Adebayo Lamikanra

I confess with a little touch of shame that I do not read plays. I have tried many times to immerse myself in the ebb and flow of some of the more famous and some not so famous plays. But, the result is always the same. I never finish going through any play. There is something in my mind, which keeps disturbing my enjoyment of plays, making it impossible for me to follow the plot of the story. It has taken me a long time to discover that my subconscious is fully convinced that plays can only come alive when they are put on stage. This is the reason why I have never had the privilege and pleasure of reading a play by the great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw.

Fortunately however, Shaw was a man of so many parts that one does not have to read any of his plays for one to become acquainted with his genius. He was a prodigious writer, a rebel with many causes, a conversationalist in the mould of Ben Johnson (definitely not Bullet Ben, the steroid dope) a great wit and a formidable intellectual. He has been quoted and misquoted by so many people that there should be a dictionary of what he actually said in the course of his long and interesting life. There are also so many interesting stories about him that a faint suspicion that at least some of them are not true. I am about to relate two of such stories and whilst not insisting that they are true, they sound so much like what Shaw could have done that I hope you will find it possible to believe that they really did happen.

One of my favourite stories about the great man concerns a stunningly beautiful actress who was however not known for the quality of her grey matter. This young Venus was reputed to have playfully suggested to Shaw, who had no claims whatsoever to beauty, that they should get together to make a baby. The basis of this weird and wild suggestion was that it would be great to have a child with the mind of Shaw and the extreme physical attractiveness of the actress. The uncharacteristically careful Shaw was reported to have viewed the suggestion with naked horror. He was stuck by the thoughts of the possibility that they would produce a freak, possessing the reputedly weak mind of the actress and his own, all too evidently, unattractive body. His rejection of this interesting proposition was strong and immediate.

On another occasion, Shaw was sitting next to a lady at a dinner party and probably out of boredom, he turned to her and bluntly asked her for sexual favours in return for what in those days was the kingly sum of L100. The woman, taken aback by this bold and unexpected request, nevertheless stammered her acceptance of the terms. Thereupon, Shaw repeated the request but this time offered to pay only £2, which even in those days was a miserable sum of money. The poor lady was infuriated by what she regarded as a deliberate insult. “I am not that kind of woman” she snapped. But Shaw was not to be outdone. “We have established what kind of a woman you are” he said in response, “what we are arguing about is the price!”

In these troubled times, there are arguments galore over what we have to pay for any commodity. Nigerians have entered the New Year to find that as NOT predicted by any of our self appointed prophets, the price of posting letters has risen beyond the reach of honest men and the price of food is following closely behind. The situation with regard to food is so perilous that only a massively funded programme of “better life for urban men and women” may make it possible for many people living in our towns and cities to survive what is clearly going to be an annus horibilis. Gone and gone seemingly forever are the days when some government officials living in cloud cuckoo land tried to put figures to the rate of inflation ravaging our poor country.

Under normal circumstances the vast majority of people stroll through life without having to put their courage, determination or integrity to the test. Some unlikely people turn out to be heroes when they are confronted by strange situations whereas many others who are perceived as being extremely dependable fail miserably when the chips are down. In other words, we should pray that we not be put to the test as there is absolutely no guarantee of success and failure can be absolutely devastating. But, these are far from being normal times. Temptation is round every corner and the will to resist has been mercilessly sapped by over-exposure to the great uncertainties of our time. One does not have to be a cynic to recognise that our minds are a battleground for good and evil.

All we care to know now is that the only thing going up in Nigeria is the price of everything we have to buy. In the early days of our discomfiture, it was possible for one to keep going by simply doing away with what one regarded as luxury items. When the price of milk started to float determinedly upwards, people rationalised that life could go on without milk. Bread was banished from the table when its own turn came, eggs were made to don the cloak of rarity and, many claiming to be born again, turned resolutely away from all kinds of intoxicating drinks.

All these, if the truth be told were simply tactics to survive what we thought was a bad patch. We tried very hard to believe all those apologists who seemed to have been employed to do nothing but persuade us that life much more abundant was only round the corner. Now we know that all those mediums were gazing into cracked crystal balls and their promise of ‘fat’ years to succeed the ‘lean’ ones are the figment of a warped or bribed imagination. Suddenly we are all confronted with the horrible possibility that we would sooner or later, have to face the possibility of finding out what sort of persons we really are, and even going beyond that to find out just how much our integrity is worth.

Under normal circumstances the vast majority of people stroll through life without having to put their courage, determination or integrity to the test. Some unlikely people turn out to be heroes when they are confronted by strange situations whereas many others who are perceived as being extremely dependable fail miserably when the chips are down. In other words, we should pray that we not be put to the test as there is absolutely no guarantee of success and failure can be absolutely devastating. But, these are far from being normal times. Temptation is round every corner and the will to resist has been mercilessly sapped by over-exposure to the great uncertainties of our time. One does not have to be a cynic to recognise that our minds are a battleground for good and evil. We are good only when the forces of good are strong enough to overcome those of evil.

It is to be appreciated however that the forces of good in some people are so weak that to all intents and purposes, they are to be regarded as being totally evil. Also, it is not too difficult to be good when we enjoy the protection of physical as well as mental well-being. But, as soon as we are confronted with difficulties and uncertainties, our defenses are shot to pieces. This is the kindest explanation that can be offered for the fact that there are not many people now who, given the opportunity, will not feather their nest at the expense of the poor people of Nigeria. In other words, it is very easy to be ‘settled’ in this period of great uncertainties. In the end it is those that could not resist the temptation to be ‘settled’ that will be condemned. All those that were not in the position to be tempted will of course be able to crow about their famous victory over what in the end was an imaginary enemy.

Bernard Shaw was undoubtedly a great man, but also a mischievous one. My sympathies are completely with the poor lady who was the subject of his acid joke, as nobody should be confronted with such a test. Not even in jest.

Lamikanra, a professor of Pharmacy at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife sent this 1993 piece because of its relevance to 2016 Nigeria