INTERVIEW: Ourselves @ Work: Home Is Where The Hustle Is

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Chibundu Onuzo. Image: Facebook

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Lagos is a city of travelers, hoping to either find their luck or make it from scratch.

GREGORY WARNER, HOST:

You're listening to ROUGH TRANSLATION from NPR.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Every few years, I grow discontent with my staid, predictable life in London. I wonder if I should move back to Lagos, where all the action seems to be happening.

WARNER: This is from an essay called "Frontier Town" we encountered in the Travel Quarterly Strangers Guide. The writer, Chibundu Onuzo, thinks longingly of the city of her birth, Lagos in Nigeria. But she's also wary of who she might become if she left London and moved back home. We asked her to read this excerpt.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Reading) Lagos is the only place I know where the noun oppressor is used as a compliment. For most people, the change creeps up on you without you even noticing. The more successful you become in Lagos, the more deference you get. The more deference you get, the more likely you are to end up an oppressor unless you deliberately swim against the tide of cultural expectations. Would I become an oppressor if I moved to Lagos? I don't know. My instincts are egalitarian, but life is a lot easier in Lagos when people perceive you have money. The police talk to you with respect. You don't wait for hours in the bank. I notice this about myself when I'm in Lagos. I start caring more about my clothes, my shoes, what Lagosians would call my packaging.

WARNER: Lagos feels like home to her. But would Lagos change her? Would it chip away at the version of herself that she wanted to be? In the essay, Chibundu talks about one person from whom she might seek advice on this question - her older brother, Chinaza Onuzo, 10 years her senior.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: We met properly when I was a young adult, and he was taking his first steps into a career in private equity. By this time, I was in boarding school in England, and he had returned to Lagos to become a full-time hustler - or so it seemed to me.

WARNER: Her brother Chinaza's side hustle, as she calls it, is trying to transform the landscape of Nigerian cinema to make Nigerian films for export. He produced "The Wedding Party," which is one of the highest-grossing Nigerian films, and he's had films on Netflix and Amazon Prime. If anyone had some advice for her about the price of making it in Lagos, he might.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: In Lagos, everything is heightened. But can I live at that feverish pitch for longer than a three-week holiday? What does Chinaza think? I want to know.

WARNER: Chibundu is the author of three novels, the first of which won the Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She's also a frequent contributor to The Guardian and other outlets where she often writes about Nigeria. But there was much she did not know about her own brother's story - how exactly he'd risen up in Lagos and what he had to confront about himself.

CHINAZA ONUZO: Hey, Chibs. How are you?

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Chinaza, why's your camera not on?

CHINAZA ONUZO: 'Cause I can see your stack of books, and I was like, it's a very big stack of books.

WARNER: This is ROUGH TRANSLATION. I'm Gregory Warner. If you've ever thought to yourself that you need to be hustling more but worry that hustling might turn you into a hustler or something that you're not, that's exactly how Chibundu felt going into this conversation with her brother. Their conversation was so thoughtful and wide-ranging, we're going to play an extended excerpt of it here mixed in with Chibundu's own writings. And then we're going to check back in with Chibundu about how this conversation changed her. It's ourselves at work on ROUGH TRANSLATION, back after this break.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WARNER: We are back with ROUGH TRANSLATION. I'm Gregory Warner. Chibundu had lots of questions for her older brother about the person he had become in Lagos. But she started the conversation at the beginning. Who was he when he first left Nigeria at age 15?

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: So you moved to England when you were 15 to go to boarding school...

CHINAZA ONUZO: Yes.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: ...In Winchester. And what was that like?

CHINAZA ONUZO: When I was at Winchester, I was from Nigeria. So basically, I had a completely different experience than pretty much everybody else at school.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: And obviously, we know you - like, your siblings know you as Chinaza. But everybody in the industry and most of your friends now call you Naz. And if I - again, I might be making this up, but I feel like the name Naz came from Winchester College. Is this true?

CHINAZA ONUZO: So basically, there was this thing that they did when we were in Winchester where they used to give the Black kids nicknames of actors. It was weird. Don't ask me why. So they basically said, oh, we should call you, Will. And I'm like, no, I don't look anything like Will Smith. That's so random. And then they were like, oh, but we cannot pronounce your name. Chinaza is too difficult. I'm like, OK, fine. You can call me Naza. I'm like, Naza, that's weird. That's also hard. And I was like, fine, call me Naz. Like, literally - like the rapper? And then, like, yes, but with a Z. So that's literally how it stuck.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: OK. I'm just saying, your friends at your boarding school wanted to call you Will Smith because you are Black. But this is not - I think - and this is also, like, a generational thing. I'm, like, definitely a much younger millennial than you, so I'm shouting microaggression from the rooftops. But - OK.

CHINAZA ONUZO: So, I mean, I suppose it was...

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: But anyways, OK...

CHINAZA ONUZO: That's fair. That's fair. I will now re-examine my life. Oh, woe is me.

(LAUGHTER)

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: OK. Right. First, you've gone to one of the oldest boarding schools in the world. Then you go to Duke. Then you get your master's. Did you - was that another culture shock for you? Or had you sort of become acclimatized to this very privileged, very white sort of species by going to Winchester first?

CHINAZA ONUZO: Wow. Really?

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Yeah. Really.

CHINAZA ONUZO: Very privileged, very white - really?

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

CHINAZA ONUZO: OK. So - but that's the thing, though. So actually, let me put it differently. So one of the things that Winchester does is that it expects you to conquer the - like, conquer the world. Like, it basically says you are a member - so this is going to sound a certain way - but that you are a member of the elite.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Go on. Do it.

CHINAZA ONUZO: And so if you do the work, you can achieve anything you put your mind to, right? I then applied for jobs. It's not two or three interviews. It's 10, right? You name it. I interviewed - Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, et cetera, et cetera. But no - no offers, like, literally.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: My brother moved back to Nigeria after graduating with an economics degree from an American university and a master's from a British university. He knew what he had to offer. And if you failed to hire him, that was your loss, not his. This extreme confidence is typical of Lagosians.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Sometimes I find my own self-confidence eroded by living in London, where I am an ethnic minority. I need some of that Lagos mentality. A microaggression is somebody else's problem, not mine. I know who I am. I know what I'm capable of. If you don't recognize it, get out of here.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHINAZA ONUZO: So that is the - you know, they say it like, you always have a next goal. So the next goal for us over the next five to 10 years is to basically build out a global creator from Nigeria. So that's our goal, right? So like how the Koreans have done, the British have done, the Indians have done, we want to basically build global creators from Nigeria. It doesn't even have to be us. We just want to enable the creation of that.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: So this is also, like, my whole thing that I find fascinating about you because I didn't think, as an outsider, you would have been able to break into the Hollywood film industry or the film industry in the U.K. I can't think of many Black producers in the U.K. that would have a string of films or televisions. Like, you didn't go to film school. You don't know this person. You know - you don't know that person. Like, you just said, oh, I want to make films. So yeah, I guess it's two questions in one. How did you break into the Lagos film industry?

CHINAZA ONUZO: So one of the things about - in film industries in general, like, the more structured it is, the harder it is to break in, right? In general - because the barriers to entry are higher just by the nature of it. In the U.S. and U.K., it's like, oh, those entrepreneurs over there are special. But in Nigeria, everybody's an entrepreneur - you get what I mean? - because we believe that that is the culture. It's just that, like, Nigeria rewards entrepreneurship. But paradoxically, Nigeria also punishes failure a lot. The risk of success are high. The risk of failure are also high. So people are like, I cannot fail, and I must succeed.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: So part of the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you is, sporadically, every two or three years, I think, what life would be like if I moved back to Nigeria? Was there any incident that made you think, gosh, I wish I hadn't moved back to Nigeria?

CHINAZA ONUZO: No. Well, I mean - OK, I take that back. So when I moved back, the car that was available for me to drive was this old - so my uncle, Uncle Frank, lent me his old Maxima or something that's an old car. So we were coming home on Third Mainland Bridge, and there was a broken-down truck on the side of the road - no hazard lights, no caution, no nothing. He was just parked in the middle of the road. And then I saw it. And then I tried to change lanes. The bus next to me did not let me in. It literally was like, I'm not letting you overtake me.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: You will not overtake me. I'm going to win.

CHINAZA ONUZO: The bus sped up. So literally, there was - I was literally about to crash because the bus driver next to me was refusing to let me in. So literally, I had to speed up and swerve around it - missed it by inches, right? And so that was Nigerian culture in a nutshell. Maybe that was, like, two months after I was back in Nigeria.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: OK. Well, my question for you is, why didn't you slow down (laughter)?

CHINAZA ONUZO: No, because I couldn't slow...

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: You went into the head-to-head...

CHINAZA ONUZO: So I couldn't slow down.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Laughter).

CHINAZA ONUZO: No, no, no, no, no. So I was - because it wouldn't have worked because there were two - there was a car behind him. I wouldn't have been able to - like, in the split-second assessment, slowing down would have been worse.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: OK. It sounds like you'd acclimatized pretty well in those two months. You're like, we - I will speed up with you.

CHINAZA ONUZO: No, no.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: And I will risk my life, but I'm going to win.

CHINAZA ONUZO: No. I mean, I clearly looked at this knowing that option, I think. But, like, the decision was like, yes. So, I mean, there are few times where you almost got robbed, et cetera, like - but stuff like that. I mean, thankfully, I haven't been robbed in traffic. I mean, they've knocked on my window a couple of times, those types of things. I was at a bar when robbers were outside.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I guess this is the Wild West thing that sort of does make me apprehensive about moving back to somewhere like Lagos. Like, you're just saying casually in conversation, yeah, I was in a bar, and there were robbers outside. And yes, it's not that - yeah, but it's - I'm like, perhaps, I don't know if I'm ready to just accept that that would be just a part of the background.

In the Wild West, at least that of Hollywood's imagining, a man could walk into a saloon for a drink and end up shot dead by an outlaw. In Lagos, a person can drive to work one day and end up robbed in traffic at gunpoint. There's a certain badge of honor to almost dying and then carrying on as if nothing has happened. Lagosians don't just have a stiff upper lip. Their upper lips are made of concrete. But at what cost?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I feel, actually, we've had a couple of conversations where you've basically called me a slacker.

CHINAZA ONUZO: So...

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: You have.

CHINAZA ONUZO: So I wouldn't use the word slacker because I am not Ferris Bueller's dad. So what I have said is that you should go for the things that you want. That is what I've said because you always choose - when the thing that you want feels like there's conflict, you shy away from the conflict. And so my general point is that you shouldn't run away from conflict if it's part of the thing that you want. Let's go there and figure it out one way or another.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: So basically, I need to step on the accelerator when the van is next to me instead of pressing the brakes, basically. I need to get more of that - no, I'm going to accelerate past you. OK, yeah.

CHINAZA ONUZO: No. So I wouldn't say that. See, that's the thing. There are different types of entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is somebody who feels so passionate about a problem that they think they are the only one who can solve it. It is actually divorced from whether they are aggressive, whether they are whatever. What you have is belief.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: And that's it. I don't know. I mean, there are many things I believe, you know? I believe that, OK, like, the U.K. government is - their policy towards young people is faulty. There are many - there are things they should be doing to make sure that young people in this country have more opportunities. I believe it, but am I going to believe it enough to actually go and stand for government in this country? I don't know. Would I be more likely to enter politics in Nigeria? I think I would.

CHINAZA ONUZO: No, but let me ask you a question. This is a simple question based on what you just said.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Mmm hmm.

CHINAZA ONUZO: If you went to - what's your council? - your local government. So if you went there, and you walked up to them and said, I want to do X, Y, Z - here's a proposal - and I want to do an after-school thing for this, that and the other, would they say no?

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: No, they wouldn't say no, actually. No, they wouldn't say no. They wouldn't say no. You're right, actually. Mmm hmm.

CHINAZA ONUZO: And then, after you started that thing, as a celebrity author, you say, oh, can you give me X amount of pounds? Have them pilot it in X. Can we take it citywide? Can we take it countywide? Can we take it nationwide? If you really believe that that was what you should do, you have - you can do it. You just don't believe it enough.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: But you see, you've already brought your Lagos mentality to my throw-away idea. See, that's my point. Like, I'm already tired. Like, I just wanted to do something small. You're like, let's take it council-wide. Let's take it England-wide. Let's take it nationwide. Let's go for world domination. I'm like, oh, my - I need a nap. I need a nap (laughter).

WARNER: ROUGH TRANSLATION also needs a break - just a short one. We'll be right back.

(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "SYLVESTOR")

WARNER: We're back with ROUGH TRANSLATION. I'm Gregory Warner. When Chibundu told her brother that she'd be more likely to enter politics if she lived in Nigeria, that's a trend that she's seen before.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: There's a long history of writers getting involved in politics in Nigeria - not because they want to, but just because they feel compelled to.

(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "GREYLEAF WILLOW")

WARNER: She points out the Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, was imprisoned during the Nigerian Civil War. Chinua Achebe campaigned internationally for Biafran independence.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: And it happens often, actually. Soyinka and Achebe are just two very prominent examples, but there are others. Because of the prominence your writing gives you, you can't stand on the sidelines when push comes to shove. Whereas, in this context, I don't think people expect you to write a - you know, even if you do write about politics in London, for example, I don't think anyone then expects you to then go on and become a politician, etc., etc.

(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "GREYLEAF WILLOW")

WARNER: In the Stranger's Guide essay that introduced us to Chibundu, she worried that Lagos would chip away at her moral stance, turn her slowly into an oppressor, flashing the outward signs of success in exchange for access. But this was the flip side of that fear - that she'd feel obligated in Lagos to become a reformer - something that she doesn't feel quite ready for, in Nigeria or in England. Just a few hours before this call with her brother, she'd actually gone to her local youth center in London and volunteered to organize a mentorship program for the summer.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I literally - after I had the meeting, and I go home, I was like, what have I gotten myself into? What have I taken on? Have I taken on too much? I'm doing so much this year. And then I left, and I was like, have I just overpromised (laughter)?

WARNER: So you felt self-doubt as soon as you put action to your belief?

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Hundred percent.

WARNER: And then immediately, you're thinking, oh, my God, I...

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Laughter).

WARNER: And so what was that doubt around? Was it...

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I didn't like feeling overwhelmed, and I didn't like feeling that I had taken on too much.

WARNER: Which is why she worried about moving to Nigeria, where it seemed that all her friends and family were taking on as much as possible.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: It's funny. People talk about how, like, oh, you don't have to turn every hobby into a job - that that's capitalism - that makes you feel like everything you enjoy doing, you have to monetize it. And people talk about that in the Western world. But, like, in Lagos, this is to the - like, times 10. So, you know, you enjoy eating ice cream, so now you're going to have a blog about eating ice cream and sell advertising about it. It's like, I just wanted to have vanilla ice cream. But - you know, but now it's turned into, like, a side hustle. And, like, Lagos is, like, the city of side hustles. Everyone is doing something on the weekends, doing something.

WARNER: And Chibundu wondered, did she have the energy to live in a place where everyone's finding their hustle - everyone's pressing their advantage?

CHINAZA ONUZO: So there's a Nigerian phrase called shine your eye. So what is effectively means is that everybody's out there to take advantage of you - right? - so you have to live your life accordingly. But that was - one of the earliest decisions that I made was to not do that.

WARNER: Chinaza tells her this story about when he first moved to Nigeria, in his early 20s. And he hired a motorbike driver - an okada driver - to take him a fairly long distance. The ride took almost an hour. But before they set out, they settled on a price - a hundred naira - which, back then, was worth about $1.

CHINAZA ONUZO: And so once he drops me, he's like (non-English language spoken) - so that was boss - it's very, very far. Please add something for me - just 50 naira. And I said, no, we agreed 100 naira. We agreed 100 naira. And I walked away. That 50 naira would have made no difference to me, but the idea in my head was that I had told you this was the price, and I had overshot what was reasonable based on that price. But since we had agreed, it was more important for me to be like, you cannot convince me. And I walked away. And I was like, but Naz, that 50 naira would have made all the difference in his life. But for you, you just didn't give him that extra 50 naira to win an argument. So - and I always remember that because that is the consequence of always winning. You end up in these weird zero-sum games that don't have to be. So that's - I always use that example to remind myself about, there have to be - that this need to win at all costs is - there's limits.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I think that's interesting, like, how there's value in - that sometimes you might lose because someone might take advantage of you. But what you lose by being hard all the time is even greater.

CHINAZA ONUZO: So the question is always, what do you believe in? What do you believe to be true that no one else does, right? That is the thing, right? And that is what makes an entrepreneur. And that is not a Lagos thing. So the question that I always tell me is, like, what do you believe in?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I think it's been actually really good to hear what you're saying about belief. I think I do have more self-doubt than you. Or maybe you do have self-doubts and you don't present it as much. I think I do eventually sort of psych myself into going after what I want, but I think I do with a lot more handwringing and, like, oh, is this the right decision, or should I do it? Or should I not - I don't know.

CHINAZA ONUZO: People always look down on belief or conviction because in this hour, it is like conviction is a fool's errand. Can you really be sure? Can you really know? You cannot know. But what do you believe? And what are you willing to do to make your belief happen? Because you see, the truth of your belief is, how much are you willing to do for it to be tested?

WARNER: Chibundu, I want to ask you about this last part of your conversation with your brother about belief, because when I listen back I think a second or third time, I started hearing you guys discussing belief in a bigger way, something, like, about belief that wasn't just about success or making it.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I think we're talking about how do you do something you say you believe in? So he's not talking about making money or writing books or whatever. It's just if you have something you say or think you want to do, how does this thing move from an idea into action? I think that's what we're talking about.

WARNER: Chibundu came into this conversation with her brother doubting that she had the energy to hack it in a place as entrepreneurial as Lagos. But talking to her brother, she remembered how she feels whenever she goes back home.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: I sort of feel more confident. And it's funny, actually. I went to the airport, and the guy who was checking our passports when I landed in Lagos, he wasn't wearing a uniform. And I told him off, and I was like, why aren't you wearing a uniform? You should be wearing a uniform. And I didn't think I would dare do that at immigration in London. But then I just have a sort of confidence. It's like, I'm home. You know, nobody can tell me anything. This is my country. And that was my energy in Lagos, this big, Chibundu energy. So I just moved through the world very confidently. And I am trying to import some of that energy here as well, actually.

WARNER: Here to London, she means. That's her plan now. She's still not quite ready to move to Lagos, but she's going to try to import that confidence and that energy to make a small difference in her adopted country. Chibundu told our producer, Justine Yan, that despite her doubts, she is going ahead this summer with the mentorship program at the youth center.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: Like, the amount of effort you put into it shows how much belief you have. And yeah - and he's right. That's not a Lagos thing. That's not a U.K. thing. That's just like - it has to be inside. It's about what's inside you. And yeah, we're going to do it this summer. It's going to be good. And I think actually, again - my brother has infected me.

JUSTINE YAN, BYLINE: So this is your side hustle.

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Laughter) I think side hustle is - side hustle is strong. But this is (laughter) this is my side project, my side - passion project.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WARNER: On our next episode of @Work, how do you drive an 18-wheel truck while at the same time homeschooling your kid?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You know, we've had dry-erase markers where she's just writing down the side of the window a math problem that she's struggling with. And so we're walking through it together.

WARNER: Women truckers tell their stories of freedom and loneliness in the long haul. That's next week on ROUGH TRANSLATION.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMING HOME")

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Singing) So when are you coming home? I know I missed it, but I'm healing, and I'm learning all the time. When are you coming, coming home? If you walk away...

WARNER: This episode was produced by Justine Yan, Pablo Arguelles and our lead producer Adelina Lancianese, edited by Bruce Auster, who is our senior supervising producer. The ROUGH TRANSLATION team also includes Luis Trelles, Tessa Paoli, Nic M. Neves and Bhaskar Choudhary. Editorial insight from Sana Krasikov.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMING HOME")

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Singing) It's what I deserve.

WARNER: Chibundu Onuzo is not only a writer. She's also a singer. In fact, this is one of her tracks called "Coming Home."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMING HOME")

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Singing) Maybe I said I'm sorry. I treated you like a fool.

WARNER: Big thanks to the magazine Strangers Guide, where we Chibundu’s essay. If you don't know Strangers Guide, we're big fans of it here at ROUGH TRANSLATION. They devote each issue to a single place, and then they commission local writers and journalists to talk about that place. It's very thoughtful, beautiful photos. Check it out.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMING HOME")

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Singing) I'm learning all the time.

WARNER: John Ellis composed our theme music. Additional music by FirstCom Music and Blue Dot Sessions, mastering by Josh Newell, fact-checking by Ayda Pourasad, legal guidance from Micah Ratner and Eduardo Miceli. NPR's standards editor is Tony Cavin. Emily Bogle is our visuals editor. Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom. Our senior vice president for programming is Anya Grundman. I'm Gregory Warner, back next week with more @Work from ROUGH TRANSLATION.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMING HOME")

CHIBUNDU ONUZO: (Singing) When are you coming, coming home?

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Prof. Chukwuma Azuonye (1944-2022)

Professor Chukwuma Azuonye

BY OBI NWAKANMA

Chukwuma Azuonye, poet and Professor of African Literature, died in Massachusetts, the United States, on May 8, and his final remains were interred June 10 at the Milton Cemetery in Massachusetts, the United States. He joins an increasing list of iconic Nigerian intellectuals including Abiola Irele, Isidore Okpewho, Oyekan Owomoyela, Akin Euba and Fela Sowande, among many, whose earthly remains now lie in alien lands far from the homeland, from where they strayed, some in search of meaning, some in search of the golden fleece, and all ultimately into exile.

In the case of Azuonye, he will now lie by his second son, Nnamdi, who perished in an automobile accident a decade ago, and whose death shook Chukwuma to his very timbers. Born in Isuikwuato, now in Abia state, Chukwuma Azuonye studied English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka from 1965-1972. Quite early at Nsukka, his literary and intellectual gifts had come clearly to fore. He was editor of The Muse, the Literary Journal of the Nsukka English department, and Omabe, the Nsukka Poetry Monthly.

The civil war however interrupted his studies at Nsukka. Like other young men of his generation, on whom the holy task fell, to defend the shrines of their gods and the bones of their fathers, in a civil war that was brought to the East of Nigeria, Chukwuma Azuonye volunteered to serve the young republic of Biafra, not as a combatant, but as a publicist. He was deployed as a correspondent for the Biafran War Information Bureau. The work done by the Biafran War Information Bureau under the renowned poet and scholar, MJC Echeruo, who was also Azuonye’s teacher, has not been fully documented, but that bureau drew to it, some of the finest literary minds available to the republic.

It was certainly a nod to Chukwuma Azuonye’s gifts that he was shielded from combat, but tasked with documenting, archiving, and preserving the stories of the battlefront, and of the soldiers of the young republic. He was in a sense a war historian. But the effects of the war was to weigh on him psychologically too, for like most of his generation, he did not really, fully return from that war. There was something restless and unresolved in his mind – a quest for which even he did not have a name; but it drove him towards a full discovery of the Igbo world; its language and its lore.

At the end of the Civil war, when the dream of Biafra collapsed, Chukwuma Azuonye returned to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and earned his degree in English in the First-Class honours in 1972. In 1973, he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to the School of African and Oriental Studies of the University of London, where he did graduate work, and completed his doctoral on African Oral Literature, with a dissertation on the Ohafia War Songs.

In 1976, Chukwuma Azuonye returned to Nigeria, to the department of Languages of the University of Ibadan as Lecturer. By this time, Professor MJC Echeruo had moved as Head of English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to Ibadan, as the first African Head of the English department at the University of Ibadan, and subsequently, its first Dean of the College of Postgraduate Studies. Important work was going on at Ibadan, and the universities in Nigeria were still in their golden age. At Ibadan, in Languages with Azuonye were the likes of the famous literary critic Abiola Irele, and Isidore Okpewho who had also just returned from his studies in the United States, and was doing path breaking research in Oral literature, where he would earn his most significant plaudits. Echeruo was at the head of that pile, with his work, Victorian Lagos, just breaking into the scene, signifying one of the earliest works in the emerging methodologies of modern cultural studies.

Azuonye fitted naturally into the phalanx of stars in the Ibadan humanities, doing strategic work of recovery in the postcolonial era, with his own research primarily on Igbo Orality and African Diasporic cultures.

In 1981, he left the University of Ibadan and joined the faculty of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka’s Department of Linguistics and African Languages. He would subsequently serve as the Head of the Department from 1986-1988. The Nsukka phase of his life might be legitimately described as the most exciting and productive period of his artistic and intellectual career. The literary scene of the so-called Nsukka School was at its nadir. Azuonye was quickly made editor of Uwa Ndi Igbo, the journal of Igbo life founded by the famous novelist, Chinua Achebe then at Nsukka, and he was also one of the editors of the Okike Literary journal.

In these endeavors, Chukwuma Azuonye helped to extend and enrich the cultural environment and output from Nsukka. It was in this period that he became a collaborator with the legendary critic, Professor Donatus Nwoga, on the project of the recovery of a lost tradition of the Igbo Script, which resulted in one of Azuonye’s most intriguing works: “The Nwagu Aneke Igbo Scripts: its origin, features and potentials as a medium for alternative literacy in African languages.” It was a most sophisticated and daring work, whose scope remains even now, overwhelming and complex. Unfortunately, it was work which he could not complete, owing to circumstances, which including the sudden death of his co-investigator, Professor Nwoga, and Azuonye’s slowly failing health, stymied the work.

in 2007, which had brought together one of the largest body of writers, scholars, and poets to celebrate the life of one of Africa’s greatest poets of the 20th century. It was a most impressive outing which had also led to Azuonye’s relentless and methodical work that led the UNESCO to adopt Okigbo’s papers as an important part of world heritage. It was also in a sense, Azuonye’s last hurrah. His rapidly declining health forced him increasingly to seclusion. He fought bravely but death undoes us all.

He was married to Dr. Chioma Azuonye, whom he met in London as a student, and they shared a devotion that was pagan and fierce. Chukwuma Azuonye’s death closes an important chapter on the life of one of those really remarkable figures of Nigeria’s modern intellectual tradition. He was an impressive intellectual: eloquent, and precise. He had the rare gift of subtlety which often came to light, for instance, in dissecting a poem like “Sophia,” that very difficult work by Echeruo, with its matrix of imagery, as no one else possibly could among his peers, with such elan and aplomb. A star indeed has departed.

Zik’s Anguish, Nigeria’s Failure

Nnamdi Azikiwe

BY OBI NWAKANMA

Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe was the leader of the African nationalist resistance to colonialism from 1937 to 1957. He spearheaded it. He theorized it. He catalyzed it.

In spite of the puny attempts by characters whom Azikiwe himself would have dubbed “Lilliputians” to revise the history of African nationalism in the 20th century, and diminish Azikiwe’s work, the great Zik continues to glow because he is preserved in the documents of the 20th century.

What he said; where he said it; who he fought, who fought him, why they fought him; what those who fought him said and wrote about him, and why they said and wrote what they did about him are all parts of Imperial and Post Imperial history and the struggles for Black freedom preserved in the great libraries and archives of the world. In 1943, Azikiwe issued a timeline within which he said the British must decolonize and leave Africa. He gave them fifteen years.

The independence of Ghana in 1957, and Home rule in Nigeria in that same year saw the culmination of Azikiwe’s sustained pressure using the “parliamentary” method. The African Nationalist movement was part of a global Black Freedom movement in the 20th century, which played out at key metropolitan epicenters. One part was the West Indies, and the other part was the Black Civil Rights movement in the United States.

Zik activated the African movement, working in concert with a global network of allies – George Padmore, C.L.R James, I.T. Akunna Wallace-Johnson, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Ladipo Solanke, and in the US, WEB Dubois whose 1915 essay, “The African Roots of War,” may have impressed a young Nnamdi Azikiwe very early on the question of decolonization; Alain Locke, Azikiwe’s teacher at Howard, and for whom he would be research assistant, whose path-breaking book “The New Negro” made an impression on Zik and inspired his own 1937 book, “Renascent Africa”; Leon Hansberry; Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, Rayford Logan, Ralph Bunche, and the biggest of them all, that melodic brass baritone, actor, all-round sportsman, orator, lawyer, and renaissance man, Paul Leroy Robeson, whom Zik called, “my leader.”

In 1945 Zik challenged Churchill’s interpretation of the Atlantic Charter, and vigorously called out the attempts to subvert African freedom at the newly formed United Nations meeting with his powerful essay in the West African Pilot challenging Churchill, “There is no New Deal for the Black man in San Francisco.”

He deployed the argonauts – young men he had specially recruited to go to school in America as the “advance guard” of the “new African”: Nkrumah, Ojike, Orizu, Mbadiwe, Ikejiani, Okongwu, Akpabio, K.A.B Jones-Quartey, who went round the United States giving talks on the imperative of African freedom. Mbonu Ojike relocated to San Francisco where the new United Nations was being formed, leaf-letting and canvassing for the African position.

That year, Nkrumah left the US and moved to London, with an introductory note from CLR James and Azikiwe who had talked to his friend George Padmore about him. He joined up with Padmore and organized the Secretariat of the 5th Pan-African Conference which Padmore was planning for Manchester.

In 1947, as a result of the persistent agitation of Zik in West Africa, and the “Zikists” abroad, and their contact with Eleanor Roosevelt and Ralph Bunch who worked in a very key position in the Roosevelt administration, they got the US President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to get Churchill and the UK government to concede to political independence and the rights of Britain’s African colonies, just like India.

This is the story of Nigeria’s independence that Nigerians were never told. That Nigeria’s independence and of the West African colonies were won by Azikiwe and his men in 1947. In other words, decolonization was secured in principle by the Zikists in 1947. What happened in 1960 was a formal transfer of power following a transition which allowed Britain to secure its own key interests and not leave in a hurry as they were forced to in India. It was the culmination of the work Azikiwe began to do, starting from when he arrived Ghana, or the Gold Coast, to become Editor of the West African Morning Post in Accra. Azikiwe’s arrival radicalized the press in the Gold Coast and activated the era of radical or militant nationalist discourse. Until Azikiwe arrived Ghana, there was no nationalist movement.

I’m not even sure that Ghanaians are taught this history. That is also because Nigerians have never been taught. We have been fed lies about “three nationalist founding fathers.” Ahmadu Bello was not a Nigerian nationalist leader. He, in fact, did not want independence for Nigeria and allied with the British frequently against the nationalist agitators.

Neither did Awo fight for Nigerian nationalism. He fought for a regionalist mandate – what Zik called, “Pakistanism.” Awo had an intense disdain for the North and an intense fear of the East. The facts are clear. Their writings speak for them. The tenor of their political negotiations speaks for them. The archives of their debriefings speak for them.

But in the need to maintain a false “kumbaya” and a feel-good “national history,” we have immortalized falsehood. The founding nationalist imagination of modern Nigeria is Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and his followers. Period. They sacrificed for this nation. Their ideas for a coherent, modern nation based on a secular republican idea, based on the equality of individual citizens, rather than on an ethnocentrism that bred religious and tribal bigotry were defeated by those who fought them and who took charge of this nation. The nationalists who fought for freedom were subverted and eventually sidelined. And here we are today.

Azikiwe’s idea of Nigeria was subverted and defeated. The current state of Nigeria is the clearest evidence of Azikiwe’s political failure. He dreamt of a nation welded together by the power of mutual trust. A nation built on Citizens sans Frontiers. Zikism has been described by so-called realists as utopian and built on unreconstructed idealism and naiveté.

Those who won the argument have bequeathed to us today’s Nigeria: poor, broken, divided, backward, unproductive, insecure, outlandish, and dangerous to the health and survival of the human person. To them the irreconcilable differences among Nigeria’s various peoples make it impossible for Nigeria to meld and exist as a single, coherent nation. Today, Nigerians hate themselves as never before.

The Hausa hates the Igbo; the Igbo hates the Yoruba; the Yoruba hates everybody; and the minority groups are as confused and degraded as everyone else. Here is Nigeria that still practices an esoteric kind of feudalism which it calls democracy. Here is a constitutional republic which still maintains pseudo-monarchies and mud-empires. I will give just a recent example.

Two weeks ago, the “Presidency” went around meeting with what it called regional “leaders” to discuss the security issues arising from the fall out of the ENDSARS protests. This is straight of classical Feudalism. The Feudal lord has a habit of convening a meeting of his “Tenants-in-Chief” so that they would keep the peasants quiet. It doesn’t occur to the dinosaurs in the presidency that in the 21st century, and in an increasingly urban, and digitized society, and a republican democracy, there are no “middle men.”

That a Legislature exists through which people in various constituencies elected their representatives, and empowered them to speak on their behalf. That the “kings, queens, and leaders” of the people are not exactly whom the government actually think they are. In the specific example of the South- East, anyone who claims to be “the leader(s) of the South East,” is playing dozens with the gullible presidency.

The true leaders of the Igbo are diffuse. They rise by the day and change by the night as circumstances dictate. The true leaders of the Igbo receive Congressional mandate once the Igbo gather.

Their mandates end with each Congress. That is why the Igbo themselves say, “Oha Wu EzeNdi Igbo.” That is, “The gathering of the Igbo is the King of the Igbo.” Once the Igbo gather, they constitute the “Igbo sovereign.” Everybody – irrespective of title or stature become equal, subject only to their “CHI” in that gathering. That is also why, if you press them a bit more, the Igbo will say, “NaniChukwuwuEzeNdi Igbo.” That is, “Only God is the true King of the Igbo.

That is to say, the leader of the Igbo is an idea, not a thing, or a person. The only person who ever came to near-universal acclaim as “leader of the Igbo” was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. But even he would have said, “Come off it!” If the Igbo publicly place a crown on your head, run! They want to kill you. So those who say they are meeting with “Igbo leaders” are on their own, because when true “Igbo leadership” meets, they do not gather in obvious places.

They are selected by lot. They are emissaries. They speak in parables, and they are also sometimes, the most unlikely folk whom no one suspects to carry a scared mandate. And the point is that this is so because the Igbo have practiced an ancient form of democracy, and a republic, for so long- indeed some scholars might say, long before Athens.

The truth also is that increasingly, most Nigerians are becoming a bit more like the Igbo, driven by the desire for liberty and individual freedom, and far less than primordial allegiances. This generation is the last that will fall prey to crass ethnocentrism.

The newer generation of Nigerians are coming round to the Zikist idea that all Africans are the same and owe each other the duty of mutual-respect; that the nation in its simplest idea is the largest mutual aid society.

Nigerians are increasingly exhausted by persistent and needless rancour. They will fully come to realize that one’s greatest ally is his or her next door neighbour. People want the same things – secure streets; passable roads that are not flooded regularly; good schools for their kids; neighbourhood parks for recreation; a sense of safety; regular supply of electricity and clean water; clean, well-run public transportation; well-equipped hospitals; equal and affordable housing; good paying jobs; a regular source of income; a sense of one’s dignity; a sense of well-being that annuls the pressure of needless competition that makes one citizen detests or envies his fellow citizen, and kills to get ahead because of the very limited opportunities that casts one citizen against the other. This was Azikiwe’s dream for Nigeria: a nation where our very differences would meld into the beautiful colour of the rainbow. A prosperous and humane nation where no man is prey against the other, and man’s inhumanity to man is abolished.

Igbo Fight

BY EMEKA UGWUONYE

It is true that the Igbos fight among themselves more than any other ethnic group in Nigeria. That is judging from my own observations. When the Igbos fight among themselves, they don't know where to draw the line. Every fight among the Igbos is an existential fight - that is, they seek to permanently destroy each other. That is why it becomes impossible for them to reconcile after a fight.

For over 20 years as a lawyer in America, I saw a lot of that. Even a divorce between an Igbo woman and an Igbo husband will, on the average, be more bitter than a divorce between non-Igbos or between an Igbo spouse and a non-Igbo spouse. They don't know how to narrow a fight. They expand every fight into a total war. That is why a divorce case involving two Igbos in America will cost them more than if it were a divorce between two non-Igbos.

It is usually in Igbo-versus-Igbo divorce that one of the spouses will go as far as informing the immigration that the other spouse lied 20 years ago when he filed for his immigration papers. It is usually in Igbo-versus-Igbo divorce that one spouse will seek the deportation of the other spouse. It is usually in Igbo-versus-Igbo cases that one party informs the authorities about some distant crime the other party committed, which nobody else knew about.

I happened to intervene in a lot of Nigerian-versus-Nigerian disputes in America. I knew that it was worse among the Igbos. For instance, it was very difficult for an Igbo union or Association to hand over power from one administration to another peacefully without going to court. Very rarely! Usually, the new administration will sue the outgoing executive and accuse them of stealing and embezzlement (or any worse offense possible). They can do this over $2000 dispute. The Igbos hardly like mediation. They want their opponent to be dead. And he is willing to lose even his own life to achieve that.

It was in one of such cases that the leader of a new Igbo union administration testified in court against the leader of the outgoing administration. In his testimony in court he said:

"We contributed and contributed and contributed and he ate the money totaling $16,538". He had to repeat the word 'contributed' three times in order to show the judge that they made the contributions on more than one occasion. He was not educated enough to use a word that would have avoided repeating the word. Despite his lack of education, he was the most confident and loudest in court. Typical Igbo man.

The judge was so shocked to hear that a human being ate money. So the judge asked: "Do you mean he ate the money?". The man replied: "Yes, your Honor". The judge continued: "Even the change, the 38 cents?". He replied: "He ate every penny of the money we contributted". The judge winced and the jury were visibly confused.

At that point, I asked to approach the bench. The judge was happy. I explained to the judge that the man only meant that the other party embezzled the money, not that he ingested the money. Only then was the tension doused.

You know in Igbo language, the statement: "He ate rice" will be: "Orili rice" or "Orie rice". Also, in Igbo language, the statement: "He embezzled money" is "Orili ego" or "Orie ego". When an uneducated Igbo person wants to say that somebody embezzled money in English, he will likely say: "He ate the money".

Look at the World Igbo Congress! What happened? After the founding executive, there was so much infighting that they had 10 lawsuits in American courts and they were still looking for lawyers to file more suits pro bono. That was a terrible experience. The World Igbo Congress would have been the pan Igbo movement that would have advanced the Igbo interest worldwide and bring the Igbos together. But the moment one Igbo Governor gave them a donation of $15,000, some members wanted to overthrow their executive. And because every Igbo fight is war, they spread the fight as far and wide as possible. They challenged the legitimacy of their constitution. They challenged the ethnicity of some of the executive members and claimed they were no longer Igbos, that some of them were from Benue State. It was so bitter that it was impossible to reconcile them. The World Igbo Congress had to die. But Zumunta (the Nothern union) never had such problem. The Yoruba unions did not have anything like that.

When I say these things, some young Igbo men get upset. But I don't care. Many of them are too young to know history. Many of them are too uneducated to understand what is happening. Many of them lack practical experience they can refer to. For instance, I can refer to World Igbo Congress. One of the Founding leaders of World Igbo Congress is my friend. He is here on DPA and will probably read this. So, am I supposed to worry about what some uninformed Igbo brothers say? Not at all. The Igbos need serious reorientation to be able to make it. If the Federal Government of Nigeria was smart, they would simply have recruited some Igbos and set them against IPOB and watch them destroy themselves. Just get some Igbos. Give them their own radio and tell them to counter Radio Biafra, and they would do it perfectly well.

So, if you are a social scientist and they ask you to evaluate the readiness of the Igbos for anything serious, you will come back and report that they lack cohesion. They lack organizational discipline. An Anambra man will fight an Enugu man any day. Just tell him that Enugu people are backward and Wawa bush men that drink their tea with Okpa, instead of bread. He will fight him. And tell the Enugu man that the Anambra man is an Ijekebee man. (You see: The Igbo people did not invent tea. They did not invent bread. But they will abuse a fellow Igbo for drinking tea with Okpa instead of bread).

So, stop kidding yourselves, guys. You are not ready for anything yet. We need a lot of underground work to prepare our society if that is the direction we want to go. And the first thing we need to do is to be honest to ourselves. We are not the geniuses we think we are. We are actually behind. It is not what you do as an individual that will count, but what you can do as a group. Even the ants are better organized than the Igbos. Ask Nnia Nwodo. Ask Chimaroke and Jim Nwobod. Ask Jim Nwodo and CC Onoh. (Yes, I am aware of Awolowo and Akintola, Tinubu and Funsho Williams. Don't worry, I am well informed).

Osi Umenyiora on Giants signing Nigerian OT prospect Roy Mbaeteka: 'This is what dreams are made of'

Graphic Image: Igor Lazarevic

MICHAEL BACA

EAST RUTTERFORD, NJ (NFL) - Osi Umenyiora's dream of producing NFL prospects out of Nigeria has been realized.

The New York Giants on Friday announced the signing of offensive tackle Roy Mbaeteka, a Nigerian product of the NFL's International Player Program. After mentoring Mbaeteka through the process as an inexperienced prospect, Umenyiora was ecstatic to learn his protégé was signed by an NFL team and the ripple effect it may have in Africa going forward.

"Hard to describe what has just happened here," Umenyiora tweeted upon the announcement. "I'm an emotional wreck. What this means for so many people where We come from is impossible to explain. Thank you Giants. This is what dreams are made of."

Mbaeteka, a 6-foot-9, 320-pound prospect, is one of 13 athletes from nine countries who were selected to compete for a spot in the league's 2022 International Player Program. Instituted in 2017, the program has produced current NFL players like Efe Obada, Jakob Johnson and Jordan Mailata. The Giants are hoping Mbaeteka is the next Mailata, who went on to become the Eagles' starting left tackle in three years despite not having any football experience as a rookie from Australia.

"Once you see him, you know he's physically imposing and in a year or two if you immerse him in football culture, he's going to be fantastic," Umenyiora said, via the team's website. "The Giants took a chance. Not much of a chance, I think. When you see him working, you're going to know what he's about. He is big, strong, physical, extremely intelligent, very athletic. He's built to play offensive tackle in the league. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of (former Giants teammate) Kareem McKenzie. He has the same temperament. He's very smart, but he's a very athletic player."

Umenyiora has been an integral part of the NFL's international growth since retiring from the league in 2014. The 12-year NFL veteran is one of the founders of NFL Africa and a co-founder of The Uprise, a football program based in Nigeria with the purpose of discovering future NFL prospects. Umenyiora believes Mbaeteka is the first of many Africans yet to be discovered.

"I realized there are so many incredible athletes over there -- I'm talking a hundred times better than I was as an athlete," Umenyiora said. "And they have no chance of bettering their lives, no chance to actually do something constructive with their lives because of the situation over there. In America and in the West, you have opportunities for these guys to do something with all the incredible talent that they have. I recognized that and I decided I was going to start a program to help get these guys opportunities in America. We've had camps in South Africa, Ghana, Senegal. I have scouts in these locations and they're looking for the best athletes we can find and once we find them, we bring them to a location and we start to train them."

Born in London, Umenyiora lived in Nigeria from ages 7-14 before coming to America and discovering his football talent as a teenager. A second-round pick by the Giants out of Troy University, Umenyiora went on to become a two-time Super Bowl champion in New York and finished his career fourth on the franchise's all-time sack list (75.0).

After landing in New York the conventional way in 2003, Umenyiora is now dedicated to helping teams find NFL-caliber talent in uncustomary methods. Befittingly enough, it's his former team taking a leap of faith on a 22-year-old Nigerian, and Umenyiora believes it will be the start of something big.

"A lot of people think this was me, but I had nothing to do with this," Umenyiora said. "The Giants decided they were going to fly him in. They did this on their own. They saw him, they liked him, they flew him in yesterday, and he blew them away. They offered him a contract and here we are. For it to be the Giants of all teams, it means the world to me, it really does.

"What the Giants have done here is truly hard to put into words. There are so many people in Nigeria and in Africa who are going to see this and right now they're going to have hope. Before, they were hopeless. They're going to see this as hope and they're going to start working and working toward something, however unrealistic it is. At least now, they will see that it is possible. They've changed the world, they really have."

Mentored By Osi Umenyiora, Nigerian OT Roy Mbaeteka Signs With Giants

Roy Mbaeteka and Osi Umenyiora. Image: NY Giants

BY MICHAEL EISEN

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (NY GIANTS) – The Giants signed one of their most intriguing, noteworthy and unforeseen prospects of this or any offseason.

Roy Mbaeteka is a 6-9, 320-pound offensive tackle who has no high school or college football experience. That's hardly surprising, considering he's lived his entire life in Nigeria. His nascent football career has also included stops in London and Arizona. Now he's heading to the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, where the Giants believe he can develop into an NFL-caliber lineman.


So does one of Mbaeteka's mentors, former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who lived in Nigeria as a youngster and was perhaps the first to spot the 22-year-old's talent.

"Once you see him, you know he's physically imposing and in a year or two if you immerse him in football culture, he's going to be fantastic," Umenyiora said in a phone conversation from his home in London. "The Giants took a chance. Not much of a chance, I think. When you see him working, you're going to know what he's about.

"He is big, strong, physical, extremely intelligent, very athletic. He's built to play offensive tackle in the league. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of Kareem McKenzie (a former tackle who, like Umenyiora, played on the Giants' Super Bowl XLII and XLVI teams). He has the same temperament. He's very smart, but he's a very athletic player."

Umenyiora is fourth on the Giants' career sack list with 75.0 and a member of the franchise's Ring of Honor. Since concluding his 12-year career in 2014, he has worked in a variety of roles to help the NFL grow internationally. Last year, Umenyiora was one of the founders of NFL Africa, which is part of the league's International Player Pathway program (IPP).

Born in London, Umenyiora lived in Nigeria from ages 7-14. He has made numerous visits to the country and finding potential NFL players both there and throughout Africa has become one of his great passions. He and Ejike Ugboaja, a former Nigerian basketball player, founded a program there they call The Uprise.

"I realized there are so many incredible athletes over there – I'm talking a hundred times better than I was as an athlete," Umenyiora said. "And they have no chance of bettering their lives, no chance to actually do something constructive with their lives because of the situation over there.

"In America and in the West, you have opportunities for these guys to do something with all the incredible talent that they have. I recognized that and I decided I was going to start a program to help get these guys opportunities in America. We've had camps in South Africa, Ghana, Senegal. I have scouts in these locations and they're looking for the best athletes we can find and once we find them, we bring them to a location and we start to train them."

Mbaeteka was first spotted by Umenyiora at a camp in Nigeria in May 2021. He was one of three players selected to train at the NFL Academy in London in October. Three months later, the NFL announced that he was one of 13 players selected to compete for a spot in the 2022 International Player Pathway program. Mbaeteka was one of three potential linemen to travel to Arizona to work with former NFL center LeCharles Bentley. "He's been immersed in football for the last couple of months," Umenyiora said.

The NFL held a showcase for the international players in Arizona that was attended by Giants scout Jeremy Breit, who was so impressed with Mbaeteka that the team flew him to New Jersey yesterday and signed him today.

"When the Giants brought him in, they took him to the board and drew things and asked him all these questions and he was able to answer them, because that's what he's been working on this entire time," Umenyiora said. "He's highly intelligent. I guess they were blown away by the fact that he was able to do all that stuff."

Umenyiora believes Mbaeteka can equal or succeed the success of Jordan Mailata, an Australian native who had no prior football experience when he joined the Philadelphia Eagles and is now the team's starting left tackle.

"If you have the physical attributes, you can make that transition rather easily," Umenyiora said. "And I can tell you in Africa there's hundreds of thousands of people who have those attributes who just need an opportunity and we're going to provide it for them."

Umenyiora is thrilled the Giants are giving that chance to Mbaeteka.

"A lot of people think this was me, but I had nothing to do with this," Umenyiora said. "The Giants decided they were going to fly him in. They did this on their own. They saw him, they liked him, they flew him in yesterday, and he blew them away. They offered him a contract and here we are. For it to be the Giants of all teams, it means the world to me, it really does.

"What the Giants have done here is truly hard to put into words. There are so many people in Nigeria and in Africa who are going to see this and right now they're going to have hope. Before, they were hopeless. They're going to see this as hope and they're going to start working and working toward something, however unrealistic it is. At least now, they will see that it is possible. They've changed the world, they really have."

Giants Sign Nigerian OT Roy Mbaeteka

BY JOHN FENNELLY

NEW YORK (GIANTS WIRE) - Many NFL teams are spanning the globe these days to find players and you can count the New York Giants as one of them.

On Friday, they announced the signing of Roy Mbaeteka is a 6-foot-9, 320-pound offensive tackle from Nigeria who was mentored by former Giants great Osi Umenyiora in the NFL Africa initiative, which is part of the league’s International Player Pathway program (IPP).

Mbaeteka has no high school or college experience but the Giants are hoping he can be molded into a competitive player much the way the Philadelphia Eagles did with Jordan Mailata, a former Australian rugby star who is now a starter at tackle on their offensive line.

“Once you see him, you know he’s physically imposing and in a year or two if you immerse him in football culture, he’s going to be fantastic,” Umenyiora told Giants.com in a phone conversation from his home in London.

“The Giants took a chance. Not much of a chance, I think. When you see him working, you’re going to know what he’s about. . . He is big, strong, physical, extremely intelligent, very athletic. He’s built to play offensive tackle in the league. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of Kareem McKenzie. He has the same temperament. He’s very smart, but he’s a very athletic player.”

Osi has been very active in developing international talent for the NFL, especially in Africa. He downplayed his role in bringing the Giants and Mbaeteka together.

“A lot of people think this was me, but I had nothing to do with this,” Umenyiora said. “The Giants decided they were going to fly him in. They did this on their own. They saw him, they liked him, they flew him in [on Thursday], and he blew them away. They offered him a contract and here we are. For it to be the Giants of all teams, it means the world to me, it really does.

“What the Giants have done here is truly hard to put into words. There are so many people in Nigeria and in Africa who are going to see this and right now they’re going to have hope. Before, they were hopeless. They’re going to see this as hope and they’re going to start working and working toward something, however unrealistic it is. At least now, they will see that it is possible. They’ve changed the world, they really have.”

“If you have the physical attributes, you can make that transition rather easily. And I can tell you in Africa there’s hundreds of thousands of people who have those attributes who just need an opportunity and we’re going to provide it for them.”

Whittier Tech Students Earn Biliteracy Designation

Javier Infante Rodriguez of Haverhill with his seal of biliteracy. Image: Whittier Tech

BY MIKE LABELLA

HAVERHILL, MASS (EAGLE TRIBUNE) — Two Haverhill students who attend Whittier Tech are among four students recognized by school Superintendent Maureen Lynch for earning the Massachusetts State Seal of Biliteracy distinction in Spanish.

The students are: Jesus Infante Rodriguez, a senior from Haverhill studying marketing education and business technology; Nolan Macario, a senior from Haverhill studying electronics/robotics; Roberto Catuc Coc, a senior from Newbury studying electrical and Julio Diaz, a senior from Groveland studying electronics/robotics.

The seal recognizes students who have achieved proficiency in English and at least one other language by high school graduation. Students were awarded this distinction based on their performance on the Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages test administered by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, school officials said.

Students also fulfilled the Carnegie unit credit requirements in English language arts. English Language Coordinator Susannah DiMauro, who serves as the Seal of Biliteracy adviser, helped prepare students for this comprehensive test, which was administered at the end of January.

“Thankfully I got this last-minute opportunity to take the test,” Macario said. “There are more opportunities within the workplace, college and scholarships after earning this distinction.”

The Seal of Biliteracy promotes excellence in the study of world language, respect for human differences by exposing students to other cultures and perspectives, and equity by honoring the diverse literacy skills of those in the community. It also provides evidence of biliteracy skills to future employers and college admissions officers.

“We are particularly proud of these students’ achievements, as they represent the highest number of State Seal recipients since our school began the program three years ago. This award is not easy to attain,” DiMauro said. “Students must have a high level of fluency in a partner language, demonstrating proficiency in all four domains of speaking, listening, reading and writing.”

DiMauro praised her school’s administration for initiating this program and for their support of Whittier’s diverse student body, who she said come with many gifts and talents in a number of different languages and cultures.

Eight heritage languages are represented across 1,261 students at Whittier Tech: Igbo, Swahili, Twi, Portuguese, Spanish, Pashto, Haitian Creole, and various Central American dialects of Spanish.

Israeli Event At United Nations Commemorates Victims Of Slavery

An enslaved man who bought his freedom and wrote compellingly about his experiences, Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797) was an extraordinary man who became a prominent figure associated with the campaign to abolish the slave trade.

Equiano was born in what is now Nigeria and sold into slavery aged 11. After spells in Barbados and Virginia he spent eight years travelling the world as slave to a British Royal Navy officer, who renamed him Gustavus Vassa. His final master, an English merchant in Montserrat, let him buy his freedom for £40 – almost a year’s salary for a teacher, but Equiano made it in three years of trading on the side.

Equiano worked as an explorer and merchant for 20 years, and eventually settled in England, the country where he had converted to Christianity in 1759. With the encouragement of the Abolitionists, who campaigned against the slave trade, he published these memoirs in 1789.

This book – one of the first in Europe by a Black African writer – was an enormous success, selling out immediately. This, the second edition, was published the same year. Equiano travelled widely to promote the book, and became wealthy from its royalties.

The ability of this cultured and intelligent man to relate first-hand the horrors of slavery helped sway public opinion, and by 1807 Britain had formally abolished the trade. Equiano did not live to see it; he died in 1797, leaving his English wife and two daughters.

In 2007, the first edition of Equiano's book was carried in procession at a special service in Westminster Abbey, London, to commemorate the bicentenary of Britain’s Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.

BY MIKE WAGENHEIM

A film recounting a tale of African bondage and freedom, told through modern-day social media, becomes the focal point for a U.N.-sponsored event to mark the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Jews will celebrate and commemorate their exodus from slavery during the upcoming Passover holiday, utilizing the Haggadah to retell to their children the biblical story.

Would the Israelites have been granted their freedom earlier had social media existed them to capture the injustice? Would it have changed things for an African child in the 1700s who was sold into slavery?

To mark the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade on March 25, the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations initiated a special event on Tuesday that featured excerpts from the Israeli film “Equiano.Stories.” It presents the story of Olaudah Equiano through Instagram stories. Equiano was abducted and sold into slavery as a child in 1756 before securing his freedom and working to end the slave trade in Great Britain.

“We, the Jewish people and the State of Israel feel sympathy towards victims of racism and slavery because our people endured the same kind of suffering as we’re going to commemorate two weeks from now during Passover,” Gilad Erdan, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, told JNS. “I think it had an extremely important effect that the formal event to commemorate the victims of slavery was focused on an Israeli production and it was based on the initiative of the Israeli mission to the U.N., and it exposes the truth about all of our enemies and political rivals who are trying to brand Israel as an apartheid state and the truth is stronger than anything else.”

Erdan has prioritized strengthening ties between Israel and African countries in the United Nations while emphasizing common values in the fight against racism. This event is designed to continue emphasizing these common values.

Showing the importance of the Israeli initiative, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid, decided to hold the event as an official one for all U.N. members.

“Equiano.Stories connects us to the past in a way that is often hard to achieve, particularly as we are prone to see the past as something long ago, distant and unrecognizable,” said Shahid.

The event featured the first visit to the United Nations by New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Addressing participants, Adams drew parallels between the evils shows in the film and global ills today, such as accelerating climate change, hunger and conflict.

Urging multilateral action, he said that the world body “must be more than a symbolic building; it must be a rallying cry.”

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke remotely, and technology and media entrepreneur Mati Kochavi, who produced “Equiano.Stories,” addressed the gathering, which included former NBA All-Star Amar’e Stoudemire, a convert to Judaism. The permanent representatives of Jamaica and Senegal, along with the permanent observer of the African Union, also spoke, as did the chair of the Task Force on Addressing Racism and Promoting Dignity for All in the United Nations Secretariat, U.N. Under-Secretary-General Catherine Pollard.

‘His words were his power’

“Equiano.Stories,” an excerpt of which was featured during Tuesday’s event, reimagines the childhood saga of Olaudah Equiano, an 11-year-old boy living in a vibrant Igbo village in West Africa in 1756. Deeply connected to his family and community, he happily documents his life in the village through stories shared with his followers. But one day, Equiano and his sister are kidnapped from their home. They are separated, and Equiano is transported alone, by foot, to Africa’s Western shore. There, he is made to board a slave ship.

Equiano would go on to buy his freedom and wrote compellingly about his experiences in the book, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. The film tells his tale as a modern-day self-recorded, first-person account, within the format of Instagram stories, using video, still images and text, highlighting the struggle and strength of African people during the Middle Passage—the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas.

“When George Floyd was murdered, the horrific video, captured on a cellphone, shocked the world into action. And as [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin’s forces unleash senseless violence on Ukraine, the images we’re seeing and the stories we’re reading in real time have rallied the global community to stand united with the people of Ukraine,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “We see these same dynamics play out in brutal conflicts and under repressive regimes around the world. Activists and everyday civilians who are able to share their stories and call on others to help, and it really can make a difference.”

“In Olaudah Equiano’s time, they didn’t have smartphones or social media. But he used the tool he had at his disposal to share his story with the world: his words. His words were his power,” she emphasized.

‘The commonality is our past’

One of the writers and directors said she saw her own Israeli identity in Equiano’s story, which is one of the aspects of the saga that drew her to the film project.

“As an Israeli, the values of family and the values of humanity are incredibly important and something that mean a lot to us, and we saw that very clearly in Equiano’s story in the way that he describes his family, in the way that he fights for humanity and fight for his freedom. And not only in the way that he bought his own freedom, but then went on to fight for the freedom of his people and spent his whole life fighting for the freedom of his people, and that’s just something that really resonated with us,” Adi Kochavi told JNS.

Erdan, who has placed a priority on strengthening ties between Israel and African countries in the United Nations, said that Tuesday’s event was designed to emphasize common values in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism.

“Both of our fights emanate from a history of enslavement. …The commonality is our past, and this is what makes Israelis so empathetic to Africans, whose equality, dignity and self-determination was stolen in the slave trade,” said Erdan. “This commonality is why it is so important for Israel’s Mission to the United Nations, and for me as its ambassador, to have initiated today’s presentation.”

SOURCE: JEWISH NEWS SYNDICATE

‘She Waged A War’: A Daughter’s Intimate Look At Nigeria’s Most-Decorated Figure

Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr

BY ASHKLEY OKWUOSA

TVO.org speaks with author Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr about her mother, Dora Akunyili, and how she battled discrimination and death threats to take on corruption

In 1988, Dora Akunyili’s sister died after being given fake insulin to treat her diabetes. It was not an isolated incident: estimates suggest that up to 80 per cent of the drugs in circulation in Nigeria at the time were counterfeit.

Akunyili, who’d earned her PhD in ethnopharmacology in 1985, would make the fight against fake medicine her life’s work.

In 2001, she became the director-general of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, where she worked to reduce the circulation of counterfeit drugs in the country. Not long into her tenure, the BBC reported that her team had confiscated £140,000 worth of fake drugs.

Akunyili also relied heavily on public-education campaigns. While her efforts were successful, she received death threats; in 2003, she survived an assassination attempt after a bullet shattered the windscreen of her car and pierced her headscarf.

Eleven years later, Akunyili died of cancer. She is said to be the most honoured Nigerian ever, having received more than 1,000 awards.

Earlier this year, Akunyili’s daughter, Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr — a Toronto-based author and speaker — published a book about her mother’s life titled I Am Because We Are: An African Mother’s Fight for the Soul of a Nation. TVO.org speaks with Akunyili-Parr about her mother’s legacy, hope in politics, and the importance of interdependence and community.

TVO.org: For those who might not know your mother, can you describe her briefly and tell us what she represented?

Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr: She was at some point named “Man of the Year” — that’s the kind of person my mom was. She was called an Amazon by many people, so this is to say that she was a strong woman. She was very publicly recognized for the work she did while at the helm of the Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, where she served as the director general. And that work was very important because it is a sector that is the vein of a country.

All of us, every single day, put food and medicine into our bodies. Imagine if the food and medicine were counterfeit and doing the opposite of what they were supposed to do. It’s not nourishing you; it’s killing you. And this is not an overstatement. This was going on, and many people were dying, including my own mother’s sister, who died as a result of fake insulin.

She took the work to heart, and she waged a war. She called it a war against fake drugs. She didn’t do this alone; she brought the people of Nigeria along with her, sensitized them on what the actual problem was and empowered them to be a part of this journey. She came to the attention of millions, not just by virtue of her words but also by her actions and the 80 per cent reduction in fake drugs that happened in Nigeria.

She as a hard-working woman who was looking out for the well-being of the people. The people were very central to her. She really saw the power of shared humanity and guarded it, because that's what it means to be human and to be each other's brothers and sisters.

TVO.org: I recently watched a news clip from Nigeria’s National Television Authority that featured a tribute to her after her death. In the video, Nigerians here in Canada — in Ottawa — were mourning her death. One man said, “She gave us hope.” What was it about her life that affected people, even those watching from here?

Akunyili-Parr: Growing up in Nigeria, it was very common for us to sit around the dinner table and bemoan the state of affairs, politics, leadership. It was this hopelessness, and all we could do was just complain. Nigerians have had very few individuals that represented a new possibility for the country, so when she came along, it was exciting, because that’s what Nigerians have been desiring. She embodied that Nigeria that was in our hearts as a dream.

And how did she do this? She worked hard, refused bribes, and she had several assassinations attempts on her life as a result of saying no to compromising herself on this war against fake drugs. When you can see someone who embodies something that is otherwise sort of a dream, maybe dismissed as unrealistic — someone who doesn’t take bribes, someone who is not corrupt, someone who cares about the people… We had very much bought into that story that we’ve always known, but in truth is not who we are. She was a different story and has inspired so many others; we didn’t have to be that single story of what it means to be Nigerian.

TVO.org: There’s so much to be said about being a woman in politics and the sense that it is an old boys’ club. Can you share a little bit about what your mother experienced and how she overcame it?

Akunyili-Parr: A friend of mine just finished reading the book, and she said that it shows the struggles of women that shattered the glass ceiling, because my mother shattered expectations. But there are scars along that route; there's a cost to that. From the get-go, she stepped into this job with something to prove, because there were concerns that she couldn't handle it, because she was a woman. There was a cost to her family. She had six children; she was away all the time. But luckily, we were older when she got the job. At some point, there was a threat to her children. My little brother's life was threatened as a way of getting to her, and he had to be removed from the country.

But my mother's superpower was whatever you threw at her, she used almost as a weapon. So: “You think I can't do it because I'm a woman? I’ll show you.” Or “you think I'm going to be corruptible because of XYZ? I’ll do the opposite.”

“Try to kill me because I'm doing good work, and I’ll get even stronger.”

TVO.org: In this book, you write in her voice and tell her story. I wonder what you wanted us to take from her story and what you think she would have wanted readers to take from the story of her life?

Akunyili-Parr: I was very clear that this was not the unattainable story of a hero or a story for us to look at how amazing she was and be impressed by that. At the core, I wanted to tell a human story, a story that would help us realize that she was you and I — she was just a girl. She was just an Igbo girl who believed in herself and what she had to offer and whose values were shaped by growing up in a village, raised by her grandmother who was this incredible matriarch and had deep values that she bestowed upon her — values of hard work, of honesty, of community, and all these things that became part of who she was. She was just a person who felt pain like we all do, was heartbroken, questioned herself, had insecurities.

But there were some key elements that I anchor in the book: her faith and her own inner belief that there was a purpose to her life. In many ways, she's sharing who she is so that we can find who we are. She is telling you her story so that you can understand that your story is powerful. In the beginning of each chapter, I start with an African proverb, and one of the ones that people have really loved is “if you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never spent a night with a mosquito.” And I think in many ways, that captures her life. She always believed that she could make a difference anywhere she was put. She started with a group in a local village, where she built a clinic. and then someone saw that and put her in a local government and so on. So, I would say that it's knowing yourself, stepping into the truth of who you are, and knowing that your story is being written and that you are the author of that.

TVO.org: Another major theme in the book is Ubuntu, which you describe as the importance of community over the individual. In these times, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing that our own individual actions have shared consequences.

Akunyili-Parr: Ubuntu stems from different Bantu languages. It is an African humanist philosophy; one of the translations is “a person is a person to other people.” Another is “I am because you are. You are because we are.” Something that a friend who did a PhD in Ubuntu always makes sure to remind people of is that it’s not always about the human part of it; it’s also about recognizing the bigger world we are part of. Everything is interconnected, and everything is part of this very beautiful delicate balance.

My mother had this saying at the end of the last speech she made before she passed a few months later. She ended with “a society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they know they shall never sit.” And I believe that is the essence of Ubuntu — that interconnectedness is so delicate and so powerful. My mother’s life not just Ubuntu because she decided to show up, but in how she showed up. She was consciously showing up to safeguard lives, knowing that every life matters. She saw fake drugs as a huge problem because human potential is incredible, and when lives are lost senselessly, so is the potential they had to have contributed deeply to community.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Ontario Hubs are made possible by the Barry and Laurie Green Family Charitable Trust & Goldie Feldman.

'We Are All One Community': Saint Joseph's Catholic Church Celebrates Its 70th Anniversary

From left: Chinonso Akano, Kathy Bearden, Monsignor John Walsh, Chris Gibbs and Esther Honori are pictured after the 70th birthday service at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Marietta March 18.

LEO TOCHTERMA

MARIETTA (MARIETTA DAILY JOURNAL) — Organizers for the 70th-anniversary service at Saint Joseph Catholic Church were pleasantly surprised.

They had expected some 400 people to show up, and instead found around 800 people gathered in its pews last Friday.

Founded in 1952, the church has more than 4,000 families, according to Monsignor John Walsh. Congregants filled it to the brim for the anniversary of its founding, which, not coincidentally, is also the birthday of the church's namesake.

Walsh was happy to see such a vibrant crowd.

"People are ready to come back after COVID-19," Walsh said. "When I looked out tonight, especially around 6:30 and saw a big group of people there, I figured we would have a very good product tonight."

The two-hour service was attended by high-ranking church leaders, including Bernard Edward Shlesinger III, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and those in attendance offered prayers and well-wishes by the clergy for Ukraine.

Since Walsh arrived at the church 14 years ago, he's seen it diversify, with large Mexican and African populations joining the parish. To welcome this diversity, some parts of the Mass are conducted in Spanish depending on the number of worshippers in attendance.

"We have different cultures," Walsh said. "We still have people from different areas, and they all seem to be mingling away and working together, which has been great."

In its 70 years in Marietta, the congregation has undergone plenty of changes, most notably building a bigger church building to accommodate a growing population.

After the anniversary service, members of the church spoke of the sense of community they feel coming through Saint Joseph's doors.

Stephen Bird first attended the church's school back in 1966.

"It's changed a lot, but it's always been a welcoming community," he said.

Bird and his wife, Romi Rivera Bird, a native of Mexico City, appreciated Walsh and the church's involvement with Marietta's Mexican community.


"We came here to start a ministry (in 1999) to serve the Hispanic community that was rolling a lot into Marietta at the time," she said, "so that's something I appreciate about Saint Joseph."

Chinonso Akano, 45, moved to Marietta from Nigeria in 2012 in search of a parish to call home and found it at Saint Joseph's. Akano serves as president of the church's African community and has a seat on the parish council.

"We met people of African descent (here), so we felt like we were at home," Akano said. "They want your input. They want people to be heard because we are all one church, we are all one community."

Now more than a decade into his time with the congregation, Akano, whose four daughters and wife attend service there with him, believes he made the right choice on a place of worship.

"If I had to do it all over again, I'd still come back to St. Joseph," he said.