By
Obododimma Oha
Men are naturally happy that they possess penises and often try to construct their identity and power through the presence of this boneless work of veins and muscles. Set within the context of how men define and narrate their existence, taking away a man’s penis from him means ruining him. Which is why the Igbo sometimes euphemistically refer to a man’s penis as “ihe o jiri buru nwoke” (What makes him a man). And so, in Igbo discourse, when one wants to taunt one’s fellow men about their lack of courage, one says to them, “Unu na-eme ka ndi n’ akwughi amu” (“You behave like those who lack testicles” or “You behave like those who have lost their their testicles”). Perhaps this is the hidden sorrow expressed in a parodic marching song that my school mates and I used to sing at our elementary school just after the Nigeria-Biafra war in the early seventies.
One clown among us had, during the usual morning parade on the school grounds, turned the march past song the teacher taught us to a version that many us quickly learned and sang in place of the original. Counter-discourse is always attractive, especially if it says things without saying things. The actual nationalistic song that our morning assembly teacher taught us that morning said:
Nigeria is a nation of great beauty
Great beauty, great beauty, great beauty!
Nigeria is a nation of great beauty
Great beauty, Nigeria!
Little bare-foot soldiers, we marched round the field, happy with this “beauty” song, even if our school buildings still bore the cruel handwriting of the war. We sang and waved our green-white-green flags, in preparation for the Independence Day celebration in 1972. But as we sang, another voice worked its rebellious way into our heads and before you could say Yakubu Jack Gowon, the song had changed to
Nigeria is a nation na-ebi utu
Na-ebi utu, na-ebi utu, na-ebi utu
Nigeria is a nation na-ebi utu
Na-ebi utu, Nigeria
Whether it was a deliberate attempt at contaminating the original, or the result of an inability of the originator (who had a little speech defect) to wrestle with the sounds of English, or even the failure to hear the actual words the teacher taught us, the new version quickly appealed to us and we stuck to it. After all, we, (all boys in an all-boys elementary school), could very well relate with the idea of “utu” (Igbo word for “penis”) and the notion of one’s nation cutting off one’s penis was for us a funny thing to sing about. Moreover, we had just emerged from the war in which most of us learned to give our loyalty to another republic, not Nigeria. Singing about Nigeria as a nation “na-ebi utu” was therefore perfectly OK with us as children whose national identity was not quite clear yet.
Moreover, still fresh in our heads were the anti-Gowon and anti-Nigeria songs that we were singing in Biafra to signify our being very patriotic Biafran citizens. There were songs talking about Gowon’s private parts, his being syphilitic, his wife possessing an over-sized vagina, etc. It was perfectly alright to demonize and animalize the enemy, and thinking otherwise was to suggest oneself as a saboteur. So, Nigeria as a nation “na-ebi utu” was somehow a continuation of a discourse we were very familiar with and, indeed, liked so much. If being a Nigerian citizen meant losing one’s penis, as the Biafran propaganda had taught us, then, we marching schoolchildren had probably lost ours, to our sorrow!
I have never been a woman and so I don’t know the excitement that accompanies recognizing that one has female sexual organs. But I suppose that if we were girls and proud of our girlhood, perhaps we would have equally constructed a semiotic of Nigeria as a threat to our authentic femininity. Our boyish celebration of our possession of the penis was also a celebration of how such sexual identity needed to be safe in the performance of loyalty to fatherland. We were going through a post-war education in which our teachers were under some obligation to return us, or teach us, to love Nigeria again. A very difficult task, the re-education involved versions and subversions of the national semiotic.
When one thinks about the failure of Nigeria as a nation state to give those singing and sorrowing barefoot soldiers at the elementary school and other Nigerians the reason to be proud citizens, through good governance, provision of basic social services, and above all, a sense of security and freedom, several years after the end of the unfortunate war, one cannot help thinking that it is indeed the nation that has lost its penis. As I recall that parodic marching song, I realize how indeed patriotic we were in recognizing the danger that an imposed fatherland posed to our penises.
Since the nation in taking away our penises also loses its own, it cannot father progress; cannot guarantee freedom; cannot ensure the respect of the Nigerian within or outside its territory. The policy of “penislessness” considers those who try to grow their penises back dangerous. If you do not know what it means to try to grow your penis back, then start writing and publishing articles that criticize the government of Nigeria; start playing Tai Solarin and Gani Fawehinmi; start drawing attention to the implications of the Sudanese plebiscite for Nigeria; start calling on Nigerians to think for themselves instead of waiting for those in government to do so.
Narrating one’s knowledge of fatherland as a sexual tragedy is indeed disturbing. But more disturbing is the fact that the nation appears comfortable with its condition of failure and the indirect ways of making failure a condition for citizenship.
*This essay was previously published in my column, Shibboleth, in NEXT, a unique Lagos-based newspaper that later went bankrupt.
Obododimma Oha
Men are naturally happy that they possess penises and often try to construct their identity and power through the presence of this boneless work of veins and muscles. Set within the context of how men define and narrate their existence, taking away a man’s penis from him means ruining him. Which is why the Igbo sometimes euphemistically refer to a man’s penis as “ihe o jiri buru nwoke” (What makes him a man). And so, in Igbo discourse, when one wants to taunt one’s fellow men about their lack of courage, one says to them, “Unu na-eme ka ndi n’ akwughi amu” (“You behave like those who lack testicles” or “You behave like those who have lost their their testicles”). Perhaps this is the hidden sorrow expressed in a parodic marching song that my school mates and I used to sing at our elementary school just after the Nigeria-Biafra war in the early seventies.
One clown among us had, during the usual morning parade on the school grounds, turned the march past song the teacher taught us to a version that many us quickly learned and sang in place of the original. Counter-discourse is always attractive, especially if it says things without saying things. The actual nationalistic song that our morning assembly teacher taught us that morning said:
Nigeria is a nation of great beauty
Great beauty, great beauty, great beauty!
Nigeria is a nation of great beauty
Great beauty, Nigeria!
Little bare-foot soldiers, we marched round the field, happy with this “beauty” song, even if our school buildings still bore the cruel handwriting of the war. We sang and waved our green-white-green flags, in preparation for the Independence Day celebration in 1972. But as we sang, another voice worked its rebellious way into our heads and before you could say Yakubu Jack Gowon, the song had changed to
Nigeria is a nation na-ebi utu
Na-ebi utu, na-ebi utu, na-ebi utu
Nigeria is a nation na-ebi utu
Na-ebi utu, Nigeria
Whether it was a deliberate attempt at contaminating the original, or the result of an inability of the originator (who had a little speech defect) to wrestle with the sounds of English, or even the failure to hear the actual words the teacher taught us, the new version quickly appealed to us and we stuck to it. After all, we, (all boys in an all-boys elementary school), could very well relate with the idea of “utu” (Igbo word for “penis”) and the notion of one’s nation cutting off one’s penis was for us a funny thing to sing about. Moreover, we had just emerged from the war in which most of us learned to give our loyalty to another republic, not Nigeria. Singing about Nigeria as a nation “na-ebi utu” was therefore perfectly OK with us as children whose national identity was not quite clear yet.
Moreover, still fresh in our heads were the anti-Gowon and anti-Nigeria songs that we were singing in Biafra to signify our being very patriotic Biafran citizens. There were songs talking about Gowon’s private parts, his being syphilitic, his wife possessing an over-sized vagina, etc. It was perfectly alright to demonize and animalize the enemy, and thinking otherwise was to suggest oneself as a saboteur. So, Nigeria as a nation “na-ebi utu” was somehow a continuation of a discourse we were very familiar with and, indeed, liked so much. If being a Nigerian citizen meant losing one’s penis, as the Biafran propaganda had taught us, then, we marching schoolchildren had probably lost ours, to our sorrow!
I have never been a woman and so I don’t know the excitement that accompanies recognizing that one has female sexual organs. But I suppose that if we were girls and proud of our girlhood, perhaps we would have equally constructed a semiotic of Nigeria as a threat to our authentic femininity. Our boyish celebration of our possession of the penis was also a celebration of how such sexual identity needed to be safe in the performance of loyalty to fatherland. We were going through a post-war education in which our teachers were under some obligation to return us, or teach us, to love Nigeria again. A very difficult task, the re-education involved versions and subversions of the national semiotic.
When one thinks about the failure of Nigeria as a nation state to give those singing and sorrowing barefoot soldiers at the elementary school and other Nigerians the reason to be proud citizens, through good governance, provision of basic social services, and above all, a sense of security and freedom, several years after the end of the unfortunate war, one cannot help thinking that it is indeed the nation that has lost its penis. As I recall that parodic marching song, I realize how indeed patriotic we were in recognizing the danger that an imposed fatherland posed to our penises.
Since the nation in taking away our penises also loses its own, it cannot father progress; cannot guarantee freedom; cannot ensure the respect of the Nigerian within or outside its territory. The policy of “penislessness” considers those who try to grow their penises back dangerous. If you do not know what it means to try to grow your penis back, then start writing and publishing articles that criticize the government of Nigeria; start playing Tai Solarin and Gani Fawehinmi; start drawing attention to the implications of the Sudanese plebiscite for Nigeria; start calling on Nigerians to think for themselves instead of waiting for those in government to do so.
Narrating one’s knowledge of fatherland as a sexual tragedy is indeed disturbing. But more disturbing is the fact that the nation appears comfortable with its condition of failure and the indirect ways of making failure a condition for citizenship.
*This essay was previously published in my column, Shibboleth, in NEXT, a unique Lagos-based newspaper that later went bankrupt.
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