THIS piece was written long ago after the famous pounded yams eating episode between Chief Audu Ogbeh and OBJ. The piece even won me a small prize in a newspaper where it was first published(Post Express). Before then, I had visited his farm in Makurdi when I was left stranded after the ANA National Convention of 2003, hosted by the Benue State Chapter, after an erstwhile treasurer who lost re-election and took our allowances away in anger. I went on the trail of someone who had gone there to get a bail out.
Chief Audu Ogbeh at that convention supported the Association and his play “Epitaph for Simon Kisulu” was the convention play we all watched at the Aminu Kontangora Cultural Centre. Many may not be aware that he was a writer in his own right. ANA land in Abuja featured prominently in the discussions at that convention and Chief Audu Ogbeh promised to do something about it. When we got back to Abuja, Haruna Penni and myself led Chief Audu Ogbeh to the forest that the land was then. A look at it told us all that any attempt to do anything there would be gargantuan. The matter ended there.
About a year ago, I published this piece on this same page when someone challenged me to a culinary contest with the inimitable historian Prof Saheed Aderinto. He was for AMALA and me I pitched my tent with IYAN (pounded Yam). The contest had to be aborted after I released this piece. My praise for Iyan through venerating Audu Ogbeh was found too trenchant, so much that the self-appointed referee of the contest gave himself a red card.
Now that Chief Audu Ogbeh has gone to the land of our silent fathers (apology to Ola Rotimi), I am republishing this piece so that we can have an extended happy memory of him from a lighter side:
*Never! I will never be part of the vain attempt to criminalise pounded yams in our polity. If a cup of coffee and tea have been stained with issues bordering on official corruption and state poisoning as the cases were with Prof. Tam David West and Chief M.K.O. Abiola, I have no worry because both beverages belong to the pantheon of foreign drinks. But to extend such perfidy to our much beloved pounded yams, the king of all foods, is to do the unthinkable.
Talking about pounded yams and Audu Ogbeh, both have come a very long way. Pounded Yam is a much-beloved food of the area where the man originated from, the Middle Belt region, particularly Benue State. Audu Ogbeh was a farmer before going into government in the 2nd Republic; he left government “penniless” and went back to farming; farming acres and acres of yams that usually transform to pounded yam. Before Ogbeh’s eventual comeback to government for the second time as PDP Chairman, he was a successful farmer, quietly bringing joy to the palate of pounded yam lovers.
I remember in the mid-eighties, shortly after Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ogbeh came to my university campus in Jos in his company (Wole Soyinka is reputed to be an intense lover of the bravura which a full meal of pounded yam gives). It is widely known that Audu Ogbeh was a good friend of the laureate. That day, when it was the turn of Audu Ogbeh to speak, he intoned that he was in the league of those working assiduously in the propagation of the eating of pounded yams. Everyone laughed at his wit and understood why he was a friend of Soyinka – they both shared the bohemian, epicurean and ribald tendencies of writers. Since then and until he emerged as the PDP National Chairman, Audu Ogbeh was in a kind of limbo, but never wavering in his commitment to pounded yam.
It was, therefore, not a huge surprise when our other friend, who came back from a kind of animated limbo to become Nigerian President, OBJ, remembered and heard the call of pounded yams from the heartland of the Benue. Obasanjo, an ultimate lover of Iyan (pounded yam) eaten with egusi or isapa soup, accompanied by bush-meat and washed down with a keg of palmwine, called a compatriot, a fellow farmer (not a chicken farmer) to be part of his government; and so Audu Ogbeh came. Audu Ogbeh came to govern a behemoth called the PDP and eventually discovered that ruling an unruly party such as the PDP was no “pounded-yam-eating” party.
Before we go further into the vain attempt to rubbish pounded yams, let us hear some panegyrics in praise of pounded yams:
Iyan, hard as stone in the land of the Tivs
Succulent like a maiden in Idoma land
White as the canine’s teeth in Ijeshaland
Fermented for three days before being eaten in Igbominaland
A food warrior’s severe heads for in Igbo history
Unknown in Hausaland and yet given a
Sweet-sounding name, “Sakwara.”
The Yorubas have a gamut of sayings concerning Iyan (pounded yam), and I shall render a few here. When a child behaves so well and acts so sweet, the elders praise the child thus: “Okare, omo re bi iyan” (Well done, a child as good as pounded yam). A bad or disobedient child is threatened thus: “0 je yan re nisu” meaning “you will eat your pounded yam raw in its unpounded form”. This is no mean threat. The food sellers call out to customers, “Ewo ju obe e muyan!” meaning “come and crown the glory of this appealing soup with a wrap of pounded yam”. The Yorubas’ love for “amala”, another kind of food made from yam flour, is legendary; still pounded yam is ranked higher than amala. Hear them “Iyan lonje, oka loogun” meaning “pounded yam is the real food, amala is the medicine”. Now you know why Yorubas “abuse:’ amala, it is purely medicinal, a dosage to quell the royal rumble in one’s stomach.
I can go on and on about “iyan”, but look into your culture and unearth the sayings connected to pounded yam in your locality. I bet it would be a revealing exercise.
******
NOW, back to the attempt to criminalise the eating of pounded yam. The picture is like this: Audu Ogbeh ate pounded yam, belched and challenged President OBJ through a letter. OBJ ate his own gargantuan pounded yam and replied in a gladiatorial manner. The two pounded yam friends settled their quarrel over a huge mound of pounded yam, reminiscent of a scene in Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”. We all thought the quarrel was over, because as far back as native history could recall, no quarrel or fight survives over a shared simmering calabash of pounded yam. But we were later to know that one of the pounded yam combatants ate with an unforgiving stomach ,which even pounded yam with its peace-making allure could not appease. For once, someone was treacherous towards pounded yam and vainly tried to bring our beloved food to disrepute.
Chief Innocent Audu Ogbeh, do not despair, you have walked this road before, like your name, you are innocent of whatever they accused you of. You are as innocent as a lamb in the court of wolves. They can never understand your writer’s spirit of following the right path of justice, even if you daily wolf down pounded yam with them. Trudge on Chief Audu Ogbeh and know that their campaign of calumny against pounded yam is in vain.
Rest in peace, our dear Chief. When you get to heaven, do not eat worms or any other wriggling things, whatever they eat there is what you should eat with them; and if they offer you your beloved pounded yam, eat your fill!