THE GUARDIAN, Sunday, March 3, 2013
SUNDAYMAGAZINE 37
THE READING NATION
ARTS
Bolanle Awe And The Feminist/Gender Discourse In Nigeria By Tunji Olaopa
INCE the Beijing Conference of 1995, the issue of women and their lot within the socio-economic, cultural and political context of any nation resurges with fresh political energy at a global level with increasing vibrancy. This resurgence is critical to feminist and gender discourses everywhere. These discourses have often been polarised along so many ideological and racial lines bothering on conceptual and political issues and problems of patriarchal influence, the scope of gender disequilibrium across regions and geographies, the dynamics of required political action, and the possibility and implications of cross-cultural alliances and solidarity. This last point is the occasion for the rich flowering of African feminism and its rich inputs into the woman question especially within the context of underdevelopment in Africa. For African feminists—or womanists as many would prefer, the issues of gender, patriarchal domination, patriliny, and other ideas resonates with some fervent energies that connect with the overall development of the continent rather than a sterile idea of liberation that has occupied western feminism. What motivates this alternative conceptual framework for thinking about women is the shared experience of colonialism and underdevelopment in Africa which places the women, and men, in a unique cultural and historical context not similar to the experience of their white counterparts. In Africa, the woman question is also the equality question as well as being, in the final analysis, the development question. In other words, when African women talk about their shared oppression and common victimhood, they are concerned about their desire to participate more in the collective healing of the continent than the reigning patriarchal, male-dominated political system allows them. Thus, within the context of African feminism, there is a serious and critical attention given to images of motherhood, political equality, maternal care, the environment, and communal solidarity. These issues differentiate the African alternative to theorising about a woman’s place in the society away from the banalities that have attended the theoretical framework of feminisms in the west. The fundamental idea central to African feminism is simple: the woman too can take her place in the development effort and match the men folks stride for stride in the collective attempt to upturn the development and governance fortunes of postcolonial Africa. Of course, we can agree that there are unique differences between the sexes, yet both ought not to be excluded from adding their contribution to the collective predicament. Indeed, the recognition of the role of women in development is itself a first significant step in African development. The template and platform for women action, as the Beijing Conference attests, has been devolved to national basis as the over 190 participants states at the Conference confirm. In Nigeria, the undeniable status of the advocate and pioneering historian of Nigerian women goes to Prof. Bolanle Awe for her unflinching faith and thorough excavation of the significance of women in Nigeria and their capacity to participate in the Nigerian national project. Mother, academic, historian, activist and many more, Prof. Awe has proven her advocacy by insinuating herself solidly within the confines of the discourse on Nigeria and her greatness by participating and critiquing the many paths we have attempted to turn as a nation. Apart from her predecessors in the woman struggle— Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, Gambo Sawaba, Margaret Ekpo, and others—I had no problem in fixating my attention on Bolanle Awe as a contemporary intellectual hero around whom the gender discourse especially in Nigeria resonates with unique and unusual intellectual and historical energy. With her, we are forced to confront the fact of women as a neglected force in the national project. Mama Awe is presently 80 years old. But the advocacy for women began a long time ago.
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After a doctoral dissertation which signalled her interest in Yoruba history and oral tradition as a rich source of that history, Prof. Awe consolidated her research into Nigerian women with the collaborative establishment of the Women’s Research and Documentation Centre (WORDOC) in 1987. She has also documented her arguments, views, recommendations and historical observations in many books, including The Impact of Colonialism on Nigerian Women, The Feminist Saga in Nigeria, Nigerian Women: A Historical Perspective and so on. In marriage, career and even politics, Prof. Bolanle Awe is a personification of a success story par excellence. What seems unique in Bolanle Awe, for me, is her capacity to weave intellectual research into personal beliefs and national advocacy. What we can call her philosophy of social change is targeted at an attitudinal change beginning from the family upward to capture the whole of society and the nation. For her, a huge portion of that attitude change lies in the hand of the Nigerian women, and essentially in their attitudes to themselves. Prof. Awe calls for a redefinition of the private, domestic sphere as the place where a woman ought to begin her career rather than her attempt to surpass the men in career pursuit outside the home. The home is the first significant crucible of womanhood before it becomes the framework for measuring the worth of a nation. To abandon the home, as most women now do, is to abandon what is most imperative in a woman’s being and responsibility. It is easy, following the trajectory of this argument, according to Awe, to change the nation if the home and the family receive the touch of femininity. To make the point more cogent, Prof. Bolanle developed over time a research dynamics that interjects historical analysis in the woman advocacy. Adrienne Rich calls this a “re-vision”—“the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction”. This re-vision becomes imperative because the writing of Nigerian history has not been fair to the achievement and contributions of women. In fact, one can say that the writing of history has usually been from the masculine perspective. Therefore, a deep rethinking and revisioning of history gives the woman question in Nigeria a better push than mere feminist desire for liberation. True liberation begins as a historical point within the context of discourse; and Bolanle Awe would agree with Gerda Lerner that, “Women’s his-
What seems unique in Bolanle Awe, for me, is her capacity to weave intellectual research into personal beliefs and national advocacy. What we can call her philosophy of social change is targeted at an attitudinal change beginning from the family upward to capture the whole of society and the nation. For her, a huge portion of that attitude change lies in the hand of the Nigerian women, and essentially in their attitudes to themselves.
Awe
tory is the primary tool for women’s emancipation.” Thus, to pick up their true emancipatory potentials, there is a need to research the history of the African matriarchal context which makes a good woman first a good mother. The African matriarchal tradition lays the foundation for a dynamic trajectory that moves outward from the home to the society and the nation. This stands contrary to the western feminist tradition that resented the home as a prison for the woman. The objective of the feminist therefore is to burst the boundary of the home and move in strength into the public in competition with men. On the contrary, the first objective for the Nigerian woman is the imperative of family building as the first step in nation building. The task of a historian therefore, to which Prof. Awe dedicated herself, is to bring alive the essence of the matriarchal tradition, and the worthy contributions of many female characters, from “the dim recesses of Nigerian history” into the urgent and present imperative of building a national project that has been subject of masculine foibles. Bolanle Awe’s intellectual outputs represents a unique angle to the challenge of nursing the national project back to life in the bid to create a developmental Nigerian state. And her singular contribution is this: Motherhood is the single most neglected angle to the national question in Nigeria. There is therefore the need to interrogate the historical contributions of the mothers as the requisite sacrifice in the healing of the nation. The ideas of development and nation building have often been cast in masculine terms as requiring only the ingenuity of men as politicians. Yet, the essence of Bolanle Awe’s historical trajectory is simple: To build a virile nation in Nigeria, we should beware of what Chimamanda Adichie calls “the danger of the single story”. The single story in this case is the one-sided narrative of the development and nation building framework. The evidence of history controverts such unilinear trajectory. Rather, what is historically reasonable to say is that development is not gendered; all hands are required on the development deck in Nigeria. Thus, the trajectory of history which emancipates the Nigerian women by providing them with evidence that would facilitate attitudinal change also emancipates the nation by suggesting some ways out of our national conundrum. Bolanle Awe is one intellectual who has refused to succumb to the pandemic scepticism, pessimism and cynicism that are demanded by our protracted predicament. What is required, according to her, is “a new
vision of Nigeria” of which we can all be proud. And this vision must necessarily tap into the depth and crevices of history to outline the way forward. The way to go is anchored on three plausible factors: The first, motherhood; second, the educational system; and third, the federal character principle. Motherhood would constitute the single most significant factor in the preservation of the nation. As the natural custodian of the home, a mother is expected to ensure that the health and balance of the home and the family is maintained. In the Aristotelian framework, the household constitutes the natural and most fundamental community from which the state evolved. For Aristotle, the household originated “in the bare needs of life, and [continues] in existence for the sake of a good life”. Motherhood therefore, in Awe’s reckoning, would be the most natural nurturing point for positive political action, and hence the most fundamental task for women to pursue. Secondly, the educational system facilitates harnessing the potentials of the Nigerian youths, and especially the female child. For Prof. Awe, apart from the women, the youths constitute the other neglected force in the governance and development processes in Nigeria. And education possesses the capacity to redress the disequilibrium that contributes to the lopsided profile of the national project. In fact, the education of the youths could redress the lack of recognition given to the Nigerian women as worthy partners in the nation building process. Finally, Bolanle Awe recognises the inherent capabilities of the federal character principle to achieve a fundamental catchment into the governance drive to make Nigeria a truly developmental state. Backstopping the educational system, the federal character principle serves as the framework for ensuring equitable and equal participation of all. It facilitates what we can call an all-round, engendered development that permits both men and women and youths some significant roles in building the Nigerian nation. Friedrich von Schlegel, the German philosopher, considers a historian “a prophet in reverse”. Bolanle Awe is still prophesying the good of Nigeria and the possibility of the national project even at an old age. Her true worth can be regarded as that of finding a feminist and revolutionary historical language, in Gloria Steinem’s words, “that will allow people to act together while cherishing each other’s individuality” and humanity. Such a language, like the language of service delivery in governance, constitutes a significant part of the national project without which we cannot hope for a nation where diversity would long for unity.
Olaopa, Federal Permanent Secretary, Abuja tolaopa2003@yahoo.com