By
Obododimma
Oha
Celestine
Ukwu, an Igbo highlife musician, played the tune, “Ije Enu,” and is widely
associated with a philosophical orientation to music, the music one can listen
to, enjoy it, and learn some lessons also. Other Igbo highlife mucsicians
associated with this tradition are Gentleman Mike Ejeagha and Goddy Ezike. If “Ije
Enu” is identified as being philosophical (probably that refers to “sage
philosophy,”), it means that it deserves a deep consideration and should inspire
further discourse. Although I am not discussing Celestine Ukwu’s song in this
essay as such, especially being a non-expert in music, I have to point out the nature of its relationship with my
essay: it has basically inspired it, as it must have directly or indirectly
inspired other discourses. “Ije Enu” is couched in this essay in Standard Igbo expression as “Ije
Elu,” but is essentially of the same type of discourse in which differing
narratives manifest in the journey of life. Celestine Ukwu sang:
Ije
enu – o
Ndi
na-akwanụ akwa
Ndi
na-aṅụrị aṅụrị - o
Akụwape!
(o
bụ) Onye ọ dịịrị mma taata
(Ka)
ọ ga-adịrị mma echi –o
Akụwape!
(The
journey of life
Some
are weeping
Some
are rejoicing
Akụwape!
(Is
it) for whom is rosy today
(That)
it would be rosy tomorrow
Akụwampe!)
Apart from
saying that we have diverse experiences and stories in our journey of life, the
song draws attention to the inevitable shifts in fortune in the journey of
life. The person laughing today may have to cry tomorrow. In fact, the song
makes me think of the Igbo saying, “Onye ma echi?” (Who knows tomorrow?), which
some people have as their personal names. The person in government may put only
his kinsfolk as the only qualified people for
public offices, but does he or she know tomorrow? In the next two or
three thousand years, we would read in history books that there were people
called “Nigerians,” when the country must have been erased from the map by other
forces in creation and re-creation, an indubitable fact that the late Pius Adesanmi pointed in one of
his social media sayings before dying in a plane crash. Nigeria is a tiny, non-observable dot in the galaxy, and outside this galaxy, it simply vanishes as
an entity. So, why not think “Ije Elu” as you brag and boast because you have
power today?
Ije Elu, of
many paradoxes, of intersecting opposites, of unstable things. Those who eat
from the bedecked table today may just eat from the bare ground tomorrow. Because, who
knows tomorrow? Onye ma echi? One can draft soldiers into the soup pot today,
but those drafted into the soup pot should not miss the sting of hot pepper in
the eyes. One could be there to intimidate today, only to be intimidated
tomorrow. Onye ma echi?
Who can kill
a person and revive that person, to kill him or her again? Who, wielding an AK-47,
can go also to the spiritworld to harass the spirits or beat his chest and say
that he caused some young men to die by making them drink dirty pond water? One has
to be a spirit to go to the land of the spirits. And everyone must drop the
weapon, also drop the dress of flesh, drop even the label called “name” and become a spirit
someday. At least, we know that one. That one is predictable! But onye ma echi
and how it would be with him or her? It is not everyone that is Ojaadili, that
mythical Igbo wrestler who went to the land of the spirits and wanted to
wrestle with his smallish chi!
Why bother to
sculpt yourself or another discredited “leader,” when you know that sculptures
rise and also sculptures fall? And the fall of a sculpture may coincide with the
fall of a stalwart when Onye ma echi wants to come into effective operation.
Indeed, the safest thing is to treat people like human beings and be remembered
for good deeds, not some oppressive tendencies. Because, onye ma echi? Echi dị ime
(Tomorrow is heavily pregnant) and who knows what it would give birth to? That
thing it would give birth to is also onye ma echi!
Ije Elu, the
journey of this life-world full of interesting adventures! Ije Elu, where
several villages are destroyed in a country on a galaxy, and life goes on, the
abnormal giggling that it has finally become normal. Ije Elu, where those in
darkness are showing the light to those in the light. Ije Elu, where the living
envy the dead!
Comments