He wanted this to happen everywhere in the country but he started from the West, where he could control. Nnamdi Azikiwe was a nationalist. Yes, but he wasn’t a fighter in the sense of it. But he was able to bring everybody together. Since, he was so consistent about One Nigeria, he became the ultimate hero of the revolution. The telling of that story is the most important element in nation building and we have never really undertaken. Having grown up in America, I know that was an intention and it worked. That is why we took the clothes, the ties etc. History is not taught at all. We have an agency called the National Orientation Agency, that is their work. But what is the content of what we do? I’m not here to criticise anybody. That is why, I tell the story myself. There is no day I don’t read or study anything about Nigeria. It has become an obsession. Nothing is as beautiful as understanding the story. So, for ten years, I have been writing a text, do a TV series, fifteen episodes like Roots. I started writing it, I have had as many as ten Nigerian writers to work on this story at different times from different parts of the country. I called them at different times, gave them a little stipend, gave them the story and then asked them to write the scripts.
They did a wonderful job but something was always missing. You are talking to people who have already been propagandised against themselves, they are writing a story they don’t believe, you gave them the details. I just read a book on Nigerian modern history and it was talking about the bombardment of Lagos. The bombardment of Lagos took place three times. King Kosoko had it together, Oba Akintoye was the British lackey, he was not a strong leader. Kosoko said to hell with you. The British were telling everybody that it was because of his slave trade, because of his interest, Kosoko would not give it up. He was a hero.
There were more battles won by the Africans. The British brought in over 20 ships to the harbour. Here is the worry: the wording on the book is “he was the first enemy” as opposed to the British being the enemy. So, we come to the conclusion that the British were wrong even by their own law, even by the instruction coming from London. If you look at it carefully, anywhere the author of that book used the word enemy, it always referred to the Africans. You don’t realise that that word is you, it imbues your life and the possibilities therein.
The possibilities that you can be as a nation, the way that you can be are diminished by the way that you are educated. How do you educate a massive people? So many of those that you want to talk to, to try to convince them to try to do it themselves, to watch themselves, their language, their preferences don’t understand how they are being influenced. How do you turn this around? It is a massive job because you are alone in it.
Nigeria is blessed by a crop of writers and many of them had written about colonialism and its effect. But the message never managed to transcend?
Here is the issue: you talked of several great writers, internationally recognised. We need for our great writers to be deliberate propagandists because you find our greatest writers don’t necessarily give you that thing that I mentioned before – a protagonist who shows you what to do and turns out to be the hero. If you take a protagonist from the works of the people we are talking about, a propagandist has more commitment, it is not just about telling the truth. If you look at the last ten years, if you want to see the best writing that there ever was, look at the columns of Nigerian newspapers. They are great and profound writers. But if you analyse what they write, you know they are great at expounding the problem but they don’t concentrate on how to get out of it, they don’t concentrate on how to give examples of people who have successfully conquered the situation that we find ourselves now.
What I think we need is a massive realisation that we are all sunk in the mire of negativity about ourselves and the best of us are the greatest complainant that you ever want to hear. If you look at all the great European writers, the Dickens and so on, they are examples of how you can write in favour of yourself.
What becomes the common meeting ground for the man who wants to indoctrinate you and you who want to be independent minded? What should be the point of contact?
The thing is that I’m to the academic community as much as anybody. I’m talking to policymakers in government. This is our biggest problem now. You know the ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria are our most difficult problems. It must be attacked and attacked systematically knowing what you are doing. Somebody has to study this as a subject. There is a movement around the world among third world countries except in Africa, to put on television programmes to guide peoples’ thinking. The leader of the movement is a guy called Quinton Sabido, a film director. There is a whole theory called the secular theory on how you make movie programmes systematically, that attacks a social problem. It makes people rethink a social problem and then they influence people who never saw that programme. Television is powerful like that.
I once did a popular TV programme for NTA called I Need to Know. One of the things it is remembered for is that Funke Akindele was introduced to television in that programme and a few others. The main thing is the United Nations Population Fund asked me to do a programme on reproductive health to teach young people about reproductive health.
It was a chance to teach certain behaviour inserted into entertainment by formula. UNFPA hired IMF to assess the result. It was a massively successful effort. The programme ran on TV for five years. It was rated the most popular programme on Nigerian television. Now, its possible to teach Nigerians the history, I have the story, a story in which each ethnic group believes that their ultimate hero is there. Right now they only know that a few. I can tell the story of what makes Obafemi Awolowo a hero apart from just the free education policy that he ran, same with the other heroes of other ethnicities. I can show you how in doing things that they did, you will be more successful as an individual and as a nation. I can make that movie and ultimately what I will show you is how they came together and defeated the almighty British empire and raised one flag, not five flags for each of them.
This is why you should honour that flag to the death because it is your obligation to honour that flag as that is what they did for you. That is how American history is taught. I am going to make that series. Is Nigeria going to make that investment? I get yes from every bit of corporate Nigeria but never got a cheque, though. Dora Akunyili, God bless her soul, gave me the raving endorsement. She told corporate Nigeria, ‘do this’ it didn’t happen. So now, what happens? We decide to turn it into a movie rather than a series. I have been trying to raise that money. I have cut the whole expense to half or even less, I’m still reading more history, it is still my crusade. I’m still finding better material and changing the script. My children are grown up and some of them are in the university and they are wondering when I’m going to start this whole thing. I’m still here.
I am also trying to write an accompanying popular book to be sold everywhere. It is also the story of how Nigerian gained independence.
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