(Continued from last week)

The reporter took a chance given that the visit to his palace was unscheduled. That evening, being in the axis better described as area of ‘Academic Royalty’ in Anambra State with Professors Chuwkuemeka Ike and Laz Ekwueme, renowned academic mounting the royal throne of their forefathers, the reporter reasoned that after speaking with Professor Ike, it was worthwhile to give a shot at meeting Igwe Laz  Ewkueme. Both are royal neighbours since Ndikelionwu in Orumba and Oko were not miles apart.

The first anxiety was to meet the retired Professor of music at home and, not being on his schedule, to spare time for a chat. But His Royal Majesty was at home and had no airs around him. He sat in the living room, perhaps resting when the reporter stepped in. When we announced our mission, he was willing to talk but for cough that had made his voice croaky. Musicians worry about their voices but the reporter reminded him that we were not engaging him in an opera. He let out a loud laughter interrupted by cough.

‘See what I told you,’ he said. But he spoke with his impeccable intonation and went down memory lane. His career exudes fountains of wisdom for young people.

Excerpts:

At what point in your life did you know that you were going to end up in music and how did it start?

Well, I got into music as a profession by accident. I have always been interested in arts; even from age four, we used to do what we call Christmas concert where we did dramatic sketches recitations from the bible, all the musical songs mostly spiritual and religious. And of course, by virtue of our background, we have always been in the church choir.  But at Government College, Umuahia, we presented songs.

I composed the music, chants, anthems and some popular songs. But we performed at Umuahia because at the end of every term, each house would take turns to present concerts and dramatic sketches, dances and such things. So, right from even my form one and two, I sketched and choreographed such dances and composed music. We were lucky at Umuahia to have a music teacher, one Alfred, who had a diploma in music and he saw that some of us were gifted in music and he gave us lessons in the theory of music and some became good performers.

I was not so good in the performing of keyboard because I lacked patience; I couldn’t afford to keep making mistakes and going over and over again. It was part of my own character; not having patience but it was much easier to sing. Moreover, all those who played keyboard didn’t sing; they always liked to play but I loved singing. I was gifted with a good voice; and that sort of encouraged me not to work so hard on the keyboard. But anyway, at Umuahia, we did a lot of music and drama; theatre really as far as sports and other things. Music and theatre were more or less inseparable. And as a teenager then, I had the ambition of being a film star; doing musicals of the time –  Jim Kelly, those things in those days where you would dance and sing and perform and act.

That sort of thing tickled my fancy as a teenage boy but there were also opportunities to compete at the festival of the arts and I competed in music, theatre, literature; writing poems, short stories and I won many prizes in the first festival of the arts up till 1957. At Umuahia, you were trained; you were all round. At school certificate, we did eight subjects; four art subjects – English language, English literature, History, Geography and four science subjects – Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology; so you were sort of rounded and in the sixth form, you choose which one you would go into. My sixth form was pre-engineering with physics, chemistry and mathematics.

I was also quite good in English and literature; so I was a little confused on what to do when I left Umuahia because my English master, one T.J Justin wanted to take me to start a school he founded in Kaduna or Jos. My principal wanted me to go into journalism as a writer; my maths teacher wanted me to go into Engineering.  But I didn’t have any money to be trained in these things; so I dabbled in all sorts of things and worked in Enugu for some years and I featured very prominently in the British Council music circle and theatre in the Radio Nigeria; then it was NBC. We did theatre and music and such things.

You could take examinations in music; there were two examining bodies- the associated board on the Royal Schools of Music and the Trinity College of Music, London. They both had examinations, which were taken here in Nigeria and I took those examinations up to grade eight, which was the highest level. It was the equivalent of the higher school level of music at that time and I even went and did a diploma in music. Whereas Nigerians got scholarships, went and did diplomas in England and came back here, I already had this diploma in music. So, on account of this, I was able to win a Federal Government scholarship to do music at a degree level in England; and that’s how I won that in music.

Before then, I had got an admission in America to do Theatre Arts, but again there was no funding, so I didn’t take that up. But the music still came and I went to England to do a lot of projects in music and studied music. But, while I was doing that, I did not leave my theatre; I also studied Theatre Arts, especially speech and drama. I did a lot of work in BBC; African theatre. So, I have always been carrying on music and theatre and did a lot of acting in England and modelling and advertising; those things. So, I did a lot of those that I got a degree in music.

I went on to do a Masters at the Royal College of Music and came back to teach at the University of Nigeria. From age 27, I became a lecturer. So, that’s how I came back in 1964 as a lecturer. In fact, I spent one year in England but as I did say, I continued my theatre arts practice and while I was there, with four years of BBC theatre – television and radio, I came back here teaching music at Nsukka. It was part of my training.

I went to Yale University and did a PhD and even started more theatre at advanced level; at postgraduate level there. But the civil war came; the Nigeria-Biafra war, so I stayed in America for eight years, taught at Yale, taught at the State University of New York and part time in other universities in America. And I came back to Nigeria in 1974, invited back by the vice chancellor of Lagos because FESTAC was supposed to be in October of 1975 and Ade Ajayi wanted Lagos University to be the centre of the academic and performing part of the festival; the intellectual aspect.

So, he invited some of us who were in the various parts of the world and me in particular, to found the Centre for Cultural Studies. So, I came back to Nigeria in 1974 and remained at the University of Lagos. FESTAC was later postponed to 1977, so I started the Department of Music and the Centre for Cultural Studies there. I retired in 2001 when I turned 61. Well, I find that my interests in English Language and Literature and the sciences – mathematics, physics came very helpful because all knowledge is related and at the higher level, you find the application of mathematics, physics in music. Even the computer, they have computer techniques in the theory of music. I think my interest and knowledge of languages proved useful because for a music degree, you have to do, apart from your A’ levels and other requirements, you have to get a language at O’ level; one of five languages – Latin, French, German, Italian or Russian. Although, we started Latin at Umuahia, we did not take it at school cert.

As I told you, we had these four science or four arts subjects; it was general education. Nobody really took them at school cert or really get GCE O’ level. So, when I came to England then and did my registration for the D-maths, it was discovered that I didn’t have one of those languages; so I was informed that if I had to continue with the degree, I must get one of those languages at O’ level at the next January sitting and I arrived in September. First of all, I couldn’t take my intermediate in July/August; so, I checked it out, Latin was a dead language, no market but it helped; no Italian but there was an Italian teacher in Royal College, so I engaged her as a private teacher and within three months in January, I wrote the GCE and I passed it. So, at the end of the intermediate that year and at the intermediate level, so many people entered but only 15 people were successful.

For a PhD at Yale, you had to pass two foreign languages at a reading level; you have to read ancient and modern language; and the common languages were French and German. I substituted Italian for French; so, I did Italian and German and those two were very relevant for music. So, I found that what I had acquired at Umuahia, including the sciences and the arts came very useful at the end and even till now, they are still very useful. When I meet a German, we converse in German and when I meet Italian, I do the same.

So, it is very useful, even though music was not my original ambition, it was part of it. I wanted to be an actor, combining music, theatre and dance. And now, I hardly combine them in the new Nollywood plays. I have drawn from my experiences in the US and England and BBC and other dramatic places in England to try and elevate the Nollywood to the higher standard. So, that’s the story.

At the time you were talking about being a musician, being an actor, those things were not popular. How did your parents and people around you take it?

Well, I am lucky to have come from a family, which was educated early. My grandfather, Ekwueme the first; I am Igwe Ekwueme the fourth; so when the White men came with their Christianity and education, they approached the Igwes to give them lands and support. So, Igwe Ekwueme looked at their religion and the principles of it and it didn’t really differ much from his own beliefs of God and truth and honesty; those good things, the virtues that Christianity brought. So, he thought, well it was a good thing but it was better to let the younger children go. So his younger children – my father, Igwe Ekwueme the second and all those who were the youngest ones went to school but his older sons who were going to farm didn’t. So, that’s how we had a head start and my father became a church teacher and we had to go to school.  My eldest brother was the first to go to the university; Alex went to Ekwulobia at the age of 11. He went to King’s College on scholarship. I went to Umuahia; my younger brother went to Igbobi College, and to King’s College (both in Lagos) and from there to University College, Ibadan. So, we have always had a head start in education.

The thinking of someone going to do music was a  non-starter. Normally, people go to study law, medicine or engineering. But you see, Alex had gone to US on a scholarship before me and he saw that there was nothing wrong with being a performer. In fact, as I told you, I had my first degree and Masters in England and when I wanted to go for PhD in the US, we looked down on American degrees. Only a few of them were respected – Yale, Harvard and Princeton and I applied to those three and I was admitted. He advised me to go to Yale because Yale has the most prestigious PhD; you can see so many Harvard PhDs, but only very few Yale PhDs.

So, it is the background of our family; when my grandfather found that European education had taken a primary place in the local mission, he stepped down for his son. Ekwueme the second took over. And so, Igwe Ekwueme the third was the chief regional radiographer for Eastern Region and I am Igwe Ekwueme the fourth. So, we have had a head start.  We have about 102 graduates and professionals of Ekwuemes as we speak, including seven lawyers, nine medical doctors, about eight Architects, eight or nine Engineers and so on. Apart from pharmacist and nurses, we have such things as accountants and business people. So, my wife is a professor of Arts Education. We have had this head start in education, what we don’t have is money.

While there were no eyebrows raised by your family people, what about people around

That’s their problem, not mine. That’s their problem because, well, without lacking in modesty, among my classmates, I told you about E J Alagua who had the best school cert. in our own time, he was the only one who was a professor in our set before me. I was the second in our class but I was the first to get NNOM, even before people who were four years my senior. I mean, we have only a few people in the country. It was not a matter of your course but how good you are and how hard you worked.

You came to kind of lay the foundation for the school of music in UNILAG; you also taught in Nsukka.

I taught in Nsukka before coming to UNILAG.

What I want to find out is when you came to UNILAG even at that time, in the seventies, music, as a course of study was still not popular. Were you dampened by that; how did it affect you?

Well people were saying how many students do you have? But whether I had one student or 2000, you still need basic equipment for all of them. So, it sort of made our budget not as buoyant as it should. The university authority themselves were not as eager to fund the things we needed then because, the historians who didn’t need keyboards or instruments or anything; they did their studies just by talking, they didn’t need much of the equipment. So, there was no reason why you should spend so much money on a course that had only about six students in first year and that sort of thing. Yes, that did take its toll on our goals.

 You have now retired but you find out now that there is a dearth of academics; you find in all these new universities springing up, people are teaching in two or three places because there are no academic staffs. What do you think about those of you who are retired going back to give a helping hand?

Well, I go back to the 80s and 90s when university teachers were very badly treated. I made this statement in a number of fora. It was true then; at one time, every messenger, every clerk, every driver, and every security man, name it in every bank and every oil company earned more than every professor in every Nigerian university at that time. That was under Babangida; we were treated very badly. Professors couldn’t have cars; they couldn’t have basic facilities. Of course, many left and went to other parts of the world. Many of our doctors went to Saudi Arabia and so on. So, the so-called brain drain; well strikes and strikes made things better in that education became a little better funded but still not as well as it should have been. But then, there were more and more people wanting higher education, especially with unemployment. So, the way things were going, there was already a shortage of teachers and more students coming and NUC was asking universities to take even more people with very lean facilities; so the explosion came and the teachers were not enough.

Some teachers had to go and teach in more than one or two universities and satellite universities emerged, which were later closed down but which I think are still back again. Yes, it was an opportunity for those who retired at the maximum age of 65 then, to be engaged on contract to continue teaching. They have now extended that to 70 for professors only, which I don’t think make sense, because you are a university teacher does not matter. The retirement age should be the same. If you can teach at 68 as a professor, you can teach at 68 as a senior lecturer. I don’t see really the distinction but that is neither here nor there. But some universities are funny in that members of the academic community themselves are selfish. This man has reached the age of retirement, why is he still here? Why should he still be here? Let him go so others can rise. This is the attitude of Nigerians. As they say, PhD is no longer doctor of philosophy but pull him down. So, Nigerians themselves including academics especially those who are not of very good quality and needed politics to get on; they didn’t want those who have done their stay to continue because they felt they were blocking spaces for them. But, the fact is that it is not true.

Many of those who are old enough to retire are still strong enough to continue and they have the experience; the training and the expertise to continue, even to, especially the post graduate level, prepare those who are going to be teaching but unfortunately that has not been the case. But as you did say, some are teaching in three or four universities after retirement. So, that is already being done in that some of the old hands have been reemployed in other universities to help the new ones, especially with the multiple growths of universities in every state, including those set up by the Federal Government. So, that has been encouraged but retired professors will continue teaching until they are no longer able to do so.

You are in support of the older hands going back to teach

Yes, I am in support of the older ones continuing to teach; they don’t have to go back, they should continue teaching even if not in their own places because of what I said that people would want them to go. They can go to other places that need them because there are many places that need them. My wife has retired from the University of Lagos but she is now at the Federal University at Alaike, Ikwo in Ebonyi State as a professor there because it is a new university and they need people with experience and they can only get people like that to help build up the younger ones to form the staff. So, I am in full support of that.

Finally, you have come home to live with your people. You may have been close to them but at this level, you are closer to them, what have you found out?

It is difficult because there are so many forces contending against normal life in Nigeria, especially in the eastern Nigeria or South Eastern states. We have problems of security, roads, water, electricity; you can see me battling with erosion in my home. Village strife, competition for land and facilities that are not there; some traditions, masquerades appear on certain days of the week and such things. So, there are many points of conflicts and you as a traditional ruler, you have to try and solve these problems. And even you as a traditional ruler, you are not very popular with your people because in some communities, they struggle to be the traditional rulers; even to the point of fighting to death. Some have created autonomous communities and therefore broken down larger communities into smaller ones so that there can be traditional rulers and they can have their own.

So, there are lots of problems in this, but yes, you are home with your people and you have to try and bring them up into the 21st century world where they live in the traditional society but are at par with those in 21st century in the rest of the world where you have to get good drinking water, good health services, good roads, electricity for our daily needs; stop erosion and other agents of degradations that destroy our communities; get good farming techniques so that you can stop urban migration. Yes, I know my people and my people know me but it is always a learning process; you keep growing and I call myself Ozioko Igboko (one who shows the way) so that I can perhaps, continue to educate. I said I call myself Ozioko Igboko, it is a hard struggle but well worth it. So we try to move together, we have a cabinet that meets once in a month to discuss issues of the community represented according to what we call wards.  We are rebuilding our market now to make it a lock-up stores.

We are working on the roads, hoping that the Federal Government will help. Water is a major problem; the roads, our governor has done very well. He tried to build more rural roads but we still need some more.  Oko is now a semi-urban centre with a polytechnic which has some 50,000 students from other parts of the country and that creates its own problem.  But we try to manage and hope that God will continue to help us to grow from strength to strength.

Did you meet Achebe when you were at Umuahia; if you did, what do you know about him? Or you didn’t know about him?

Well, I did not meet Achebe at Umuahia because he had a double promotion at Umuahia. I could have met him because I met some of his former classmates but he had left before we entered. We were the first set to come in, in September 1948 instead of January they used to enter. So, I didn’t meet him at Umuahia but everybody met him soon after and when I returned from England in 1964, he was the director of external broadcasting at NBC and he wanted to elevate the programme to high level. So, he invited me to be the music specialist in the external broadcasting of NBC. But when we talked after some time, he agreed with me that it was better to go to the University of Nigeria. He later even came to teach at Nsukka.

We became friends and in fact, he became my mentor as it were, and my referee. If I was applying for anything, I would cite him as my referee. We became very good friends and he was at one time the Vice President of the Old Boys Association. The night or few days before his accident, we had just had a seminar on him called ‘The Eagle on the Iroko,’ and I had presented a paper about him on that evening, talking about his use of music even in things like the ‘Things Fall Apart.’ In the book, music was cited, traditional music was fantastic and it was on his way back from that seminar that he had the accident.

Now, you are an arts person; how do you rate his contributions to the art?           

Everybody in the whole world knows that Achebe is superlative in the world of literature. That he didn’t have a Nobel Prize in literature is still a wonder to many people but that is not for us to decide. So, certainly he is second to none; he is absolutely second to none in the arts. You know, he has made fantastic contributions in the field of arts and Africa is known through him.

The world knows African literature through Achebe. This example will suffice, there is the highest honour given to Nigerians for intellectual and academic achievements called the Nigerian National Order of Merit. Now, we are Umuahia are proud to point out that of all the schools in Nigeria, Umuahia has the highest awardees of NNOM laureates, he was the first one. Then Ben Ewneonwu, Prof Nwokolo, Harrison from Rivers, I am number five, Prof. Ike was number six and my classmate, E .J Alagoa, who in fact had the best school certificate result in my time is number seven. He was the trailblazer and again, Umuahia has the highest number of well-known writers in Nigeria. You talk of Achebe, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, C.C Momah, Prof. Ike, Elechi Amadi, Aniebo,  Saro-Wiwa among others but he was number one. I mean the greatest of them all; so there is no question about where anybody rates him in the arts.

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Posted in Nigerian Newspapers. A DisNaija.Com network.

Source: The Sun Newspaper

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