The Transcript
Hi, I’m Immaculata, and you're welcome to the Sweet medicine podcast. I am a Nigerian artist and researcher, and sweet medicine is an argument for the indispensable role that the humanities and social sciences play in our quest for social healing in Nigeria and anywhere else in the world.
Stress is killing us. By and large, we Nigerians are a country in survival mode, and it's in the context of this moment that I present this sweet medicine for those who find it in themselves to pause and ask, “Wait, where are we running to how have we been taught to think? How can we disrupt the programming that alienates us from ourselves as individuals and as a collective, and how else can we be?”
For eight weeks on Tuesdays, I'll be sharing short arguments on the value of history and humanities in Nigeria today and over the weekend, I'll be sharing conversations I've had with other researchers and practitioners who we entered towards social healing in Nigeria. Today, I bring you a teaser of the weekend conversations.
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Immaculata: If you want to personify Nigeria, like if someone comes to you as a patient and their problem is that Nigeria is a don't-you-dare father, mother, parent, to them. It's like, “Don't bring yourself to this house; like I want you, but not yourself.” So you're in this house where you have to not be in this house. If this patient comes to you, how do you first of all, we know that there is no tablet for that. Pfizer is not making drugs for that. What would you tell that patient?
Chibu Obiajunwa: As the average doctor in Nigeria? The answer is, go and do what your dad says it is good for you. Don't disturb the social order. Respect your dad. He knows what is best. God created a lot of things which basically amounts to this state of internal conflict. Don't honor yourself, right? It doesn't matter that you are exhausted by maintaining appearances and you want some sort of genuine connection. Do do what seems like the best thing to do, and you will see that in your life, you will have all the things that come out of it which purportedly are good things. And look, aren't you happy with your life? Look at all the good things. But if I were me, I would refer to the sentence, which became a bit viral, right? That if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. If you want the rewards of being loved by your own self, you have to suddenly still mortify an ordeal of being known by your own self.
Aaliyah Ibrahim: For me, the real philosophy comes from Audrey Lorde, who's been an amazing teacher saying “across difference, toward freedom.” And you know that for me, is like, Okay, do I want freedom? Then I must work with difference, because I want freedom, which is also kind of its own massive idea. I want freedom for myself. I want it for other people. So I must work with difference, and that requires me to come to terms with my own internal mystery [and] the external mysteries of others.
Immaculata: Yes, I am the patient, and I am coming to you and every other guest here to be like, yo. This is my father. This is me and my father. I don't know what to do about it. And I'm not just speaking for myself. I'm also speaking for these many other people who I have been speaking to the past or my whole life. It's not just enough to against against, against against, without any fortification of what for, what for what.
Chibu Obiajunwa: Yeah, we're taught, how can we this is the world as is. How are we surviving it for ourselves and for our people?
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The voice you've just heard is the voice of Aaliyah Ibrahim, a writer and international development practitioner. And coming up next are the voices of Didi Cheeka, a filmmaker, critic and archivist. Amarachi Iheke, a PhD student researching radical imaginations of African selfhood. Obayomi Anthony, an artist, photographer, filmmaker and National Geographic explorer, Israel Wekpe, a theater director and lecturer at the University of Benin, Tobiloba Akibo, a landscape architect and researcher. Mobolaji Otuyelu, an entrepreneur and researcher, and Father Anselm Adodo, the founder of Pax Herbals Research Institute.
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Immaculata: How do you see that Nigerians have been taught to think about how to be in the world?
Didi Cheeka: If we can see, for instance, truly speaking, that there is one way people are being taught to be with themselves. People are being taught to be violent towards each other. My submission was that the coup of 1966, July 15, was an attempt to correct the ills of the nation. Unfortunately, it failed. But from this process everything began going wrong. So I want to pose the question provocatively: Remember that Nigeria is the country of Herbert Macaulay It's the country of Awolowo. The country of Azikiwe So the country of Aminu Kano If that one was not the Biafra-Nigeria War, how could Abacha have become head of state of Nigeria at one point in time?
Amarachi Iheke: The Nigerian state is a very temperamental person.Constantly on the edge, so insecure, requires the kind of apprehension, securitizing apprehension of human bodies for it to feel validated in itself. Like it's having conversations with us all the time, but it looks like violence. It looks like every day you leave your house. Like it's an emotional repressed dad. You see how our parents parent us? That's Nigeria. I feel like it is such a matter of fact thing to say but really, let's really sit down. Let's talk about that. You know, like that's, let's really humanize that in a way to also think about us as like, not just pawns in this game, but we’re co-creating it. Do you know the psychosocial state you're in by being in that perpetually securitizing state of being? That affects the psyche in a tremendous way. And I think Nigerians don't talk about themselves as emotional beings in that way, because it's almost like, “Who has time to do that?”
I always think about coming back from lesson. I was in primary five or something like that, coming back from lesson. My dad was driving us back. This is in Umuahia. There was this store, this food kiosk at the side of the road. And like it must have been the boy who, you know, the apprentice of like the lady who was serving the food or something. And she was just beating him with the side of a spoon, a metal spoon. As a child I just thought, “my god, why are these things always like, why do we violate each other like this all the time?” It's such a normal thing to exist in a constant state of like, exemplary violence.
Obayomi Anthony: Being a yoke that comes from this egg of disconnection from your own self... I can only define it as a kind of poison that you either experience a lot of sorrow by knowing it's there every day, or you just die slowly and silently. And for me, it's not possible to see things and then pretend as if I did not. For myself, and I understand how I'm processing it, but art is when you express it. I do not imagine that writing a book is what will change Nigeria because what is the percentage of people that can read? In what language are you saying these things? I am looking for a way that art can be a conversation again, or a place where we can be invited to conversations that are connected to our reality as Nigerians in Nigeria right now, I think that arts in Lagos is more of a spectacle.
Israel Wekpe: You know, someone's told me that it is where you are, there is reality. I'm here right now, and I'm dealing with it. A play is happening right now, and we're wrapped looking at it.
Tobiloba Akibo: So the biggest question for me in my career and my profession is how do how do I do work that is meaningful, because most of the time, most of these big clients, because they have money and they can control you. They'll tell you exactly what you [should do] but sometimes it's not meaningful. Somebody will ask you for a particular type of plant that she knows is an invasive species. There's no real need to do that, because we already have our own indigenous species around us.
Mobolaji Otuyelu: Innovation is not just big laboratory. The innovation is like responding to the realities. Yeah, and like, I loved the idea of the contemporary. The contemporary, for me, is the most vibrant place of exploration and creativity because. You're responding to what is happening now, gift of now. I enjoy the contemporary. I love the question of, “what is it to be me? How can I be me? How can I be me in a way that brings together all the disparate, supposedly despirate parts of me?” The parts of me built in English literature. The parts of me that yearns for deeper connection with my ancestral the part of me that loves Italian shoes, the part of me that is environmentally [conscious]. That's the beauty of contemporary because you have to find a way of bringing everything together to say this is what it is to be an African now, this is what is to be in Yoruba now, this is what is to be in Nigerian now, this is what it is to be a black person. Now. [And] the now is always moving until I die.
Fr Anselm Adodo: We didn't become a nation of our own free will, remember? We were captured for foreign years in Africa. There was complete domination of a people, mental, psychological, physical, for 400 years. And the political model that was also passed on to us... So the foundation of decay, for under development is there. We can only try to see how we can do the little we can to restructure. But as you know, it's very, very difficult. Yeah, sometimes when we blame the government, but they are living in a system that they didn't even bring here. And you find that as they are going forward, they are also coming backward, because it's difficult unless you break down the house. But when you break the house down, you can't predict what will come out of it, too. So people now want “at least we know we are here. Let's keep it going.”
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And up next are the rest of my guests, Gbope Onigbanjo, a researcher and consultant working in the fields of International Affairs, Peace Studies and Political Economy, with an MA in conflict resolution in divided societies. Oluwakemi Agbato, a design writer, researcher and founder of RENIKEJI jewelry design practice. Adefolatomiwa Toye, an architect and PhD student researching the role of Nigeria's first universities in the development of national identity. And the last guest you’ll hear on this episode is Gbemi Adekoya, a psychotherapist.
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Gbope Onigbanjo: I am thinking about these two elements, the local peace and the state-level peace or the elite peace. I'm thinking about how it doesn't seem like they can exist without each other. If we're to continue to live in this state-based world system, continue to live within states, there will always have to be a state established peace and order and also a local order. The two have to work in concert as closely as possible. The tension could be an important part of pushing back against state-based narratives of peace that people just don't agree with and shouldn't have to agree with. And I think conflict always leaves people transformed. You will never it's hard for me to think of a conflict ending and communities, livelihoods, individuals being the same as they were before.
Immaculata Abba: If you could identify however many. But what are the key characteristics that makes a resilient community, in your eyes?
Aaliyah Ibrahim: For me, the opportunity to really redefine what we say we are. If today we say we are all farmers of tomato, tomorrow we can we say that we are farmers of rice? You know, this opportunity for change.
Adefolatomiwa Toye: This hope and optimism was there at that point in time, there was this cautious effort to say that we, that we Nigerians, we have a stake in our national [progress], a stake in Africa's progress, and a stake in the world. They were very optimistic, and they had every right to be, because many of their leaders, or the elites, could show to themselves and to the world that this is what we are doing, and this is what we plan to do, and this is the trajectory we are going to take.
Early talks for UNN started in the mid 1950s in [the Eastern region’s] House of Assembly, saying that they want a new university, not the colonial one at the University of Ibadan. Azikiwe was big on you people are wasting money there. It was very contested, heavily contested, but the EasternEastern Regions had a little bit of autonomy so they could get away with it. And that's why I speak of the tension and anxiety in colonial records of that time.
Oluwakemi Agbato: I’m interested in how these objects also contribute to our nation-building after independence, when we were thinking of, okay, what is Nigeria and how do we construct this idea [of Nigeria]. And the thing is, the road is never straight, and that's the fun part. Like, you are looking for something, then you find something else. I'm researching stamps, I'm learning about birds, I'm learning about orchids, I'm learning about reliquaries in Congo. The road is never straight, and that's the sweet part, so sweet!
All this difficulty around learning names and dates, it falls away because it becomes real for you. You are the one pursuing knowledge, the knowledge is not pursuing so it becomes real for you. Can imagine just that awareness of the world? You can feel everything that you touch like you. You can feel the power of your emotional handprint on everything that you touch. It's a wonderful life for me, being able to deepen that for me has been so amazing.
Gbemi Adekoya: So I got an interesting client, a client who has stayed with me for over a decade, their story, and that person wanted me to tell them if I thought they were a bad person. They asked me- Do you think I'm a bad person? Because when I was young, my uncle abused me and ruined my life, and because of what my uncle did [leaving] me sick and depraved, I abused my niece and nephew. Why is my family ostracizing me, and why am I now facing like jail time and I have to be on the abuse registry as a registered offender? And then I asked, if your uncle was abused by his own uncle, does that make you deserving of the lifelong harm that he caused you? Is your uncle excused from the harm that he did to you because he was also a victim of somebody.
The exact same way you, my dear caller, are not deserving of harm, is the exact same way your niece and nephew are not deserving of harm. And the exact same way I think that your uncle deserves to be held responsible for the choices he made... is the exact same way that you can both be the victim of somebody's poor choices and you have made the choice to be the perpetrator.
Life has happened to us. We are, however, responsible for our choices. That's why it's critically important that everyone does the work to recover from the things and the people who happened to us, because we are on the hook for those we happen to.
Aaliyah Ibrahim: I’m just interested in how where people go to interrupt their harm, and where people go when they need help in any community, where people go when they need to survive. Because not a lot of people, you know, if I interrupted my harm–whatever conditions I was living in–by going abroad, most people, the least they can do is knock on their neighbors, but their neighbor is also in the same condition, right? So, I'm very interested in what it means to find resources within your enclosure to to be able to survive the enclosure, if that's at all possible.
Immaculata Abba: What are good practices for knowing when enough is enough? Because people like we're all human, we will, we will transgress each other.
Gbemi Adekoya: I like your question, and it's one of the conundrums of the world that there's no simple answer. There just isn't, because people are complex, right? And people are people, people will people. And you are going to regularly face situations in your life, like, where you’re like how did we get here? So I think a good way to answer would be to say: Just be prepared to be dumbfounded regularly, and to not know the answer and recognize that when that happens, you're not mad or crazy, you're just a human.
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Once again, my name is Immaculata, and you've been listening to the guest teaser episode for the Sweet Medicine podcast. Sweet Medicine is produced by Studio Styles, my project space for research and creative projects for well being, social justice and healing, connections with ourselves, our communities, our histories and the environment.
Sweet medicine was made possible through funding from the Open Society Foundations, through its Ideas Workshop, whose ambition it is to fund heterodox ideas and speculative concepts across the globe and to seek out new forms of cultural production where open society and expressions intersect. Our theme music is by Joyce Olong. It is an original composition for this podcast and for the long list of collaborators that help bring this to life, please visit sweet medicine.me/about.
See you next week.