What Lord Lugard Thought About Nigerians -Tunde Fagbenle

This one got me thinking:

"Last week my friend, Babs Sobanjo, forwarded me the following piece said to be an extract from a Confidential Document by the British colonialist, Lord Frederick Lugard, who established the geographical contraption he, with the help of his lover, gave the name Nigeria.

The piece, snotty in the extreme, typifies the British in their calculating, self-serving, devilry. It represents Lugard’s appraisal of the African as represented by Nigeria and Nigerians."
What is Tunde thinking? What are you?
ENJOY

The Trial of Robert Mugabe -A review by Kenneth Kudakwashe Nyoka

Here is a powerful review of my book, The Trial of Robert Mugabe, by a Zimbabwean civil rights activist.Kenneth Kudakwashe Nyoka. He is a former magistrate and prosecutor in Zimbabwe.
He is on: kknyoka@yahoo.co.uk

Enjoy

The lost promise of outrage

One day, when the story of the renaissance of African literature is written, it will probably begin like this: There is Caine Prize, there is Adichie, there's Chris Abani, Helon Habila, Petina Gappah, Sefi Atta - have I missed your favorite, ah, Chikwava, Uwem Akpan and many more.
That day the story of our literature will be written, the first page, or at least the second, will surely contain words like these: Ikhide Ikheloa was a midwife, an excellent midwife, who sometimes pinched the pregnant woman to push harder, pricked the child to cry. Cry, baby, cry. Here, he has perfected the fine art of prodding, urging and shepherding of artists to realize their promises (no pun intended). A beautiful review of Ogochukwu Promise's Outrage.
Here's one of the many beautiful paragraphs:
"Art imitates life’s reality. The frustration with all of this is that there is a beautiful story in Outrage. In the indisciplined hands of vanity printing, the result is a tedious disaster. It is a rich but inchoate tale told by a talented storyteller whose voice has been garroted by communal mediocrity largely beyond her control."
ENJOY!

Season of Migration

On the advice of several friends, I am in the process of merging this blog, Nigerian Literature Review, with my other, more expansive one, African Literature News & Review. This, I think, allows me to cover more issues beyond those of my beloved Nigeria. I think, I've become a pan-African, willy-nilly.
So, friends, I am migrating! Hope you don't abandon me. Vergiss mich nicht!
Yours brother in-blog,
Chielo Zona

A Swamp Full Of Hyenas [Book Review]

Ikhide Ikheloa is one of the good, really good reviewers out there. He discusses one of the books I thought every Nigerian/African should read, Swamp Full of Dollars, by Michael Peel. An excellent review. Swamp Full of Dollars is what I may call the Nigerian Cry, the Beloved Country. ENJOY

Nollywood in peril

Niyi Ige appears to liken what Dora Akunyilu does to the Nigerian image to what is happening in the Nollywood art (art?) scene. Deodorize, deodorize the the putrefying body. Oh, oh, I might have gone too far here. Please, read Niyi's words and judge for yourself. And remember to forgive me if I really went too far in my characterization. Here you go:

"In order not to mislead anyone, I must begin with a confession, I have no fondness for Nollywood or perhaps more accurately I do not understand the phenomenon.

The thin scripts, wildly implausible plots, non-existent production values and the determinedly stilted dialogue leave me somewhat mystified as to its potent appeal to vast swathes of the Nigerian public and further afield.

I am consistently confounded when I catch acquaintances whose cultural and aesthetic bonafides I was prepared to vouch for watching Africa Magic on the sly while a stack of ‘home videos’ lurk surreptitiously in the corner."
ENJOY

Africa's elite and the Western media

I thought you might want to read this little piece of mine just published by the Pambazuka guys.

This is how they summed my attempts to capture the current mood of the African mind.
"Responding to intellectuals' efforts to repair the downtrodden image of African people, Chielo Zona Eze urges us to recognise that we have 'moved beyond the world shaped by the 19th century ideas of the African'. Stressing that he sees little probability of Nigeria's difficulties coming to an end anytime soon, the author asks us to consider a 'change of heart that begins with a radical rejection of the thought that the West is only interested in grubbing in the African compost'."

It would be interesting to see what you think of the essay. ENJOY.