..
Professor Harrow,
I feel exactly the same as Amatoritsero. I find your continued conjecturing of a possible imprisonment of Abani for whatever reason somewhat implausible, based on facts uncontested in this debate. There is nothing so far in Abani's own words or in the findings of those opposed to him to indicate that he may have been arrested or imprisoned at all. If you admit that his claims to have been imprisoned for his writing are barefaced lies, why conjecture he might have been imprisoned for something else? Why conjecture he might just be exaggerating, rather than lying outright when nothing in all the accounts indicates he was ever arrested? I mean, you would have had a point if in the course of this we had discovered that he was actually arrested or imprisoned for a day; if some facts had turned up to say this chap was actually arrested, interrogated or kept in detention briefly for some other reasons not to do with his writing. You would have had a point if someone who knew him then had come up to say he was indeed arrested and imprisoned at so-so-so and so time, but only because he bit off someone's ear or stole their loaf of bread and so on. But without any valid basis for that conjecture, why raise it consistently as a counter to those who say he's lying? That is the problem with your position! It is based on nothing and advertently or inadvertently, it is serving to make Abani's lies look less serious than they are It is an indirect support for the man and it rankles greatly with some of us.
....
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 29 November 2011, 13:43
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
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Sent: Tuesday, 29 November 2011, 13:43
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
dear amatorisero
thanks for your reply. i did not express doubts over the claims that abani had not been imprisoned for his writings. if you would please reread what i wrote you will see that. might he have been imprisoned at all, on any charge, and then decided to turn that experience into the full-blown stories he is now making up? why not? at this point to ask that question is not to doubt the statements by all those on the list that he had not experienced what he claimed. i am not denying his "armed robbery," simply trying to understand the basis for his having made it up. of course, he might never have seen the inside of a prison cell as well.
there were people who knew him back then and who could easily state that he never went to prison. tess doesn't categorically say that because she was his teacher, not acquaintance.
let me repeat, in my last postings i did not express incredulity that he could have lied; i expressed dismay that he has come to this point in his public statements. his claims about having been imprisoned for his writings, about the young boy and his penis being nailed, about fela, all have been refuted convincingly, and i have not defended him for making those claims.
ken
On 11/29/11 4:27 AM, Amatoritsero Ede wrote:
-- thanks for your reply. i did not express doubts over the claims that abani had not been imprisoned for his writings. if you would please reread what i wrote you will see that. might he have been imprisoned at all, on any charge, and then decided to turn that experience into the full-blown stories he is now making up? why not? at this point to ask that question is not to doubt the statements by all those on the list that he had not experienced what he claimed. i am not denying his "armed robbery," simply trying to understand the basis for his having made it up. of course, he might never have seen the inside of a prison cell as well.
there were people who knew him back then and who could easily state that he never went to prison. tess doesn't categorically say that because she was his teacher, not acquaintance.
let me repeat, in my last postings i did not express incredulity that he could have lied; i expressed dismay that he has come to this point in his public statements. his claims about having been imprisoned for his writings, about the young boy and his penis being nailed, about fela, all have been refuted convincingly, and i have not defended him for making those claims.
ken
On 11/29/11 4:27 AM, Amatoritsero Ede wrote:
Prof. Harrow,I did not want to wade into this. But you force my hand when you keep doubting. Perhaps you are trying to be politically correct. You do not believe the evidence of pius, emetulu, etc etc, and all the activists in here. Why not simply send an email to Akin Adesokan who was in jail, or Ogaga ifowodo who was also in jail - albeit not because of their writing. You must know these guys, sir. I am older than the subject you are discussing. I was in Nigeria during the time covered by his narrative. I have been a poet since the 80s. I lived in Nigeria till 1994. There is no way none of us fellow Nigerian writers/activists wont have heard of those incarcerations if they happened. One thing with Nigeria is that no matter the amount of repression there is an irrepressible watchdog press, a section of which goes underground every time there is crisis and reports everything. The pure and simple fact is that none of the tales took place. Period. We might however say, well, leave the man alone. To each his own; that then is a different matter entirely. But your prevarications and incredulity that a writer of such a status could commit such a sleight of hand, is precisely what makes 419 scam effective. I wish you know how many people in the metropolis made a career out of Ken Saro-Wiwa's death; reclaiming the latter's torture and suffering as theirs to short circuit immigration obstacles, demand asylum, kindle affection from women, get ahead as a writer etc etc. I do not want to go into this elaborately because sincerely it is embarrassing for me too. I feel i am made complicit in the matter indirectly because a so-called intellectual has descended to levels we usually reserve for those who one assumes do not know better. Let me explain what i mean. If your family member is accused of robbery, armed or not, with overwhelming evidence found on his person, handcuffed, and dragged before a court, sentenced etc, do you disagree with the hard facts and shameful truth or simply hide in embarrassment or deny? You seem, sir, to be choosing the last option. This matter has been a long festering sore; now it is making pus all over the place. One is indeed speechless.Amatoritsero
On 28 November 2011 23:45, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
hi pius,
i see your point, but in my way i was not really cutting him any slack. i don't think that it is impossible that he went to prison, but that doesn't mean much. maybe he did, maybe it was for a small thing and a small time, and he turned that into these fabulations, these stories. why is that cutting him slack? i didn't say his stories were plausible, but that he is now in a position where he has to bear the heat for his claims. aren't we basing our rejection of his claims on their implausibility? all i said was that there were people, witnesses to his whereabouts, who could attest directly to the facts.
my metaphors of trouble the waters and air of fabulations are simply expressions of the same doubts sounded by everyone else on the list "penis nailing and all." his performance didn't undo those doubts for me, but became a "sad sight" of a major writer exposing himself to public humiliations, which is what is happening now. i called all this troubling. i could have used stronger language, but in the end, my posting is intended to share the doubts expressed by funmi and ikhide et al. as for trouble the waters, it might mean lots of things to lots of people: for me it is the title of a film about hurricane katrina where the troubled waters wrecked a good part of a city, and destroyed people's lives. it is a metaphor that doesn't necessarily cut slack.
bottom line: i am not in disagreement with the postings that have effectively shown him for a fabulist, and his performance that funmi asked us to watch was particularly disturbing. troubling.
ken
On 11/28/11 10:57 PM, Pius Adesanmi wrote:--Ken, Ken, Ken:How many times I call you? Your case don begin dey taya me for dis matter o. This is getting very frustrating. Unless I misread you below, you are saying that even after touching the holes in palms of Jesus Christ, after reading Kennedy, after reading Moses, after reading Ikhide, after reading Funmi, after reading yours truly, after doing your own digging, all you can do is this cross between hedging and an underhand reaffirmation of your belief in the plausibility of Chris's narrative? "They have the air of fabulations"? All those speeches and claims merely "trouble the waters" where you stand? You can't quite bring yourself to say that those fabulations are fabulations? There is still that part of you that can't quite embrace the absolute implausibility of those stories? And just what is this festishization of the text you are doing here? Ken, there are s/heroes of the Nigerian struggle - some of them here in this listerve - who actually suffered. Some, like Chima Ubani, died on the hellhole of Nigerian roads fighting the shitstem till he drew his very last breath. The kind of outlandish slack you are cutting the totally false narrative of a fifteen-year old novelist put on death row for the Vatsa coup and who shared a prison cell with Fela and patati and patata is quite frankly becoming offensive. You are beginning to do more damage to the sanctity of the Nigerian struggle and the sufferings of our genuine s/heroes than even the initial offender. If you do not want facts to disrupt your appreciation of Chris, perhaps there are other ways to go about it?Ken, would you cut an American writer this extraordinary slack? If I have to ask you this question again, I will not frame it as "American writer".PiusFrom: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, 28 November 2011, 19:30
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
dear kennedy--
i suppose that the encomiums for abani are for his writing, not his representation of his suffering past. that said, at funmi's insistence, i did view the speech he gave, seen on TED, and that, combined with that $100,000 or so he charges, creates a sad sight.
i am not unhappy that his past is being examined; when you go public with statements about anything, you have to be held accountable. he was not invisible. surely there were people who knew him personally during the years he evokes as those of his imprisonment; ditto for any prisoners he claims to have known. the public records he evokes won't tell the stories of people who lived in the places he lived in, and who knew him back then. we can't really discuss the question of his being tortured meaningfully, since if he actually had passed any time at all in prison, and had been tortured, only a medical and psychiatric examination would yield the proofs we want. but his whereabouts can't remain a total mystery, and his claims will be revealed for what they are eventually.
i agree that they have the air of fabulations, penis nailing and all, and that he is now incorporating them into expensive speaking fees is indeed troubling.
so i read him as a writer whose speeches and claims trouble the waters. he will have to bear the heat now.
ken
On 11/28/11 7:01 PM, Kennedy Emetulu wrote:--...
"dear allwould soyinka and achebe have been imprisoned if they hadn't already had reputations that put them in the national spotlight? or saro-wiwa? would he have been considered such a threat if he hadn't been able to mobilize international opinion?" – Kenneth HarrowProf, below is what Pius said about the above:"..........No Nigerian writer has ever been persecuted because of a novel or a poem or any such thing. Not even Ken Saro Wiwa or Wole Soyinka have that history. Writers have been persecuted by the Nigerian state because of their political praxis. Never because of literature. The Nigerian state is an illiterate state. She does not read novels. She would be happier if Soyinka concentrated on writing plays and poems. He would be free to write those to his heart's content. She reacts to writers only when they make political noise, not when they write novels........." – Pius AdesanmiThat is the fact. What you want us to do here in your question is conjecture; but we can make intelligent conjectures from the facts. First, clarification is that Achebe was never imprisoned. Soyinka was, but only because of his politics.I'm sure you've heard the story of those imprisonments and all the legends associated with them – how Soyinka hijacked a radio station at gunpoint in 1965 to demand the cancellation of the rigged elections in the West; how he was arrested and later freed by Justice Kayode Esho; how in 1967, he was arrested by the Gowon government and put in solitary confinement for actively trying to broker peace between Biafra and Nigeria. Before then, he was lauded and sponsored by the state as a writer; but once he began to get into active politics and activism, they arrested and imprisoned him. Achebe, as I said, was not imprisoned; but it was the suspicion that he knew of a military coup (because of the uncannily prophetic novel he wrote before then) that made him a person of interest at a time his ethnic group and men of his stature in the army and Civil Service were being hounded and killed by a state controlled by those opposed to his ethnic group.Saro-Wiwa was a writer also feted and sponsored by the state. His plays were broadcast on national television controlled by the state and he himself, early in his career served in government as a Commissioner in Rivers State and also as a member of a quango created by the Babangida government. But once he took the political road of championing the cause of his ethnic group against the dominant and predatory state in a fierce political battle, they came for him.Of course, all of them had international reputations as good writers before their brush with politics and the state; but it was their political involvement that got them bigger visibility internationally, because what this did was to awaken the international literary and political establishment to their plight as writers being persecuted for their politics. The lines became merged and the rest is history.It is that type of history that Chris Abani is manufacturing to get the credibility of people like the Soyinkas, the Saro-Wiwas and the Achebes. He didn't go through the suffering these people went through for their politics and their art (as both became merged once the state came calling), but he felt by lying that he went through that and prop up these lies with his work of art, he would achieve their status. Well, it would seem he has, if we accept the fraudulently contrived encomiums coming his way. But we are not about to let him get away with it. If his promoters in the West think they can impose his false history on us, they have another think coming. Nigerian literature has never had a fraudulent figurehead. Chris Abani will be purged of his lies and made to walk the plank!….From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, 28 November 2011, 21:17
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
dear all--
would soyinka and achebe have been imprisoned if they hadn't already had reputations that put them in the national spotlight? or saro-wiwa? would he have been considered such a threat if he hadn't been able to mobilize international opinion?
ken
On 11/28/11 2:49 PM, Pius Adesanmi wrote:--Chidi:Thanks for that detail on Achebe. Correction taken in good faith But you must admit that starting a new thread with my name and very nearly killing a mosquito with a laser-guided intercontinental balistic missile in the process could make your enemies accuse you of diversion. Although I will defend you if they do but your enemies could come out saying that you are using corner-corner sense to divert attention from the real issues, having been unable to satisfactorily explain to, say, Kennedy and Moses, why you took the unbelievable position you took in the thread that you are now trying to hide under a bushel. Anyway sha, I intend to now start claiming that Buka Sukar Dimka got his coup inspiration from the first poem that I ever wrote and I was put on death row until I escaped to Canada via France. Chances are I will get some dumb institutional do-gooders in America to invest in the story and reward me plenty plenty. If my lies eventually catch up with me, shebi I can always count on my brother, Chidi, whose love for me passeth all understanding? Abi no be so?PiusFrom: Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@yahoo.com>
To: USA Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, 28 November 2011, 5:46
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Haba Professor Pius(PP)
--"..........No Nigerian writer has ever been persecuted because of a novel or a poem or any such thing. Not even Ken Saro Wiwa or Wole Soyinka have that history. Writers have been persecuted by the Nigerian state because of their political praxis. Never because of literature. The Nigerian state is an illiterate state. She does not read novels. She would be happier if Soyinka concentrated on writing plays and poems. He would be free to write those to his heart's content. She reacts to writers only when they make political noise, not when they write novels.........".....Professor Pius(PP)Haba PP,Professor Chinua Achebe was arrested and interrogated immediately after the 1966 coup for what he wrote in the novel "A Man Of The People".Late Hubert Ogunde was severely persecuted in the early 1960s by the Tafawa Balewa and Akintola federal and regional governments for what he said in the play "Yoruba Ronu"Eedris Abdulkarim, a Nigerian contemporary musician complained of severe persecutions during the Obasanjo civil regime for what he sang in the music "Nigeria Jaga Jaga".In activism, there is no clear boundary between Politics and Literature. If Okey Ndibe, an activist who uses Literature as his primary platform can be taken hostage in a Gestapo-style operation at the Lagos International Airport by the Goodluck Jonathan regime goons, the credibility of your comment above then seems doubtful to me.
There are of course many uncelebrated cases in contemporary Nigeria, like your spouse and children being denied certain benefits they should ordinarily been entitled to by a state government in a state you have lived in for more than two decades and a government official pretending to be a friend, calling and advising you "to cooperate for the sake of your family", and you know very well that you write poems and that you have no other "political praxis".
PP, your views carry some weight, so, make you no dey yan dis kin yan.
......Chidi
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