Talent Development In An Underdeveloped Society: The Frustrations of a Creative Youth in Nigeria

A Paper delivered by Chidozie Chukwubuike on the occasion of Youth Creativity Exhibition and Establishment of Creativity Enhancement Fund at the Imo State Library Auditorium.
Date: Thursday, 13 November, 2008

Introduction
The thought that gave birth to this topic seems to thrive on opposites. First, we see ‘Development in Underdeveloped Society’. Afterwards, we see ‘frustrations of a creative youth’. On the surface, the thought of creativity and frustration, together, strikes one as absurd. However, in preparing this paper, I decided to contextualize it. Beginning with this introductory phase, I went ahead to reconcile the dictionary definitions of the terms that appear in the topic with their practical usage in real life situations in order to arrive at working definitions. Furthermore, I tried to identify the causes of underdevelopment in Nigeria, and quickly followed it with an analysis of the frustrations of a creative youth. In discussing the issue of creative empowerment, I decided to personify the seeming contradictions earlier mentioned into recognisable characters. I chose two fictive archetypes from the celebrated Igbo epic novel – Things Fall Apart. These two characters are father and son, Unoka and Okonokwo respectively. I have chosen these characters in order to help us see beyond the surface to show that indeed ill-managed creativity can lead to frustration. And, that there is a possibility of developing talent, even in an underdeveloped society. I also needed those two characters, especially Okonkwo to show the government and people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria what youth empowerment should be; borrowing from the pre-colonial Igbo society. Finally, I sought a conclusion by enumerating the lessons intended to be drawn from this discourse.

Definition of Dominant Concepts in this Paper
Without bugging this audience with boring academic exercise, let me hastily provide working definitions of the major recurrent terms in this paper by reconciling the definitions in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary with their practical usage for the purpose of this presentation.
i) Talent: This is a natural skill or ability at something. It comes to people in diverse ways; some are gifted in crafts and technology and some others in physical and abstract artistic performances. Some people are lucky to live out the full potentials of their talents; some others discover their talents but not privileged enough to harness them; while yet another group live and die without ever knowing what their real talents are.
ii) Development: This is the action or process that causes somebody or something to grow, expand, or advance gradually. It is the progressive improvement of any situation, environment, or potential (human or material).
iii) Underdeveloped: The word is used to apply to countries or regions that have not achieved a high level of economic, industrial, and technological advancement. It is the functional antithesis of development because undevelopment has gone out of fashion since you can hardly see any country that can be classified as undeveloped.
iv) Frustration: This is a feeling of dissatisfaction at or with something. Frustration usually comes with discouragement or sense of unfulfillment. It some times leads to violence.
v) Creative: This involves the skilful and imaginative use of something to produce another thing of value. It is usually used as an adjective to qualify a noun, as in creative youth.
vi) Youth: The time when a person is young; especially before a child becomes an adult.

Causes of Underdevelopment in Nigeria
Some time in our recent past history, we watched the then Head of the Interim National Government of Nigeria, Chief Ernest Shonekan set for Nigeria an economic target and development goal tagged Vision 2010. That was over ten years ago. And, today, as 2010 is less than two years away, the music has changed to vision 2020. Over the years, we have fanatically held fast to those customs that have always kept our people down. From the historical inception of our country as an independent sovereign nation, the story has remained the same. As early as 1962 we began to hear about manipulation of census figures, and that culture has remained with us till today. Every election year, Nigeria has consistently embarrassed the civilized world with abysmal election fraud. We have stubbornly remained unchanging in our ways. The story has since remained the same; every year our dear country is indicted for unmitigated corruption by such international civil society organizations as Amnesty International. We are always plagued by such vices as judicial compromise, unemployment, falsification of age by workers, blind imitation of western culture, etc. and instead of changing our attitude; we grope aimlessly in self deceit. Nigeria as a country is notorious for toying with its destiny. The entire gory picture painted by Chinua Achebe in the early 20th Century, when he wrote the book The Trouble with Nigeria, has persisted in our system till today.

The Frustrations of a Creative Youth
I have tried to categorize the frustrations of creativity into; self induced frustrations on the one hand, and frustrations caused by societal influences on the other. It was in one of the celebrated works of Miles Munroe that he said; “The greatest tragedy in life is not death but life… life that fails to fulfil its potential”. It is indeed a tragedy. There are two sides of creativity; one is productivity, and the other is frustration and violence. Whenever a creative person is empowered, the person becomes productive, all things being equal. A productive person is usually happy and contributes positively to society. On the other hand, when a creative mind lacks adequate empowerment, the person more often than not resorts to violence as a means of expression and release. Esiaba Irobi, a modern Nigerian playwright based in America captured the frustrations of creative youths in two of his plays – Hang Men Also Die, and The Other Side of the Mask. In the first play, some highly imaginative unemployed youths employed their creativity in the art of terrorism and violence. The second play, The Other Side of the Mask explores the frustrations of a creative artist and brings it to a fatalistic denouement. Jaamike, the main character in the play, degenerated to murder and suicide. That is the extent to which the frustrations of a creative youth can reach.

* Self Induced Frustrations: In some cases, it is discovered that many creative youths are the cause of their own frustrations. The most obvious is what I call lofty or grandiose ideas syndrome. For instance, a youth who is gifted in the art of painting may be waiting to raise the hundreds of thousands required to establish an art studio and gallery instead of going out to acquire the skill of house painting which he is likely to excel in if he allows it to engage his interest, and which of course can give him immediate cash. Many youths spend most of their productive years fantasizing the unattainable and avoiding the more pragmatic options. If they attempt starting the gallery against obvious odds they often get stuck due to finance and, eventually get frustrated.
Another self induced cause of frustration among youths is the problem of discernment. Creative people are ideas people. At every point in the life of a creative mind, there are myriads of ideas struggling for attention in his brain. Some of these ideas are spontaneous and cannot stand the acid test of sustainability. And many a times, people jump at half baked ideas that cannot last. The end product is usually frustration.
There are so many others. The list is interminable. You only need to look around you and you see them. You see highly imaginative young minds that live their lives to impress others; thereby, engaging in things that do not give them joy.
Most creative people are known to be shy, and at times it even degenerates to the level of timidity. It is very self limiting and naturally leads to extreme frustration.

* Society’s Influences: It is almost a curse to be born with great talent. Gifted children are usually misunderstood in the society. Only very few children are enabled by their immediate environment to fully realize their potentials. The more common experience is that society stifles creativity. Let us look at some of the ways by which the society hampers creativity.

Family: The family is a very strong influence in the life of anybody. It all begins there with the mother, the father, and the siblings. Whatever the family encourages normally succeeds and what is not encouraged fails. If the families of J.J. Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, or Omotola Jalade had frustrated these people’s talents, may be, these super stars would have been street touts today. Many times, social perceptions and parental ego predicate what children are allowed to become. Nobody tries to find out what innate abilities the child possesses. We hear some parents say, my child must be a medical doctor. And, may be, that child is highly gifted in designs and fabrications.

Religion: This is a very sensitive area in the sense that, even as it is obvious that I am postulating, caution must be applied if I don’t want to be left with an empty auditorium or, in an extreme case, mobbed by the audience. Yet, it is a fact that fanatical adherence to certain unexamined doctrines of churches and religions are inimical to the healthy development of a child. Some churches don’t dance, some don’t act dramas, and some don’t even watch televisions. We have seen religious doctrines that are vehemently against jewelleries and modern clothing fashions. It is therefore sad that any child in such a church who is a talented dancer might never discover his or her talent. Many of such talents become frustrated and take to crime due to lack of support or encouragement.

Government: Government policies are very strong instruments of change. The change can either be productive or destructive depending on the accompanying variables. The issue of skills acquisition is not known to have been taken very seriously by governments in our recent history. Look around you, and you can hardly find any creativity centre run by government anywhere in the country. The ones initiated by private individuals complain of total lack of government patronage.
The concept of Imo Job centre is a noble one but what is its modus operandi? What is the grand-strategic design for its implementation? Every government that assumes office sings of youth empowerment with what I call passionate lip service. When a creative youth cannot have access to institutions or programmes that can help him or her to exploit his or her creativity, frustration sets in.

Economy: I once entered the office of a medical doctor and on the wall I read “The paradox of Job is that you need experience to get a job and you need a job to have experience.” The same applies to the concept of economy; we need good economy to harness creative talents and we need harnessed talents to create good economy. So what do we do? If you ask me, I will advise that a middle course be charted where a synergy is formed between the already developed talents and the government in order to harness more talents. In Nigeria, many families are poor. The per-capita income of the average Nigerian citizen is one of the lowest in the entire world. There are highly talented musicians who cannot afford the high cost of releasing their music album (LP). However, it is important to point out that any investment in such talents cannot be wasted since music is a serious foreign exchange earner.

Here, our contemporary society should learn from the mistakes and failings of the generation captured in Things Fall Apart. We shall forge out of the crucible of our own experiences, a new attitude towards creative empowerment. Permit me to take us to Things fall Apart. In the book, the two characters; Okonkwo and Unoka are portrayed according to the value system of the generation that produced them. About Okonkwo, the book says, “ Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the cat.” That is the summary of that generation; importance or relevance was hinged on physical strength, brutal force. You must be a strong person, cultivating plots and plots of land for you to be respected. But today, you can bear witness to the fact that fame has shifted from labour and raw energy people, to ideas people.

Crafts people in the Unoka’s generation passed unnoticed. If you were a palm wine tapster, people would only relish in the sweetness of your wine and remember you only when there was an event that called for the supply of palm wine. (Unfortunately, today, palm wine tapping is even going into extinction.) The only things that gave men relevance then were the size of their barns, the number of plots of land, the size of the persons household, how physically strong a person was both in the farm and in the eventuality of external hostility.
Again, today, you can also bear witness to the fact that fame and importance has somehow shifted to crafts people, the Jay-Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, Pete Edochie, Philip Emeagwali, etc.

In the generation Things Fall Apart was situated, creative artistes were disdained. They were seen as lazy people. In fact, the novel described Unoka in the following words: “In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.” (pg2)

That was a very unfortunate depiction of a character whose talent the same book described thus: “He was very good on his flute … Unoka would play with them (the village musicians), his face beaming with blessedness… He could hear in his mind’s ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colourful and plaintive tune…”(pg5) My people, is this not the description of genius? I believe what society needs do is to learn from the mistakes of that generation that mismanaged creativity and, do better. It is also pertinent to point out that the purpose of this paper is not to condemn the Unoka-Okonkwo generation. There is also something that happened in that story which the present Nigerian peoples and government should emulate in order to sincerely empower the youths. Let us still take another excursion back to Things Fall Apart. “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit … (pg12) He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife.” (pg 12) Here it is important that we look at how the society discovered Okonkwo’s strength and helped to establish him to the level where he could be described in death thus:
“That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia” (Pg 147).

What was the secret of the metamorphosis? Let us still revisit Things fall Apart for an answer. When Okowkwo was ready to launch into farming, he visited Nwakibie, a wealthy man in his village who had taken the highest but one title which a man could take in the clan (Pg 13-14).

Okonkwo spoke to Nwakibie in the following words: “I have come to you for help. Perhaps you can already guess what it is. I have cleared a farm but have no yams to sow. I know what it is to ask a man to trust another with his yams, especially these days when young men are afraid of hard work. I am not afraid of work…. If you give me some yam seeds I shall not fail you” (Pgs 15-16). And Nwakibie responded thus: “I have learnt to be stingy with my yams. But I can trust you. I know it as I look at you. As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look. I shall give you twice four hundred yams. Go ahead and prepare your farm”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is youth empowerment. There are many young men and women in our society today who need capital to launch them into one enterprise or the other. There should be a synergy between the government and philanthropists in order to empower creative youths. Let us learn from Nwakibie’s example. As we do that, it is also important that we address those factors that led to the negative perception of Unoka as a failure. A quick look at the history and lifestyle of the creatively gifted people in our contemporary society shows that such people are not usually good managers of themselves. That is why whenever our footballers go to Europe to play professional football they become so rich. This is because Europeans have discovered early enough that creativity and financial management are two different things.

Such footballers are immediately given managers so that they can concentrate on perfecting their art. Michael Jackson, as large as his personality looms, still has a manager. Fela Anikolakpo Kuti of the blessed memory was said to be always bankrupt, in spite of the millions of money his shows generated, until Beko, his younger brother assumed the role of a personal manager and straightened out Fela’s finances. Our contemporary musicians are now doing so well because many of them have discovered this secret and now emulate their Euro-American counterparts to sign on with managers to control the business angle. I urge every one to take out a moment and reflect on some of our great talents that died in near penury – Area Scatter, Lomaji Ugorgi, Nzeorji Imo, etc. Just imagine what would have happened if such people were either Europeans or Americans.

With very few exceptions, most creative minds are reckless with money. That was why the Unoka-okonkwo generation, who did not understand this fact, was impatient with Unoka whom the book described thus: “In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm wine, called round his neighbours and made merry” (Pg 3).
I would postulate here that our modern society does not need Okonkwo in his Things Fall Apart mould, but one that is moderated by the Unoka in him. This is because Okonkwo’s tragedy actually began the day he murdered the merry part of himself. Things Fall Apart describing Okonkwo in Page 27 says; “But he was always uncomfortable sitting around for days waiting for a feast or getting over it. He would be very much happier working on his farm.”
William Shakespeare , in Julius Caesar, described Cassius who shares characteristic resemblance with Okonkwo in the following words; “ He reads much; He is a great observer, and he looks quite through the deeds of men: he loves no play,… he hears no music: Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort as if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything. Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves; And therefore are they very dangerous.” (Complete works of Shakespeare page 722)

CONCLUSION
There should be a radical reorientation to address all the factors I raised that cause underdevelopment in Nigeria.

The peoples and government of Nigeria should take seriously such projects as Job centres, Creativity village, Skill acquisition, Youth empowerment and Civil Liberty Organizations that promote creativity.
We must learn to discover and promote creative talents wherever they are.
We must learn from the empowerment of Okonkwo.
We must learn from the mismanagement of Unoka, and our own generation’s unharnessed talents.
We must learn to play, promote entertainment and make our society a happy place.
All these, I believe, shall in turn contribute to build a strong and stable economy where creative empowerment and social development will be a way of life.

Guest Writer:
Chidozie Chukwubuike

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