Engaging Okey Ndibe and his Foreign Gods, Inc.

While he autographed copies of the book to be read, the event began in earnest as Okey met and exchanged pleasantries with friends, colleagues and associates. We swiftly took pictures together before being called to sit and get to know Okey even better. Before starting to read from a passage of this recent book, Okey […]

While he autographed copies of the book to be read, the event began in earnest as Okey met and exchanged pleasantries with friends, colleagues and associates. We swiftly took pictures together before being called to sit and get to know Okey even better. Before starting to read from a passage of this recent book, Okey took us back to his humble beginnings; the circumstances of his birth and upbringing; how extraordinary to be raised as children of “C” and “E”; the fond and doting memories of Yola, his birthplace; and the horrid recollections of his family’s escape from a mob attack in Yola as well as their consequent departure in a ferry, back to the East when living in the North became unbearable, as he narrated all these with nostalgia.
Although I never met Okey in person before this event, but, by following his works in both print and online media, I was, nonetheless, acquainted to the ideals and principles he vouches for-his struggles for a better Nigeria, his longstanding commitment for good governance in our country, his unrelenting passion of confronting both political and social repressions under all situations, and his unflinching ability to speak truth to power-which sometimes came with a burden such as attracting the Nigerian government’s fiat leading to an unlawful detention and seizure of passport.
Beyond familial pedigrees and early age reminisces, Okey never forgot to tell us, also of his detention in America on December 20, 1988, exactly 10 days after his arrival in that country when a policeman picked him up at a bus stop because he purportedly matched a description of a certain bank robber somewhere in the US state of Connecticut. Okey also discussed his first encounter with the legendary Chinua Achebe while in school in Nigeria; his subsequent meeting with the literary giant in the first assignment at his first job upon graduation in Nigeria, and how he was saved by Achebe from being fired from that job; the afterward friendship with the Achebe family in the United States; and finally his becoming a godson of Achebe. While saying all these however, humility was the catch phrase for Okey who told us emphatically that we must always refrain from discussing Achebe and Ndibe in the same sentence, suggesting that the two names are most definitely and quite essentially, far apart.
Whenever the opportunity presented itself, it seems not in Okey’s nature to forget discussing issues Nigeriana by reminding his audience on the need to work on actualising a better Nigeria through improved leaderships. To attain a healthier nation, Okey argued that Nigerians must be steadfaswt in clinging to at least three moral principles: the will to recognise tyranny and the ability to confront it without assent to its accompanying psychological and emotional defeat; the resolve to repudiate hero-worship of corrupt leaders thereby ostracising such leaders; and the need to radically impede our unfounded romance with God.
On the will to recognise and confront tyranny when faced with it and without agreeing to its psychosomatic impacts, Okey cited an example of himself refusing to address the late Umaru Yar’Adua as president but instead found a more apt description for him: Resident of Aso Rock; obviously for that was where he lived, and perhaps died. Because it is true that the elections that brought Yar’Adua to power was the worst in Nigeria’s polling history, to accept to address Yar’Adua as president, is to allude to and even justify the stolen and illegal mandate on which he rode to power. By addressing him Resident of Aso Rock and by advocating that all Nigerians refer to him not as president, Okey thinks that any leader faced with such disapproval, rather than stand his ground, would have no choice than to concede defeat.
On the second and third moral principles, Okey says once corrupt politicians and public officers continually find support groups from amongst the masses, who, through various acts of allegiance, cheer them on to steal from the treasury, Nigeria will not be able to bring sleaze to a minimum. In order for the people to win over the fight on fraud as exercised by corrupt politicians and public servants, the masses must make it a civic duty to inform themselves and their wards to boo these corrupt people by calling them what they are: thieves. It is only by doing so that such thieving leaders can feel ostracised, making them to sit down, reflect, and ultimately comply with their conscience-a sense of right and wrong. Again, Okey thinks that for us to chart a promising course we must begin to see things both in objective and subjective senses by radically taking a turn away from our present baseless relationship with God. To fall for the idea that God gives power as cheating politicians do claim-in order to pacify potentially probing, inquisitorial minds as to the legitimacy of their processional ascension to power-is, to concretise their otherwise illicit socio-political deeds as defensively divine rather than earthly. This is why, we must see, according to Okey, that God does not vote, people do; thus do not say God gives power, just count the ballots.
Before taking a teaching position at Brown University, Okey Ndibe earned an MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and has taught at Connecticut College, Bard College, Trinity College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). He also authored a book entitled Arrows of Rain and has served on the editorial board of Hartford Courant where his essays won national and state awards. Foreign Gods, Inc., published in 2014 by Soho Press, New York, narrates the adventures of Ike Uzondu, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who heads off to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his village and sell it to a sophisticated gallery in Manhattan. Uzondu’s journey, by turns funny and depressing, offers a pondering on the dreams, promises, and frustrations of immigrant life in America. It portrays the nature and impressions of religious conflicts and the ways in which modernity creates and intensifies infatuation with the “exotic.” From Brooklyn to Lagos, Foreign Gods, Inc. excellently brightens our globally interconnected world.
M. D. Aminu wrote from Abuja, Nigeria. He can be reached at [email protected]