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Nigerian Pamphleteers and the Congo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

K. W. J. Post
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Extract

Boys shook their heads a number of times while girls covered their faces with white handkerchiefs as the pathetic story of Congolese first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was read out to a crowded audience by PYC dramatic group at the Lagos City College, Yaba, last Sunday.

This notice, describing the staging of a play by a youth club run by a Lagos newspaper, the West African Pilot, appeared in that newspaper on 31 March 1962.1 All over Africa Patrice Lumumba's meteoric rise and tragic death caught the imagination of men and women in all walks of life, and more especially that of the young. In Nigeria, however, this reaction is of particular interest. First of all, the news of Lumumba's murder in February 1961 provoked 'anti-white' rioting in a country where race relations had not been an overt issue for a decade. Demonstrations outside the United States Embassy in Lagos, the Federal capital, led to indiscriminate attacks on Europeans resulting in much damage to cars and serious injury to several individuals.2

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 1964 , pp. 405 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

Page 405 note 1 The same play had already been performed by students at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, in the Eastern Region. The Pilot Youth Club (P.Y.C.) revived its production and gave several more performances early in 1963.

Page 405 note 2 Even at the height of the nationalist movement overt racial issues were only occasionally prominent, the ‘Bristol Hotel’ affair of 1947 being perhaps the most famous incident. It is surprising, therefore, that the events of 16 February 1961 were so little reported in the world's newspapers.

Page 406 note 1 Iguh, Thomas, The Last Days of Lumumba (the Late Lion of the Congo), a Drama (Onitsha, A. Onwudiwe and Sons, n.d.), p. 52.Google Scholar In all quotations the spelling and punctuation have been left as in the original.

Page 406 note 2 Letter to the West African Pilot, 19 02 1962.Google Scholar

Page 407 note 1 The Last Days of Lumwnba, pp. II and 36–7.Google Scholar

Page 408 note 1 Iguh, Thomas, Tshombe of Katanga (a Drama) (Onitsha, A. Onwudiwe and Sons, nd.), pp. 37 and 41.Google Scholar

Page 408 note 2 Stephen, Felix N., The Trials of Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta and St. Paul (Onitsha, Njoku and Sons Bookshop, n.d.), p. 25.Google Scholar

Page 409 note 1 Olisha, Okenwa, The Life Story and Death of Mr. Lumumba (Onitsha, n.d.), p. 21.Google Scholar

Page 411 note 1 In the latter, for example, the national printing press and a railway locomotive have both been named after him.

Page 411 note 2 One very important set of questions for which we have no answers at present relates to the economics of pamphlet publication—how many of each are printed, and how many of these are actually sold?

Page 411 note 3 For a longer discussion of the social structure and politics of Onitsha, see Sklar's, Richard L.Nigerian Political Parties (Princeton, 1963), pp. 551–7,Google Scholar and the present author's The Nigerian Federal Election of 1959 (London, 1963), pp. 399–409.Google Scholar

Page 411 note 4 See the discussion in Hodgkin's, ThomasNationalism in Colonial Africa (London, 1956) pp. 63–83.Google Scholar

Page 411 note 5 Such an audience is now to be found even among northerners, who have tended to lag behind in modern education. The author has himself seen these pamphlets being read in Kano's old city. Dr P. C. Lloyd says that he also came across The Last Days of Lumumba being performed as a play in Igbetti, in northern Yorubaland (one of the Yoruba towns least affected by modern social change), by young men just returned from Lagos.

Page 412 note 1 Worthy of note here is a phrase used by a Nigerian army officer (trained at Sandhurst) when describing to the present writer an occasion on which General Mobutu had been entertained in a Nigerian officers' mess— ‘ he is not a gentleman’!

Page 412 note 2 See Hobsbawm, E.J., The Age of Revolution (London, 1962), p. 202.Google Scholar

Page 413 note 1 The Last Days of Lumumba, p. 51.Google Scholar For a photographic reproduction of the first scene of this play, see overleaf.