JALA Winter-Spring 2008-Vol 2 No 1 - African Literature Association

to you for the simple reason that there is SOME
hope. You are young, you are in a very highly
respected University (hence the tragedy of it
all). You stand a chance of having your
erroneous views at least re-orientated. Not
necessarily by me. I am too emotionally close
to all this rubbish. Let’s begin at the beginning.
The function of a novelist, at least ONE of
them: To hold a mirror up to nature. This
particular mirror shows you naked, ashamed,
exposed and bleeding. The reflection is
terrifying and ghastly. Therefore, what do you
do? You cry out. Throw a cloth over the mirror.
It cannot be true! Are you now – in the
hypocritical manner to which I have since
resigned my ears – going to tell me that there
are NO PROSTITUTES IN NIGERIA, in Ekotedo
Ibadan; or that school teachers can never fall in
love with prostitutes? (Morning Post, Lagos
January 23, 1964)
But the Nigerian Parliament at the time, apparently sided with the
undergraduate student and others like him who only saw
pornography and no art in Jagua Nana. For, shortly after its
publication, an Italian film company, Ultra Films of Italy, representing
five international film industries, acquired the rights to film it. The
year was 1961 shortly after the Nigerian independence. The
Parliament arbitrarily stopped the filming giving the novel the historic
identity of being the first Nigerian novel so far to be debated on the
floor of Parliament. The morally conscious parliamentarians
maintained that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation which had
just obtained her independence ‘on a platter of gold,’ should not be so
soon seen through the eyes of a rumbunctious prostitute! But Ekwensi
was not the kind of wrestler who could be discounted because his knee
had touched the ground. Over the next decade after the debacle of
Jagua Nana, Ekwensi’s creative prolificity and effusive versatility
simply exploded. He published 11 (eleven) books—- Burning Grass
(1962), Beautiful Feathers (1963), Iska (1966), Yaba Roundabout Murder
(1962), Trouble in Form Six (1966), Juju Rock (1966), An African Night’s
Entertainment (1962), The Great Elephant Bird (1965), The Rainmaker and
Other Stories (1965), Lokotown and Other Stories (1966), The Boa Suitor
(1966).
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