AYI KWEI ARMAH'S GHANA AND OUR NIGERIA

AYI KWEI ARMAH'S GHANA AND OUR NIGERIA

By 'Dimeji Daniels

Published by Gbooza, a news site on June 3, 2012. Also published in Gazelle News on 9 September, 2013 and Daily Independent on September 13, 2013

All my through my university days as a literary student, the Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah was one of the few African literary icons I fell in love with because of his outstanding employment of images and archetypes. Though there were other literary greats like Wole Soyinka, Nguigi Wathiongo, Chinua Achebe, amongst many, Ayi Kwei Armah stole my heart in a special way with his vivid use of images and archetypes that sometimes can be humorously sickening.

Of all the novels he wrote, his first, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, describes in vivid details, using visionary symbolism, the decadence in the Ghanaian society and how the protagonist 'The Man', an anonymous railway clerk, is considered a lily-livered financial impotent by everyone around him, especially his wife and his mother-in-law, who believe he is too scared to grab his portion of the national cake.

The book is partly about the always-rekindled hope of Africans for a 'messiah' at every election period, only that the hope is soon replaced with frustration and a never-fulfilled longing for a new 'messiah'. Upon independence, the hope for a better nation is re-enlivened in the Ghanaians, but as time passes by they soon realize that the new leaders are in so many ways like the colonialists they sent packing. Their love for made-in-Europe items is so intense and insatiable that it draws many hitherto men of integrity into the pursuit and love of the gleam, in other words mundane things. The Ghanaians do not require too much intellectual depth to realize that they are once again stuck and their situation far worse than what obtained during the imperial reign.

Estella, the wife of Koomson, a Minister, who in the manner of a white woman rubs imaginary strands of hair back into the main mass of her wig, depicts African women, especially the rich, who long to be like their European counterpart. Estella will not touch any drink save for European drinks, as the African beer is not good for her tummy. And like Estella, her minister-husband, despite his apparent flaunting of ill-gotten wealth, wants people to believe that it's all work and no money in government. He goes on and on about how the people they 'selflessly' serve ungratefully accuse them of corruption. What a mean way to pay back these committed nationalists!

Like the Honourable Minister in Achebe's Man of The People, the ministers in Ayi Kwei Armah's novel passionately read long speeches they know nothing about and don't believe in for the benefit of the fickle-minded masses that naively believe in their lies and often praise their big-manship. Save for a few, the masses, like political neophytes, continue to show faith in the capacity of the politicians to bring about change. But the truth is, these men are not capable of anything that is noble. They have nothing to offer other than to oppress and suppress their people with stolen government funds. Eventually in Ghana (though not the one depicted by Ayi Kwei Armah in the book), it took a revolution to jolt the masses out of their reverie.

Ayi Kwei used several archetypes, one of whom is Oyo, the Man's wife, who cuts the picture of those who see nothing wrong in taking a bite and would even prod a loved one to dip his hand into the pot. There is the bird 'chichidodo' which hates faeces but feeds on the maggots therein, a clear example of the majority of the masses who condemn corruption but loves its proceeds.

As for the images used, Ayi Kwei Armah uses a bus which is beautiful on the outside but decrepit on the inside to describe how decadence is eating away the country from the inside in a termite-like fashion while the outside world believes everything is fine with her. Readers are also confronted with the image of a waste-bin so full that it refuses to take more, but for people's continued dumping of waste therein it soon becomes consumed and hidden under the slimy dirt, representing how overwhelmed of corruption the country has become.

The Harvard-schooled Armah also talks of the gleam, a symbol of the glitter and glamour of life that has turned leaders into surrealists who love things which should be used and use people who should be loved. Their iPad, iPhones, Blackberry, stolen money-procured cars are much more important to them than the people around them. Their workers are no more than ordinary figures which become useful only when there are errands to be run; the well-being of these workers is none of their business.

Teacher, one of the characters in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, declares: "True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all blackness in the big old slave castle? And the men around him, why not? What stops them sending their loved children to kindergartens in Europe? And if the little men around the big men can send their children to new international schools, why not? That is all anyone here ever struggles for: to be nearer the white man. All the shouting against the white men was not hate. It was love. Twisted, but love all the same. Just look around you and you will see it even now. Especially now."

All of the times that I have read this book, though written about the Nkrumah-led Ghana, I could not help but see how it unmistakably depicts 'our' Nigeria. Most of the people who became hoarse-voiced fighting corruption have now seen that governance is not as 'easy' as Nigerians think. They now unrepentantly argue that what political office holders are paid is too little for the 'sacrifices' they make on behalf of the masses. Most saddening of all, the youths who condemn, criticize and demonize these politicians do so to get a bite of the cake. Give these youths political appointments and the devil of yore becomes a progressive who could never do anything wrong. These youths create different groups on social network sites to defend the actions or inactions of their benefactor-politicians. Even the innocent are ignorantly drawn in and if at all they discover, they are already caught up in the dance of shame.

The closing of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is, for me, the most enjoyable part. Honourable Minister Koomson, who on an earlier visit spurns the latrine of the Man, is forced to later escape through the cockroach-infested odious latrine and he also suffers un-hidden disdain in the hands of the driver of his boat who before the coup calls him ‘Sir'. The earlier scorned and abandoned Man and the captain of the boat become his only hope of staying alive.

The Charles Taylors, Mobutu Sese Sekos, Hosni Mubaraks, Muamar Ghadaffis, Zine el-Abidine Ben Alis, Sani Abachas of this continent have all gone this way, down the latrine of history they never believed could touch them and many more will still be forced down this latrine. Like Koomson, their cars, houses, foreign accounts, women of easy virtues, and their cronies will fail them when it matters most. In the end they will be forced down the latrine of history with its attendant odious smell, never to be remembered for anything good again, because they refused to stand with their people when they are needed the most.