A cliché goes that Nigeria is a sleeping giant. The implication is that when Nigeria wakes up, Africa will also wake up and onto a journey to progress. How nice! Nigeria is more of a stillborn than a living, breathing and progressive being it is often made out to be. Here stillborn doesn’t mean it died, it just means Nigeria is stuck in its own colonial invention and postcolonial dystopia.
Nigeria’s stillbirth is the subject of Diekoye Oyeyinka’s book, Stilborn (2014), published by East African Educational Publishers. It is the story of Nigeria’s convoluted history from 1943 up to 2010. It is a difficult story to tell simply because it is nonlinear but Diekoye tells it by picking places, persons and moments in the country’s life to illustrate the pain and tragedy of this slumbering giant.
It is part the story of Seun, an orphan, but as well the story of the millions of Nigerians ‘orphaned’ by Nigerians economic mismanagement, inter-ethnic and inter-religious wars, poverty and hopelessness. In Stillborn you get snapshots of the lives of ordinary Nigerians, its politicians and their melodramas that have stagnated Nigeria for the five decades of its independence. It is not surprising that Boko Haram is mutating into the ISIS of Africa, taunting the government of Nigeria and attacking any part of the country whilst venturing into neigbouring countries.
Stillborn can also be read as a metaphor of much of Africa today where violence, war, corruption, death etc stalk ordinary citizens of many of its states.
However, Diekoye remains optimistic that Nigeria can overcome its ‘backwardness’ if the majority of its citizens can resist the push and pull of moral decay, indolence and despair. But to resist corruption demands fighting against its seduction which comes in the guise of ethnicity, religious fundamentalism, unbridled materialism etc. It’s a war and a race against time, especially when a country’s leaders don’t seem to have a vision of progress. It’s a story of pain but one that also suggests that it’s possible to retain faith in the good of humanity and possibilities of social transformation and progress.
Excerpts of an interview between Tom Odhiambo and Diekoye Oyeyinka in Nairobi, ahead of the launch of the Stillborn book.
Odhiambo: Apart from what the blurb of the book says about you growing up and living on three continents, tell us more about yourself – childhood, family, friends, schooling to adult life.
Diekoye: There were a lot of books in my childhood – this was by choice but my parents were extremely supportive of this initiative. Education for my parents was always the greatest gift you can give a child, so I ended up switching schools every 3 years (except for University), as my parents made more money and could afford better schools. I’m the youngest of three, two years younger than my sister and four than my brother, and we are all extremely close. I always enjoyed school and never found it too difficult; although I am a better learner than I am a student … I was more curious about new knowledge and unchartered solutions than in getting the standard answer.
Question: Where did the writing inspiration come from?
Answer: I’ve always enjoyed creative writing and been fascinated by the African culture of storytelling. I realized as I got older that I was better at capturing experiences in writing than vocally. I broadened my reading scope drastically during my last year in college (2009) and increasingly realized that writing had the potential to touch lives. I want that legacy. The specific inspiration for this book came from a deep seated frustration with a broken system that was making false promises and aborted dawns the status quo (hence the name).
Q: Stillborn invokes Nigerian history, which is more or less the story of Africa today. Why this?
A: The tragedy of Africa is that our leaders tend to mirror the folly of their peers rather than learn from them. I knew if I could give an apt portrayal of Nigeria – the supposed giant of Africa – other peoples will see their frustrations mirrored in the narrative.
Q: Is your book a fictional version of Achebe’s The Trouble with Nigeria?
A: I actually haven’t read that book yet, but I was trying to document the Nigerian narrative, which when spelled out is the trouble with Nigeria. If any direct comparison must be made, it is the Nigerian version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The goal was to make a reference manuscript that people can read years from now, and say this is how Nigeria looked post-independence. This is what was happening in the political scene, this is how the students interacted at the universities, etc.
Q: Would I be right to say that your generation of Nigerian writers is very committed to the ‘question of Naija’, even though you are very much what is referred to by the cliché global citizens?
A: I think you have to find yourself ‘within’ to truly master your place in the world. If we take Chimamanda for example, her first novel Purple Hibiscus was a family narrative, her second Half of a Yellow Sun was the narrative of a nation, and in Americanah she shows this global citizen role. In Stillborn, Seun is shown as a global citizen, although barely. With this book, I wanted to make something for Nigerians and Africans firstly.
The only global issue I considered was the constant categorising of African writers as merely good storytellers. I wanted to contribute to the advancement of literature, and I experimented with form and sentence structure. I am a huge fan of the movie director Alfred Hitchcock, a pioneer in using camera positioning, lights, sounds, etc and not just the actors to tell the story. I attempted something similar in how the setting of each of the 5 parts affects its pace, and the surroundings being described were captured by sentence structure e.g. a Lagos traffic was not said to be hectic instead the sentence was composed of big words in short sentences to give a cramped feeling, followed by long alliterating sentences to give the feeling of flowing traffic.
Q: I read somewhere that ‘poetry never changed the world’; and I guess literature will never change Nigeria. So, why worry about Naija’s woes?
A: I read somewhere that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford the sort of revolution seen in the Arab spring. I document the mistakes of the past so we do not blindly repeat them. The book is a memo to our leaders that we remember, even after the headlines have long faded.
Q: Why publish your book in Kenya? Is there a Nigerian edition?
A: I wanted an African publisher because I did not want to water down the story or make it ‘easier to read’, which is what I got from western publishers. I applied to the top 3 publishers I knew on the continent, but EAEP were quickest off the mark…
Q: Do you think there is a chance of a renewal of a pan-African literary and cultural connection as it used to be in the 1960s and 1970s?
A: I really hope so. It was a main motivation in making this my first book. I feel the story of a stillbirth is a common narrative across the continent, I hope if we write stories that are true throughout the continent it will inevitably ignite a continental debate and force greater interaction
Q: Is the African writer relevant today?
A: Extremely relevant. Today’s writers are the historians and prophets and these are most pertinent in cultures where there is vast unfulfilled potential. Charles Dickens’ documentary of Victorian England was important in making the country look inwards and see the many ways it was failing vast numbers of its population. My words might not turn the country upside down, but perhaps they might affect issues I care particularly about e.g. education and a connected Africa. Chimamanda has been instrumental in the feminist conversation…
Q: Impressions of Kenya?
A: Love it. I wish I could come to stay in Nairobi and write for six months…
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