By
Obododimma Oha
Recently, some comedians (@onyikimorah and @yanbaba1) produced and shared a video clip in which one could see very clearly the Igbo trickster, "mbe" (Yoruba "ijapa"). The trickster often features in folktales and is often presented as a hero. But, as I have argued in other articles, the trickster has only transformed and humans have learned from it. So in African politics, business, and even scholarship, the trickster's ways may be used. That also means that people should be smart, or, as they say in Nigeria, they should "shine their eyes."
Back to our clip. This parent is dressed in Igbo chieftaincy gear, which means that he is important in his community. He also speaks English with an Igbo accent, to signify his double-consciousness. Obviously, these are made-up, not reality. His son is also called "Anayo," which is clearly Igbo.
Papa Anayo calls Anayo's class teacher, ignorantly scolding her for teaching Anayo to tell lies : Anayo is required to do an assignment involving writing to a fictional uncle in London. Papa Anayo understands this as teaching his son to lies.
Is writing a story or novel not fabrication, lying, come to think of it?
The false impression Papa Anayo gives is that, while he is teaching his son to be moralistic, school is showing him a way to get lost in immorality.
But the trickster in him comes out when the teacher demands to know why Anayo was not in school because his father traveled out of the country. Papa Anayo is the one teaching Anayo to lie by telling him to claim that his father has traveled, when he has not. Also, the lying trickster in Papa Anayo manifests in the interaction when he begins to claim that he cannot hear the teacher again because of network problems. There is no network problem. As a friend has rightly observed, when he is scolding the poor teacher, there e is no network problem but when the fault is shown as his, there is network problem.
This is clearly the way of the trickster. That he is now a chief or is in State House does not stop him from being a student of the trickster. In fact, he must have learned an applied tricksterhood and how to outwit in government.
The message is clear: some people may advertise themselves as righteous and as apostles of righteousness when we have tricks that promote unrighteousness in their lives. Papa Anayo cannot pour away truckloads of beer in one state in Nigeria and expect Value Added Tax (VAT) from the sale and consumption of gin and beer from another state in the country. You cannot pour away your VAT and have it back! Who says Papa Anayo does not have two faces?
Papa Anayo is about falsehood. False elder and title holder. False purist. False fighter of fraud. False reformer. False leader. Falsehood personified. False authority. False parent. False hope in the cooperation between parents and teachers in raising the child in the present time.
But I have not forgotten that Papa Anayo is doing his own assignment under the master and has been been flying out of his country for medical attention. Only God knows what tricks he is trying out on his doctors. Only God knows.
Papa Anayo and I have something in common : it is not only that we can be students of the trickster as humans, we are both Igbo and from the same culture, although his own Igboness is just fictional. Nigerian comedians often laugh at ethnicity and create stereotypes that are also naive . Igbo people, for instance, are stereotyped as lovers of money.
If I encounter a figure like Papa Anayo who shares a stereotype with me, I am supposed to keep quiet or overlook his tricks, in keeping with primordial sentiment.
Even though Papa Anayo is fictional, I am supposed to defend him because he is featured as Igbo. That is the way of the trickster.
One thing that is quite observable in the video clip is that Papa Anayo thinks that he is superior to "Nwa Ticha" and talks down on her. He even shouts her down and interrupts her often. This is not just pompous masculinity playing out, but a social assumption that a teacher is nobody. Teachers are derogated and said to be miserly, measuring kola nuts they offer visitors with the ruler, to check and make sure the nut is not wasted. So, in patriarchal Nigerian cultures, teachers are rated low.
The "Nwa" (roughly translated as "small" or "unimportant") in "Nwa Ticha") which Papa Anayo prefers, signifies this contempt for teachers. "Nwa Ticha," but nobody ever says "Nwa Engineer" or "Nwa Doctor." That would be an abomination!
But it not true that the teacher is miserly. It is only the kind of narrative of decivilization that we can find in a wasteful society.
However, the teacher is seriously challenged to live up to the name. A teacher should not teach nonsense, as Fela Kuti warns, but should guide aright.
Anyway, Nwa Ticha proves to be a smarter trickster. Tricksters should expect to meet other tricksters someday.
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