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Where is Mama Nigeria?
Where is Mama Nigeria? Is the nation motherless? Where is the Helen Sirleaf Johnson of Nigeria?…
My art class before the Coronavirus.
My art class before the Coronavirus.
I dreamed about it last night–I was teaching, and there was this really brilliant student who did everything perfectly.
As I went to take a closer look at her work, I woke up.
What really happened was that I had fallen asleep with my music playing. And what really woke me up was Peter Tosh, singing,
Ajé
I just completed this painting
as a tribute to
The Birth of a Beautiful Divinity, Ajé
Ajé (The Divinity of Profit, Prosperity and Wealth)
Acrylic on canvas
HOMESICK
In 2001, homesick, I returned to Nigeria after staying away for nine years in the US.
My destination was Ife, and I lodged in a hotel in Lagos for the first week. I used the hotel rental car, with a hired driver, to run errands. One day, the rental car driver who drove me around Lagos, said “Prof, why not just buy a car instead of spending all your money on car hires? Don’t you plan to stay in Nigeria for a couple of months? It’s best for you to get a fairly used car.”
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (PART Twenty-four)
Rufus could tell something was wrong when he opened the door and saw me. All he needed to do was to take one look into my eyes and he could read me like a book. First, I had been gone all day. All I went do was to drop off Josephine and Gina. He expected that I would be back within an hour, maybe two maximum. The hospital was not that far, maybe fifteen minutes. I left before 8 am, and it was 6 pm when I came back.
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY,1981 (Part Nineteen)
I had never seen Papa Ru in such a subdued mood. Nothing could have slugged him harder than the thought of Kongi maltreating him. He used to boast that it was because of Kongi that he returned to Nigeria from Britain.
Kongi had attended an event that Rufus produced for the BBC in London in 1979. And after the event, Rufus said, “Kongi met me backstage and asked, ‘Young man, what are you doing here, with all this talent that you have? You need to return to Nigeria immediately and contribute to the development of your country.’”
