Meet THE DROPOUT PROFESSOR (Onyeka Nwelue) -

In a world where a university degree is the first sure step to attaining success, a young Nigerian who dropped out of university to pursue his life's ambition has gained much more. Solomon Elusoji had an encounter with Onyeka Nwelue, whose knowledge is being used in universities around the world as a visiting lecturer


The room is small, maybe six feet by six feet. There are seats arranged in rows on the rugged floor. A couple of people are present in the room. A projector is beaming images of a short film – The Beginning of Everything Colourful – across a wall. Onyeka Nwelue, one of the co-creators of the film, and the man premiering the short film to this sparse audience, is seated at a corner, his eyes flicking between the laptop in front of him, and the larger picture on the wall.


That was the first time I met Onyeka Nwelue. A fresh-faced intern reporter roaming the Lagos literary circles for interesting scoops, I had landed at the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA) headquarters in Surulere, attending a modest gathering of industry stakeholders. Tall, brashly outspoken, Nwelue was conspicuous. It was 2013, and Chimamanda Adichie had just released Americanah. He saw me with a copy of the book, asked for it, flipped through it randomly, weighed it on his palm, and said, more to himself than me, This girl dey try sha.

I didn’t understand what the premiered short film The Beginning of Everything Colourful was all about. All I saw was a man walking across the streets of Paris, smoking, walking into a night-club, and I think there was a scuffle somewhere. My memories of the film are vague. It was too artistic, too abstract for me to relate with it. It was the sort of thing you made in film school for professors to critique.


After the CORA meeting, I did a little research on Nwelue. He is one of those people who, after meeting them for the first time, leave you with a kind of curiosity, a hunger, a need-to-know. I found out he was a University dropout, a celebrated teenage writer. He had gone to India and written a novel The Abyssinian Boy, which had featured in literary awards such as the T.M Aluko Prize for Fiction and the Tahir Ibrahim Prize for First Book. I started to follow him on Facebook; and that was that.

Fast-forward to 2015, and I meet Nwelue, for the second time, at Joy Isi Bewaji’s book reading in Ikoyi. He has grown a beard. He moves with ease, grace. His brash outspokenness is intact. When I walk up to him, to ask for an interview – partly because he had just been announced as an Assistant Professor of African Studies at Manipur University, India, and partly because I thought he was a fascinating subject – he was kind, courteous,
almost humble. He handed me his card, and I promised to get in touch the next day.

As always, while working on my questions, I did a background check. Interestingly, on his Wikipedia page, which is one of the most detailed Nigerian profiles I have come across in a while on the site, Nwelue was described as “a Nigerian writer, filmmaker, cultural entrepreneur and professor, described by Channel O as ‘an unalloyed genius’. He divides his time between Paris, France and Puebla, Mexico.”

He had gone on to write two more books, Burnt, and Hip-Hop Is Only For Children.

Burnt is a narrative in verse. According to Wikipedia, “British-Hungarian poet, George Szirtes describes the collection as ‘a breathless series of vignettes, anecdotes and narratives.’ It explores abuse, dogma, tangled relationships and a love for hypnotic cities, and has been translated into Spanish by Venezuelan writer, Alberto Quero. It was also presented at the Poetry Festival of Maracaido.”

Hip-Hop Is Only For Children is “a creative non-fiction book that takes a critical, personal perspective on Nigerian hip-hop culture, as adopted by Nigerians with an American influence. The book, which has taken years to write, focuses on the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Stone Age, with a heavy concentration on the New Age Generation which includes Davido, Whizkid, Terry G, Oritsefemu, MC Galaxy, Iyanya.”


By the time I came around to contacting Nwelue, he had left Nigeria and was in France. I contacted him on Facebook, and we agreed to conduct the interview via email. I would send him a series of questions, he would respond, and I could ask follow-up questions based on his responses.

“Well, it feels great and I feel somewhat accomplished,” he told me, when I asked him how it felt to hold an Assistant Professorship in an Indian University. “My dream came true.”

His academic journey has been quite chequered. In 2007, Nwelue was admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to study Sociology and Anthropology. He didn’t finish the degree. He went on to pursue a diploma in Scriptwriting at the Asian Academy of Film and TV, Noida. After graduating, he lectured at NSS College, Ottapalam, in Kerala, Southern India. He has taught at the University of Lagos as a guest lecturer, and has also taught Screenwriting during the Film-in-a-Box, organised by Africa Film Academy in Lilongwe, Malawi.

In 2014, he was appointed Visiting Lecturer of African Studies at the School of Modern languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Hong Kong. He then moved to Mexico, where he was invited by Instiuto D’Amicis to teach African Studies and Cinema. His appointment at Manipur as an assistant professor may as well be the zenith of his academic career, yet.

“As a writer, I am a teacher,” he wrote to me, attempting to explain how his many parts fit into his calling as an instructor. “As a record label owner, I am a teacher. As a filmmaker, I am a teacher. As a public speaker, I am a teacher. These are different mediums of education that I have delved into. They are the same, actually. I haven’t thought about the one I cherish the most. I have always been a teacher, right from primary school to secondary school, when teachers asked me to help write notes for other students on the black-board. I have always loved teaching, no matter how it is done.”

When I ask him whether he sees himself as successful, Nwelue told me “I am nowhere successful. You must have your personal definition of success. For me, one who has money is successful. I don’t have it. I still borrow. I still owe lots of people.”

Despite his many successes, Nwelue has had his share of failures, too. He was nominated three times for the Creative Artiste of the Year at the Future Awards, but never won a single one. In 2011, he was the director of the Bayelsa Book and Craft Fair, which was described as an epic failure.

“Failure is a way of life,” he told me. “It is a cycle. It comes to every man. Every man fails. How you rise is what makes you what you are. Failure is very important. You haven’t had a life if you have never failed. What makes me happy about life is that after each failure I experience, comes utmost success.”

Unsurprisingly, his brash outspokenness has earned him a reputation for controversy. He has said Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, writes bad dialogue, chosen Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as “the worst book ever written by an African”, and has described multiple award-winning author, Chimamanda Adichie as “a nuisance to African literature”.

Nwelue runs La Cave Music, a record label based in Paris. They have managed to sign quite a few interesting artistes, focusing on promoting African and Caribbean music in Europe and Asia. However, he is also involved in literary representation. He founded Blues and Hills Consultancy, to make that dream a reality.

“We are into literary fiction at the moment,” he said, in a 2011 interview on naijastories.com. “We offer our clients stories that reveal the way we live our lives in an uncanny way. These stories might take unconventional styles, but we are proud of them.

“Each day, we are building up new plans and leveraging on the internet to market these talents. The truth is that we haven’t had an author yet that will find it hard being accepted by the public, because we are growing talents that are charming. For one, we want to make sure our book tours, book parties, and interactive sessions will be the ultimate media – never forgetting the power of the internet.


“But the idea of having a literary agency is basically to play the role of middleman between writer, publisher, and rights buyers. So, the marketing and publicity could be left for the departments of these publishing houses.”

As at 2011, the agency did not charge reading fees, because, according to Nwelue, “it is a business where we wait for our ten percent to come.”

He told me, during our mail conversation, that he has nothing to say to the young Nigerian out there, and refused to talk about some of the things he would be involved in, in the next few years. “I don’t know,” he wrote, “I don’t discuss my dreams with anyone.”

He also does not see any need to change the world as it is, despite the mad swell of evil, manifest in acts of terrorism, across the world. “Oh well,” he told me, “I can’t change religious fundamentalists. They are getting stronger every day. Every year must witness a terrorist manslaughter, so, I’m sorry, but it won’t change. Every new morning gives birth to a new brain-washed religious freak.”

Adeola Akinremi [adeolaakinremi@gmail.com]Reply All
Sunday, May 10, 2015 4:08 PM
The Dropout Professor
In a world where a university degree is the first sure step to attaining success, a young Nigerian who dropped out of university to pursue his life's ambition has gained much more. Solomon Elusoji had an encounter with Onyeka Nwelue, whose knowledge is being used in universities around the world as a visiting lecturer

The room is small, maybe six feet by six feet. There are seats arranged in rows on the rugged floor. A couple of people are present in the room. A projector is beaming images of a short film – The Beginning of Everything Colourful – across a wall. Onyeka Nwelue, one of the co-creators of the film, and the man premiering the short film to this sparse audience, is seated at a corner, his eyes flicking between the laptop in front of him, and the larger picture on the wall.
That was the first time I met Onyeka Nwelue. A fresh-faced intern reporter roaming the Lagos literary circles for interesting scoops, I had landed at the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA) headquarters in Surulere, attending a modest gathering of industry stakeholders. Tall, brashly outspoken, Nwelue was conspicuous. It was 2013, and Chimamanda Adichie had just released Americanah. He saw me with a copy of the book, asked for it, flipped through it randomly, weighed it on his palm, and said, more to himself than me, this girl dey try sha.
I didn’t understand what the premiered short film The Beginning of Everything Colourful was all about. All I saw was a man walking across the streets of Paris, smoking, walking into a night-club, and I think there was a scuffle somewhere. My memories of the film are vague. It was too artistic, too abstract for me to relate with it. It was the sort of thing you made in film school for professors to critique.
After the CORA meeting, I did a little research on Nwelue. He is one of those people who, after meeting them for the first time, leave you with a kind of curiosity, a hunger, a need-to-know. I found out he was a University dropout, a celebrated teenage writer. He had gone to India and written a novel The Abyssinian Boy, which had featured in literary awards such as the T.M Aluko Prize for Fiction and the Tahir Ibrahim Prize for First Book. I started to follow him on Facebook; and that was that.
Fast-forward to 2015, and I meet Nwelue, for the second time, at Joy Isi Bewaji’s book reading in Ikoyi. He has grown a beard. He moves with ease, grace. His brash outspokenness is intact. When I walk up to him, to ask for an interview – partly because he had just been announced as an Assistant Professor of African Studies at Manipur University, India, and partly because I thought he was a fascinating subject – he was kind, courteous, almost humble. He handed me his card, and I promised to get in touch the next day.
As always, while working on my questions, I did a background check. Interestingly, on his Wikipedia page, which is one of the most detailed Nigerian profiles I have come across in a while on the site, Nwelue was described as “a Nigerian writer, filmmaker, cultural entrepreneur and professor, described by Channel O as ‘an unalloyed genius’. He divides his time between Paris, France and Puebla, Mexico.”
He had gone on to write two more books, Burnt, and Hip-Hop Is Only For Children.
Burnt is a narrative in verse. According to Wikipedia, “British-Hungarian poet, George Szirtes describes the collection as ‘a breathless series of vignettes, anecdotes and narratives.’ It explores abuse, dogma, tangled relationships and a love for hypnotic cities, and has been translated into Spanish by Venezuelan writer, Alberto Quero. It was also presented at the Poetry Festival of Maracaido.”
Hip-Hop Is Only For Children is “a creative non-fiction book that takes a critical, personal perspective on Nigerian hip-hop culture, as adopted by Nigerians with an American influence. The book, which has taken years to write, focuses on the Golden Age, the Silver Ager, the Bronze Age, the Stone Age, with a heavy concentration on the New Age Generation which includes Davido, Whizkid, Terry G, Oritsefemu, MC Galaxy, Iyanya.”
By the time I came around to contacting Nwelue, he had left Nigeria and was in France. I contacted him on Facebook, and we agreed to conduct the interview via email. I would send him a series of questions, he would respond, and I could ask follow-up questions based on his responses.
“Well, it feels great and I feel somewhat accomplished,” he told me, when I asked him how it felt to hold an Assistant Professorship in an Indian University. “My dream came true.”
His academic journey has been quite chequered. In 2007, Nwelue was admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to study Sociology and Anthropology. He didn’t finish the degree. He went on to pursue a diploma in Scriptwriting at the Asian Academy of Film and TV, Noida. After graduating, he lectured at NSS College, Ottapalam, in Kerala, Southern India. He has taught at the University of Lagos as a guest lecturer, and has also taught Screenwriting during the Film-in-a-Box, organised by Africa Film Academy in Lilongwe, Malawi.
In 2014, he was appointed Visiting Lecturer of African Studies at the School of Modern languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Hong Kong. He then moved to Mexico, where he was invited by Instiuto D’Amicis to teach African Studies and Cinema. His appointment at Manipur as an assistant professor may as well be the zenith of his academic career, yet.
“As a writer, I am a teacher,” he wrote to me, attempting to explain how his many parts fit into his calling as an instructor. “As a record label owner, I am a teacher. As a filmmaker, I am a teacher. As a public speaker, I am a teacher. These are different mediums of education that I have delved into. They are the same, actually. I haven’t thought about the one I cherish the most. I have always been a teacher, right from primary school to secondary school, when teachers asked me to help write notes for other students on the black-board. I have always loved teaching, no matter how it is done.”
When I ask him whether he sees himself as successful, Nwelue told me “I am nowhere successful. You must have your personal definition of success. For me, one who has money is successful. I don’t have it. I still borrow. I still owe lots of people.”
Despite his many successes, Nwelue has had his share of failures, too. He was nominated three times for the Creative Artiste of the Year at the Future Awards, but never won a single one. In 2011, he was the director of the Bayelsa Book and Craft Fair, which was described as an epic failure.
“Failure is a way of life,” he told me. “It is a cycle. It comes to every man. Every man fails. How you rise is what makes you what you are. Failure is very important. You haven’t had a life if you have never failed. What makes me happy about life is that after each failure I experience, comes utmost success.”
Unsurprisingly, his brash outspokenness has earned him a reputation for controversy. He has said Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, writes bad dialogue, chosen Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as “the worst book ever written by an African”, and has described multiple award-winning author, Chimamanda Adichie as “a nuisance to African literature”.
Nwelue runs La Cave Music, a record label based in Paris. They have managed to sign quite a few interesting artistes, focusing on promoting African and Caribbean music in Europe and Asia. However, he is also involved in literary representation. He founded Blues and Hills Consultancy, to make that dream a reality.
“We are into literary fiction at the moment,” he said, in a 2011 interview on naijastories.com. “We offer our clients stories that reveal the way we live our lives in an uncanny way. These stories might take unconventional styles, but we are proud of them.
“Each day, we are building up new plans and leveraging on the internet to market these talents. The truth is that we haven’t had an author yet that will find it hard being accepted by the public, because we are growing talents that are charming. For one, we want to make sure our book tours, book parties, and interactive sessions will be the ultimate media – never forgetting the power of the internet.
“But the idea of having a literary agency is basically to play the role of middleman between writer, publisher, and rights buyers. So, the marketing and publicity could be left for the departments of these publishing houses.”
As at 2011, the agency did not charge reading fees, because, according to Nwelue, “it is a business where we wait for our ten percent to come.”
He told me, during our mail conversation, that he has nothing to say to the young Nigerian out there, and refused to talk about some of the things he would be involved in, in the next few years. “I don’t know,” he wrote, “I don’t discuss my dreams with anyone.”
He also does not see any need to change the world as it is, despite the mad swell of evil, manifest in acts of terrorism, across the world. “Oh well,” he told me, “I can’t change religious fundamentalists. They are getting stronger every day. Every year must witness a terrorist manslaughter, so, I’m sorry, but it won’t change. Every new morning gives birth to a new brain-washed religious freak.”