Watch "The Lion and The Jewel Stage Play".

The Lion and the Jewel, one of the earliest efforts of Wole Soyinka as a playwright, is a fine piece of drama that subverts existing perceptions of love or romance as something meant for the ideal couple, usually a young man and a woman who triumph at the end after a tortuous attempt by a wealthier and older male character to win over the love of the lady in contention. In this play, however, the “civilised teacher”, Lakunle, fails to convince the village beauty, Sidi, to abandon her tradition. He insists that the tradition of paying bride price is “outdated, savage, and primitive”. Sidi, he suggests, should abandon such antiquated custom and marry him so that they will live their lives like white people who drink “tea with milk and sugar” instead of the “primitive palm-wine” associated with African peoples of Ilujinle extraction.
Sidi finds his proposal derisive, and scorns him with reckless abandon. On the other hand, the old traditional ruler, Baroka or the Bale, known in the community as the Village “Lion” deploys native wisdom, traditional etiquette, charm, and verbal vigour to trick the village beauty into taking a trip to his royal bedroom. At the end, he succeeds in deflowering the village jewel while the deluded “modern” teacher continues to fantasize his ideal marriage to her.
Stage plays are a very educational and entertaining form of relaxation for the whole family, (more educational than most of the movies we take our children to see in the cinemas), endearing us with our culture and taking us back to the mindset of people at the time the book was written. The Lion and the Jewel stage play is a classic once in a lifetime experience, you would not want to miss.
This Stage play, directed by Wole Oguntokun promises to be one that would keep the audience spell bound, and leave them yearning for more, two plays come up every Sunday in the month of August at Terra Kulture, visit Naira.com for more information and online ticket purchase.

Before Books Become Dinosaurs

What caused the extinction of Dinosaurs? Drastic climatic change, Asteroid shower, or they just ate each other up??? Nobody really cares. But immediate actions need to be taken before books and the reading culture in Nigeria, follows the way of the dinosaur and is being referred to in past tense.
Nigerians are discarding the culture of reading at an alarming rate, especially in schools where this is supposed to be the norm, the libraries are always empty until the exam approaches, with lecturers making it ‘easier’ by offering the students handouts which they can breeze through a few weeks before the exams, reading for the sake of research and intellectual stimulation is virtually non-existent these days.
Even after Degree programs, everybody seems to be ‘relieved’ that they do not need to read anymore, wrong! The sole basis for education is to develop the mind; not to obtain papers. When the mind of the people is well developed the society has a chance of being developed too.
Nigeria will significantly develop as a people and a nation if structures are put in place to cement the reading culture, especially among children.
The major inhibiting factor that keeps our young folk away from books I feel is the computer and the internet; they know when Apple would release its next gadget with all its full features and they think Chinua Achebe was a former Head of State.
Another major drawback is Accessibility; usually in Africa, the government is the biggest purchaser of books, especially textbooks for schools. But children do not always respond favourably to textbooks and they may not be good at reading them, especially if textbooks are the first materials they read.
Plus everyone wants to read a good story. But with the lack of good reading materials, standards of literacy are decelerating, and skills of PlayStation 3 are improving.
We sure do have a couple of bookstores in Nigeria, but where do I get a Wole Soyinka book written in 1975? Or a book such as The Untold Story of the Nigeria-Biafra war by Dr Aneke?? How do we get these books across to the prospective readers??
There is an online bookstore on www.naira.com containing thousands of books from established merchants such as Evans, Dada Books and Glendora books; the online store consists of a wide variety of books including novels historical, political, children, religious, educational, motivational, classical books, biographies and even books in our local dialects (our local dialects are in a Survival of the Fittest fight with the English language), books written as far back as before independence to books written a couple of months ago. Payments for these books are straight forward and easy, and they will be delivered to your doorstep.
By so doing lots of Nigerian graduates including professors remain enlightened in the evolving world of new ideas.
When the resolve or enthusiasm to improve oneself dies, life as a whole begins to die. To maintain a highly developed and greatly improving society, we need to maintain a high level of intellectualization via the reading culture.
Education for the progressive mind is far beyond schooling. Regular update through reading should be a way of life, hence the term reading ‘culture’. To stop reading is to stop updating. And to stop updating in an ever changing world is to start decaying.
So before books start eating each other up, or climate change leads to the extinction of books, we should act fast and save the books, buy more books for yourself and your kids, and instill a reading attitude on the upcoming generation.