Drugs for all ailments

Goodness and Messi

By Akeem Lasisi

73pp; Fullpoint Publications & Communication

That's what Akeem Lasisi calls his book of jokes, Goodness and Messi: drugs for all ailments.

This compact volume is surely a first for Lasisi - the master raconteur - whose art straddles the conscious universe of the literate poet and the spontaneous space of the oral performer. He is coming out in a new garb - that of a comedian - and veering into a new territory, away from what he has been hitherto known for.

Goodness and Messi is also probably a first for a Nigerian comedian. Nigerians are familiar with books on history, politics, and the literary art. Lasisi should and must know a bit about the latter as he is a poet, an award-wining, bilingual performer who plies his art with almost equal competence in Yoruba and standard English.

His unique rendition, which has seen him performing within and outside the country, has surely helped him in compiling this new brew of jokes.

Which then means that in addition to his many caps as a journalist, practicing writer, and culture exponent, he now wears the robe of a comedian who not only tells his own jokes for the entertainment of many in a season of economic and political anxieties, but has also documented these jokes for the private enjoyment of others and, it should be said, for posterity.

This is where the comedian emerges as a pioneer among his peers.

True, there are many outstanding stand-up comedians in Nigeria, many of them well-known household names bringing joy, so to speak, to many. They are the toast of politicians, corporate bodies and multinationals. Several of this emergent tribe of verbal entrepreneurs are millionaires.

They have come a long way from when the comic trade was seen as the province of buffoons with no better preoccupation.

They have made much success, financially, of the trade than such pioneers as John Chukwu, Art Modupe Alade and Tony Saint Hyke, all of blessed memory, who combined comedy with emceeing and/or acting and conferred respectability on it.

But neither these dead pioneers nor their contemporary successors (at least none to this writer's knowledge) have tried their hands at putting their art in writing for the public. And this is probably a consequence of one or two factors which further underline Lasisi's contribution here.

The first is that the language of comedy in Nigeria is the English-based pidgin, especially what is called the Waffi variant that is spoken in the Niger-Delta. Comedians also tell their jokes in the substrate languages of the Nigerian pidgin, namely the indigenous languages or "vernaculars" such as Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, and Efik.

But while they may now be popular in the verbal arts and contemporary popular music, neither pidgin nor its substrates are popular written languages in Nigeria.

On the other hand, but for the uniquely talented pioneers mentioned above, most contemporary Nigerian comedians rarely employ Standard English in their business. This will no doubt limit their international acceptability.

This point is in addition to the fact that Goodness and Messi (note the pun in the sound and spelling of this phrase, a variant of the prayer, "goodness and mercy shall follow thee/me...") highlights other possibilities in the preservation of our verbal productions alongside recorded performances (live or otherwise) on VCDs and DVDs, much favoured by Nigerian comedians.

There are about 60 jokes collected in this book, many of them quite funny. The reader can check out such wisecracks as the one about Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United coach, from which the book takes its title; and that one on the expert pilot who survived nine air crashes in three years!

Yes, some of the jokes look and sound tame in cold print but there is every sense in the belief that they will have a different effect when animated on a live stage, their ultimate home. This is double offer (print and stage) for the price of one and there is but one person to thank for this - Akeem Lasisi.

The poet and journalist must, in addition to everything else, be commended for opening up new vistas for and breaking down the artificial walls between the verbal arts, comic or otherwise, spoken, chanted and - why not?- Sung. Goodness and Messi deserves a space on everybody's shelf.