Beautiful Nigerian playwright and Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Cultural Diversity and English Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Osonye Tess Onwueme, has given reasons why she decided to relocate back to Nigeria from the United States where she had been a citizen for more than 30 years.
Onwueme stated that she has been anxious to come back home because the story of Nigeria can be better.
She said, although Nigeria had been a very dismal, dark atmosphere arena for a long time especially in the last decade, “we should be the ones creating our stories, Nigerian story has to change, we are the creators.”
The author of the popular play, Shakara: Dance-Hall Queen (2001), The Desert Encroaches (1985), Tell It To Women (1995), and What Mama Said (2003), made the comments in an interview with Punch in Ako, Trademall in Lugbe area of Abuja, during the official opening of Happy Belly Events and Creative Performance Centre.
The Prof was responding to questions on why she decided to return to the country, even with the worsening security challenges, hardship and bad governance and which have discouraged most Nigerians from coming home.
Onwueme said: “The longing to come back home has been there. Nigerian story can be different, it’s been a very dismal, dark, atmosphere, arena for a long time in Nigeria especially in the last seven, eight, ten years. We are the creators, we should be the ones creating our stories, Nigerian story has to change.
“I have been a citizen of that country (US) for more than 30 years. But I am, first and foremost, a Nigerian. My umbilical cord, my placenta was buried in Nigeria and Nigeria is a place that can never be, for me, recreated. Nigeria is my home, my homeland and I claim this as my home forever and forever.
“So wherever I go, it is like the tortoise, wherever he goes, he goes with his shell; I may have gone elsewhere around the world, I’ve been around the world as a writer, as a keynote speaker, all over the place. But there’s always been somewhere that I call home and this is here and I am claiming it, reclaiming it and I want us to be proud.
“My children, I raised them in America, five of them and now 12 grandchildren, the youngest was four years when we left, the oldest was 11 years. They could speak our language, their children they teach them, so it is something that depends on you, it depends on us. We can’t just be blaming the politicians.”
About her journey into writing, Onwueme said as a pioneer African female playwright, she entered, “when it was even more difficult for women to storm the scene of the literary intelligential in Nigeria with the likes of Wole Soyinka Chinua Achebe J.P. Clark and Ola Rotimi at the time because it was a man’s world.”
“So at the time I got into the scene or entered, there was a vacuum and I became a pioneer in that sense. Zulu Sofola was an elder compared to me at the time, it was a very vacant topography for women especially for the dramatic arena.
“So I am done, I have five children, I have really accomplished the best to the top of my career, 12 grandchildren, I am retired, I retired as Eminent, endowed chair University Professor of Global Letters and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.”
“People can retell, recreate our story and to nourish both our body and our hearts and our minds, we should be the ones telling a new story for Nigeria. That is why storytelling is a major component of what is Happy Belly Events and creative performance centre is supposed to be offering. I want us to be able to tell better stories again,” she said.