino continued to put himself inside the body of Soyinka claiming to know what was his thought while writing the play, Death and the King's Horsemen. Therefore, he re-emphasized his earlier postulation thus, "Similarly, Soyinka was wondering why the best educated Yoruba were the cheer leaders of the genocide against the Igbo." Soyinka has never at anytime said that there was genocide against the Igbo, much less talking about Yoruba being its cheerleaders. That is just a figment of imagination from Biko Agozino, Soyinka's mind reader. For what everybody knows, there has never been a Law Court or Tribunal, international or local, that declared the Nigerian civil war, a genocidal war against the Igbo. As I have pointed out many times, the Nigerian civil war is the only war in human history where a partner in war invited international observers to trail the tracks of its soldiers at the war fronts in order ensure strict adherence to the rule of engagements in war. In the London Times of 21 July 1969, the Polish representative in the International Observer Team in Nigeria said, "I have spoken to thousands and thousands of Ibos, soldiers, missionaries and relief workers but have found no trace of mass-killings of Ibos; we have visited places where rumour says massacres occurred, arriving sometimes only a couple of days after the crime was supposed to have happened. We just could not find evidence of it." At another occasion the Swedish member of the IOT in Nigeria, Major-General Arthur Raab said, "After seven months, we have still not seen any signs of the mass annihilation which Ojukwu claims is threatened by the Federal side. It looks as though Ojukwu is deliberately transferring military headquarters to schools, hospitals, churches and so on. In which case, can one call these civilian targets." Chinua Achebe corroborated what General Raab said when he narrated on page 172 of There Was a Country that the Biafran soldiers did set up their armoury outside his fathers house. While the family were asleep, the Biafran Army had turned his ancestral home into a military base without their consent. The family was violently awakened in the middle of the night by exchanges of fire between the Nigerian Army and the Biafran soldiers.
Biko Agozino ended his decoding of Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horsemen thus, "What I am offering is a sociology of literary interpretation of Soyinka and I am certain that the rebel in him may force him to disagree with my interpretation and award me a national illiteracy prize." Millions of intelligent Nigerians are denied their constitutional and legitimate rights to go school to learn how to read and write. Those millions of intelligent Nigerians are involuntary illiterates and they should not be humiliated for no fault of theirs. Therefore, it is my candid opinion that since you can read and write, you are not entitled to a national illiteracy prize but a national literate-oaf prize.
S. Kadiri
Skickat: den 14 juli 2018 16:30
Till: Rex Marinus; usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Kopia: Windows Live 2018
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Soyinka Illiteracy Prize