04 May 2009 |
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The ‘Tailor Retailored.’ Sartor Resartus. This is the title of Thomas Carlyle's book. As is obvious, the words are Latinate. The name Thomas Carlyle may not resound very much in today’s world, but in the 19th century Britain it was a name associated with a robust and restless intellect. Carlyle was in the line of what I would call British freelance scholars like Joseph Addison or William Hazlitt, precursors of today’s public intellectuals. Anyway, not to digress, Carlyle was one of the most formidable literary figures of the 19th century Britain. His book on the French Revolution is regarded as one of the best – always reckoning, though, with Carlyle’s many stylistic idiosyncrasies. Sartor Resartus is regarded by many as his masterpiece. It is a book that satirically deploys ‘Philosophy of Clothes’ to dilate on Truth, absolute, concrete and transcendental Truth. It is a book in which Carlyle pronounces on cant, pretence, arrogance, deism and capitalistic soullessness. But my intention here is not to write about Carlyle’s subjects and multitudinous Carlylesque paradigm shifts in the book, but to use the book’s title for my own purposes. Rebranding has been the war-cry recently in Nigeria. Everything is to be rebranded, and I mean everything. Not only the country’s rather scruffy image as it’s being nitpicked by the critics of rebranding. Everything. The whole shebang. Mrs Dora Akunyili, having run out of ideas of what other things to rebrand, has, I understand, commissioned an intellectual challenge, calling on thoughtful Nigerians to prepare lists of what can be rebranded in the country. A friend, a long-known alter-ego, has compiled his long list. First, Education - seeing the state of our education, the physical and moral fabric of it, from primary to tertiary level. Economy - well, I’ll pass without a comment here. Roads and Infrastructure - these can be rebranded, too, simply by building more roads and infrastructure and maintaining those we have. Our collective thinking must also be rebranded, so said my friend. The frenzied dance around the Golden Calf should be halted, or slowed down. We must be more reflective, try to share our time between chronic display of prosperity-driven piety and boning up on a bit of science, appreciating art and reading. Actually reawakening the reading culture must be part of rebranding. Then my friend had suggested that the name Nigeria must be rebranded. Can’t we all see how Calcutta has become the better for it when it became Kolkata, cleaner, beautifully built-up, slumless, crimeless, the new Garden City of the whole Asia, including Japan. And look at Myanmar, can’t we all see how far the country has gone from the time it was called Burma? Immediately, Nigeria must cease to be called Nigeria. Chief Obafemi Awolowo - paraphrasing Clemens von Metternich - described Nigeria as a geographical expression, and that exactly is what it is, and more. The name Nigeria is the fanciful concoction of the consort of Lord Lugard. So we must rebrand the name of the country, call it Wazobia, or Igbohausayoruba, that is if there is not going to be a quarrel of whose name comes first, and if other Nigerian ethnic groups would allow their names to be left out. Anyway, whatever we choose to call it, Nigeria must be renamed, rechristened (apologies to Muslims). But my friend had omitted to mention something. Our dress code. Clothing, or a style of dressing, is infinitely important in the lives of men and women. This is something that should not be overlooked while one is talking about rebranding. Clothes maketh a man and a woman. Often for women it goes beyond mere frocks. Maquillage too, motley cosmetics, high heels, hair and nail extensions, perfume, botox, uplifts. All of these are important in sizing up what a real woman is. Only last week I read about how the wives of African rulers went to New York to teach the wives of other world leaders how to dress to kill. One of the British tabloids had told off the often modestly-dressed wife of their Prime Minister to go to New York and take some practical lessons from the overdressed wives of African leaders. You could indeed fell me with a feather when I saw the pictures that the African First Ladies took in New York. Among the posy of First Ladies, the wife of Cameroonian President, Paul Biya, stood out. Huge beehive hair, smart colourfully confected clothes, high heels, visibly long manycoloured nails, designer goggles. You have to see the picture to know how Mrs Biya must have impressed everyone at the event they went for, how she must have put the name of Cameroon in the consciousness of everyone with haute couture. Forget the outpourings of mawkish nonsense that came with the so-called Susan Boyle phenomenon in Britain. Susan Boyle, the frumpy-looking woman who wowed the whole world with her okay singing voice. This had provided pabulum for every sort of religious and spiritual - even irreligious and secular - people all over the world, it had given them the opportunity to wax profound on ‘inner beauty’ and every sort of baloney of the authenticity of what you have inside you, over against outer beauty. But then, we live in an age of unabashed lookism. People are judged more by how they look like outside, what they wear, which was why Susan Boyle raised a lot of titters when she waddled onto the stage in Britain Has Got Talent. But the Susan anomaly will certainly pass. Even as I write people have continued to judge one another by appearances, what they wear, what they smell like, it’s still a label-engrossed American-Psycho world. Just as the marque of your car matters, the maker of your shirt does count too. And to show how such a mindset has fossilised, there is now a good number of men now described as metrosexuals – no, not a splicing of hetero and homo. Metrosexuals are men who like to look good for the sake of looking good, men who use every sort of vanity cream that a woman would use, a tinct of eyeshadow, hair groomed and styled to fit, spending time pedicuring, manicuring, and turning out not in drag, as you would imagine, but in very manly, if chic, suit. Actually this is not a new thing in England. Dandies used to be part of British cultural - if not political - landscape. The duo of Beau Brummell and Beau Nash readily come to mind in their wigged, waistjacketed, powdered and brocaded glory. Of course Nigeria has had its own fashionable Beaus. My dad told stories of how Okotie-Eboh used to tie ‘wrappers’ that invariably had long trains of clothing, Okotie-Eboh was considered the most flamboyant and sartorially accomplished politician in the First Republic, and even today that is what he is remembered for most - the tail of his wrappers. And perhaps one reason he stood out was because of the statuesque figure he cut with his flowing finery while his contemporaries always donned the regular agbada, so in a sense he was unique. Having not fought a hard fight for independence like Kenya, for instance, it was easy for our leader to slip into their buba and sooro and agbada. Perhaps for good reasons at the time, our leaders had come to see the European suit as not befitting of their collective status as the ‘Founding Fathers’ of a country who was on its way to becoming the Giant of Africa. And there was the precedent of Ghana’s Osagyefo (although Nkrumah did occasionally vary his toga-like wardrobe with suits). And I wonder whether the leaders had also heard about the exploits of Wole Soyinka and his friends, when they appeared at a black-tie event in Trenchard Hall of the University of Ibadan wearing ties over danshiki to protest against the regulation dress of dinner parties. Although Soyinka does not even wear danshiki everyday again, the cultural tone that was set by his near contemporaries, those bygone politicians, have now become the hard-and-fast rule. During his fist stab at leadership, Obasanjo had further erected the barricades. His Indigenisation policy had stressed African dress code as the de-rigueur official dress. There was a tacit warning: As president or governor in Nigeria do not be seen dead in a white man’s suit. Even now as people in the street wear a melange of traditional African and Western gear - clerkily ‘English’ today, elegantly African tomorrow - those who rule us would feel like a fish out of water if they wear suit. Of course, you can’t say that they have listened to their Fela well, in his song about a man in suit and tie sweltering his head off in African sun. Because a full agbada would make you sweat almost as much as a suit, unless you took off the agbada, wearing only buba – the equivalent of shirtsleeves. And since the rulers enjoy such a mod-con as an air-con they need not worry about sweating. But beyond sweating, this seamless and indefatigable wearing of agbada by those at the helm in Nigeria has its problems. Not just because most African leaders now wear the suits, and they do. Even Kenyan leaders. Even South African leaders. And Sudan’s Al Bashir does wear suits far more than his Islamic robes! The point I am making here is that our leaders must rebrand by wearing suits. Since they enjoy air-conditioned air a lot at home in Nigeria, they must shed their agbada for the classic Western style of dressing. Even if they think it would be out of place in the various Government Houses to wear suits, it should be a must whenever they go out of the country for one meeting or the other. There is the story of how Tafawa Balewa was wisecracked by the solecistic Prince Phillips of England. During a visit he paid to Great Britain in the 1960s, Balewa had changed from a less voluminous agbada to another one, bigger, longer, more down-to-the-ground. The Prince had shaken his hand and said, Why have you gone to change into your nightrobe? It’s not bedtime yet, we are about to have a dinner? You see, if Balewa had worn a suit such a jibe would not have been necessary. And don’t we all know that what caused our good former General now Multiple-Chief Olusegun Obasanjo the United Nations post was that he was always seen in agbada. The kingmakers at the United Nations had taken a hard look at him, wondering whether he would even try the suit once. The longer they waited and watched the more they realised Obasanjo would never shed his agbada. So he was dropped, and the post went to Egypt’s Boutros Boutros Ghali, who wore suits, and then to Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian who also wore suits! When Yar Adua was moaning about not being invited to the G20 Summit, someone should have told him the reason he wasn’t invited was because he carried himself around in ridiculous-looking tribal agbada. That was the sole reason. Look at South African interim president who was there? Check out the Ethiopian leader who went by special invitation. It was suits all the way. Well, except for such a theocrat as Saudi Arabian king, who had worn what Allah told his forebears, centuries ago, to always wear. And the attire of the Indian Prime Minister looked close to a suit enough to be accepted. But agbada, with its large furls, frills and furbelow! Does anyone imagine Jacob Zuma is going to turn up in the next G20 meeting dressed like Chaka the Zulu? Apart from the possibility of being apprehended for indecent exposure, this would cost South Africa a place in the comity of G20 nations, G20 would become G19. And in all likelihood, Japan and China became what they are today because their leaders gave up their traditional wear. Now since when has anyone seen a Japanese Prime Minister wearing a kimono, not even in their Diet (parliament). More than all, don’t we notice how Chinese leaders rebranded after the death of Mao Zedong by doing away with the Oriental collarless Mao tops and switching to western suits? So apart from being made more welcome in London and New York, our rulers, like the Chinese, must change to suit-wearing because this would again be a magic formula for the economy. The folds of the agbada would never be in the way again when our governors and the president are working in their plush offices. These men are the tailors of our destiny, so they must be retailored first, they must cut a better jib, they must be redressed like an emperor, not of course with nudity, but with the ‘English’ suit. After all it is with the English language that they conduct their daily business, so affecting to be traditional or unabashedly African by wearing agbada serves no purpose. Besides the utilitarian significance of the suit, Nigeria’s helmsmen would also look better in it, they would appear more dapper, more smart, more modern. Who says appearance does not matter? It does, far more than the pseudo-philosophy of inner-ness. If you place a Nigerian youth whose jeans drop to his hips, who wears a baseball cap front to back over a streety t-shirt, who is weighed down with bling, beside a similarly dressed youth from Peckham South London, I bet you will not be able to tell who is from where. And I once saw a farcical figure of a former minister in London. It was the frigid winter of 2002. The man had worn a woollen black jacket over his agbada to stave off the cold – the effect was comical, redolent of any of those blacked-up Yoruba comedians in films. If the man had worn suits during his time as a minister, he wouldn’t appear on the streets of London in such schizoid fashion style. So my own suggestion to Mrs Akunyili is to tell her boss to flag off the suit-wearing rebranding. She would be surprised how well it would work. And to achieve even better effect she must advise him and other agbada-wearing men in top positions to spare no expense and have their suits tailored in London’s Saville Row. She too – and other female office holders – must emulate Cameroon’s Mrs Paul Biya, they must stop dressing in cheap ankara, which is not originally African anyway, they must wear well-tailored suits, bought from the best boutiques in Paris and London, it would have the effect Mrs Biya’s get-up had on the Western press and those who saw her pictures.
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