Nigeria in the Arts of Nation Seeking, 1983-2022

Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́

Department of English | The Ohio State University | Columbus, OH 43210

1st Biennial Conference of the Nigerian Academy of Letters

12-14 June 2019

Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀ University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria

1: Gratitude

It’s great to be back in Ifẹ̀. My appreciation to the VC, Professor Ògúbọ́dẹdé. I am grateful to the President, Professor Francis Egbokhare, the National Secretary, Professor Ayọ̀bámi Kẹ́hìndé, and other officers of the Nigeria Academy of Letters for the opportunity of this talk. I must also thank, the Chair and Secretary of the Organizing committee of this year’s conference, Professor Akin Àlàó and Professor Mojí Ọlátẹ́jú for the honor of the invitation to address this conference. Professor Àlàó and Professor Ọlátẹ́jú, I believe, will not my mind my saying that we both belonged to a cohort of much younger men and women who trekked up and down the hallways of the 3 Humanities Buildings many decades back; Mojí and I in English/Education, Akin in History. I acknowledge the presence of the Dean of Arts, Professor Gbèmí Adéòtí. I acknowledge as well the presence of two forerunners of language and literary studies in Nigeria, Professors Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé and Ayọ̀ Bánjọ. It is a great pleasure to enjoy the company of other colleagues in the type of atmosphere under which we are assembled here today. 

There’s one more request I must make, and this is to ask the Academy and this audience to accept my dedicating this talk to the memory of Professor Pius Adébọ́lá Adésanmí (1972-2019), one person whose life was driven, almost to obsessional dimensions, by the desire for a Nigerianness that is different from what it is. Pius Adébọ́lá Adésanmí, who I had the fortune of calling a personal friend and professional interlocutor,  died in the fatally mis-engineered Ethiopian Airliner Boeing 737 Max that crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10 earlier this year.  

Pius Adébọ́lá Adésanmí (1972-2019)

2: Preamble & Introduction

Professor Akin Àlàó’s invitation letter and subsequent communications asked me to speak about “Nigerianness” in whichever way I find most appropriate.  The reason for that keyword, the invitation further indicates, is that the Academy aims to make a “major contribution to resolving the crisis of national integration and nation building in Nigeria.” In my interpretation of that goal, the Academy agrees with those who believe that the current state of being in Nigeria is unsatisfactory. As stated in the 2019 invitation, processes of national integration and nation building are in a crisis. I am always wary of crisis formulations because—oh well—they tend to be formulaic, handing out conclusions, with very little offered as to proof. Crisis formulations deem evidence transparent to all. But I also noticed that the Academy’s phrasing of the conference theme strongly signals the possibility of channeling thought and knowledge for the creation of a crisis free Nigeria. Present in the ethics of creative and critical arts and letters, I sensed in the conference call, is a constant drive for plotting or designing courses and trajectories that describe not only what is but also charts pathways to what ought to be. (Those among us who have been in social media circles of self-aware Nigerians in the last 5 years must have read one passionate thing or another about changing “the narrative” as a method of re-creating the “Nigeria project.” Those of us who have not been in such circles should count themselves fortunate.) This talk recognizes the wish of the Academy of Arts and Letters for advancing the need to plot a different story of being in, being of, being for, and being about, Nigeria. To proceed towards that goal, I believe, the first step should be to abandon the crisis formula because it presents the current situation as a terminus that is cut off from the many surrounding highways, pathways, and byeways of traveling further. My presentation interprets the Academy to be saying that Nigerianness will not be given. It will be made in the acts of those who identify with Nigeria, particularly who identify as Nigerians,  and by others who do neither but grant those who do the pleasure of the machinations of their ways. The Academy’s charge implies that our analysis should reject the geneticist approach to understanding nation-being and adopt the narratologist’s sense of textuation as this applies to significant motions that define Nigeria. Following that line of reasoning, this talk is largely descriptive. When prescriptions are ventured, they reflect leads evoked by the artistic text.  While it is obvious to me that laws can, and do,  prescribe what a country ought to be, nation-being, in the reasoning followed in this presentation, emerges in, and as, practices that cannot be fully legislated. As I see it, Nigerianess is not the same thing as Nigeria.

3: Caveats & Contexts

    I am not a political scientist, or a constitutional lawyer, or a politician. But I have read Achille Mbembe regarding the vulgarities of power. (On the Postcolony). I have read Jean-Francois Bayart, and also Patrick Chabal, on why, and how, the state works, or does not work, in African countries (The Criminalisaton of the State in Africa; Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument). I have read Wálé Adébanwí on how the popular press cooks and serves the nation for the populace (Nation as Grand Narrative). I have read Ebenezer Ọbádáre on the civil society (Civic Agency in Africa). I have read Mamood Mamdani on the evolution of essentialized group contentions in postcolonial African states (Citizen and Subject). Even so, I should repeat, my reading, alas, has not made me a political scientist. My vocational leaning tilts towards literature and culture, and it so happens that a large number of the texts about which I write and teach are created by Nigerians, and many of them speak of Nigerianness. This is why, henceforth in this talk, I speak of what was, what is, and what ought to be about Nigeriannes with evidence derived from literature, music, and film. I am happy to declare, again, that the paper makes no recommendations. After all, I am not a political scientist!  Thinking with the following rubric, the remainder of the talk outlines pathways through the arts of Nigeriannes: (i) ironic patriotism; (ii) befuddled patriotism; (iii) dissolution terror patriotism; (iv) profitable patrimony patriotism; (v) flexible patriotism; (vi) Nigeria envy. It gets clear as the discussion proceeds that I favor the patriotism of profitable patrimony in that it entertains a sweet ending. 

A: Ironic Patriotism: Wọlé Ṣóyínká & Túnjí Oyélànà (1983)

    First, listen to the opening 2 minutes of this recording:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+love+my+country+oyelana. 

A lot has changed and a good heap remains the same since 1983 when the LP record, in part a political campaign song, was released to convince voters around which candidates, issues, and personalities they ought to converge (DJ Cuppy remixed the song in 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cacP-6gwz0A).

Although it does not nominate any political party to be supported or opposed, the record barely disguises its rallying call for the leftward People’s Redemption Party, the most radical of the recognized parties that contested the 1983 national elections in Nigeria. The record catalogs unbecoming features of Nigeria and proposes some remedies. It mocks the ruling party’s anti-corruption slogan of “Ethical Revolution” (ẹtíká rẹvo kínni) and threatens the decapitation of its advocates (“me I go revo dem head”).  The song’s critical intent is clear in both the martial rhythm of the music and the articulation of the mortifying words in pidgin English, national standard idioms, and mixed-code expressions. 

    The irony comes out most earnestly in the singer’s drinking bar, ear jarring,  phrasing that contradicts the die-for-the-nation patriotism of the lyrics. To the surprise of discerning listeners who know Tunji Oyelana to be a melodious balladeer, the singing, often sounding  like a construction worker who steps on a sharp nail, enacts distress. The beats too sound like a haphazardly assembled body of instruments whose orchestration is extemporaneous. The trumpet goes on its own, and the percussion follows its own trajectory. The two points of convergence in the song are the singer’s stream of protest and the rigid marching, or mock military parade, beat. The music sounds like a ragtag, spontaneous, improvisation provided by a megaphone bearing leader of a protest march, or of a drunken, undisciplined set of law enforcement officers. The dissonance of  this deliberately distressed orchestration is unmistakable. The listener could not but wish for a consonant social order to replace the one lamented in the lyrics and something more pleasant to the ears in the beats. The kind of patriotism chanted in “I Love My Country”--genuine love of country for which an earnest praise form is difficult to conjure—may be the most rampant type in Nigerian arts of nation seeking, from the most obtuse and pedantic commentariat to the pepper-soup joint raconteur. 

B: Sonny Okosuns: “Which Way Nigeria” (1984): Befuddled Patriotism

    A year after Oyelana, Sonny Okosun released “Which Way Nigeria?” a swinging, completely rhythmical number whose sweetness is contradicted by the lyrical lament of situations on the ground in Nigeria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQRryNzHOks

Winners of the elections for which Soyinka/Oyelana campaigned against the ruling party have been removed from office in a military coup (“gunslide” victory was the term used by a retired general) barely three months after their “landslide” electoral triumphs. 
    The dissonance in Okosuns’ song is of a different type. Unlike the Oyelana/Soyinka election campaign, the cadence is very tight with the song stress falling on time to a refrain to which either the body or the foot can respond in rhythm almost without thought. The sweet rhythm smoothly blends basic West African ke-n-ke-le time-keeping beats with Caribbean calypso rhythm. Stomping the ground in protest is the most appropriate, perhaps natural, kinetic response to the Oyelana/Soyinka song. For Okosuns’, swaying pleasantly  will be more fitting. While one induces the listener into a lull, the other instigates and agitates. 
Both tunes affirm steady love for Nigeria. As an expression of political desire, Okosuns’ sweet song is incoherent though; a lyrical singer sounds sincerely lost in a quandary for direction  and resigns tepidly into a prayer at the end, saying “AMEN,” as if the whole performance has been a liturgical conceit. The song decries corruption, condemns get-rich ambitions and schemes, and praises the previous regime’s food production campaign tagged “Green Revolution,” a project that Soyinka/Oyelana ridiculed as thoroughly corrupt. The manner of Okosuns’ befuddled singer throwing up the two hands in resignation is the dominant convention in nation-seeking performances in Nigeria. This scarcely introspective variety of examining Nigerianness typically presents a stylized catalog of inexplicable contradictions from which only the almighty (or some other all knowing force) can save “us”.

C: Sunny Ade’s Dissolution Terror Patriotism: Nàìjíríà Yìí ti Gbogbo Wa Ni (1996)

    When this song was released, General Sani Abacha (1943-1998) was in office, and the political tension that threatened to break up the country after the annulment of the 1993 presidential elections remained unresolved. The lyrics are in Yorùbá, King Sunnny Ade’s main performance language. Other verses were rendered in Nigerian pidgin, Hausa, and Igbo.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7XWN-5ZknU)

Following up immediately after the danceable beats of the xylophonic  keyboarding of Nigeria’s national anthem in the opening seconds, the following pleas are the first words sang: 

Nàìjíríà yìí ti gbogbo wa ni	This Nigeria is for us all
Kò mà gbọ́dọ̀ bàjẹ́	Decayed, it must not become
Torí kò sí bòmíràn tí a lè lọ	‘Cos there is nowhere else to go
Àjò ò lè dàbí ilé	Land of sojourning is never like homeland
Ẹ jẹ́ ká sowọ́ pọ̀	Let us all link hands together
Ká fìmọ̀ ṣọ̀kan	Join minds for one common purpose
Gbe e, kémi gbe	You lift it up, I uplift

Overly orchestrated for dancing, the bouncy, sprightly, music draws attention away from the solemn call of the sung words. Outwardly (if one can speak of space as such in music) the record sounds like an affirmation. But a keen listener would note that it is a dirge that attempts to conceal a loss. The sweet music prances over a lamentable situation of the remains of a fractious, rupturing, family. Notwithstanding the explicit pleas for unity, the collective has run itself into a dead end. The no-exit terror invoked in the song is not quite true.. Other physical locations and new ideas about rules of association are always open to be explored.. It ought to be recalled that  Soyinka/Oyelana’s ironic patriotism also speaks of a determination to not leave. But that resolution does not come out of resigning to fate but out of a determination to fight for something different than the prevailing one. In contrast, the only rallying point in Sunny Ade is bare existence. Notions, even inchoate, of how to identify the desired “better naija” are not broached. It does not sound like the bare convergence canvassed in this song will work; people are already bailing out for something other than “this Nigeria,” the one whose preservation Hubert Ogunde advocated in 1968 ( “To Keep Nigeria One”) and which Sunny Ade’s call 3 decades later indicates has failed to materialize. Odòlayé Àrẹ̀mú (d. 1997), the late dadakúàdà poet once chanted that “abíniléni kò pé ká fẹ́ràn ara ẹni” (the fact of our having emerged in sequence from one uterus does not dictate that we cohabit) because a nation is not to be discovered but invented. He reasoned further in the same poem that contiguity may not be a reliable measure of safety for those seeking shelter from the hostility of relatives.

D: The Nigeria That Was: Evidence from Literary Figurations

    We shall come back to music. In 1955, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1912-1966), Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, published Shaihu Umar, a novella written in Hausa language. The story was widely popular and rapidly went through many reprints among Hausa readers partly because it got assimilated into the schooling system. The English translation, published in 1967, was also widely received. Dexter Lyndersay and Umar Ladan adapted the story for the stage in 1970, the year it was also made into a film. These publication details are recounted to reiterate the wide acceptance enjoyed by Balewa’s book and also to flag why I want to present some elements of the story as indices to the coming to be of the country, Nigeria. 

The narration of Shaihu Umar strives for believability. The eponymously titled story is a retrospective, largely first person, account of the life of a universally respected cleric living in Rauta near the city of Bauchi late 1880s to early 1890s. Umar began to tell his life story after being asked by a student in his madrassa to give an account of himself: (i) “from whence you come” and (ii) of his country. Shaihu Umar started thus:  “. . . I was a native of this country, but even so, I did not grow and pass my boyhood here. It was far away in the country of the Arabs that I grew up. Long ago I was a native of a certain country near Bida, and the name of our town was Kagara.” (19). Regarding the issue of nation seeking, these opening words cause one to wonder if a moderately talented novelist or filmmaker were to produce a sequel of this story, one that would have descendants of Shaihu Umar living in Ilé-Ifẹ̀ today, those individuals would probably not be able to self-refer truthfully as “natives” of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, although their relatives living in Bauchi or Rauta could. The question may be asked as to why Umar’s descendants living in Bauchi be natives and those in Ifẹ̀ would not be? Perhaps the question should be reframed:  “Is Shaihu Umar’s understanding of ‘native’ the same as Balewa’s?” The character’s historical self-understanding may be more flexible than allowed in the country over which the author is a high official.
    In Rauta, after having lived in Kano, grown up in Egypt, and also survived a deadly sandstorm in the Sahara, Umar enjoys all the privileges of citizenship, one that was largely defined by Islamic tenets. I will be a less than honest reader if I fail to note that Umar assumes an “outsider” posture when he starts speaking. He identifies as an alien and promises to speak “about my country and my origin, and about my wanderings, and the difficulties I endured before I arrived here in your town” (emphases added). We do not know how long after he arrived in Rauta, shortly after November 1883 (the seventh month, three days before the tenth of Muharram), that Umar retold his tale. But he had built a large following when he recounted the events that became the story. The questioner’s country was not identified. We can deduce nonetheless that Rauta, at least the coterie led by Umar there, was “multinational.” 
The first sentence of the biographical section,  titled “I am Native of Kagara,” gives us clues as to how to apprehend pre-British era stories of identification in territories that became Nigeria: “Away back (began Shaihu Umar) I was a native of this country, but even so, I dd not grow up and pass my boyhood here.” (19). The narrative reports Umar to have claimed whichever geopolitical entity to which Rauta belongs as his country, although he spent his boyhood days in another, a place described in the next sentence thus: “It was far away in the country of the Arabs that I grew up. Long long ago I was a native of a certain country near Bida, and the name of our town was Kagara” (19). Umar identifies the language and ethnicity of his boyhood country, the place where he was raised with utmost kindness and generosity by a family that adopted him. He never called himself an Arab. As things concern the physical standpoint from which his self-accounting narration proceeds, Umar calls himself a native. But he also names himself a native of Bida. Is Shaihu Umar a Nupe (from Bida)? Probably. Is he Hausa or Fulani? Probably not. Is he Bauchi? His words suggest that he believes he is. Mid-1880s, pre-Nigeria, Balewa’s Shaihu Umar separated ethnicity, residence, and birthplace. These are crucial distinctions that were not co-terminus and which ought to be central to any discussion of Nigerianness. 
In Umar’s late 19th century, pre-Nigeria, Bauchi, slave raiding wars ran rampant everywhere except in cities like Sokoto, Kano, Zazzau, Borno, etc, where the proceeds of the blood soaked raids were laundered and then traded. Instability prevailed outside of city walls. Life, revolving around simple homesteads, farms, and markets, was extremely precarious, especially for children and women. People sought justness under the leadership of the local ruler who claimed to have derived his authority from God. Here, then, is another pathway question: should the vestiges of this form of local governance, under the guise of tradition, religion, or culture, be retained or routed completely?
Shaihu Umar’s self-accounting offers pathways and interfaces to consider regarding models of citizenship, belonging, and identifying with a place. Umar’s milieu was very unstable in ways that are not dissimilar to what prevails in ours today, one and a half centuries later: kidnapping, insecurity, and threats of instability was evident. Umar’s father died before he was born. His stepfather got outschemed by rival favor seekers after a slave raiding expedition, and that family was displaced as a direct consequence of kidnapping for money. Balewa blatantly called it slave trade. Umar himself was kidnapped in Kagara and sold in far away Kano to an Egyptian trader who, after adopting him, took him to Egypt where he trained to become a learned cleric. 
The novel makes slave raiding and kidnapping causal factors in trade routes disruption, the creation of ruinous environments for legitimate markets, and needless deaths. (I should note as an aside that Balewa’s story bears many similarities with Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s travails earlier in the century, including fortuitous encounters with mothers.) Notwithstanding the instabilities, ancestral birth alone did not define full belongingness everywhere Umar and his kin found themselves: Makau, his stepfather, in Makarfi near Zazzau (Zaria) and Kano, Umar’s unnamed mother in Fatika, Kagara, Makarfi, and Zazzau, or even Umar himself in Kagara, Kano, Ber Kufa (Egypt), and Rauta (near Bauchi). In each place, there are pathways, other than birthways, to belonging.
Individuals were defined primarily by labor status—slaves, farmers, imams, students, and rank in the administrative apparatus. Of course, the story privileges Islamic understanding of worldly being such that sorcery and witchcraft were discouraged and punished. (Umar’s maternal grandfather was accused of witchcraft, and he had to bribe his way to freedom at the emir’s court in Zaria [then Zazzau] where he was held in pretrial custody.) Indeed, allegedly “pagan” communities like the Gwari (who were specifically so described in the story) bore the brunt of the slave raids. 

E: Nation Seeking in Genevieve Nnaji’s “Lionheart" (2018)

I want to turn to another sense of Nigerianness that is being modeled in cultural forms, specifically Nollywood, the media mode that has come to define, for good (fecund creativity and incredible resourcefulness)  or for ill (little regard for intellectual property, rushed and low quality end products, valorizing inordinate desire for instant wealth) global notions of being Nigerian. My illustration comes from Genevieve Nnaji’s “Lionheart,” the first original, Nigerian production to be purchased by Nextflix, the global media streaming elephant. Many reviewers praised the media behemoth’s belated acknowledgement of contemporary Nigerian movie-making achievements. 

In the story, Ernest Obiagu’s Lionheart Motors, relying on the potential deal of gaining a concession deal from the government on mass transportation routes, excessively leverages its current assets on bank loans to acquire new vehicles for servicing the anticipated business. The concession plans fail, and the banks move to mitigate their losses. In short, Lionheart loses its financial strength and becomes extremely vulnerable. Obiagu’s heart too breaks medically when he suffers a cardiac infarction during a company board meeting at which he is to announce his brother as the new chair to the disappointment of many that Adaeze, his America-educated daughter and current head of logistics, will be the chosen one. The ensuing struggle to save the hearts of both the company and its founder provides the film’s plot substance.
In Nollywood, as in Nigeria at large, plot and life often take sudden turns for which God (or the devil) is held responsible. (Such is also the case in Umar’s 19th century Rauta created by Balewa.) The plot device is revealing in more ways. First, nothing is left to God in reality, and God functions as the term for hopeful outcome. Second, the hearts of both Obiagu and his company are saved. Third, both Obiagu and Lionheart Motors survive only because the surrounding environment changes. We should spare each other the trouble of the film details and detours and skip to a discussion of the melodramatic resolution, including the melodious music accompaniment. The merger that saves Lionheart Motors consists of companies hitherto rooted in different sections of Nigeria but which has been striving each by itself to extend its reach to other regions. When Makano and Lionheart combined, the southern Nigeria markets opened up to the northern markets, and vice versa. A bigger profit making field emerges. The plot conflict outlines, most economically with Obiagu’s heart attack, the problems with what is good and not so good, about Nigeria. The melodramatic ending that portends a propitious beginning in the near future sets out what ought to be. 

F: Nigeria Envy: Wan Luv, Kubolor (2011)

    Reliable assessments of a country’s pathway to a reflective self-recreation could be gleaned from what citizens of other places say or note about it. In that spirit I invite readers to listen to a Ghanaian singer, to my mind an aspirant to the unattainable ambition of becoming Nigeria’s Fela. Here is Wanluv Kubolor singing “Thank God We’re Not a Nigerians, ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9W5VMZkRA, listing features of being Nigerian:  naming practices, speech affectations, perfidious corner cutting even in international competitions, superstition, foodways (addiction to traditional cuisine), artistic genius, clothing styles, poorly handled urbanization, terrible leadership, and, of course, internet fraud. (In 2012, Will Ferguson’s 419, a novel titled for the Nigerian internet fraud won Canada’s ScotiaBank prize.)

A deep Nigeria-envy lurks in Kubolor’s comical presentation. The lyrical “we” refers not just to Ghanaians but to nationals of other countries who admire Nigerians’ unapologetic brash showing in “traditional'' and “neo-traditional” ways. Who in this world does not know of Nigeria’s obsession with schooling! Nigerians do not hesitate to teach everybody that they are the most highly educated immigrant group in the US. Fela and Nollywood index the audacious creativity that defines Nigeria. The audacity of Nigerian Christians reacquainting Rome with Christianity is not a fantasy. Other nationals wished they could freely mix and switch codes of being (language, religions, cuisine, etc.) with the ease that Nigerians bring to such. The code that cannot be Nigerianized or hacked by Nigerians is yet to be invented. 
The topics of Kubolor’s critical commentaries exasperate Nigerians as well: how come the Nigerian environment is so poorly managed; with that many university trained personnel why are they not the wealthiest set of immigrants in the US; with so much abundant brilliance, how come their roads fall apart and remain in such terrible disrepair. There is a lot of loathing; a lot of it self-loathing, and self-flagellation. In short, what criticisms can a Fela-wannabe from Accra hurl at Nigeria that the inimitable Fela has not said about his own country! 

Conclusion: Ọjà Layé: the Nation is a MarketPlace

Oladipupo Adesina, "Marketplace" 

    Plot resolution in “Lionheart” defines and desires Nigerianness as something that ought to be engineered to work like a single market that will be run for immense personal profits on the basis of cross-country ownership agreements. The parts—of both the companies and the nation’s constituent socio-cultural groups—must turn towards one another in mutually satisfying ways. This willful turn towards the other of course means becoming knowingly vulnerable to injury and hurt. The precarity inherent to such turns, we see in the movie, could be mitigated with written safeguards on rules of association that will secure and not hinder or punish strategic advantages. We could see in Genevieve Nnaji’s “Lionheart” that whatever benefits that accrue at the present moment must be scalable. 

At the end of Lionheart, Ernest Obiagu (Peter Edochie) keeps his Igbo attire (For me, the natural bilingualism of the movie is its most impressive element because it recognizes the fact of difference in ways that are not impervious to translation or felicitous subtitling.) Makano’s full babaringa does not conflict in any shape or form with the primmer clothing of his hosts, many of whom enjoy pleasures (music, clothing, food, drinks, comportment) that are different from what their parents fancy. For the allegorical reading I am suggesting that the film invites, Nigeria must be configured for profit-making. 

To speak directly, “Lionheart” lays out many pathways for Nigerianness—including greedy, hostile takeovers; lying and cheating others on the basis of perceived ethnic stereotypes; deceitful, selfish, manipulation and misuse of state machineries. But the satisfying end—which as I said a moment ago is also a beginning—comes out of honest bookkeeping, arduous confidence building, hopeful wishing, and gender agnostic, conscientious exertion towards building physical byways and pathways. The transportation narrative in “Lionheart” outlines a proverb of the path to follow. Unless immense, active, energies are invested to construct them, God willing or God not willing, there shall be no possibility of success. As they say in Yorùbá language, igbó rèé, ọ̀nà rèé. Here is the bush; here is the path. The most fruitful pathway cannot but include instituting, and defending vigorously, the rights to be of the constituent parts, and securing these with clear, agreed upon, rules of association and exit that are driven by the right of the citizen to ask to be left alone.