1st July, 2016
On Wednesday June 15 2016, prior to the commencement of the 70th birthday lecture titled, “Femi Osofisan and the Fascinating Journey along Many Paths”, delivered by Professor Olu Obafemi, Osofisan agreed to speak to Gbenro Adesina, the Ibadan Correspondent of TheNEWS.
In the sitting room was Professor Osofisan’s wife, Adenike, also a professor of Computer Science in simple clothes, surrounded by family members. I could see countless awards pinned on two boards in the sitting room. When Osofisan emerged from his living room beaming with a smile, he instantly ushered me into the balcony where he also keeps some of his awards from different organizations here and abroad. He then called for a piece of cake in a plate and red wine over which the interview was conducted for about an hour.
Q: How do you feel being 70?
A: I feel the same as I felt before being 70. There is no difference. It is just that I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of good wishes. Several people came to celebrate with me at 70. It was really, really a great time.
Q: How do you feel when Biodun Jeyifo and your other friends at every slightest opportunity tell you that they are your seniors as they were 70 before you, demanding for respect from you?
A: Don’t mind them, they are rascals. I am used to their harassment.
Q: During the ceremony which of the comments touched you the most?
A: It is difficult to say. I am touched by all of them. They are all kind.
Q: What is the uniqueness of 70th birthday to you?
A: It is just the way of our culture here to celebrate age. You will see that there are big differences in attaining 40, 50, 60 or 70 years and so on. Every ten years that one survives, it is a miracle, particularly in our society. There are enormous difficulties in our society: illnesses, depression, frustration, poverty, irrational violence, political betrayals, you name it, each sufficient to terminate your life at any moment. So, anybody at all who makes it to 50 nowadays, is extremely lucky, particularly me. I never expected to be this lucky. I call it a miracle.
Q: How do you mean?
A: People in my family, especially the male, don’t last long. My father died 70 years ago. He died at thirty something. I didn’t know him; I was only three months old. And then his only brother too died young. So, I thought, it’s natural to die young in my family.
Q: What about your mother?
A: My mum lived long, though you could say, not long enough. She had two sons for my father. I never enjoyed fatherly care. I don’t even know what it means to have a biological father. My mother was too poor to take care of us, so we were farmed out to relatives here and there. It was the benevolence of relatives that accepted us that helped us to survive, at least in the early years.
Q: So how did you manage to get to where you are today?
A: Luck and hard work. The funny thing about life is that those who have everything are the ones who don’t work hard. Since they have everything, they have no incentive to work hard. It is those that don’t have anything that always work hard. If you don’t have anything, you will depend on what you can do with your own hands. So, for me, good luck with the benevolence of God helped me this far.
Q: While growing up, who were those that really played significant, unforgettable roles in your life?
A: Those who brought me up: my stepfather, my aunty and her husband, though, things later got sour on that side, and quite a number of people who helped me all along when I needed them.
Q: What lessons did you take home from your birthday anniversary?
A: I am frankly not thinking of any lessons now but simply savouring the joy of having so many people at my birthday anniversary. The turnout of people means that one is considered significant in one way or the other. Kindness and compassion from people have brought me a long way and I believe this kindness is something that must be returned.
Q: Why haven’t you joined the likes of Wole Soyinka, Biodun Jeyifo, Niyi Osundare and the rest abroad for greener pasture?
A: With Soyinka, it is a bit different from the others you mentioned. All of them went abroad for different reasons. Soyinka went abroad because he was to be killed for his unceasing opposition to the military regime. Remember, he was eventually sentenced to death by General Sani Abacha. So, he had to go. Jeyifo and Osundare had left earlier because of family problems. But I didn’t have any pressing reason to go, so, I didn’t go.
There is no doubt that when those people left the country, things were tough for the university system. Things were going down terribly. Morale was low, so, many left for more lucrative jobs. Others left because of persecution. They were fleeing from the military government. Those who left for job satisfaction felt they could not find the tools and resources they needed here to succeed in their chosen careers. People were losing confidence in themselves and becoming disillusioned. For me, I reacted differently. I just felt that if the military were trying to destroy education, then some of us should stay around to make sure they didn’t succeed.
Q: Was your decision not too risky for you?
A: It was. But we had to survive by all means. I am sure you were alive then and you know how risky it was but we had to devise all kinds of means to survive. We did and I am glad we did.
Q: Are you saying that it never occurred to you at any point in time to leave?
A: It did, many times because of the children. They were getting letters from their friends whose parents had left, asking them why their dad was still staying in Nigeria while other children were enjoying themselves abroad with their parents. They were under a lot of pressure, and it did occur to me to leave too because of them. It is only that I decided that I wasn’t going to go and my wife fortunately bought into that. Also, I felt that I should raise the kids to a certain level, to maturity, to give them firm roots here. That was it, though, it wasn’t easy at all. But I must tell you that I feel happier that they finished their secondary schools and universities before they decided to move. Education is not just what you get in the classroom. It is the combination of what you get in the classroom, from the home, and the cultural environment. The kind of education you get gives you self-identity. As you grow up in this country, you have a notion of who you are, and where your roots are. The experience we had abroad in our time imprinted it on us that it is terrible for young children to be sent abroad at a very early age, when they have not developed any kind of self-knowledge or self-defence. They don’t know who they are and they are going into a culture that discriminates against black people and they have nothing to defend themselves against that. That’s why we lament about those Yoruba parents who will not allow their children to speak Yoruba. In Lagos, in the cities of the south-west now, it’s the ‘sophisticated’ practice. And the children grow up more or less like aliens, unable to speak their mother tongue, and not even speaking good English either! We strongly advocate that parents should speak Yoruba to their children and allow their children to speak Yoruba as best as possible, because at that age, children can master five to six languages easily. But being Yoruba, and being able to speak it fluently, strengthens their sense of identity and their ability to stand and compete with others anywhere in the world.
Q: Some parents feel that exposing their children to Yoruba or other local languages will reduce their competence in English?
A: It is a wrong fear. It is absolutely wrong. At that age, they can speak many languages perfectly. Your children will be competent in all the languages you expose them to at the early stage. I think those that have refused their children to speak their languages will regret it in future. Those children will later realize that they lack something and accuse their parents. In the west out there now, some of our people are already sending their children to learn Yoruba to make up for their own parental lapses.
Q: What informed your studying French?
A: I was going to study Engineering. You know, I went to Government College, Ibadan, which is reputed for science subjects. We had the good laboratories, and very good teachers. But it just happened that our Principal at that time, Mr. D. J. Bullock, who is now dead, was highly interested in drama, and I was an all-round student. So when we were choosing our final options, he called me and said that, instead of all of us going to the sciences, could I not consider the arts? He said he was worried about who would replace people like him for instance after they would have left? So, I said okay, I would give it a shot. But I didn’t go for English because to me it was becoming somewhat common. Many students in the arts went to read English and I decided to do something different. That’s how I decided to go for French, since I had a distinction also in it.
Q: Is Professor Ayo Banjo correct that you were influenced by your “pretty” French teacher to read French?
A: That was of course a joke; he was pulling my leg. Yes, our French teacher was very attractive, but how old were we at the time? Well, if you insist. She was really beautiful and her classes were interesting. But as I said, that could not have influenced our career so decisively at that point in life. Certainly we could not have even dreamt of competing with our teachers, especially handsome bachelors like the then dashing Mr Banjo!
Q: With a PhD in French why are you writing in English?
A: Why not? French, English, Yoruba, or Igbo, these are just languages. You can use any of them as you wish. There are people who studied Physics and write in English, not so? It’s just that I started with English and then came to realize that you have to concentrate on one and master it. You see, languages are not the same and the structures are not the same. It doesn’t mean that I don’t write in French of course, just as I also write in Yoruba. But I am most at ease with English, perhaps unfortunately.
Q: You were a student activist in France and you were arrested for one thing or the other. Can you shed light on your experience as a student activist?
A: Those were years of student movements all over the world. And for me, it all started in fact while I was in Dakar in 1968. I wasn’t the student leader. No. I was just part of it. It was a hot and memorable period in Dakar for the Senegalese people and the government. I was arrested with others, jailed in a military camp, and later expelled by President Senghor. Then two years later I got to France, and it was the same thing, perhaps more violent. We students were trying to fight for a better world. It was a period of glorious idealism. Well, eventually, most of the radicals came to power, after lots of agitations, rallies, mass movements, imprisonments, suffering. There was betrayal, disillusionment, yes. But still I was glad to have been involved in all of that.
Q: Comparing students’ activism then and now, what do you have to say?
A: The age of innocence is obviously over. Tragically. That glowing period has died. But it’s not just with the students but with all political movements all over entire world. When you look around, the total picture is depressing. Where are all those stirring dreams, the inspiring, larger-than-life leaders? When you look at the kind of leaders we have now, which one of them can you trust? They have become sinister, dishonest and manipulating sadists. Generally, as I see it, activism all over the place, not only students’ activism, has taken a perverse dimension. With the triumph of the capitalist life that American has imposed on us, in this age of materialism, of everybody for himself alone, all the old ideals of humanism, of communal benevolence, are gone. Don’t get me wrong, Capitalism can be productive and destructive, I admit. But it can be very destructive of what you and I consider humane values. Money is the reigning god for the students as for all of us. It’s no longer the same world that we knew.
Q: Banjo said that the key lecturer at the conference organized for your birthday described you as an idealist and that some of the things you pursue in life: justice, equity, fairness etc are utopia. What do you have to say to this?
A: It seems he is right. I confess to having been one of the artists in search of Utopia.
Q: Your works are full of ills of the society. Are you bitter?
A: No, I am not. If I am bitter, I will be completely paralysed. I will not be able to do anything at all. I am not happy at all with what I see around, but bitter is not the word I will use to describe it. Or otherwise one would lose hope.
Q: You are still hopeful?
A: Yes. I, all of us, have to be hopeful. We have no choice. Hope is the only thing that can sustain us, and make us struggle on. It is difficult of course. Unlike before, I now realize that hope is not something that is always there. No, it is something that you have to fight for, to will into being. But whether we like it or not, we have to keep hope alight.
Q: Some people are fighting for it in different ways. The AVENGERS in Niger Delta, and those who are distributing letters to all the foreign embassies calling for restructuring of Nigeria, is that the kind of fight you mean?
A: Please understand that people will always fight. There is no time that people will ever be silent like the corpses in the morgue. People will always fight for different things. So let’s not let that discourage us. What is obvious however is that the Nigerian state is still highly unstable. So, people will seek all kind of solutions, particularly if they feel marginalised, and cheated. If we want to stay together therefore, we should negotiate our rules of engagement. We need to look at ourselves and ask honestly what does each of us want? What do you want? What do I want? Unfortunately, we didn’t do that because we were just created by the British. And we have not had the kind of leadership to create the right atmosphere for us to live together as brothers and sisters, in such a way that all of us will have a sense of belonging in the nation. All of us just assumed that there was a country already when it is something still to be created. So, unfortunately, ever since the creation, we have never bothered to do genuine assessment, to ask who is satisfied and who is not, and ensure that everybody is fairly and equitably represented.
Q: What is the solution?
A: The solution , to me, does not lie either in the creation of more states or the collapsing of some of them together as many people are currently shouting. Rather the great problem is having the right people in power. Even if you create more states or whatever and there are wrong people at the helms of power, nothing positive will happen. First of all, we need to agree if we want to stay together? If so, if we want to stay together, on what terms and conditions? How will everybody be satisfied? We need to negotiate this. For me, it is not just the question of restructuring. That may seem the easiest solution, the most obvious. But it’s certainly not the wisest. It’s no guarantee that we will not even generate more tension. For instance the Yoruba states are the most homogeneous now. If we say we want to form Oduduwa state, can we imagine living together in harmony? Can we imagine Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ogun states coming together as before, under one political administration? It is no longer feasible obviously, because so many things have changed. So the solution is not in the creation of nations out of Nigeria but rather, in creating an environment and regulations whereby everybody will have a sense of belonging and satisfaction, where justice will be ensured wherever you may be, where you will get meaningful employment, where your children can grow up happily, and so on. Create a kind of welfare system where everybody will have access irrespective of where you come from to life and liberty, to fulfilment and adequate reward for work, and the problems we have will be more than half solved.
Q: Why is it so difficult for us to sit down and talk about all these things you have mentioned?
A: Because our people are more interested in how to share the national cake than how to bake it. Many individuals as you can see only want to take their own part of the oil revenue. No, not even their own share, but as much as they can appropriate for themselves as possible. Rather than sitting down and looking for the best way to live together in harmony, all we are interested in is how to have Ijebu country, Abakaliki country, Sambisa country, or Niger Delta country, some country located in his or her backyard. We yearn for enlightened leadership, but almost every time, what we have are the wrong people in power, those who only wish to negotiate to fill their own bellies alone.
Q: How can we start that process to have a better Nigeria?
A: I don’t have a solution yet to that, I must confess. But I don’t think the solution will come from one person. It will come from many heads thinking together, searching sincerely for a solution. We have had a number of conferences, but we are still stuck in a muddle mainly because, so far, our intentions have been dubious. Hence we have only succeeded in sending selfish politicians who are in the main guided by their individual interests as delegates to discuss the nation’s problem. They can’t give us any useful result.
Q: The followers too are not pushy enough.
A: Followers are not given a voice at all in Nigeria. Many of them don’t really know what is going on. Ignorance is rampant as you know, the lack of proper education. That is why I believe our people need good leadership to be able to articulate the right things for this nation.
Q: In the play, Midnight Hotel, you allow the woman to go unpunished for her unfaithfulness. What does that say of our country?
A: Who will catch her? How many people in Nigeria really pay for their wrongs? Until we had this current government which has shown interest in holding people accountable for their deeds, tell me, among the looters of Nigeria, who genuinely got punished for their crimes? Crimes are committed with impunity. People get away with their sins. And my aim then is just to show the audience what is going on in our society, to expose it exactly as it is, and see if they will be alarmed or disgusted enough to wish to do something about it; not to polish it up by masking the truth.
Q: How do you cope with the numerous activities: teaching, writing books, writing for the media and other things?
A: It is a kind of commitment. But I have not written for newspapers for some time now. I stopped my column after it had run for some two decades or more. I thought I needed to give myself and my audience a break. But really the stress can be minimized if you’re organized. You can do almost anything you want to do, if you’re determined. There are some ideas that can be best expressed through plays, some, newspapers will do, or you use poems to express yourself. That is it. It is just what you want to do. Some people will prefer watching football for instance while others will prefer going to the club, or other things. For me, I choose to write virtually whenever I can.
Q: What is your source of inspiration for writing?
A: It’s our society. There is no shortage of materials if you are writing about our society because there is always a crisis in our society. My writing is always in response to something happening in the society. There is always something to write about every day, every week, every month for there is always a crisis here. And if there is a week without a crisis, that will be a crisis itself. People will be so worried that why is it that there is no crisis. So the situation in the society is the inspiration. A hundred times daily, a thousand times, we will still be arguing what is the best way to run Nigeria. Since independence, we have been arguing about the Nigeria project and we will continue to argue about it and Nigeria will go on.
Q: You have been a socialist and leftist. What has changed about your perspectives?
A: First, I hate labels. I share certain views which are of the left but I am not a doctrinal person at all. I share the view that the present society is bad, because unjust, and that only few people are benefiting from the society. That is where I started, and where I have remained. That we can correct things by ourselves and we don’t need to wait for a deity or God to come and do it for us. If Nigeria will be better, if all the necessary corrections will be effected, we will be the ones to effect the changes ourselves. It is not a question of going on our knees. It is a question of determining to correct all our societal ills and taking action together. Consciously changing the world, through concrete action. Perhaps this is the view that gets me labelled as this or that.
Q: What would you have done differently?
A: It is very difficult to say in a quick summary. I have lived my life the way it has come to me. I don’t know what I would have done differently. Sometimes you offend some people who needed to be offended and you say maybe you shouldn’t have. But I have been candid to myself. I have been candid with the talents I have. I don’t think I have any special regret to say I would have done something differently.
Q: Which one is your favourite among the books you have written?
A: My answer to that is simple—my favourite book is the one I am writing at the moment! You see, all the books I have written are like my children, and were written at specific moments in answer to specific pressures. I felt that it was the best way to present them at the time I wrote them. So they are all my favourites.
Q: How many books do you think you will be able to write in the next twenty years?
A: Ah, how do I know? This is mere star-gazing! But I will write as many as I am capable of. I didn’t set out when I started with the aim that these are the number of books I will write, except that last year, when I saw that I had published sixty eight titles, I decided that by the time I am celebrating my 70th, I should have 70 books. So, I have published 70 books as at today. There are some works of course that have not been published. In the same way then, I may decide that when I am going to be eighty, I should have eighty books! Or even more, if God grants me the grace. There are dry moments when you can’t write at all, when you experience what is called the writer’s block. I have been in that state since last January. I have not really been able to write. Before, I used to target two plays per year. This year, I have not been able to write even one scenario.
Q: Why are you disturbed?
A: It is the writer’s block, as I said. I have not written anything new this year, not even a poem. But I don’t allow it to worry me so it doesn’t develop to unmanageable anxiety.
Q: Is your writing skill acquired or a talent?
A: Both. Talent is ten percent of the work. Sometimes less. The rest is perspiration, the skill you acquire through training and practice…and luck!
Q: How qualitative is Nigerian education of today. Some scholars believe that it is only the first generation universities that can offer qualitative education. Do you share this believe?
A: My answer is mixed. Do we have quality education? My answer is yes and no, depending on department to department, teacher to teacher. We still have some good education going on. If you are talking about university, the problem starts before university. What comes to the university? What comes from the primary and secondary schools before it gets to the university? I am talking about the students, not money. In primary school, teachers are badly paid, or they are not paid at all. Same in the secondary school, with poor learning facilities and dilapidated classrooms. By the time the products come into the university, they are already damaged goods. That is why we are doing post JAMB. Though, we still have some good students but universities themselves are damaged universities. First of all, the manner of recruitment is so flawed. In the past, the best students will be retained for postgraduate, now the best student will be the first to go to private businesses, to the industries. We have a problem with that. Then, we have had an exodus of our best brains for several years. We lost them mainly to the west. In that process, since there will not be vacuum, mediocre talents were recruited into the system. Mediocrity unfortunately reproduces itself. So, we have that serious problem now, the acute shortage of qualified staff. Secondly, the universities are affected by the irrational policies of the government, such as the creation by fiat of additional universities just for political reasons, without first asking where the teachers will come from or where to find the resources to manage them effectively. Don’t forget that we have not even managed the existing ones well. So some lecturers who are not worthy of the profession are now professors! Of course they can only teach what they know, which is ignorance or fraudulence. Because they teach only what they know, the students also get only what they teach. So, although there are some brilliant students that will come out fine, the vast majority is damaged goods. Islands of genius here and there, but generally, the standard of education in Nigeria is not very high.
Q: Do you believe in private universities?
A: There is no direct response to that. I mean, who for instance are the teachers in private universities? Many of the proprietors have not been to universities themselves. So, barring the odd ones among them, what standards will they give? Some private universities are good but what is the number of these good ones? Most are owned by proprietors who see it as just another avenue to made money, or church groups that just feel that if that rival church has a university, we too must have our own. The competition then leads to some funny situations. For instance you hear that some proprietors will say that ah, these students are paying so high and so they must pass at all costs! That you can’t fail them because their parents don’t expect them to fail after doling out so much! Or that such number of students must have first class to attract people to the university! Such stories!
Q: Do you subscribe to increasing school fees in the government universities?
A: It’s not just whether fees must be increased or not. The issue is that the university must run properly, at least not below a certain standard, and the money for that must come from somewhere. So far, the money has been coming from the government. But if the government says it is broke and the money paid can’t run the system, what can we do? Let us say the university needs N100, 000 to run properly and the government says that it has only N30, 000, what happens? If you don’t want standards to decline, where would the remaining come from? It has to come from the parents or somewhere else. That is the problem. The money we need to function is no longer there. There has been such unbelievable looting and profligacy by our past governments, as the court trials are now revealing; then there has been a drastic fall in oil prices; and even that revenue is besieged by the so-called Avengers bombing the oil installations. The truth is just that the government alone can no longer provide for the campuses. The parents must come in to the rescue. But when you ask them to pay, some parents will be angry and they will say it’s a betrayal, because we ourselves enjoyed free education, which is true of course. If there was no free education, I don’t know what I as a person would have become. But just as true is the fact that the money was there then, and is no longer there. So, as difficult as it is, we just have to be realistic with the current situation, and take the necessary decisions, however painful.
Q: Both the executive and legislature at the centre in Nigeria are proposing to make French a compulsory language without any consideration to local languages. What is your take on this?
A: I think they are just being ridiculous to propose such a policy. We need French of course because all the country surrounding us speak French. But to make it compulsory, is simply a course in overzealousness, if not even mischief. I don’t know where it originated from. How many of us need French? What of Chinese, after all China is a major world power. What makes Chinese language less important? Or German?Or Arabic?Swahili? How many languages of the world will you make compulsory?
Q: If you are to advise the government considering the situation of the country, what will you say?
A: Personally, I think the government is shooting itself in the foot because it is not managing information very well. If you have promised so and so on the premise that so and so are there and those things are no longer there, of course, you have to modify that promise. Maybe for political consideration, they are unable to come out and say this is the situation, this is all we have got, and so this is all we can do. If oil was sold at 120 dollars per barrel then and now, it is sold at less than 30 dollars, through no fault of yours, why not come out candidly and say so? Or where is the money going to come from? For instance, we can no longer maintain all these bureaucracies. Many of the states are clearly failed states. They can’t even pay their workers’ salaries. Why not restructure the state system then? It will take courage of course to do that, but I don’t know how reasonable it is for the nation to be going from one financial crisis to another, while our so-called legislators feel that they should maintain their high living and be buying expensive cars. So many things one does not understand about Nigeria.
Q: What is your advice to the students?
A: The youth are in crisis. They need advice and serious re-orientation. But to blame them is to evade the truth. They are only following the footsteps of their elders. They should however try to live by a different standard from these looters, and see what they can do to make life better for themselves through honesty and thrift, selflessness and compassion, virtues that seem nowadays to be outmoded, but which are still the most solid foundations for a truly happy and meaningful life.
END