Shuffering & Shmiling

Another memoir from Ofilispeaks. Sad to think that 30 years later, Fela's insightful analysis of the Nigerian state of being is still ever so apt. As Ofili puts it, "Nigerians have bypassed the government and look to God for hope". Necessarily a bad thing? Not if it gets you through the day. However, this system of "shuffering and smiling" is not sustainable, as things cannot progress without an accountable (and active) government in place. As our leaders turned themselves into demi-gods and drove our nation further into the ground between 1999 and 2007, we suffered and smiled. As the new administration busies itself with nothing, we continue to do what we do best. I only hope that we don't wake up one day to find that we have raised a new generation of suffering smilers who have learned to expect nothing of their leaders and wait in vain for elusive divine interventions.

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Memoirs Of An Immigrant: Shuffering and Shmiling - Ofili

In the early 70’s popular Nigerian artist Fela Kuti released “shuffering and shmiling” a song that served to juxtapose the chaotic environment of Africa with the blinding optimism of its indigenes. Optimism that many times was the product of a mass flooding of religious hope into the minds of Africa’s people. According to Fela “suffer suffer for world, enjoy for heaven” was the motto that seemed to place the minds of Africans into a false sense of enjoyment, one that caused them to ignore their current and often chaotic predicament and remain enthusiastically optimistic for a future that was bleak. Not surprisingly Fela’s song received national criticism from the upper echelons of the Nigerian government, who condemned his obvious claim of suffering. And by the lower class Nigerian citizenship seemingly offended with the notion that somehow they were satisfied with their current state of poverty. In 2003 Fela would be vindicated posthumously by a World Value Survey carried out by the University of Michigan. A survey that listed Nigerians as the happiest people in the world. A happiness that occurred amidst nefarious statistics courtesy www.ruralpoverty.com showing that 35% of Nigerians lived in abject poverty with more than double that number considered as poor. All this while still being ranked as the 20th poorest nation in the world. But somehow we had found a way to the top of a happiness poll?

As an immigrant into the United States I was confused, surely something must have been wrong with the survey sample. Surely the Nigerians that were surveyed were not the ones I spoke to on a weekly basis that complained about the bad roads or the consistently inconsistent power and water supply? Surely they did not include the hundreds of Nigerians that crowded foreign embassies clamoring for a chance of another life in any other country but Nigeria? Surely it did not include my Dad, who had his business run to the ground by greedy government officials insistent on getting paid undocumented business taxes? Surely it did consist of the Nigerians Fela had in mind when he sang…

Everyday my people dey inside bus, Shuffering and Shmiling
49 sitting 99 standing, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go pack dem self in like Sardine, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem dey faint dem dey wake like cock, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go reach e house, water no dey, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go reach e bed, power no dey, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go reach e road, go-slow go halt, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go reach e road, police go slap, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go reach e road, Army go whip, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go look pocket, money no dey, Shuffering and Shmiling
Dem go reach e work, query ready, Shuffering and Shmiling
Everyday nah de same

But unfortunately it did. The survey consisted of the same suffering Nigerians who had somehow found a reason to smile for the World Value Survey; with a happiness ranking higher than both America and the United Kingdom combined. A ranking so economically illogical that it warranted a personal investigation by myself into the mechanisms that produced the survey results. The original article as published by the British New Scientist Magazine showed the survey results were determined from two key questions. The first question asked how “happy” an individual was at a particular moment. Under this context Nigerians came out on top. The second question asked how “satisfied” an individual was with life as a whole, finances and health. In this category Nigeria ranked near the middle for satisfaction. Both results were arithmetical averaged and Nigeria was determined to be the happiest nation in the world.

However, behind the survey science lay a trend that was hidden from much of news media outlets, out of all the countries surveyed, Nigeria was the only country in which its people were happy despite being less satisfied with life. Only Fela could have said it best, “Nigerians were suffering and smiling,” a situation that he blamed on the religiously influenced dogmatic optimism that possessed Nigeria. An optimism that not only isolated Nigerians from the apparent poverty they faced but also isolated the Government from its social responsibility to its people. Somehow according to Fela religion had made Nigeria dangerously optimistic.

This notion of religiously fueled dangerous optimism pushed my memories all the way back to my early childhood. A childhood in Nigeria that had religion as a mandatory part of life, almost everything involved religion...As a child I experienced my fair share of religious enthusiasm as a student at a catholic elementary school. Our morning assemblies consisted of both impromptu and memorized prayers that lasted up to an hour. And prayer did not simply stop at the assembly it continued in the classrooms at 12 noon when the bell rang for our prayer to Mary Magdalene. This was the norm for me, I just showed up and prayed whenever I was required to.

My religious innocence however became challenged as I got older and more socially conscious. A consciousness that sparked an internal battle between my religious and social spirits. I wanted to go out and do the things those teenagers my age did, unfortunately there was a slight problem. The problem was my mum; she was as religious as you could get. A missionary in Church, she prayed in the morning, listened to scriptures in the afternoons and preached to us at night. We went to Church almost every other day, Tuesday was bible study, Wednesday was prayer meeting, Saturday was Youth service and Sunday was the dreaded general service that lasted up to five hours long, it was terrifying. As a family we spent 50% of our lives in church, not even including the other 10% we spent at home praying. Suffice it to say, our family was as holy as you could possibly get.

Church sermons at that time revolved around a common theme, call on God for all your problems and he would answer you. This theme was spread through the sound systems of a myriad of churches across the nation. The theme focused on God as the solution of all of our nation’s problems, family problems, personal problems and even electric problem. Ironically I had a problem with this, one that was suppressed for years in Nigeria but only allowed to mature in America. In sharp contrast to Nigeria, church services in America were exceedingly short and straight to the point. But the key contrast did not reside in the length of the service, but rather in the theme of the service. A theme that, similar to churches in Nigeria spoke about God as the solution to all problems, but only if intertwined with an effort from the congregation. From their view point it was not alright to accept ones position of poverty with a hope that God in his time would make it better, you had to be willing to do something about your poverty. But ironically this part of religion is mostly overlooked in Nigeria, where God is pushed to the masses as the ultimate solution without demanding anything from the citizens. And the citizens in return don’t demand anything from their Government, instead they bypass the government and look up to God for hope. In doing so they expect little from the Government and little for themselves, this concept of little gives birth to the distorted conception by the world value survey analysis that somehow Nigerians are happy.

In the words of Desmond Tutu "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land." A statement that lays emphasis on what happens when religion is drunk without the consumption of social issues. Nigeria and Africa as a whole have to take a page from the American religious system. We have to charge people to demand more from themselves and government, while simultaneously praying to God as a catalyst for the solution. Only then can we experience true happiness.

Suffering and Smiling

The music of Fela Anikulapo Kuti is rarely heard on the radio in Nigeria. Everyone is in a possession of a CD or two of his, but to listen to his music, you've got to go out of your way to look for it.

Suffering and Smiling is a documentary about the movement started by Fela, and continued by Femi. Its about the passion of a gifted family for the betterment of a country that refuses to give them access to its radio waves, and is literally falling to pieces around them. On stage, they are alive, fearless and awe-inspiring. Off stage, they are persecuted, at times taken for granted, but nonetheless fiercely dedicated.

In Suffering and Smiling, we see with alarming clarity, how dire the situation in Nigeria is, and just how consuming the depression that stems from the hopelessness of it all, can be. Desperation was the common thread uniting our country’s people. In churches they cried out, screamed and begged God for change. In the Shrine, they got high, drunk and violent, clutching like animals at the fleeting opportunity for an escape from their despair. In the Niger Delta, they spoke with the bitterness of decades of lost livelihoods and unbearable impoverishment.

We knew Fela had a message (many messages in fact). We knew the powers that be had refused to listen to that message, and had ultimately regarded it as contrary to national security. We knew his mother was thrown out of a window, and that he was arrested and tortured repeatedly. What we didn’t know, was the instrumental role played by our current (and hopefully outgoing) President in the relentless vendetta against him. Neither did we know how unreceptive the Nigerians many of us interact with were to the message he intended for their benefit.

When Misan and I started The Afro Beat, Jeremy was very quick to send us an email of encouragement. In his mini eulogy on the greatness of Fela, he touched on something that we had honestly never noticed. For many Nigerians, Fela was, and still is, an embarrassment, a no-go area. It doesn’t matter to them that his music touched and gave hope to the man on the street. And it certainly doesn’t matter to them that his passion for his beliefs was greater than his concerns for his life and his safety. These are the very people that the commentators we've featured on The Afro Beat blog so far, have spoken out against - the passive observers who see Nigeria as a disgrace, a failed experiment not worth salvaging. These are the people who don’t challenge wrongdoing when they see it, but instead focus all their energy on simply getting from A to B. These are the people who are so worn out and despondent, that they turn a blind eye to the extreme poverty and inhumane conditions in which so many of their countrymen are condemned to fester and rot.

The Afro Beat admittedly hasn’t gone very far towards achieving much at the moment. Like everyone else, Misan and I have so much going on in our lives that sometimes it can be incredibly easy to forget to log on to The Afro Beat. Trying to cater to the interests of such a diverse audience, and at the same time stay true to the core of The Afro Beat, has indeed been very difficult. Trying to do this, especially when it has become clear that interest in the project is waning, has been even more difficult.

Motivated by Suffering and Smiling, and its depiction of true dedication in the face of extreme oppression and opposition, we’ve decided to open up The Afro Beat. It is no longer a movement that will require membership of any sort, simply because such a requirement is a barrier to progress. At the same time, obviously we’ve got to be careful about unpatriotic or separatist input over which we would have no control, and which could potentially get us into a lot of trouble. But it’s a risk worth taking if only to spark a few fires in the minds of others like ourselves who want to work out a role for The Afro Beat, its members and this generation in the alleviation of Nigeria’s unending crisis.

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Suffering and Smiling is showing next on Wednesday 28th March at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, London, as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Click here for more information. The footage shown at the start of this post is an independent video from YouTube and is not part of the Suffering and Smiling film.