The Wazobia storyteller

I once took part in an informal competition on story telling, but it was a poor outing for me because I didn’t have that ‘sweet mouth’ – the sort of ‘sweetness’ that comes with storytelling which can hold the audience spellbound for hours, perhaps days. That day, I actually enjoyed the presentations of two friends blessed with the power of oratory.


You see, traditionally in Africa, storytellers are revered and so are good stories. Although old writing traditions do exist on the continent, most people today, as in the past, are primarily oral people and their art forms are oral rather than literary.


Oral literature or Orature, to use the term of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan writer, is orally composed and transmitted, verbally created and performed with dance and music. This art is rich and varied and the composer or storyteller must be skilled in the art. His facial gestures, voice and ability to play the roles of different characters are integral parts of the storytelling.


Language is also a vital tool because with it, he could create a vivid picture of the scenes in the minds of his audience. This brings to mind the man I have tagged ‘Wazobia storyteller’. I am an ardent listener of Wazobia FM and enjoy all their programmes. Perhaps the aspect I enjoy the most every morning is the News belt anchored by Nedu. For me, his style of news reading is different. Often, he gives me the impression that I am listening to some tales which he creates himself, yet they are actually real news served in a style different from the regular ones.


His style is really engaging and instantly commands my attention any time the news bulleting is on. Perhaps the language he employs, pidgin, also allows him to employ the freestyle of news casting. His mannerisms while reading the news create that live picture in the mind of the listener such that most times, I cannot help but imagine how the item on the news bulleting happened. One instance was the news story on complaints about the failure of the fingerprint machines to capture some people’s fingerprints. Nedu was at it again with his verve. The ‘sweetness’ in his mouth was played up as he passed across INEC’s advice on how to overcome that nightmare. “Make sure you clean ya hand well, well so that the machine no go select ya hand,” he said.


There was yet another story on the Somalia Pirates. Hear Nedu’s explanation on who pirates are: “The Somalia Pirates dem be people wey dey colobi pesin on top of water.” There was another story on women who were raped in Britain, and without sounding vulgar, Nedu used this phrase to drive home his message: “Torchlight the website of 50 women.”


Of course, there are those who write and edit news script, but the taste of the pudding for the listener is in the delivery. That is the ability of the newscaster to deliver the news the way it should be. Nedu, for me, has been able to do that brilliantly using pidgin. His mouth dey sweet for news casting no be small!


I am sure he must have been one of those who listened to those village storytellers who were experts at telling stories about secular tricksters like the Tortoise who often project the kinds of evil forces and bad behaviours against which the human community must contend to survive. He must have acquired that ‘sweet mouth’ from them