There is a furore in town: the Eko Foundation kicking against Prof. Wole Soyinka’s appointment as co-chair, Committee on Lagos State at 50.
Its public faces, Prof. Imran Oluwole Smith, SAN and Kunle Uthman, say the appointment is wrong, since Soyinka is no Lagosian.
But a section of the media balks, with both The Punch and The Nation, both corporate natives of Lagos, writing contrary editorials.
Now, how does Hardball weigh in? First, with name analysis, with all due respect to the two signees of the Eko Foundation communication, vis-a-vis Lagos nativity.
Uthman is a Muslim name. Given that Islam was the dominant religion in Isale Eko, bastion of the Lagos aborigines, Uthman could well pass for an autochthonous Lagos name, just like Oluwa, Fafunwa, Bajulaye, Obanikoro, etc.
But Smith? That would appear a Saro name: just like Macaulay, Bickerstheth, Johnson, etc. The Saros, in Lagos history, were returnee former slaves, mainly from Sierra Leone, quartered mainly in Olowogbowo. They were the bright lights in the “new” religion of Christianity, around the mid 19th century: clerics at the Anglican Church, clerks in the civil service, and cocky consumers of European fashion: shirts, trousers, socks, ties, and, of course, the inevitable umbrella.
Sure, there were other returnees, from Brazil, of Popo Aguda (Catholic district) of Campos (the hub), with their fringe spreading to the uptown Lafiaji area. These were the Pedros, the Da Rochas, the Cardosos, the Salvadores, etc, with their mother shrine at Holy Cross Cathedral. But since most denizens from the Brazilian quarters were skilled artisans, the Isale Eko natives regarded them as little threat.
Not so, the Saro. Indeed, Patrick Dele Cole, in his Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos, quoted an eminent Saro, John Payne Jackson, editor-publisher of Lagos Weekly Record, as knocking the Saro as “non-productive”, since they feasted on “the foreigner for culture and the aborigines for wealth.” He only echoed native Eko sentiments.
Indeed, the Lagos aborigines back then resented Saro influence, in local trading and petty civil service work, fuming that next to the greedy white traders, the local Saro were the biggest threat to native Eko economic opportunities.
But if, in 21st century Lagos, a Smith and an Uthman can co-sign the Eko Foundation communication, it clearly shows how far Lagos had moved from those insular early times. But that very fact does great dissonance to their unfortunate anti-Soyinka campaign.
The melting pot that Lagos has become today is founded on Michael Echeruo’s book, Victorian Lagos. Though it started, in Echeruo’s words, as “Lagos at first of the returning Brazilians, Americans and West Indians; and later of Sierra Leoneans and Liberians; and not Lagos of Nigerians,” it has since morphed into a Lagos of all, with both natives and settlers adding value to the city.
Wole Soyinka, famed culture icon, has been a key contributor to Lagos, as we know it today. Besides, he is standing consultant to the Lagos Festival, celebrated around Easter every year; and his input and impact is clearly felt in redeveloping the old Broad Street Prisons to what is now known as Freedom Park.
With all due respect, the Eko Foundation does neither themselves nor Lagos any good by their shocking xenophobia against a rare toast of global culture, and first African Nobel laureate for Literature.
Soyinka proudly epitomises both the Lagos motto of excellence; and essence as a truly cosmopolitan city. In contrast, Xenophobia is no spirit of Lagos. So, Eko Foundation should, forthwith, quit this embarrassing campaign.
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