Josy Ajiboye, the Ultimate Prankster: Political Cartoonist as Egungun
2020; UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center; Volume: 53; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1162/afar_a_00512
ISSN1937-2108
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoAll photographs by the authorCrafting a successful witty, satirical political cartoon with only an image in a single pane accompanied by a phrase or a headline caption takes years of practice. Couple these skills with the cleverly indirect ways of Yoruba communication, and you have a consummate political cartoonist like Josy Ajiboye. With deft moves and agile wit, the editorial cartoon was Ajiboye's épée of choice. Each of his single-panel drawings contains complex overlapping meanings and metaphor, revealing that he is Eshu. Disguised in his Egungun costume, he is the ultimate prankster critiquing modernity. Nigerians love good humor, a well-turned phrase, and biting satire. Indirect criticism in the form of puns, parody, proverbs, and parables is the preferred method for correcting poor behavior, both interpersonally and on a larger sociological and cultural scale. Here I will explore how Josy Ajiboye, in the form of the Egungun, affected the politics and cartooning traditions of Nigeria for approximately forty years, from the late 1960s to the mid 2000s. Further, through this essay I demonstrate that political cartooning has a place within art history because it provides unique glimpse into the psyche of the culture from the insider's point of view.As a political cartoonist working in the heady days of the petroleum oil boom in Nigeria between the 1970s and 1990s, Ajiboye excelled at first entertaining his audience by skewering the corrupt official and the wealthy tycoon for overly excessive displays of elitism, and then using his bully pulpit to bare uncomfortable social problems such as the ever-widening chasm between the rich and poor. Through spare imagery, he documented crime, the clash between Christianity and traditional culture(s), the malaise wrought by postindependence dreams that went unfulfilled, and the failure of government to provide basic services to its citizens. Using Western modernity, Ajiboye and fellow cartoonists (including dele jegede, with whom he worked) performed the role of the Egungun of the past for modern Nigerians. Much has been written in Western academic circles about the Egungun: who they represent and how integral they are to Yoruba society. However, not much is understood about how Nigerian cartoonists used the Egungun to perform for their audience, and not much has been written about the mantle and responsibility that is demanded of the cartoonist as Egungun when he performs in public. In exercising his responsibilities as cultural commentator, fear of reprisal was ever present.In the period since I first presented this material at the 2011 Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) conference, numerous articles have appeared in print and on the Internet, discussing aspects of political cartooning in Nigeria: Yomi Ola's Satires of Power in Yoruba Visual Culture (2013) on the works of some of Nigeria's leading cartoonists had its origin in his 2009 doctoral thesis, Ganiyu A. Jimoh's The Role of Editorial Cartoons in the Democratisation Process in Nigeria: A Study of Selected Works of Three Nigerian Cartoonists (2011), a book that was similarly based on his 2010 Master of Arts thesis, and others. Over the years, sporadic magazine articles have been written about Nigerian cartoons. Before it folded in 2002, Glendora Review, a literary quarterly, published two articles about the state of Nigerian art and cartooning: "Storm in a Teacup: Artist Josy Ajiboye Looks Back" (Ajiboye 2001) and "The Traditions of Cartooning in Nigeria" (Olaniyan 1997). Since the 1990s, a number of essays, theses, and dissertations have been written about the role of political cartooning within Nigeria. None place exclusive focus upon Ajiboye. In 1983, the Daily Times, a local newspaper, published an incomplete compendium of Ajiboye cartoons; however, this book is not readily available, and neither Ajiboye nor the Daily Times have good archival records of these cartoons. Further research is required if there is ever to be a complete record of his work. Because computerized and digital records are still not commonplace in Nigeria, it is difficult to compile complete archives for his corpus of work.Little has been written in Western scholarly journals about the political impact of Nigerian cartoons; more has been written about the various graphic novel and cartooning traditions of South Africa and a number of other African countries. Perhaps the reason for this focus on work arising from South Africa has more to do with this country's geopolitical standing in the West. Nigeria, despite its oil wealth, is still perceived as one of the more corrupt, mismanaged, underdeveloped "third world" countries. Massimo Repetti notes, "The comic in Africa has always been a child of its time" (2007: 27). He argues that in its first period, between 1960 and 1990, comics traditions, from strips to cartoons and more literary productions, came together to provide a graphic mirror of the political reality of nation building, which in terms of spirit and orientation underpinned the process of Africanizing comics' subject matter and stories. Cartooning in Nigeria has evolved to include color and computerized technology, and it remains just as popular as cartoons created in the 1970s. Subject matter still includes commentaries on the government and society, and new subjects have added prosaic topics from television and the Internet. It is fair to say that today's Nigerian cartoon artists draw with an eye towards global reception.Repetti further states that perhaps the reasons why African comics are not well known outside the continent relate to stereotyped assumptions—assumptions that arise from recurrent themes such as witchcraft, simplistic references that are easily read by lay and academic audiences. I think the opposite is true. Each country in Africa has a complex history and unique political structures that defy generalization. Francophone West Africa cannot be conflated with the former colonies of the British Empire. French-styled colonialism was fundamentally different from British colonial rule and the modern African cultures that evolved under these disparate influences differ in many ways. The tendency has been to simplify Africa into easy categories and binary relationships of advanced cultures juxtaposed with less advanced cultures, Christian versus Muslim or animist cultures, corrupt systems of governance as opposed to a democratic "ideal."Though well beyond the focus and scope of this paper, there is another type of cartoon that circulated in Africa: colonial-era cartoons created by European artists. Some of these cartoons were geared to a francophone audience, others toward the anglophone audience. What united these cartoons was their singular theme of highlighting European superiority. They often depicted the African along specific tropes: an apelike subhuman or idiotic flaneur, a cannibal cavorting happily around a bonfire, a witch doctor, or a hopeless, stupid child. Africa was uncivilized, and it could not be modern. However, there was a third type of colonial cartoon that had global appeal; it did not matter where the character went, the local audience loved and followed him. Tintin was that third cartoon type. Created in 1929 by Belgian artist Georges Rémi (also known as Hergé), The Adventures of Tintin featured Tintin and his dog as they had many adventures across the globe. Tintin's 1930 lark (rewritten in 1931 and again in 1946) was set in the Belgian Congo. In Tintin au Congo, racist disrespect reigned supreme in how the African was deliberately portrayed. One of the panels, for example, shows Tintin teaching native children about their Bel gian fatherland. Really. Nancy Rose Hunt (2002: 91) argues that to the twentieth-century European colonial, the idea of African modernity was farcical. I argue that Ajiboye and his fellows did not find their desire for modernity a farce. They were not interested in synthesizing colonialist ideology to produce an intellectual space for the "good" semicivilized nonwhite colonial flunkey (Hunt 2002: 117).I met with Mr. Ajiboye in 2012 and again in 2014. He has an infectious personality; his eyes twinkle as he talks about the cartoons that were such an important part of his life. His age is a mystery—even dele jegede says that at the Daily Times, where they both worked during the 1970s, no one ever knew Ajiboye's actual birthdate. Ajiboye has said that even he does not know his actual birthdate, but thinks it is ca. 1945.1 Inaccurate records were commonplace in those days. Nigeria is still not an electronic country where full digital records exist. Josy Ajiboye was born in Erinmope, Ekiti, during British colonial rule in the Western Region, now Ekiti State. Son of a local chief and travelling singer, he had a traditional rural Yoruba upbringing as well as a Christian education. An artistic child, he drew charts for the teachers at the local missionary school.He began his professional career in 1962, working at Niger Challenge Press, the publications unit of the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), as a trainee artist. The Press produced missionary pamphlets and other materials for the organization (Ola 2013: 134–35). Simultaneously, Ajiboye took art courses at Yaba Technical College, where he learned the art of illustration and creating color separations on one plate (Ajiboye 2001: 118).2 In 1968, he left the Niger Challenge Press. He was hired by the Daily Times in 1971, at first as an illustrator rather than a cartoonist.3 By the end of his twenty-nine year career at the Daily Times, he had become a leading cartoonist with an international reputation. For many decades, Josy Ajiboye published weekly cartoons, Life with Josy Ajiboye and Josy Ajiboye on Sunday, in a number of newspapers that included the Daily Times and Morning Post. He retired in 2006.Every cartoonist develops a style that is uniquely his. Similarly, every jester and each Egungun develops their unique brand. It was during his work at the Daily Times that Ajiboye honed his style so that it was immediately recognizable. He states that it was in the late 1960s that he learned how to develop his artistic "hand" in this regard.4 Different in style from his contemporaries, Ajiboye used English to express a concept. He also used the single panel format with a caption that was more commentary than mere title. The image captured the spirit of the character or subject matter succinctly. I suggest he was following the work of 1940s colonial era pioneer cartoonists, such as Akinola Lasekan (1917–1972), better known as "Lash," who used editorial cartoons to mock colonialism, parody officious British behavior, and prod Nigerians to question their complicity and complacency with the unequal power relationships they endured.Iwe Irohin Yoruba, the first indigenous-language newspaper in colonial Nigeria, was established in Abeokuta, Western Region, in 1859. Targeted toward the newly repatriated African diaspora, who were educated and therefore part of the local intelligentsia, this newspaper captured the disillusionment the returnees felt with British governance (Ola 2013: 83). Almost immediately, the newspapers began to criticize colonial rule, its stereotypes, derisive treatment of the indigenous, and the hypocrisies within Christianity. The West African Pilot, founded in 1937, and other early newspapers continued the direct criticism of colonial rule and its supporters—the Nigerian elite indebted to the British (Ola 2013: 65–67). The fact that the European found himself increasingly caricatured led to more censorship of the press. Before Lasekan began working for the West African Pilot in 1944, the British had, in 1941, strengthened their censorship laws in a vain attempt to squash growing popular anticolonial discontent. Lasekan effectively transformed the indirect use of satire innate to his Yoruba upbringing into direct criticism. He used the teaching methods of the talking drum and the Egungun masquerade to create his own drumbeat in the march to independence. His editorial cartoons of the 1940s were one of the instruments used in the movement to gain independence. In the 1970s, Ajiboye adopted Lasekan's single-panel style and use of plain text within the image. Similarly, Ajiboye synthesized the iconography of the Egungun and Yoruba satire into his work. Although many articles have been written detailing how the Egungun perform, a short explanation of who they are and why they still exist in the twenty-first century is needed to properly ground Ajiboye as a modern-day Egungun. It is important to briefly address how integral the masquerade is to our pranksters, a group whose leading rabble-rouser is Ajiboye. He has had a lifetime of experience with and understanding of the key concepts of Yoruba worldview: He knows that the image involves more than the subject; it also refers to the past and cultural memory; and although educated in Christian missionary schools, he is familiar with traditional Yoruba gods.The Yoruba are prolific producers of the visual arts; the performative components of the masquerades are among some of the most spectacular. Earlier studies by Africanist scholars—Henry Drewal (1978), Margaret Thompson Drewal (1992), Robert Farris Thompson (1984), just to name a few—have documented a number of specific Egungun traditions. The Egungun are masked male dancers who, when fully clothed in the ensemble, take on the spirit of the ancestors they embody. They perform to the accompaniment of drums, praise singers, and most importantly, an attentive, appreciative, and fully engaged audience. A key aspect of the performance is direct communication with the audience, celebration, and the idea of spectacle; the emphasis is on the teaching story being told. Masquerades not only entertain, they exercise social control while negotiating with the existing power structure, be it the oba, colonial officer, or government official (Ola 2013: 31). Even though many of the visual arts have adapted to accommodate colonialism and modernity, the social functions of the masquerades remain. They are still held for important social occasions that include rite of passage ceremonies into adulthood, harvest festivals, funerals and other celebrations.Yomi Ola (2013) writes that of the three major Yoruba masking traditions—Agbegijo, Gelede, and Onidan—only Agbegijo is wholly satirical. Gelede and Onidan maskers perform traditional rituals in addition to parody, and Onidan maskers play tricks (Lawal 1993: 6). Whereas the Gelede masker plays tribute to women, animals, and gender roles (Drewal 1974: 14), Agbegijo maskers caricature social vices within the community and outsiders, i.e., the non-Yoruba stranger (Ola 2013: 31). Further, because Agbegijo maskers' concealed identities provided protection against retaliation, it was really the only Egungun who could get away with such criticism. The Yoruba view its members as insiders and thus human (Adedeji 1969: 61). Foreigners fit into two subcategories. A member of the first is ethnically or closely aligned to the Yoruba worldview and thus portrayed as upholding Yoruba cultural values. The second is the outsider, who would never be considered anything more than a caricature of humanity due to their inability to behave with dignity (Adedeji 1969: 61)—hence, yet another category of masker, the Egungun Oyibo, which was created to parody the European colonizer. Egungun Oyibo and Gelede maskers satirize anyone who apes Caucasian mannerisms (Lawal 1993: 10, Drewal 1974: 17).Even today, most Yoruba believe that a person must be dignified at all times. Therefore, elders and rulers are particularly expected to be decorous, calm, and never ill-mannered. In traditional Yoruba society, at least prior to the disruption that colonialism brought to existing sociopolitical systems of thought and governance, one of the ways rulers and leaders were held accountable for their behaviors was to publically witness their foibles recreated and ridiculed in Egungun ceremonies. The masquerade is still found throughout Nigeria—indeed, throughout Africa, many ethnic groups use similar public forums to air grievances. Doublespeak is a fine art in Nigeria, a skill that takes nuance and time to learn how to do well. Criticism is almost never direct—it is oblique and is often given in the form of a proverb. Sage proverbs become metaphors; sarcasm, praise, and ridicule are intermingled so skillfully that one has to listen carefully to understand the double entendre. But, even more to the point, criticism is delivered through an incredible variety of sources: the parent, any elder, folk tales, adage, and the Egungun prankster. On the surface this doublespeak looks benign or merely humorous; subtlety is key to good Yoruba satire, and unless given the necessary clues, one can literally miss the point. In other words, the audience must have the "inner-eye," or oju-inu (Abiodun 1994: 73), to understand the larger moral or ethical message of the joke the artist appears to be telling. For example, one might have witnessed an Egungun ceremony in which an overly officious, rude colonial officer and his wife found themselves being parodied for their foolishness when a masquerader in slapstick aped their clothes, skin color, and supercilious mannerisms. The British colonial officer learned the hard way that direct and open speech was not a successful way to communicate or govern, but that indirect speech (through doublespeak and the use of intermediaries) was much preferred.In a reversal of power, the Egungun used their authority to censor their communities and thus provided social corrective measures. In addition to rulers or political leaders, other targets of the times included the rich and adulterers. Frequent Egungun themes today include government and military rule, hunger, oil and electricity, greed, corruption, fear, intolerance, and stupidity. The political cartoonist continues the tradition of speaking truth, which has been the role of the Egungun for centuries. In many ways, they are Eshu—messengers, pranksters, and the public's court jester, alive and well in the newspapers of today.Ajiboye executes his pantomime in the scenes he creates. The music of the cartoon is the facial expressions, words, and gestures of the subject. Simultaneously, as Egungun, Ajiboye lays bare the inner problems of society, and as journalist, he uses the mask of the "Freedom of the Press" to express himself. But, unlike the Egungun who remain masked, Ajiboye signs his work. It is important to note the complex dance he performs. In our interviews, he reiterated that he does not directly identify his target; rather, he is careful to present a resemblance of his intended target.5 He relies on the audience to make the connection between the caption, context, and content and the satirical pun he makes. For many Nigerians, the political cartoon is just another Egungun, an extension of an enacted performance, only in print. For the non-Nigerian, the cartoon still performs, the joke is made, but the hidden meaning may not be as easily read. Ajiboye is not just a prankster, he is Eshu.Aigba ire, ka ma gba ibi. (Anything good has some evil in it.) (Lawal 2008: 30)In the Yoruba cosmos, the world consists of a gourd made of two halves or dualities. The top half of the gourd represents the spirit world—maleness—while the bottom half represents femaleness and the physical world (Lawal 2008: 26). Eshu or Eshu-Elegba, a god, is the divine messenger between these two halves: between man and the gods as well as between the pantheon of Yoruba orishas and Olodumare, the supreme being. Eshu, a trickster or provocateur, reflects Yoruba cosmology and the belief that the real, physical world is really composed of dualities such as male/female, good/evil, white/black, spirit/matter, the visible/invisible, and sacred/profane (Lawal 2008: 24). It is through this duality, the idea of twoness, or Nature's way of providing balance, that Eshu becomes important in Yoruba cosmology. Like the Greek god Hermes, who inverts or upends any situation into its opposite condition, Eshu intentionally sows seeds of discord, upends a positive situation, and makes enemies of friends, just so that he can later play the mediator. Literally the orisha of crossroads, Eshu becomes both friend and enemy, life and death, prosperity and poverty. In Ajiboye's case, Eshu is both the court jester and mischief maker who has the ear of the king or government official. If a man offends the gods, it is really Eshu who instigated the cycle of appeasement sacrifices meant to feed the [hungry] gods (Westcott 1962: 337). But, despite all these seeming paradoxes, most Yoruba believe there is no such thing as pure evil—there is always a good that emerges from the ashes.Completely enculturated in the Yoruba worldview, Ajiboye does not use deceit or cunning; rather, he uses the Egungun to highlight social inequities and abuse of power. I contend Ajiboye deploys the prankster element within Eshu. Additionally, he is a prankster because he deploys classic indirect Yoruba methods of ridicule and satire to expose man's foibles. Unlike Eshu, he does not sow chaos; instead, he demonstrates man's foolishness. He delights his audience with his subtleness on one hand, but bold satire in other instances where subtlety would be lost on the politician. He uses the political cartoon to highlight the fact that the portrayed topic represents a crossroad—will the problem resolve itself or become exacerbated by his retelling? Here is a double irony. Ajiboye uses the freedom of the press as his Egungun, his mask to don yet another mask to express himself (artistic license) and not face reprisal. In fact, depending on the cartoon, Ajiboye performs as the Yoruba Egungun Agbegijo—the special category of masker who has the mandate to criticize. In other instances, he dons the Egungun Onidan when making prankster tricks, conducting parody or social commentary (Lawal 1993: 6).Art history in general, and African art history in particular, has typically ignored the editorial cartoon, despite the fact that this art form often powerfully and accurately captures the pulse of its community. In addition, editorial cartoons offer profound insight into cultural belief systems and expose underlying social, ethical, and moral problems. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that some of the artificial barriers that separated the fine arts from the new media (such as film, graphic arts, and photography) started to tumble. While the discipline of art history now tends to ignore the rigid high-art/craft divide, remnants of this division probably lie at the root of why the political cartoon does not merit the same level of analysis as the work of a studio artist. Tracing backward in art history, Francesco Goya (1746–1828) is one of the few artists whose satirical work, Los Caprichos, art history fully acknowledges.6 Centuries later, Goya's biting social commentary and imagery continue to be reinterpreted in the works of contemporary artists; Yinka Shonibare, for example, has mined the ideas Goya presented. Like Shonibare, contemporary African artists also mine their culture, sifting through it to develop particular storylines, in addition to appropriating drawing styles from the West as they create work specific to their culture or nation. They rework the recurrent narratives so that parallels are drawn between the injustices and inequities of colonialism and the grim realities of modern nation building.Our Egungun made political cartoons intended first for the Nigerian audience and then, by extension, the rest of the continent. Clothing, physical features—in other words, the iconology— reflected the Nigerian community more than a Western-styled cartoon. It is critically important to understand and accept that Nigerian political cartoons are not Africanized Western cartoons, but a new, unique form of expression that not only draws from Western and indigenous idioms but transcends both systems of aesthetic sensibilities to become its own modality. Art history as a discipline of study maintains categories that are neatly defined and delineated. So, if an African work cannot be clearly defined by the criteria of "postcolonial angst," "pan-African Modernism," or a twenty-first century version of "universalism," new work being created in countries such as Nigeria is omitted from the discourse. It is my premise that there simply cannot be a singular African modernism; fifty-five countries on the continent make that an impossibility.For a cartoon to be successful, both Ajiboye and his audience must have insight into the subtleties underlying the subject being discussed. The viewer must have the inner eye, or oju-inu, to apprehend the meanings of our prankster's strong visual images that capture the many-layered spirit of a message within one panel. This inner eye is the ability to discern the underlying essence of the subject being satirized. It is also the innate intuition that helps the audience decide if the message is clear and if the artist succeeded in his intention. Ajiboye is able to address his message to an audience who possesses this inner eye because he understands the aesthetic qualities that embody widely understood Yoruba design tenets and speaks from a cultural and historical perspective he shares with those readers. Our cartoonist thus provides a historical connection to the past; as he dances, he provides didactic windows to the soul.The first window is the literal interpretation that has universal meaning and allows the gag or pun to be clearly understood. The public can easily reference the event being lampooned. Yet, on several concurrent levels, the seasoned reader who has greater knowledge of Nigerian visual culture (whether innate or learned) appreciates both the overt and the nuanced message. In other words, this degree of discernment is accessible once the reader becomes aware of the multiple juxtapositions of Western and non-Western systems of knowledge. Just as the Egungun trickster's costume swirls open in his dance to reveal more essential and profound layers of his story's meaning, the visual layers of the editorial cartoon offer insight into the subtleties hidden within the commentary. For example, a lavishly dressed individual is widely understood to be a wealthy person, but an elaborately embroidered outer robe, such as an agbada, might indicate a Yoruba man of high social standing in addition to wealth. The gobi or fila, a hat, is another example of subtlety and nuance that only an insider can readily discern several concurrent levels of meaning. The fila worn with the agbada may just look African to the outsider, but the way it is worn, its shape, and how it is drawn tells the audience if the wearer is Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba. The non-African sees wealth portrayed, but misses the nuance layered within the image. Similarly, an image identifying particular Nigerian modes of transportation, such as a danfo (a minivan) or a motorcycle taxi (an okada), does not bring to the outsider the same level of mirth and derision felt by the Nigerian who has been at the mercy of their drivers. As Egungun, Ajiboye serves a number of roles in society—one role is to criticize, and another is to entertain. Just as the masked Egungun's identity is known within his community, the drummers and singers who accompany the Egungun can be understood to be the words in Josy Ajiboye's cartoon panels— indeed, the drummers and the words direct the Egungun and Ajiboye around in their dance, inviting the participants to think more deeply about the message being conveyed.There were other Nigerian artists working as editorial cartoonists at the same time as Josy Ajiboye. They included Ayo Ajayi, dele jegede, Cliff Ogiugo, and Bisi Ogunbadejo; their work in the 1970s through 1990s made them pioneers. The newspapers that many of these artists worked for included the Guardian, the Daily Times, Punch, and Concord. The next generation of cartoonists emerged during the latter part of the twentieth century; however, most still draw heavily upon the work of the cartoonists of the 1970s-1990s, with the additional twist of Western modern cartooning styles.Ajiboye credits Akinola Lasekan (Lash), the first Nigerian cartoonist who worked during the transition from colonialism towards independence, as his primary influence.7 In the beginning of his tenure, the editorial cartoons that Ajiboye drew at the Daily Times were a mix of political and social commentary. Gradually, as the economic prosperity generated by Nigerian oil exports faltered, corruption soared, and governmental provision of basic necessities such as potable water, electricity, and roads became extremely problematic. Ajiboye traced these ills directly to both the military and civilian governments.8 He used familiar tropes of the generalized "them," which included the iconic military despot, the berobed wealthy tycoon, the oversexed woman/schoolgirl, and the hapless individual. Other topics frequently included armed robbery, bribery, and problems with traffic jams. All of the tropes were easily recognizable for the unspoken intended target, but even more importantly, the audience could identify themselves as part of the prank. I agree with Ola's conjecture that when the Daily Times became government owned in 1975, the barbs were not as direct or as pointed (2013: 100). Unlike the Daily Times, Punch was privately owned, and thus would level more acerbic assaults against the military leaders. Like jegede, who developed serial characters such as Kole the Menace, Ajiboye similarly created a serial character, Little Joe, who appeared in the Daily Times (Medubi 2009: 202).Both comic strips, which followed the escapades of two boys, served as Nigerian versions of Aesop's Fables. Nigerian fo
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