‘Now that everyone is a photographer, we starve’

Recently at a wedding reception in Lagos, Nigeria, I was attracted to the plight of most of the ‘professional’ photographers present. In Nigeria, ‘professional’ photographers do not wait to be invited to an event especially weddings, funerals and college convocations. They besiege such events and take photographs of especially well-dressed ladies and dash to the nearest studio to print the pictures. Before the event is over, they return with printed photographs, seek out the photographed persons and sell the photos to them. Each 5” by 7” costs N100 (about 70 US cents).

But things are changing. At that wedding reception, I noticed that many people prevented ‘professional’ photographers from taking their pictures. Rather they used their own digital cameras. At a point, I counted 12 guests poised to take shots of the dancing couple.

Many Nigerians have personal digital cameras or mobile phones with camera. Mass produced from the Asian Tigers, camera phones are cheap. A mobile phone set with a camera costs about US$50. With these in many people’s hands, they no longer want to pay for the professional’s shots. As a result, “when you bend down in from of them to take their picture, they scream ‘No, No!’ And if you take them, they won’t pay”, said one of such photographers whom I chatted with in Lagos.

Another told me that five to six years ago, before cheap Chinese phones put cameras in everyone’s hands, he earned up to N10,000 (about US $80) from covering an event (uninvited). In fact, from such monies, he paid his way through the university. Now he hardly earns up to half of that. In his words, “now that everyone is a photographer, we starve. It is frustrating. If it was now, I wouldn’t have been able to pay my fees in the university”.

Researchers assessing the impact of new media technologies have often focused on the positive side. Assessing the full impact of new media technologies must go beyond what the technologies do to users in terms of liberating access and bridging socio-economic and cultural distances. It must encompass the threat which such technologies pose to those whose basic survival depends on the old order.

Corruption in Nigeria: is Jordan Smith Right?

In the premises of a clinic in Ibadan, I overheard three women (Picture to your left) discussing a wide range of issues. Sitting under a huge tree, they lamented the recklessness with which politicians steal and lavish government money in Nigeria. One of them, a terribly aggrieved woman, told the other two of a politician she ‘helped’ during the 2007 elections. According to her, as a result of her help, the politician won and was now earning lots of money.

She did not specify the nature of the ‘help’ she rendered this politician. What she emphasised was the grievous disappointment she had encountered in the hands of ‘that ingrate’.

Her son was on admission and needed surgery. She had no money but had assurance of getting money from the politician. She went to him but all the man gave her was ten thousand naira (about $70). The surgery was to cost thrice that amount. She felt greatly let down because, according to her, even those who did not ‘help’ this politician had received substantial financial help from him.

She and her friends acknowledged the fact that politicians steal government money but wonder why this particular ‘ingrate’ would not share with those who ‘helped’ him. “We are not saying they should not eat money [embezzle money]. But when they eat at least they should remember us who put them in position of power”, they concluded.

I have serious problems with Jordan Smith’s studies of corruption in Nigeria but my anger is made worse each time I see his assertions played out in conversations and conduct of so-called ordinary Nigerians. One of Smith’s (2007)* conclusions is that among Nigerians, embezzlement of public funds and other forms of corruption attract anger and bitter condemnation only when the discussants are not direct or indirect beneficiaries of the loot. If the loot gets to the average Nigerian, they shut their eyes to its sources and the dirt surrounding it. Maybe on this one, Smith was right.

*Smith, J. D. (2007). A culture of corruption: everyday deception and popular discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

‘My Daughter is not for Sale!’: Is Bride Price Getting less Popular in Nigeria?

‘My daughter is not for sale! All I want is for you to take good care of her’. That was the verdict of Chief Agedo as he gave out his daughter in a traditional wedding to the family of Ter Ikeseh (Ter and Joy are in the pic left). (This was at a traditional wedding I attended in Minna, Northern Nigeria on Saturday May 1, 2010)

Chief Agedo announced that he did not want any dowry (that is, bride price or bride wealth). We who were there to support the groom and his family were overwhelmed by this show of kindness.

In Nigeria, bride price and the cost of wedding have been the reasons that many young men cannot marry and many young women remain spinsters. The cost of wedding and bride price is said to be the highest among the Igbo people of South East Nigeria. Bride price, which is paid by the groom and his family to the bride’s family, comes in the forms of cash, food items, live animals, and clothes. All of these can amount to as much as 2 million naira (about $14,300) or even more—if the groom appears to be rich. To get out of this, many have eloped and many have called off their courtships with ladies from families whose bride price demands were too high.
In the pre-colonial times, among the Tiv people of Nigeria, men avoided bride price by engaging in exchange marriage. In this case, a man gave his sister to another man in exchange for that man’s sister—a very smart practice that was destroyed by ‘civilisation’ and Britain.

Extremely relieved were we when Chief Agedo did not ask for a bride price. Ter, the groom, was so happy that he needed no instructions before lying prostrate in traditional homage to his in-laws. [Picture below]

But some friends told us not to rejoice too much over the demand for no bride price. According to one of them, in his culture, bride prices are not demanded, not out of kindness but because the culture believes that a man cannot (should not be allowed to) pay bride price once but should continue to pay it as long as he lives. Therefore, the bride’s family continue to make financial and other requests for as long as the marriage lasts—as reminder that the man wasn’t asked to pay any bride price.

Others felt the demand for no bride price was actually rising because bride prices have been a way of cheapening the worth of the lady: how can you put a price tag on a human being? A third group felt the growing trend of ‘no’ bride price was a response to the economic difficulties facing young men. In that case, culture is responding to the economy.

I strongly support the dynamic definition of culture suggested by the third group. Culture is not fossilised. I think also that many young ladies today find it hard to get a young man whom they love and count to be a ‘husband material’. When they get one, they will fight tooth and nail to ensure that only few cultural huddles are placed in the way of their wedding. Many of such ladies will kick hard if the family do not quickly announce an affordable bride price—or no bride price at all. In such cases, saying ‘my daughter is not for sale’ may simply be a face-saving effort.

Is bride price payment becoming unpopular? It seems so. The reasons though may be many. Whatever the reason, Ter and his family are grateful to the Agedo family of Fuga, Edo State, Nigeria.

Bye to Holland

I have been here in the Netherlands three months and it is time to return home—home sweat home. I shut my eyes and decided what I want to remember about this beautiful little country and its people. Here is a short list:
Bicycles...bloemen(flowers)...canals...clogs...dogs...dikes...A great people!

Following is an expanded list, a dictionary of sorts:

• Beer means Heineken and Amstel—that’s all
• Bicycle means a Dutch national identity which must be triple-chained or else it is stolen! (The same way a bicycle was treated in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.) (You've heard of 'stolen identity'?)
• Coffee shops: These are places where ‘coffee’ is served rolled in paper and smoked! Coffeejuana. (See 'drugs' below)
• Dogs: These are full-blown citizens with national passports and citizen rights and political party! Dogs take their owners out for a walk. (See 'walkway' below)
• Drugs: Something you should see with your eyes tightly open and discuss with your mouth widely shut.
• Dutch bargain: Something expensively cheap. For example: ‘Rejoice: I saved two Euros comparing prices across 32 shops!’ Alle moet weg!
• Dutch language: A language that is easy to speak—just pretend to be suppressing a bad cough—Wageningen; vereniging
• Dutch national flag: A controversial piece of cloth: Did the French copy the Dutch or the Dutch copy the French?
• Dutch woman: Someone that’s ever smiling--Wonder why she’s called vrouw when she hardly frowns. Could it be because she sneezes very loud? Atchoooooo!
• Energy: Something you spend all your energy saving. For example, it’s better to be sick saving resources than to be warm spending them.
• Flowers (Bloemen): What your host spends three hours showing you and you can’t see it because it is yet to sprout!
• Space: Something small but enough for everyone—except now that Geert Wilders is fuming.
• Space: Something you must economise by writing several words as one: Oldenbarneveltweg!
• The Dutch: very friendly, so very friendly people
• Walkway: Dogs’ lavatory—watch out!
• ASC, Leiden: a great place of wonderful people...

I enjoyed my stay in Holland. I hope to be back someday.

Dutch National ‘Identity’: Bicycles!

Fietsen! At 18 months, the average Dutch child is already riding a bicycle (two-wheel) proudly and effortlessly. This continues for as long as she lives. It is part of the national heritage. The use of the bicycle (fiets) (plural fietsen) tells me that the Dutch are good at making a virtue of necessity. In old cities like Leiden, it is by bike that you can reach most places.

But fietsen to the Dutch are more than a means of individual transport: a bicycle is a mass transit device also. A woman can carry three kids on one bicycle (picture below); a lover and his girlfriend joyfully share a bicycle. A rich family has bicycles for everyone—you need to see the graceful convoy on their way to a park or church! Well, this one is truly amazing: in Amsterdam, there are bicycles for commercial transport—like Nigeria’s Okada or Kenya’s Boda-boda!

In Nigeria, bicycles are ridden by the poor (especially women in the South South and South East) and by the nonconformist—like my elderly friend, Pius Stephen Omole, a grand hippie. Yet, bicycles are cheaper and healthier for the environment. I enjoyed cycling around in Leiden. But you cannot try bicycling in Nigeria—you should not. There are no bicycle paths. To cycle, you must struggle on the same road with suicidal okada (motorcycle) riders, daredevil taxi drivers; ever-angry bus drivers and murderous truck (trailers) drivers. To that list of dangers you must add the spoilt brats of politicians and government contractors cruising around in dad’s four-wheel-drive jeeps. They too do not suffer fools on bicycles gladly.

When he was Minister for Transport, Mr Ojo Maduekwe, speaking for the government, told Nigerians: “Buy bicycles, all of you. Ride them and live long etc. etc”. To show that he meant it, he got a bicycle—costlier than the average Nigerian could afford. Surrounding himself with an ambulance, several security men and cameramen, he cycled for a few short metres in Abuja before he was knocked down by a bus driver. The ambulance rescued him. Which should have come first: decreeing that Nigerians should ride bicycles or providing safe bike paths for them? Anyway, that was the end of Maduekwe’s bicycle campaign in Nigeria. He has since moved on to other ideas which he peddles to keep his position in government as minister. Such ideas/acts include leading a team of ministers to Saudi to thank the King for tolerating the presence of our sick and invisible president, or arguing with the US over the precise content of the infernal diapers worn on Christmas by Abdul Muttalib—Nigerian-born al-Qaeda boy. Ah, may God save Nigeria. To the Dutch: long live fietsen! (And thanks Edith and Hans for lending me your bike.)

This Dutchman Sells Gods

I visited my friends, Daan Beekers and Thomas van der Molen in Amsterdam. Bristling with Dutch pride, Daan and Thomas tried to take me round Amsterdam and show me the beauty of their country Capital. We passed by the Queen’s palace which was under renovation: she was on holiday in Austria. We went to the roadside open market somewhere in central Amsterdam. Many things were on sale in the market. I was attracted by a man who sold gods and goddesses of other lands—especially Africa.

He has idols of deities from different parts of Africa and Asia (See pictures left and right) to your left. He has Buddha for sale. He allowed me to take his picture and those of the gods but he wasn’t willing to tell me how these things got to Europe or to his shop. He was busy attending to ‘customers’. The gods and goddesses looked starved: they have not received any sacrifices for ages. I could not help feeling this was travesty, and sacrilege. It brought to my mind the old allegations of shrine robbery repeatedly levelled against pioneer anthropologists, missionaries and colonialists.

Nigeria: what do you write?

I was asked by the Prince Claus Fund and the Mondriaan Foundation to give a 30-minute presentation on Nigeria: people, politics and culture. The talk comes up on February 3, 2010. For a long while, I was confused. What do you say about a country that you love so intensely but whose leaders let you down so much? How can you be fair about Nigeria without lying? The paradoxes of Nigeria became my heartache! A country so rich yet so poor; so big yet so small that Abacha kept her in his chest pockets for years... I was delighted when I later received a phone call from the organisers asking me to limit my presentation to Lagos. Ah! Lagos. Click here for the presentation and please leave your comments.

Thanks.

Leiden: Here are the keys but where is Peter?

‘... And I am back!’
I am in Leiden, an ancient small city in the Netherlands. I will be here for three months, a visiting research fellow at the Afrika-Studiecentrum, Universiteit Leiden. During the three months that I am out of Nigeria, I hope to blog regularly. Welcome to Leiden!

Leiden is truly an ancient city. It is said to have been a small cluster of huts during the Roman occupation about 150 AD. Then it was known as Leithon. About 1050 AD, it became “villa Leyden” and its fortifications were first built. Stone buildings were erected as from about 1450 AD—and some of these buildings are still standing. In fact, Pieterskerk (Peter’s Church) was built in 1473 and is still standing—an awesomely magnificent edifice. The people still treasure their old bicycles. In fact, it’s as if the older is the better among the Leidenaars.

What interests me most is the Leiden coat of arms. Yes, this little city has its own coat of arms complete with its own flag and public holidays. (The Nigerian government promised immediate arrest, detention and worse to anyone found with the old Biafran flag or currency!). The Leiden coat of arms is a red lion holding a rampart on which there are two crossed red keys. The books say the lion stands for strength and defiance—as demonstrated in the refusal of the people to surrender to Spanish siege in 1573-74 in spite of severe starvation. The siege was lifted—as the Spanish army left on October 3, 1574. These days, that day of relief is celebrated annually with utmost pomp in Leiden. The two crossed keys, the books say, symbolise the keys of Heaven handed over to Peter by Jesus Christ with the words, in Matthew 18:19, “I will give you the keys of heaven...”

Everywhere you turn in the city, you see the two crossed red keys: on the entrances of bars; on public dust bins etc. Peter’s keys are everywhere but where is Peter? Beyond the keys, there is nothing in the present to show that the Bible and Christianity were once so central in the Leidenaars’ scheme of things, so central that Peter’s keys became Leidernaars’ identity and symbol of faith and hope. The few Leidenaars I’ve talked with are proud to say that they have no religion. They are also happy to say that few subjects are taboo here, that same-sex marriage is okay and that they were raised by permissive parents etc. Not only this, my colleague tried all he could but was not able to find a church last Sunday: the maps suggest that there are only two churches in this city of about 120,000 residents. Pieterskerk is now more of a tourist centre, a museum than a worship centre. Well, many Leidenaars go in there once a year for the October 3 Thanksgiving.

How does one interpret this metamorphosis? Leidenaars are known for the pride they take in the history of Leiden and their unshaken commitment to preserving their cultural practices: about 20 museums that dot this little land, bicycles, flowers, gin and art works, all confirm this. Somehow, religion seems to have slipped away within the fingers of the custodians of Leiden culture. Cultural preservation is indeed a collective but subjective and selective process.

Or maybe it was that Christianity did not really take firm roots at Leiden in the first instance; not as much as it did in, say, equally ancient Oxford (UK) or even in the US. The Calvinists drove away the Catholics from Leiden in the summer of 1566 and replaced them with what and whom? And what of this old popular saying among the Dutch (Leidenaars inclusive): “God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands”. That saying isn’t heading in the same direction as ‘In God we trust’, is it? Leidenaars appear to have been very practical rather than religious—even in their far past. When the siege of 1574 was on, they printed emergency money and on the notes they wrote “Haec libertatis ergo” meaning “These, then liberty”. God had no place in it. Those words have been part of the Leiden coat of arms since after World War II. (Nigerians appear to be more religious than practical. Maybe the truth is in the combination: practical, socially relevant religion).

Tot zien!

A black Black Friday

Thursday, November 27, being the fourth Thursday of November, was Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It is a federal public holiday set aside to commemorate the safe arrival of migrating Europeans in what is now the United States. The first recorded Thanksgiving was held by 600 safe arrivals in Florida in 1565. The purpose was to give thanks to God for protecting the migrants from the perils of the sea and the poisoned darts of Native Indians. Today, Thanksgiving is a big holiday—probably bigger than Christmas or New Year. It’s one time of the year that the family reunites. But not many people remember that it is supposed to be a day for thanking God. I am afraid the day is associated more with eating traditional Thanksgiving food—roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and veggies, than with God and His providence. Worse still, like Christmas, Thanksgiving has received a bad dent from the gush of commercialization.

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The day following Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday. It is so called because that day, all retail outlets whose accounts may have been in the red lower prices and get more buyers thus moving the account from red to black. In ‘Black Friday’ is one rare use of the word ‘black’ that actually means something good! This commercial appendage to Thanksgiving is gradually overshadowing the main event. In the days leading to Thanksgiving, I heard more talk about Black Friday than about a people giving thanks or a God receiving thanks.

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I witnessed this year’s Black Friday in State College, Pennsylvania. My friend and I went to a store to shop for computers. We were warned to arrive early as the period of grace (sales) would be short and the people would be many. We got to the first store about 4.15 am. What we saw was incredible: there were over 120 people lined up in the frozen weather—it was 0oC or 32oF. We learnt that some people had been there since 10.00 pm of Thursday: they had spent over six hours in that chill! No wonder a lot of smoking had to go on! We moved to another less known store and within minutes even the queue there began to challenge a medium-size train. In some stores, there was real pandemonium. In fact, a news outlet reported that shoppers broke down the doors of a store when it was time to get in. Americans are an interesting people: they’d go through anything to save a few dollars when it comes to buying; but they’d blow all of that on what, to the Nigerian in me, is trivial—such as paying $100 to watch a game of football.
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But the Black Friday did actually turn black. In search of my daily dose of Nigerian news, I turned to the Nigerian Tribune online. Of the four news items on its front page, three were records of the needless deaths of scores of people in Nigeria: armed robbers killed several in Ibadan; three more children died from lethal teething drugs; a truck lost control and ran into a full market in Kogi State killing tens of people in the market. In frustration, I turned to the Nigerian Guardian, and Rueben Abati was there describing and lamenting the heartless torture and murder of scores of Akwa Ibom kids who were declared witches (winches) by some rabid pastors and senseless parents. My frustration welled to the brim so I turned to MSNBC online. ‘Enough of Nigeria!’ I screamed. But what did MSNBC offer me: “Wal-Mart worker dies after crowd rushes store” What? American shoppers trampled a sales clerk to death just to save a few bucks? I am done with the news. "Well. Let's see BBC online", I mustered some hope. But I got another stab: Poll riots erupt in Nigerian city BBC declared. Riots in Jos over elections claimed the lives of at least 20 people gruesomely matcheted or burnt to death. "No more!" I resolved. It was indeed a black Black Friday.

Halloween & Egungun: norm-suspension or ancestral worship?

Friday, October 31, was Halloween (or Hallowed Evening). Originally, Halloween was a pagan festival in Europe meant to welcome and placate spirits and ghosts who, it was believed, paid homecoming visits to the earth on November 1 each year. But Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV tried to Christianize Halloween and made November 1 the All Saints’ Day, and Halloween became All Saints’ eve. That was about the 9^th century. But today, Halloween has little, if any, connection with the church. Rather, it is celebrated in queer ways characterized by the suspension of significant aspects of social norms and control. In fact, a church organised what it named a Christ-Centred Alternative to Halloween to keep members from participating in the pagan fun.

In State College, US, where I witnessed this year’s Halloween, Halloween symbols such as pumpkin and effigies of ghosts and spirits had been on display in schools, shops and private driveways two months before Halloween. I took the picture above from a charter primary/kindergarten school along Science Park Road. Yellow-and-black Halloween candies had been on sale for over two months. A neighbor displayed seven human skulls (not real) in front of his house. There was a general air of an approaching big festival everywhere. The day before Halloween, folks in strange costumes were in many places—they couldn’t wait for Halloween to come. I met a young lady in a supermarket clad in black attires with a two-foot hat. When asked, she proudly announced she was a witch dressed for a Halloween party.

On the Halloween day, schools ran half-day, and held parties. I met a "real" witch in another shopping mall. (See the picture to your left and the next picture). When asked if I could take her picture, she quickly reached for her witch broomstick and posed witchfully for the shot. Staff of a Department at the Penn State University agreed to celebrate this year’s Halloween by dressing, not as spirits, but as workmen—with helmets, boots, workman jeans and calloused gloves to match.

Halloween is a suspension of whatever made you your social you. In the evening, children dressed in Halloween costumes (ghosts, skeletons and the indescribable) went from house to house demanding candies—and people quickly gave them. They threatened a trick—if you refused to give the candies, and a treat—if you gave. These kids are called trick-or-treaters. And children from neighbors who don’t as much as exchange a glance on normal days knock on neighbor’s doors to demand for candies on Halloween. Talk of suspension of the social norms that inhibit us. (I saw a six-footer among the trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood though!)

For a minute I imagined Halloween in Nigeria. And why not? I used to carry, that is bear or wear, our family Egungun masquerade during Egungun festivals. And, though I was in high school, each time I wore the Egungun, even my father prostrated to salute me. I was no longer me; I was his great ancestor who had counted little him worthy of an ancestral visit. (To your right is the picture of a Yoruba Egungun). And my father, my uncles and aunts and our extended family never took that for granted. Flanked by smaller Egunguns, I demanded anything: chicken, pounded yam and gin, and my dad and the entire extended family quickly offered it--to the ancestors of course. Again, it was a momentary suspension of whatever made you your social you. If I knew candies, the youthful 'ancestor' most certainly would have demanded it.

Well, of course, Egungun is denigrated as a fetish ancestral worship. But there is a question. Last year December on a trip from New Malden to London, my friend and I had just passed by a burial ground and lots of folks were there laying wreaths on grave sites of their beloved long-departed. “Isn’t that ancestral worship?” I asked my British friend. “Oh, no. They’re just honoring their dead relatives”. If it were in Africa, it was ancestral worship; in Europe and America, it is fun or “just honoring” the departed and placating them with candies and flowers. Sometimes, it is too obvious that the only way to justifiably hang a dog is to call it a bad name. I think both Halloween and Egungun are, among other things, moments that we, almost justifiably, suspend the norms and our social ego—ironically still within the accepted boundaries of culture—and be who we wish to be but cannot always be.