OjuOponIfa

The road claimed a master of the stage. The shock of the violent death of my teacher, Femi Fatoba has become a deep wound on my heart... an endless stream of tears in my subconsciousness. It is harder to express it in words. Not because Fatoba, like every human, will not die but simply because he had to die the most undeserving death -- Road accident. And so the Road stole the dream in the broad daylight. I am still weeping in my the deep. Below is a tribute write up by MR SHAIBU HUSSEINI. So Long... Agbari Ojukwu So Long... Agbari Ojukwu (As appeared in The Guardiian December 28, 2008) IT was difficult for the popular Nollywood actor Segun Aina Padonu ( Segun Arinze) to speak on the renowned actor, celebrated poet and playwright, Dr. Femi Fatoba in the past. ‘Uncle Femi can’t be dead,’ he exclaimed repeatedly as this writer tried to get his reaction as soon as news filtered in that the Ekiti-born theatre don, who until his untimely demise after a road accident last Saturday on the Ea...

In the ambience of the Azania Speaks conference that held November 17-19, the tall, gangling fellow with glasses firmly planted on his Hollywoodite face looked like just another character on the campus of the University of Udine; perhaps a student or a teacher in the school that was playing host to the conference on Spoken Word and Oral Literature in post-colonial Africa. However, many of the participants who could or must have given him such an inaccurate identity, had already encountered his work without putting the lean frame behind such a monumental piece. No one could have walked through the passage of the campus at Sala Conveni di Palazzo Antonini via Petracco 8 in the heart of Udine into the hall where the talking sessions held without encountering the work of Alfredo Bini. It was a video cum slide show installation mounted in the passage, and which welcomed everyone to the arena of the conference. Frame after frame of deeply affective images streamed out of the TV screens sig...

• *Caught blackberrying... shuuuuooo

(As published in the LIFE magazine of The Guardian of Sunday, December 7, 2008) Azania Speaks, a conference on Spoken Word and Oral Literature in contemporary African literary discourse held between November 17 and 19, 2008 in Udine in the Northeastern part of Italy. With the sub theme Visions of Patnership in Africa: The Art of the Spoken Word, the conference focused much of its deliberations on the power of oral poetry and storytelling; female voices in contemporary African oral poetry and contemporary African poetic production in connection to ancient African oral traditions. It was organised by the Faculty of Modern Languages of the University of Udine, under the leadership of the Dean, Prof Antonella Riem Natale as convener, backed by Dr Maria Bortoluzzi. The Doctoral research fellow, Raphael D’Abdon was coordinator of the conference with support of Laura Pecoraro and Piergiorgio Tresvan. Music was coordinated by the South African poet, Natalie Moletbasi while Tiziana Pers over...

DAY 1 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2008 7am: Exhibition already set up 9am : Formal Opening of CHILDREN FESTIVAL VISUAL REPRESENTATION FROM ‘THINGS FALL APART’ :Exhibition and comic Workshop. 10am : “My Encounter with the Book” by Funmi Iyanda 11am: “Green Graffiti” Workshop – Karo Akpokiere & Chukwuma Ngene “Green Tales” Workshop – Obari Gomba & Adeleke Adeyemi Theme: “Lagos on My Mind”- [Organized by LC3 in collaboration with CATE/CORA]. 11.30am: The Festival Tour (where kids and their teachers are taken round the grounds of the Fair). Children on duty at the festival last year 12 noon: YOUTH ON LITERACY Theme: WHAT DO THE YOUTH DESIRE TO READ (Panel Discussion on “Youth, Creativity and Development”) with established artists and active young people such as: •Mrs Nike Davies-Okundaye: (Director, Nike Centre for Arts and Culture) •Dr. Hope Eghagha: (Lecturer, Dept. of English, Unilag) •Odion Ogogo: (Director, Heritage Ceramics) •Tunde Abod...

Theme: Literacy and the Global Knowledge Society DATE: NOVEMBER 7-9, 2008 Key Literary Events Panel Discussions . Dialogues . Conversations . Arthouse Parties Details on www.lagosbookartfestival.com Physical; CORASECRETARIAT, 95 Bode Thomas Street, Suruletre, Lagos Contact; Toyin 08057622415; Jummai: 08023683651 Marketing Consultant: INSPIRO PRODUCTIONS c/o AYOOLA SADARE 08023044806; inspiro77@yahoo.co.uk Knowledge capacity of the people of Africa Preparations for the 10 th Lagos Book & Art Festival, scheduled for November 7 – 9, 2008 , began on the last day of the 9 th outing. The key goal of this edition, which is slated to hold in the spacious Exhibition Hall of Nigeria's National Theatre, right in the heart of the city, remains two fold: (1) To help improve the African human capacity through encounters with The Book and (2) to provide a site for the most informed, robust debates on the literature of the continent. In pursuit of the second objective for this edition we hav...

WORDSLAM Words are for the sage Of old but now on page We publish its message. WOW! Fantastic, Fabulous, Mindblowing... were some of the adjectives deployed by members of the distinguished audience of the old and the young -- that congregated satrurday July 5 in the Goethe Institut garden in Victoria Island-- to capture their impression of the proceedings at the first edition of the newly-birthed WORDSLAM. Under the misting cloud, they sat stubbornly and stuck with the artistes, defying the troublesome rains that kept disorganising the technical set-up (and eventually annihilated opportunity for a technical rehersal for the eventl) to flow with the flow of melody and rhythm of the poetic performances dished out by 10 specially selected artistes; and a score of unbilled budding and aspiring poets that featured in the programme. It was such a splendid evening of celebrating the essence of the WORD in the life of man; particularly, the very essentials of WORD expressed in poetic colours t...

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Contemplating Sudan, praying for Ochalla and Kwoto Every time i think of the tragic song that Sudan has become, my mind goes to my dear friend, Stephen Ochalla, artistic director of Kwoto Dance Institut in Khartoum, who to escape the ethnic cleansing going on at home against the 'black' Sudanese had decided to spend time learning and teaching dance in Amsterdam. A deep ideologue, Ochalla and his institut had been active on the political stage, using his theatre to mount campaign against the decimation of Sudanese of his hue by an obvious 'arabite' political elite led by soon-to-be-fugitivised President Omar. When the scene was becoming too volatile and discomforting for his kind of activism -- recall what happened to Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and his theatre comrades in Kenya of the Jomo Kenyatta and later Arap Moi time -- Stephen Ochalla was lucky to be helped out by the Dutch government through The Netherlands embassy in Khartoum to go cool off in a...

Perhaps, it was that short conversation last week between Biyi Bandele and myself in the thick of the First Lagos International Jazz Festival that has brought me to this conundrum. Otherwise, why would I all of a sudden be filled with the thought of the late Hubert Adedeji Ogunde, 18 years after his passage to higher service on April 4, 1990. Last Sunday after a soak in the classic jazz menu flowing from the guitar-riddled jazz ensemble led by Bright Gain, I had strolled over to the corner where Makin Soyinka, Lemmy ‘Radio’, Jide Bello and Biyi Bandele were reveling. I hadn’t noticed Biyi minutes earlier when I saw the group trooped to the venue of the Inspiro-organised jazz fiesta at Studio 868 on Aboyade Cole Street, VI, Lagos. It must have been the missing dreadlocks, of course. Okay, I had been hinted earlier on Mama Pako’s blogsite that Biyi had indeed jettisoned the locks for a skin-scraped look – in protestation against certain iniquities in world affairs… it must be the tibeti...