Category: Uncategorized

Was Achebe fair to Ezeulu? Could he not have gone into his creative and artistic forge and found another denouement, just as powerful and intense and gripping which would have allowed the chief priest of Ulu to walk away from the enveloping unravelling of culture and tradition, from this creeping and almost irreversible dissolution and destruction of authority and institutions in Igbo land with his head high instead of knocking him down and covering him in the mud of disgrace associated with dementia? In the end, it would appear that Achebe surrenders his protagonist, a man of wit and intellect, a clear thinker, a pragmatist, pater familias, and chief of Ulu to his enemies and there are quite a few…. Winterbottom, Clarke, Nwaka etc! Is this a good price to pay for a tragic ending and did Ezeulu truly deserve this treatment? My whole being screams No! Is the death of Obika fair? No! Was it necessary? What happens to his new bride? Was this tragic end sufficiently justified? Was the reader sufficiently prepared for it?

The Webster dictionary defines tragedy thus – Tragedy is a serious play or drama typically dealing with the problems of a central character, leading to an unhappy or disastrous ending brought on, as in ancient drama, by fate and a tragic flaw in this character, or, in modern drama, usually by moral weakness, psychological maladjustment, or social pressures.” Tragedy however is typically associated with a flaw in the main character, some hubris, described as hamartia which leads this character to making wrong choices and faulty decisions. Okonkwo in TFA had that hamartia, his intense fear of being seen to be afraid, Jim in Conrad’s Lord Jim also suffered from a fundamental hubris which brought his ruin in the end, the principal characters in Adichie’s purple hibiscus were also flawed and one could go on and on. But where was the flaw in Ezeulu’s character? True, Achebe had hinted at the possibility of some flaw in the opening chapter, precisely in the paragraph that starts
“Whenever Ezeulu considered the immensity of his power over the year and the crops and, therefore over the people, he wondered if it was real” How good was power if it could never be used? In physics, there is this distinction between potential and kinetic energy. Potential energy exists only in the realm of possibilities and probability. Real energy is kinetics. Was this temptation to test to what extent he could impose his awesome power of choosing the season of harvesting that Ezeulu yields to at the end of the tale what ruins him? I do not find this ending, the way Achebe attempts to sketch it out to be very convincing but perhaps, this is because I am a unsophisticated reader. But even allowing for this aesthetic immaturity on my part, why was it necessary to bring in the sudden death of Obika in this final denouement of this gripping tale and allowing it so a powerful role in the ensuing destruction of Ezeulu and by implication of the god Ulu? Is this this sudden fall of Ezeulu justified? Should Ulu have suffered this irreversible demise? Has Ulu been godly? Does Ulu deserve our pity? For a god that looks on when its chief priest is being destroyed should not complain if its followers abandon its shrine for the altars of a new religion.

https://ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/who-are-the-worlds-biggest-bullshitters-a-light-hearted-look-at-pisa-data/

https://ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/is-pisa-fundamentally-flawed-because-of-the-scaling-methodology-used/

Some basic truths – There is a strong explanatory power in a framework that holds that tragedies arise when uncomprehending humans are caught up by an issue in time and space for which they are ill-equipped to successfully negotiate happy outcomes. A related framework is that which situates conflicts as arising from failures in communication. The war between Okperi and Umuaro is explainable using such frameworks.

Conflict literature identifies a number of other elements in situations of interaction that are either conflict provoking or conflict enhancing. These include unfounded assumptions, flawed inferences, sinister projections of unfounded intentions, cultural differences, miscues, misreadings of the others’ actions and intentions, invalid assumptions, signalling failures, arrogance, equivocation, fear of being perceived as weak, ambiguity, “idées recues”and hazy bargaining.

Most of these played out in the Okperi-Umuaro conflict.
Whether arising from poor communication, or different value systems, including cultural differences or diametrically opposed interests or competition over scarce resources or personality clashes, conflicts can be severely damaging if they are not nipped in the bud since each next step in the conflict has a tendency to escalate, attract retaliatory escalation from the other party and thus magnify and exacerbate an already bad situation.

The Okperi – Umuofia conflict adequately illustrates this tendency towards ever widening and damaging escalations in conflict when a conflict is not resolved in its early phases. The story line is simple and the story is told in a manner that is racy but has all the qualities of “vraisemblance” and realism. A piece of land is in dispute between two communities, each community claiming legitimate ownership. Umuaro sends an emissary led by Akukalia to Okperi. Akukalia, whose mother comes from Okperi, has already a poor conception of the typical Okperi person. This choice of an emotionally and cognitively ill-equipped person to lead such an important peace delegation is a first, critical and enabling condition for conflict enlargement.

Secondly, Akukalia assumes that because his mother comes from Okperi, (and thus that he is an oke nwa – in Owerri, a nwanwa) he can get away with certain offenses which someone else without such an ancestry could be punished for. A second seed of conflict, this faulty assumption, is thus sown. Third, the delegation chooses a wrong market day to carry out the assignment. Most Igbo communities do not hold peace or war or marriage talks on Eke days. (Eke days are reputed as being violence and destruction prone.) This wrong choice of day plus Akukalia’s insensitivity and brashness create further tensions, especially after they refuse the traditional white chalk and kola nuts, the ultimate symbols for peace in Igbo society that the Okperi community offers to Akukalia and his delegation. Then a series of miscommunications set in with insensitive language accentuating the ever expanding misunderstanding till an exchange between Ebo and Akukalia, which touches on the sensitive issue of Akukalia’s impotence, literally throws petrol into the now smouldering conundrum. Hurt, Akukalia does the unthinkable, the unpardonable, the ultimate desecration of a man in Igbo land! He breaks Ebo’s IKENGA. Ebo shoots him with his dane gun. Ultimately war breaks out and it required the intervention of Captain Winterbottom to quell it. Winterbottom goes one step further and breaks every gun in Okperi and Umuaro.

The story is told with the right level of diction, economy and pace. No words are wasted and suspense is maintained through gradual exposure and unlayering and unpeeling.

Could the war have been avoided? I think so. With the right level of scan and risk analysis, yes and herein lies one major value of this tale of war and peace told by a master craftsman. The story even has implications for modern day conflict resolution moves – choose your delegation well and minimise unjustified assumptions during peace talks.

The oil mill igbo mmiri split and spat out four units

one for Eke, Afo, Orie na Nkwo

Iyiafo weeps

Over invoked Ofor laments the kwashiorkor
that now afflicts Ogu

since fast tongued twisters took our state and sold us ash as salt

Ogu, not ofor, is the abused, when the aggressor claims and seizes it. Truth freezes, his empires ceases,

he is nwanyi ukwu aru
her steps and gait
always dancing and prancing even when oppression and falsehood wear her down, trap her soul
her steps dance any other stories but her sadness,

your affliction is your possession
if you possess, package and exploit it –
Uwa wu so packaging

The craters in Owerri,
coated in mechanics greasy rags
dishivelled plastic, bits and odd ends, brimming with thick dirty mud sauce
drink cars, swallows trucks

Wet baking ovens,
Owerri craters paint tyres, lubricate, wrestle. rusticate and retire ball joints

Their gaping yawning jaws
jeer at and jab away
at the rust mud maligned,
dirt and murk soaked
undercarriages of tired cars and weeping SUVs, groaning and creaking as they creep and crawl in this sea dirt and misery, born from the greed of big men with undersized minds……

Otamiri, please rescue us
from the rot and rust
leftovers of looters who came garbed as our rescuers.

My reflections reveal the results of my musings on life. When a third party reflects on them critically and passes them through the lenses of his/her own reality, some refractions may occur yielding refracted reflections or even reflected refractions in some cases.

Here are some of my reflections on life on one idle slow Sunday morning when I woke early and missed mass because I had to catch a flight on the snaky air routes of West Africa.

Reflections # 1 Never live in the past. Leave your past behind. Life is a present and must be lived in the present.
Reflections # 2 Never allow your past to trap your future
Reflections # 3 Never allow any sense of guilt from your past smother your openness to the possibilities that today and your future offer.
Reflections # 4 Oscar Wilde said that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. The wild one was paraphrasing a Pauline truism that all have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God.
Reflections # 5 Be careful of the present love whose love consists in throwing your past constantly in your face. This is not an act of love. It is a manipulation strategy that seeks to control, dominate and overpower you by appealing to a sense of guilt and dirt from your past.
Reflections # 6 Christ forgave Mary of Magdala. It was a one off thing and He never revisited her guilt after that. If your current relationship does not adopt this approach to your past failings, he or she or they do not know Christ fully, for to know Christ is to act like Him.
Reflections # 7 You must forgive yourself if you really expect total liberation from the bondage of guilt.

Bros/Sis, Na so him dey me for mouth dis early mormor as I dey wait to check in at MMIA to travel to Burkina Faso for an African microfinance summit. Make una live una lives wella, in the present and not in the past remembering that Nkiruka.

The power and sheer beauty of Achebe’s prose. Is this prose or lyrical poetry? Ezeulu’s story of his confrontation with and triumph over the elements and the spirit world are presented in this racy and gripping narrative overflowing with imageries and symbols. The days of the week are protected by their powerful spirits but the priest of Ulu worsts them all and who emerges at the end a liberator and successful negotiator and one who also carries the weight of the failings of his people and buries these at Ulu’s shrine. In the engagement with the four market days and in his race through the town, the High Priest of Ulu is offering supplications for the wishes for the protection of the clan and prayers for their future. He is also carrying the weight of the needs of the clan and all their failings on his frame as he rushes into Ulu’s shrine where he drops these.

This encounter of expiation of sins and renewal for the future is told in a style that grips and awes. The Igbo world view presented here is deep and fascinating.

The beauty of Achebe’s prose. He has appropriated the English language and breathed Igbo into its core. He speaks Igbo in English. Ezeulu’s pragmatism shines forth as does the patriarchal mindset that defines and shapes him. Simple yet deep, ordinary yet majestic are the best ways to define this artistic tour de force which this master word and “storysmith” achieves in these lines.