By Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
The Nigerian Pidgin English term "Amebo" can be said to
subsume the meaning of this poem, in terms of its subject, theme and
choice of language, as well as suggesting a larger body of ideas in
relation to the meaning of the pidgin English term. This larger body of ideas
is centred in the Amebo Principle as a demonstration of the positive and
negative potential of communication beyond its role in fulfilling the most
immediate needs as a fundamental human quality and value, the
expression of this principle in the figures of Esu and Agwu in Orisa and
Odinani cosmology and these communicative imperatives as subsumed by
the interpretive and cosmological conceptions of the discipline of
esuneutics.
The poem:
"I
Dey Shake Head 3" By Chidi Anthony Opara
No be only Naija security people
Dey argue well well,
People
Wey dey work with Naija Presido
Dey argue well well too.
Dem too dey argue
Sotee
Dem work too dey suffer,
I don dey shake head again.
Presido carry dem go meeting for
yonder,
Minister dem go,
Adviser dem follow,
Special Adviser dem follow.
Senior Special Assistant dem too
follow,
Special Assistant dem follow,
Even Personal Assistant dem follow
go.
Madam sef go,
Her worker dem follow go,
Naija government come dey empty,
Work dey suffer,
I come dey shake head more more.
As dem come back,
Instead to siddon do work,
Dem dey follow amebo dem argue.
Amebo dem talk say
Presido no fit win di meeting chairmo,
Presido people reply say
Presido no contest meeting chairmo.
Amebo dem talk again say
Presido contest but im no win.
Presido people come reply again say
Presido for win if im contest,
Argument
Come dey climb up, dey climb down,
Work dey suffer,
I still dey shake head.
Amebo: Origins and Adaptation
The term "Amebo" emerges from Nigerian entertainment history
and its subsequent filtering into popular discourse. "Amebo" is
derived from the name of a character in the 1970s and 80s Nigerian
Television Authority drama series Village Headmaster. She was a great gossip who
acted as a tireless conveyor of news between various parties in the village.
Her name passed into the popular lexicon to represent assiduous passing on of
information, particularly in a non-formal and gossipy context.
The Amebo concept has been expanded and adapted in various aspects of Nigerian
life, from music to engineering, to refer to a broad range of phenomena
subsumed by the activity of passing on information, and of engaging in
discourse as a fundamental human activity.
General Social Contexts
Bella Naija's post "Amebo-Yes, I'm Talking to You"
examines its expanded generic meaning as it entered into Nigerian public
discourse as referring to gossip, in relation to personal and public
demonstrations of this phenomenon in different parts of the world.
Her illustrative picture sums up this sense of delight in sharing
information in morally questionable sense :
The "Her Fiancee is Gay: Should I Do Amebo?"
thread on the Nigerian social network Nairaland is a debate that highlights the
social issues involved in communicating sensitive information. The question
" Should I do Amebo?" in the thread title indicates a question as to
whether or not to act like an "Amebo" in passing on sensitive
information unknown to the affected parties.
Music
Bayo Ade's Nigerian Pidgin English music video,Amebo Dem Go Tire , its refrain, "Wetin you no see you
see you see am", "what you dont see, you say you saw",
characterises an "Amebo" as more of a person who makes up
questionable depictions of reality on inadequate understanding of observations
than a person communicating accurate information, depicting the
negative potential of the Amebo concept in terms of spreading of information in
a destructive spirit of gossip.
Sadly, Bayo Ade was killed by kidnappers in 2011 even though they
collected ransom money from his family for his release.
State Secrets
The Amebo concept is invoked in connection with the tension between concealing
and revealing state classified information to the public by Nigerian
Pidgin English news site Zazu Gist in the article " 20 Years Jail for CIA Wen Do Amebo".
Engineering
The penetration of the Amebo concept in terms of the semiotics of engineering
is represented by the Amebo- 1 drone, manufactured by the Nigerian Air
Force Institute of Technology, this craft being an unmanned aerial vehicle that seems to be of
the kind that could be used in spying.
Communications Platforms
Amebo.com which describes itself as
"an online news and entertainment portal totally dedicated to giving you
an authentic view of the Nigerian political and social situation"
demonstrates the transposition of the Amebo name from its
characterisation in Village Headmaster to a generic term in informal
Nigerian public discourse to its use as a means of organising and branding a
formal information disseminating organisation in cyberspace.
AmeboMind Your Business Blogspot plays on the gossip characterisation of
the Amebo concept to brand the informal communications platform represented by
a blog.
Social Actors and Institutions in General
Charles Dickson uses the term to represent various people and organisations in
terms of their roles as agents of as well as points of convergence of discourse
in his article on the Nigerian energy crises of January 2012 "Occupy Nigeria According to 'Amebos'".
The Amebo Principle
The scope of the use of the term "Amebo", therefore, suggests that it
delineates a principle of human behaviour and activity one could describe as
the Amebo Principle.
The Amebo Principle involves the seeking and communication of information as a
compulsive expression of being human, in its transmission of
information across borders, between individuals, between governments and
publics, between private and public spaces, communication that needs to be
interpreted at various levels of decoding.
The Amebo Principle, as a demonstration of the urge-to-discourse in humanity,
demonstrates both positive and negative qualities. The positive qualities
consist in the sharing of information and reflection on and application of
information, qualities that define human civilisation. Its negative qualities
involve shallow understanding of information, indiscreet use of information and
deliberately destructive use of information.
Esuneutics
The relationship between information dissemination and the hermeneutic or
esuneutic task of decoding and interpreting the various levels or possibilities
of meaning of such information, as well as the relationship of
communication to insight as well as to deception, is represented in
classical Yoruba/Orisa and Igbo/Odinnani cosmologies by the figures of Esu and
Agwu. The interpretive process of understanding various possibilities of
meaning in discourse, in relation to a cosmology related to the symbolism of
physical and metaphysical crossroads as representing the convergence and
divergence of possibilities of interpretation and of the opportunities and
outcomes that emerge from these interpretive choices, is known as
esuneutics, developing this idea from its use by Obododimma Oha in "The Esu Paradigm in the Semiotics of Identity and Community"
, who describes himself as getting it from the Nigerian literary
group, Krazitivity.
Chidi Anthony Opara and the Ameboization of Discourse
In Chidi's poem "I Dey Shake Head", I am shaking my head, a title
implying shaking one's head in perplexity, the term
"amebo" refers to a group of people expressing opinions on the
actions of the Nigerian government and the response of the government to these
opinions from the public. One may describe the use of the term in the poem as
summing up the poem's transposition of the term from its general
meaning in Nigerian Pidgin English to refer to the swelling of discourse of
various kinds, of varying degrees of analytical value, on the current crisis in
the Nigerian polity, with particular reference to a specific incident
which I cant pinpoint.
The "ameboization", of this expansion of discourse suggests
that the Amebo concept can be described in both negative and
positive terms, as an expression of the need to examine public issues but also
as demonstrating a compulsion in the demonstration of this human tendency that
is not always exercised in a critical manner.
In fact, the entire poem can be said to turn on the "ameboization" of
public discourse, radiating from government activity to the polity and back to
its origin in the highly publicised activities of government and back to the
public, in a continuous cycle.
All over the world, the behaviour of governments provokes responses from the
public within and beyond the borders of those countries, and such responses do
affect the conduct of the relevant governments in varying degrees.
Chidi's poem laments what he describes as the "ameboization" cycle in
a specific incident in Nigerian public affairs, in which debate of dubious
analytical value is allowed to superimpose itself upon the more valid
activities of the government.
A beauty of the poem is its rhythm, centred in the parallelism of the second
stanza, composed of lines of identical or similar structure, often
rhyming.
Perhaps the form of the poem, its content and its semantic thrust, its
direction of meaning, could be seen as a dramatic reflection on discourse in
the form of its symbolisation by the Amebo concept, in which the concept stands
for communication and the various transformations it could undergo in a social
context.
Esu and Agwu
In this regard, one could relate the Amebo concept, particularly as
it is dramatised in this poem, to the trickster/communication/
cosmological figures from Yoruba and Igbo cosmology, Esu and Agwu.
Esu
In the spirit of unanticipated transformations, of upsets of expectation, at
times in the context of various ways of managing or interpreting
information, that is the forte of Esu, a central interpretive medium in
Yoruba/Orisa Ifa divination, Chidi mobilises his poetry in projecting
Nigerian Pidgin English from its oral roots into a written platform, while
moving from its origin in the localised orality of Southern Nigeria to a
global electronic dissemination via his commitment to widespread online
communication. Chidi's poetry, therefore, is a demonstration of the
transformations between oral and written traditions in African literature.
Agwu
Like Agwu, who enables the dibia interpret the messages
in Igbo/Odinani Afa divination, information brought by Agwu from its
travels to distant lands, the feature of human society that could be
described as the Amebo Principle involves the character of discourse as a
compulsive and mobile expression of being human, in its transmission of information
across borders, between individuals, between governments and publics,
between private and public spaces, communication that needs to be interpreted
at various levels of decoding.
Agwu is described by Angulu Onwuejeogwu in Afa Symbolism
and Phenomonology In Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of
Social Action ( a superb work, sadly not widely available, having been
published in Benin by Ethiope and which forms part of a corpus of works
operating from various forms and degrees of insider and outsider
perspectives on classical Igbo philosophy, spirituality and medicine including
Annechukwu Umeh's After God is Dibia : Igbo Cosmology, Divination and SacredScience in Nigeria and Patrick Iroegbu's essays and boook on
classical Igbo medicine and spirituality ).
Agwu's Household : Ulili, the Small Forest Rodent
The negative potential of the Amebo Principle is evoked by
Chidi's poem in terms of the drive to communicate and discuss information
as reduced to shallow analysis bordering on gossip;
time for focused thought, discussion and action is dissipated in fruitless
debate; the pervasive motion of Agwu, the pervasive mobility of discourse
represented by ulili, the small forest rodent, Agwu's pet, movement which
ulili, the rodent combines with cautious reexamination of his motions as
he stops to reexamine his trail, evoking the need for similar pausing and
reflection on the past in human life, is reduced to unproductive repetitiveness
in Chidi's poetic exploration of the question of forms of action, verbal
and otherwise, in the incident in Nigerian political history that
inspires his poem.
Charles Dickson decries a related development in his article on pervasiveness
of analyses on the Nigerian energy crises of January 2012 in his "Occupy Nigeria According to 'Amebos' '.
Agwu's Household : Ulu Mbekwu, The Tortoise
Within such a context, can ulu mbekwu, the tortoise, Agwu's other pet, not be
deeply implicated ? To what degree is such debate a demonstration of the
intelligence defined by human sentience, sentience that defines what it
is to be homo sapiens, the sapient being, who is aware, is aware that he is
aware and is capable of critically examining his own awareness, a form of
reflexivity that may be deployed in terms of the Chinese general
and philosopher of strategy Sun Tzu's
conception in The Art of War of the relationship between
self knowledge and knowledge of others:
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a
hundred battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your
opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
a strategy of understanding self and others that may be related to the
tortoise's embodiment of intelligence and the manifestation of this
intelligence in his constant trickery and creative subversion of
deceptive, embodying another of Agwu's range of related values and their
positive and negative possibilities, qualities of the tortoise evident in
folklore from Southern Nigeria.
Agwu's Household : Udene, The Vulture
Hovering over the entire tableau is udene, the vulture, another Agwu pet, who ,
flying high above the social terrain, can "identify [people]
who through their actions are polluted by 'social dirt' '', enabling Agwu, in
the form of another manifestation of the Amebo Principle in its positive
aspect, the Poet, Chidi Anthony Opara, who is simultaneously Agwu, and
the members of Agwu's household, the forest rodent, the vulture and the
tortoise in his positive aspect, carrying the world on his back, as the
tortoise carries his house on his back, as Ulli Beier describes this bearer of
burdens in The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susan Wenger,
in the spirit of Wole Soyinka's description of the artist as the voice of
vision in his time, a vision that literary history shows may emerge in various
forms, from the realistic to the fantastic.
References
Amebo.com . Accessed 7 February 2012.
Amebomindyourbusinessblogspot.
Accessed 7 February 2012.
TheArt of War, Wikipedia. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Beeg Eagle, "Amebo-1 Drone: Product of Nigeria's Air-Force Institute ofTechnology",
December 5, 2011. beegeagle.wordpress.com.
Accessed 7 February 2012.
Beier, Ulli, The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susan Wenger.
Dickson, Prince Charles, "Occupy Nigeria According to 'Amebos'".
16, January 2012. thenigerianvoice.com. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Thy Glory,O Nigeria!...: For the Voiceless and Resilient People Called Nigerians,
" Chief Eleyinmi (Oba Funsho Adeolu) is dead"
, September 11, 2008. Accessed 7 February 2012.
"Her Fiancee is Gay: Should I Do Amebo?"
November 2009 thread from Nairaland. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Iroegbu, Patrick, "Introduction to Igbo Medicine", Parts 1-4.
Kwenu.com. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Accessed 7 February 2012.
Healing Insanity: Igbo Medicine and Culture in ContemporaryNigeria. Xlibris, 2010. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Introduction to Igbo Medicine and Culture in Nigeria. . Lulu,
2010. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Naija, Bella, "Amebo-Yes, I'm Talking to You", post
of April 22, 2009 at bellanaiija. com. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Opara, Chidi Anthony, "I Dey Shake Head 3". February 6, 2012. dialogueseriesnew.blogspot.com.
Accessed 7 February 2012.
Oha, Obododimma, The Esu Paradigm in the Semiotics of Identity and Community",
CBAAC. Accessed 7 February 2012.
Onwuejeogwu, Angulu, Afa Symbolism and Phenomonology In
Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action. Benin:
Ethiope Publishing Corporation, 1977.
Sahara Reporters, "Kidnappers Kill Popular Benin Based Musician AfterPayment of N500, 000 Ransom", September 6, 2011. Accessed
7 February 2012.
Umeh, Annechukwu, After God is Dibia : Igbo Cosmology, Divination and SacredScience in Nigeria. London: Karnark House, 1998.
Zazu Gist, "20 Years Jail for CIA Wen Do Amebo".
January 24, 2012. Accessed 7 February 2012.
