What was your experience editing the Beacon in school?

We did a lot of things even though we didn’t have a lot of money. This was just student money. It was JP Clark who was the first editor. They also produced The Bug, we had been drawing pirate things. I did a little bit of art because I was the best artist before I went to Igbobi, I was one of Onobulu’s students while he was our visiting teacher. I was also a carver,’’ I won an award.

What did you do when you finished from the University?

In the University, it is possible that I could have been a dropout because other things were pre-occupying my attention. You saw a lot of things around you and you would rather face things like writing plays, doing musical programmes to welcome visiting guest etc. H. MacDonald, (the man connected with the detonation of the first atom bomb at the Sahara Desert on Fedruary 1960) came to Nigeria, he came to the University but we were not told he was coming, yet the students learnt about it. He went to the library which was new at that time. As he came out, he saw a huge crowd of students protesting, waiting for him. When he got to his car, he hit his head on the frame. Among the students, I came with a placard which read’’, “we who are about to be bombed salute you,’’ and that was the time they were doing bomb test in the Sahara desert.

We had Banda, Sekou Toure, they all came in there and we carried placards. We were awake to what was happening around us and we disputed certain things with our teachers.

I worked at the radio and was a controller of programmes. I dealt with all that before going back to the university to complete the degree. I was in the radio, from there, I moved to journalism.

Was that when you worked for Daily Express under Bisi Onabanjo?

Yes. After the result came out, I went to work at Daily Express. I went back to Midwest Region. From Midwest, I went to the film unit in Ibadan. I had some challenges there with politicians. So, I decided to go to where my talents would be better appreciated. First, I went to a newspaper. I went to Express. You know, Alhaji Babatunde Jose was fighting with Bisi Onabanjo to have me. I told him, go and speak to your friends in UPP who were writing all sorts of things that they wanted me to do at the film unit. They wrote that I was attacking them, that I was a columnist, so as such they should use me for their newspaper. I told him “go and tell them to leave me to you.” He said no, So, I said, “eh, I can’t come to Daily Times: I moved from the film unit to Cultural Division as a grade one officer. The money was not much but I could make a mileage. In any case, I was making money from radio plays and my columns; I had no reason to spend money in any case. I was wearing the most fashionable clothes but what caught attention was the thing I was writing.

That was despite the fact that I was a chainsmoker and also drank spirits. But all that stopped on 22 of December, 1972.

Why?

I had stopped smoking before then, the devil tempted me again when I was on tour of the country, writing a script on Nigeria. We got to Kano or Kaduna and then I saw an old boy of Igbobi and he gave me cigarettes and I started smoking again. I never took beer. Just spirits like gin, whiskey. Rum was popular with Pirate’s Confraternity. I was mixing hot drinks with time. All that stopped during the All Africa Games. We were in charge of taking care of the athletes from all over Africa. One day, I decided to stop and I stopped.

What is your take on the sale of National Theatre?

I will take it one by one. They failed to convince people over the mall, now they want to make it an emirate shopping mall. Have you done a study of that area, to know that once you go in here to Ijora, everything is packed -full from Leventis. Two, where does the Lagos State mono-rail stop? It ends inside the theatre. And for something of that nature; that is the area they wanted to put the hotel.

•Frank Aig-Imoukhuede. Photos: Emmanuel Osodi

Don’t you need space? Don’t you need the greenery in the middle of Lagos? Isn’t that what you see when you are on the bridge, the greenery in the water logged area? If you have people driving in there to go and buy and sell, where are they going to converge and disperse? They mean that they have to be supported by the BRT. So, where are they going to put that one?

If they show you the architectural designs of what they intend to do, will you, in the light of what you have done for the sector, agree with them?

Let’s go back to that sentence I told you earlier “The Englishman’s home is his castle.” This is our castle. So, we have to defend it to the last because there is nothing Nigerian about that idea that they are bringing. Rather, it will enslave us the more, it will create corruption which they are not stopping because they will be going between Nigeria and Dubai. In the process, the trafficking and all that will be strengthened. And very soon, what they are trying to fight will come; it will move down south. They are afraid of Boko Haram, let them go and see what started Boko Haram and if you create it right here, you give it leverage and then we will have problems. Yemen is not far from that place. There is nothing that has happened that has not had Yemeni connection. A lot of our people claim that they came from Yemen to Nigeria.

But they can argue that there is no terrorism in Dubai or Qatar, so why would you have terrorism here?

Yes, this is not Dubai, we are talking of Nigeria. If in lieu of what they want, they say, we will put a tower of unity, in the National Theatre that would have made some sense. People would go there and from the tower, they can see a lot of places, they can make sense. But a place for buying and selling; who is going to sell and buy? Is it the ordinary Nigerian? Don’t we have the mall in Ikeja, Surulere, Lekki and in other places. So, what are they talking about?

They would say we need more money to make progress in Nigeria

Excuse me. That is nice; these are the same people who are fighting they had a programme sponsored by Zenith where they were talking about culture – the creative industry. They are destroying culture; they have fought and fought against it and have not succeeded. Now, they are trying to batter it down with people from the emirates.

Has anyone gone to Yemen to go and do it, have they done it in Egypt? Why Nigeria where we want to start to build our castle ourselves and create a defensive mode round it? It is stupidity, greed and avarice. It is the same group of people who did what they did in Abuja. I got, in 1994, C of O for a cultural centre complex in Abuja. If I had stayed two more years, it would have gone through. We had even got it to the stage of models. We had sent it to council in 1994 under Jerry Gana. And I left on the 8 of January 1994, so we couldn’t do it. And you had their agents fighting us all along. I wanted to create something that would be the centre of tourism in that city, where there wont be everything you want by way of creating art that you won’t get there. That is where you have Ladi Kwali Road and so on. The project was about twice the size of the National Theatre in Lagos.