For the Records@ITRealms:
The acceptance speech by Nigerian TV screen goddess, Funmi Iyanda, during her investiture as Honorary Fellow of University of Cumbria, United Kingdom (UK). Excerpts.
Vice-Chancellor,
University Staff, Distinguished Guests, Graduates, Ladies and Gentlemen, family
and friends, thank you so much for those kind words and indeed for this
wonderful honour.
I’m very
grateful, not just for this invitation to be an Honorary Fellow, but to be
invited to share it with so many gifted individuals that it has been my
pleasure to meet today.
This
fellowship is important to me because my father always wanted me to be a
medical doctor. Since that wasn’t happening l thought l’d get a doctorate to
please him but l never got round to it so perhaps he’d posthumously accept this
in lieu. Also, l have never worn a graduation gown so it was on my bucket list.
This lovely university is close to my heart because it has educated some of the
people dearest to me, accepted my country men and women with warmth and
provided me great opportunities to share my rather skewed world view. I am
excited at the prospects of future opportunities for education that this
fellowship will mean. Now let me share a
few stories with you because stories are nice.
Nothing ever
went the way I planned, well almost nothing. I had planned to torment my mother
with teenager angst but she died before I turned 10, ruining that excellent
plan. At the beginning of this year I planned a major cinema project, a new TV
show and a fashion school but then I fell very sick ruining that senseless
plan.
Last week my
over thinking 14-year-old daughter Morenike asked if I thought there was an
afterlife. I told her I doubted it but feel that’s in much the same way our
current existence makes little rational sense and we cope without prior prep,
so will we cope in an afterlife without further prep from here on were such an
afterlife to exist.
It must be
my week of pointless questions because my friend John Maclean the kindest
misanthrope in the world also asked how I have been able to do so many
outstanding things despite limitations and setbacks. Because I like to confound
him with Nigerian idioms, I told him the saying, “when in soup, lick it,”
because I knew the idea of licking soup off one’s body would undo his tidy
mind.
Growing up,
I was an impoverished skinny girl with fat dreams. Naturally there was a lot of
frustration but there was also a lot of going to markets because well my mother
was dead and I was the oldest and only female child so I did most of the
cooking. I developed a love for markets and a dislike for my aunt who always
responded to all my frustrations with a non-committal “ona kan o woja” (there
is no one route into the market). I could be discussing quantum physics with
her and at my most perplexed point, she’d say but “Aduke ona kan o woja.”
It took years
for me to understand that she was trying to teach me to repudiate ideology and
dogma in favour of adaptability, functionality and multiplicity.
In my
culture, getting good education is non-negotiable so l was determined to go to
university. I worked three jobs from age
15 to save up for university. When l walked into the lush fields of the
prestigious University of Ibadan in Nigeria, l kissed the grass and shed tears.
Four years later when l walked out, l didn’t even bother to collect my
certificate. In my second year of university l had also walked out of the
church of my youth. Granted l was tired of the bloody virginity requirement,
being unaware that l could have lied about that like many wiser than me had. I
walked out really because l was no longer convinced about the infallibility of
the one way, the true way, the only way.
I had begun
to discover that for many things there are many ways, particularly for markets.
I like
markets; it is a place of human interaction, of pride in one’s product and hopefully
fair exchange of products for needs.
Good markets
have clear functional rules that allow fair and equitable exchange. When
kingdoms seek to overtake another, they break their markets and militarily
surround them. Breaking markets is symbolic of a suspension of respect for
negotiation, interaction and fairness. A conviction that one’s way is best and
others are best following that one way. You may recognise that principle in
modern foreign diplomacy as “our interests”.
I hated
school but loved education, I wanted to know things and discover things not be
told things.
I wanted to
be a writer but I didn’t see how writers got paid. Since I hated asking anyone
for money, I decided I’d be a journalist but my father wanted me to be a doctor
because well, everybody’s father wanted them to be a doctor, also my father
wished he was a doctor.
He said
doctors made money and were respected; journalists just get blown up or become
impoverished.
My father
ate his words before he died five years ago, not because I didn’t get blown up,
but because he liked to eat and words are nice.
So as a
journalist, I saw and reviewed the world. Recently a friend asked me what I
thought about modern civilisation and I answered that we may have made magical
technological leaps but I doubt that we have a civilisation. More importantly I
have begun to think that a lot of what we know may not have been completely
unknown to past generations; I am alarmingly beginning to suspect they chose
not to unleash some of that knowledge because they recognised our interest must
align with the earth’s interest.
I have
always thought that the greatest tragedy of civilisations lost around the world
to slavery, colonisation and oppression is deprivation of our modern civilisation
of alternative political, cultural and economic thought and systems, some of
which were very sophisticated.
My mind
boggles when l listen to my friend Dr Bibi Bakare-Yusuf talk about the
documented seven different pre-colonial forms of marriages in Yoruba culture. A
culture evolved enough to be gender neutral without sloganising.
So as I
stand today in this gorgeous cathedral, suffused with a sense of history, of
wonder and respect for those who have gone before us. Monuments like this
emphasise how great our individual capacity is within the limit of our role in
a never ending continuum of human endeavour.
The
challenge with a winner takes all, one way to the market, best way to be
approach is that it leaves too many behind and gives those lucky enough to fall
within a narrow accepted box an over inflated sense of importance and a genuine
lack of ability to solve unknown problems. Everyone ends up playing a role
rather than living a life whether it is in marriages, parliament or academia.
This does not make for responsive, adaptive and happy living. We are best when
we are intelligent forces at play.
Responsive, adaptive, artistic, functional and magical.
We are at a
time of unknown problems with leaders schooled to solve known problems without
the education to be robust in world view and a distracting pressure to perform
to the lights rather than function in spaces of wisdom and introspection.
This is
however not as scary as it may sound because when things no longer respond to
plan, no matter how we posture or fight, it may be that we are in a large vat
of soup with nothing but ourselves. It may be time to start licking that soup,
not a very aesthetically pleasing solution, certainly not meant for TV but l
bet it’ll be great on YouTube after all there is no one way to the market.
What is the
point of education if smart people can’t find those alternative routes to the
market?
That is my
challenge to a new generation of leaders, thinkers and doers.
Thank you.
- Ms Iyanda was awarded the Honorary Fellowship on the University of Cumbria at a ceremony held at Carlisle Cathedral in Cumbria, North West England on Wednesday, November 25, 2015.
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