Enter the Vampire

"Our appeal is straighforwardly based on the need for clemency as an essential element in the attainment of that healing process which the present national leader swore to embark upon, on taking oath of office. Without being superstitious, we cannot but observe how a 10-year cycle of blood-letting appears to have become an incubus on the very life of the nation's Armed Forces - 1966, 1976 and now 1986. You possess the will to break this jinx. You have the moral duty to exercise that will."

- Chinua Achebe, J.P.Clark and Wole Soyinka

in a petition to General Ibrahim Babangida at Dodan Barracks on March 4, 1986.

11

if you are going to dodan,
dont wear flowers in your hair.

if you are gong to dodan,
dont write or chant poetry.

if you are going to dodan,
dont mention human rights.

if you are going to dodan,
dont announce consummation's cycle.

if you are going to dodan,
ride in an armoured carrier...


III

The betelgeuse of compassion
led three graying sages
to the dodan of decision.

Our three wise men
brought no gold,
brought no frankincense,
brought no myrhh,
only logos of compassion
to break cycle of consummation.

But no room in the ears
of the leader-lord
to hear professorial pleas.

If you are going to dodan,
ride in an armoured carrier...

© Emman Usman Shehu

• Enter the Vampire is taken from Emman Usman Shehu's first collection of poetry, 'Questions for Big Brother' (ANA/Update, 1988).
• Used with permission.

Reviewing WS

Not the Wasted Generation

By Emman Usman Shehu

The importance of memoirs cannot be underestimated because they provide insights that sometimes cannot be found in history books. So memoirs are essential towards our understanding of a particular history, because of the knowledge, however little, they pass on. The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche noted in 1873:

Every person and every people, according to its goals,
forces, and needs uses a certain knowledge of the past,
sometimes as monumental history, sometimes as
antiquarian history, and sometimes as critical history, but
not as a crowd of pure thinkers only watching life closely,
not as people eager for knowledge, individuals only
satisfied by knowledge, for whom an increase of
understanding is the only goal, but always only for the
purpose of living and, in addition, under the command
and the highest guidance of this life.

That need for understanding the past becomes all the more urgent for Nigerians whose nation’s history has thus far been anything but peaceful and successful. Nigeria continues to be a puzzle of underachievement, a conundrum of missed opportunities, a riddle of failures, an enigma of misplaced values, and a mystery of misused potentials and roads not taken.

Little wonder that at his 50th birthday anniversary in 1984, Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka, frustrated by the grip of hopelessness and despair on the nation, lamented that his "has been a wasted generation". But has it really been a "wasted generation" ?

You Must Set Forth At Dawn, Soyinka’s third memoir, following Ake:The Years of Childhood and the faction, Ibadan – The Penkelemes Years, provides an intriguing retraction of that famous phrase. At the end of what is easily his lengthiest and most fascinating book, a hefty 500 pages in the American edition sans pictures, appendix, and index, and an almost intimidating 626 pages in the Nigerian edition courtesy of the Ibadan-based Bookcraft, there is no evidence that his generation has been a wasted one.

Yes, the generation has not fulfilled the promise with which it emerged as the potential successor to the local leaders who had overseen the country’s transformation from a British colony to an independent state. But even as students of higher institutions in the United Kingdom, Soyinka and his colleagues could see the quality of leadership that the country was about to be blessed with.

The nationalists, the first-generation elected leaders and
legislators of our semi-independent nation, had begun to
visit Great Britain in droves. We watched their preening,
their ostentatious spending, and their cultivated
condescension, even disdain toward the people they
were supposed to represent. There were exceptions, but, in
the main, they did not appear to have emerged from the
land and people we had left behind when we journeyed out
to acquire some skills and learning. While we dreamed of
marching south to liberate Southern Africa, they saw the
nation as a prostrate victim to be ravished. (P. 48)

Contrast that with how this young generation saw itself:

We knew, beyond all doubt, our place within the evolving
organism of new nations. We, the young generation of that
independence phase, a renaissance people who would
transform the strange bequest into a world. The only way to
grasp this confidence, this self-assurance is to treat it as pure
knowledge. Not intuition, not revelation, not blind faith, not
ambition, not deductive reasoning or a conscious sense of
mission – no, simply as knowledge in its purest, unassailable
form. And we were working in our various fields – quite
indifferent to any special designation – to bring about this
renaissance. (P. 43)

That the renaissance has failed to materialise especially in Nigeria is not totally the fault of these purveyors of progress.

Soyinka’s account shows how the euphoria of Independence progressively turned into a cycle of bloodletting, rigged elections, coups, a civil war, and more coups. And yes, more of his generation gradually become part of the ruling establishment that leads the nation from one disaster to the other. But it is also his generation that sets the standard in various fields of human endeavour; standards that are yet to be surpassed, for instance, in the field of literature.

It is also his generation that has been at the forefront of opposing the variants of misrule that the country has experienced, with Soyinka himself becoming an arrowhead of sorts from the moment he daringly swops the tape of the recorded speech of the Premier of Western Nigeria with his own denouncing the rigged elections.

One shudders to think of what would have become of Nigeria if there had been no consolidated resistance to the various forms of misrule and tyranny that have been our lot since the Union Jack was lowered October, 1960. In one sense then, You Must Set Forth At Dawn is a tribute to the resistance that has ensured Nigeria has not gone down the drains. A resistance that has paid the price in many ways. But it is a passionate ode to steadfast, loyal and sacrificial friendship. The roles of his bossom friends especially Femi Johnson and Oyetunji Aboyade are crucial to several of his interventions in the nation’s political arena. Their loss is fittingly captured in this epic narrative. Indeed the tribute to Femi Johnson influences the structure of the memoir.

But this epic is more than a tribute. It also enables us understand and appreciate, and rightly so since it is through his perspective that the narration takes place, Soyinka as political motivator, activist, writer, hunter, wine connoisseur and noble Nobel laureate.

First, it is evident that the author is driven by the credo of justice. When the quest for justice possesses him, he undertakes highly risky ventures like going to negotiate the possibility of a truce on the Biafran side during the Nigerian Civil War, pleading a reprieve for Mamman Vatsa and other alleged coup plotters, or taking unorthodox and dangerous procedures of going into exile to escape Abacha’s murder squad. He puts everything into the resistance including the windfall from the Nobel Prize. This desire to see that justice is done propels him to intervene beyond the shores of Nigeria, to stop the bloodletting in South Africa or Northern Ireland.

Soyinka has an almost religious devotion to wine and hunting and several examples turn up frequently as attestation. Likewise, he recognises his limitations and would not be enticed into doing things he knows he does not have the capacity to deliver to the required standard. Soon after the demise of Abacha, he is courted by both Abdulsalami and a pressure group to consider taking over as the nation’s leader. He declines the offers and promptings even when there is a promise to bankroll his campaign if he accepts to contest:

My immediate objection was that I would not make
a unifying president. An influential caucus in the North-
a feudal elite whom I had never spared, and who in turn
had indoctrinated their constituency with the convenient
notion that I hated the North in its entirety – viewed me
with great suspicion. To make the ideal president, I would
first have to dismantle that lie, and that, I knew, would
require making undeserved concessions. (P.575)

Soyinka comes across as a pragmatist and this he exhibits in his religious syncretism as well as in his involvement with at least one or two military regimes. He justifies the latter thus:

It boils down, ultimately, to one’s personal confidence in
determining the length of spoon with which one dines with
the devil and one’s ability to keep a firm hold on it. This
involves deriving no advantages, no gains, no recompense
in the process – if anything, expending oneself both materially
and mentally for the attainment of a fixed and limited goal,
retaining one’s independence of action. Most deliciously
of all is the ability to walk away from the dinner table, flinging
a coin on to it as a tip for the host. (P. 215)

This justification for working with an Artful Dodger of a dictator will certainly make some wince and shake their head in total disapproval.

You Must Set Forth At Dawn is also a timely warning to Nigerians on the need to be alert, watchful and sensitive about the safety of democracy. It is a collective responsibility, the memoir strongly suggests, to ensure that the ethos of democracy is not hijacked and subverted by those who have self-serving and dictatorial tendencies and ambitions. As the nation’s history has shown, even within the scope covered by Soyinka’s account, each time democracy is undermined the task of restoration becomes more onerous, with greater sacrifices having to be made.

Although not directly stated, it is apparent that the effectiveness of the Resistance over the years has been hampered by lack of proper organisation and coordination. From the Third Force to the NADECO/NALICON era, the Resistance appears to limit itself to Lagos and some sections of the Southwest.

A major insight that this Soyinkan tome provides is that a lot of work needs to be done in the area of sorting out perceptions. There are still genuine fears within the ethnic entities of the nation. Unfortunately any dialogue that has taken place thus far seems to be only when a leader wants to manipulate the political process for a self-serving goal. Consequently the age-old fundamental concerns are given a cosmetic treatment.

In his portrayal of the various key players in Nigeria, Soyinka gleefully savages quite a handful even in the way he describes them. But the indictment of the quality of leadership Nigeria has had to put up with does not come directly from the Nobel laureate. As the black on black killings escalated in South Africa across political and ethnic lines, the danger of a civil war increasingly loomed on the horizon. Various efforts to solve the problem, including external interventions made virtually no headway, especially on the side of the African National Congress, as some hardliners would not allow for dialogue. Yet at some point Nelson Mandela and Chief Buthelezi, the Inkatha leader showed the true stuff of leadership:

The no-dialogue rhetoric continued for some months,
escalating in intensity even as the sheer statistics of
reprisal settled into a numbing spiral. Then one day,
several select assassinations and indiscriminate
massacres later, including the detonation of bombs at
political gathering, right on the heels of yet another
fire-breathing ANC bulletin that promised to wipe out
Inkatha and Inkatha’s like response, news emerged that
Nelson Mandela had quietly shunted aside his Executive
Committee and traveled out on his own to meet Buthelezi. (P. 323)

Of course, the consequence of that deft move was that South Africa pulled back from the brink of what would have been a tragic civil war.

You Must Set Forth AT Dawn comes to a tantalising end as Soyinka returns home from a physically, mentally and emotionally excruciating exile. This closure seems to indicate that Ogun permitting and without Esu intervening, another Soyinka memoir is very possible. This monumental, critical and perceptive account further proves that the Nobel Prize has been far from a "kiss of death" for Soyinka. Instead, like vintage wine, he is proving that with age even his accomplished standard of the mastery of language and its application to the public good can be surpassed.

• Emman Usman Shehu's review of You Must Set Forth At Dawn at its formal presentation in Abuja on Tuesday 5th September, 2006 at Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre. Quotes are from the Bookcraft edition.

The Karaye Prize

Karaye Prize for Hausa Literature Debuts

Words by Sumaila Umaisha

Thursday, 25th October, 2007 was a special day in the annals of Hausa Literature, as the maiden edition of the Engr. Mohammed Bashir Karaye Hausa Literature Prize was awarded to the winners. In a colourful award ceremony, jointly organized by the awards committee and the Abuja chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, at the International Conference Hall, Abuja, three writers were announced as the winners of this year’s edition of the annual prize.

The three winners emerged from a total of nineteen contestants. The first prize was won by Ibrahim Sheme, first editor of ‘The Write Stuff’ and currently the editor of Leadership newspaper, for his novel, ’Yartsana. The second prize went to Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, a Kano-based writer and film producer for her Matar Uba Jaraba, while the third prize was won by Maje El-Hajeej Hotoro, a Kano-based writer, for his Kankana.

The winners went away with a cash prize of 300,000 Naira; 150,000 Naira for the first prize, 100,000 for the second and 50,000 for the third.

The event also featured fund raising for the sustenance of the award.

Chaired by Professor Iyorwuese Hagher, the occasion had in attendance prominent personalities particularly from the judiciary. They include the Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, and two former Chief Justices, Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais and Justice Salihu Modibo Alfa Balgore. The presence of these august guests could be seen as a gesture of solidarity with the founder of the prize, the Executive Secretary of the Federal Judicial Service Commission, Hajiya Bilkisu A. Bashir, who instituted the prize in memory of her late husband, Engr. Mohammed Bashir Karaye. But more importantly, it could be viewed as a solidarity with the effort to promote Hausa literature. For, as the chairman of the occasion rightly pointed out in his speech, there is no much difference between literature and law as both are born out of man’s quest to resolve societal conflict.

The chairman expressed appreciation to all those who contributed to the event, which is aimed at reviving interest in Hausa literature, and congratulated the winners of the prizes.

Earlier in his welcome address, the chairman of the Abuja chapter of ANA, Dr. Emman Usman Shehu, highlighted the efforts of the chapter in promoting literature, of which this prize is a part. According to him, the Karaye prize came into being through the association’s proposal to Hajiya Bilkisu.

Dr. Shehu disclosed the chapter’s future plans, including having a writers’ cyber café, a proper office, a meeting facility for writers, a literary agency to help negotiate contracts for writers and a writers’ residency programme. To this end, he called on all concerned to "help us build an effective support network so that our literature, whether written in English or our indigenous languages, will have a consistent world-class quality".

In his own speech, Justice Kutigi noted that Hausa is the widest indigenous language spoken in West Africa, hence the need to promote it. He commended ANA and Hajiya Bilkisu for instituting the prize. He called on all to donate generously towards sustaining the prize and urged the winners to continue to write.

The keynote address was delivered by Anthony C. Oha of Benson Idahosa University, Benin City. Titled ‘Making Literature a Tool of Immortalisation: Reflections on the Karaye Hausa Literature Prize’, the paper featured a brief history of Hausa literary prizes, the importance of Hausa vis-à-vis indigenous literature and the role of the Karaye prize in the scheme of things.

Oha began by commending the efforts of those who were instrumental to the setting up of the prize. He specifically mentioned Patrick Oguejiofor, whom he said provided the link between Hajiya Bilkisu, who is his boss, and the Abuja chapter of ANA for the much needed partnership for the institution and administration of award. He then traced the history of literary prizes in Hausa literature to the colonial era when the Education Department of Northern Nigeria organized a creative writing contest in 1933. Stressing the significance of prizes in Hausa literature, he said the development and use of indigenous African language is of great advantage since the masses who do not understand foreign language could have access to the indigenous literature. He observed that the Karaye prize is the most outstanding prize in indigenous literature in Nigeria today, and commended ANA and Hajiya Bilkisu for making this possible.

The judges for the competition were Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu of Bayero University, Kano, and Malam Bello Sule of the Nigerian Television Authority, Abuja. Professor Adamu, who was the chairman of the panel of judges, explained the criteria used in assessing the entries for the contest. In a paper titled ‘Global Media as the Message: Hausa Prose Fiction in the Age of Technology’, which also highlighted the history of Hausa literature and Hausa literary prizes, he said cultural representation was one of the major criteria. According to him, "In this criterion we were looking at how the Hausa universe was portrayed in the novel". Other criteria included the author’s handling of the theme, the narrative structure and the character development.

Professor Adamu, whose paper was read on his behalf, because he had to hurry back to Kano due to the sudden death of his mother, expressed appreciation for Hajiya Bilkisu’s courage, determination, fortitude and intellectual foresight in instituting the award.

The Karaye prize is the first non-governmental intervention in the history of Hausa literary contest. It will run in a three-year cycle, covering fiction, poetry and drama.

Engr. Karaye had, before his death in October last year, held a number of top positions in the public service. He was commissioner for Information in Kano State.

• Words by Sumaila Umaisha; published in the New Nigerian Weekly, 27 October, 2007, p17.
• Images courtesy of ANA Abuja

Umez, AWF & the BSU

Uche Peter Umez, the first guest writer to grace the Abuja Writer’ Forum’s newly instituted monthly readings, has won this year’s BSU Creative Writing Competition, judged by Caine Winner Segun Afolabi. Umez won for his short story, ‘The Outsider’. He wins a cash prize of £200 and a £2000 scholarship to study Creative Writing at Bath Spa University (BSU). Runner-up was Ovo Adagha who wins £75 for his short story, ‘Homeless’.

Uche Peter Umez and Ovo Adagha are both writers with whom this blogger has worked collaboratively before. More recently in Adagha’s case, and we continue to work together on the ambitious ‘One World Anthology’ which he initiated, bringing together a diverse group of writers across continents for the project; and the good news is we have now been snapped up by wonderful publishers in the UK, with a Nigerian publisher in the works.

Owerri-based Uche Peter Umez came to the monthly reading while the Abuja Writers' Forum (AWF) was still under a month old. What a way to start. The blogger was not there, but you can take her word for it. There was music (courtesy of singer/songwriter Bem Sar), a visual arts segment (thanks to artist Muyiwa Akinwolere), and performance poetry by Dekmankind. All this was on 21st June and the event took place in a mini-hall at Pen & Pages Bookshop in Abuja.

Introducing the guest writer, founder of the AWF, Emman Usman Shehu, said the AWF’s Guest Writer sessions would aid better interaction between writers and literary enthusiasts, and would help provide better publicity and distribution for literary works. In short: getting writers and their readers together, and getting the books into the said readers’ hands, in a place like Nigeria where much effort is needed still to reenergise the flagging reading culture.

Umez, a finalist in the 2007 NLNG Prize for Literature, is the author of a collection of poems, ‘Dark Through The Delta’ and a collection of short stories, ‘Tears in Her Eyes’. He began his reading with the short story, ‘Smouldered’ for which he was Highly Commended in the 2006 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Other stories from ‘Tears in Her Eyes’ followed.

Other Monthly Readings showcasing up-and-coming writers will follow from the AWF, which also holds weekly reading & critique sessions. The group is also organising literary contests and is due to launch a literary journal, Cavalcade, soon.

• Images courtesy of the AWF.

Adichie's Abuja Reading

Words and images by Tunji Ajibade

The Abuja Writers’ Forum (AWF) in collaboration with the US Embassy hosted Nigeria’s award winning author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in Abuja on May 15, 2010.

The attendance was something unprecedented. Nigerians and members of the diplomatic community had begun to arrive the venue long before the time for commencement. That says something. People like writers; Nigerians love their own. They came in droves, some to meet her for the first time, others to identify with her, and yet many more to hear her voice of hope, of her vision for the nation’s literature.

And it was good, the organisers foresaw it. The large capacity Cyprian Ekwensi Centre for Art and Culture was the venue. The 4pm time for the reading was slow in coming, as many had arrived about one hour earlier. Then she walked into the hall of the event, smiling in her usual calm way. Heads had turned, and necks craned as seated guests tried to get a glimpse of her. In a simple red dress, but surprisingly, without the trademark scarf on her head, she certainly had an image that no kid on the street of Abuja would miss. That, considering the good work the (Nigeria) Re-branding Team has done, having displayed her picture for months on green cabs plying roads in the nation’s capital city. Not to mention her images flashed regularly on TV, also by the same Team, where she is listed among Nigerians who are the nations’ positive faces on the international stage. An attendee at the reading spelt this out for the diplomatic community in attendance: “People like Chimamanda should be considered as the image of the country,” instead of the negative treatment Nigerian get abroad.

The Master of Ceremony, Mohammed Sani, set things rolling. He called for opening remarks from different personalities, and introduction was made of literary bodies such as the Open Mic Forum whose members were present at the event. Then the guest author sat down to business. Adichie read not from her latest book, The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of stories; rather she read an excerpt from a new, unpublished work.
Those who listened would later point out variously: “There was this shocking effect from her description of some things at various points in the story”; “Her story had this graphic touch to it”. This is not surprising. The author is of the school of ‘show’ don’t ‘tell’. She had told her students about this at the creative writing workshop which she handled earlier in the day.

The 25 participants at the workshop had been selected from the responses to a call for submissions. “The entries created much problem, and it was difficult making the selection because of the quality of what was submitted,” Dr Emman Usman Shehu, president of Abuja Writers Forum (AWF) had said at the event. “I write what I like to read”; Watch out for clichés, both of language and of ideas - they are convenient but a lazy way of writing,” Adichie had told her students while she took them through the whole circle of how to generate ideas on what to write, putting them on paper, vetting the work, and how to get a publisher. “I enjoyed the workshop”, she said later, but wondered if a one-day workshop was enough to do all that was necessary to equip a writer. Her yearly workshop in Lagos under her foundation, Farafina Trust, lasts 10 days. She made the best of the brief encounter she had with participants at the Abuja writing workshop though, having pointed out earlier on: “Maybe I can use this to see how well a one-day workshop works out.”

The question and answer time at the reading was a drama on its own – and it usually is, wherever this author who holds MA from Yale University is on the ‘hot seat.’ “I read your book Purple Hibiscus, and you appeared to me like you are fighting a battle,” actor, theatre director and consultant, Jide Zubeiru Attah, said when he had the opportunity to take the first shot. “But in Half of Yellow Sun,” he continued, “you appeared subdued.” Adichie denied much of this. “I am not fighting a battle, what I write is the way I feel,” she said with reference to Attah’s perception that she had taken up the cause of women as against the main (male) character in Purple Hibiscus. And she had no apology for the way she felt about the things she wrote, as her usual candour came to the fore: “If people find my book offensive, they should put it aside and read something else.”


“What propelled you to this level in such a short time?” was the question Dr Onuh, a director in the capital city administration, asked. The response from the author was as informative as it was educative. She identified the fact of growing up on a university campus as important. She commended Nsukka campus, the environment, for the major impetus it gave her to take interest in scholarly pursuits. There, everything was around books, reading and all that was academic. There was the fact of having parents who worked in the same setting too. She has a professor of statistics and former Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University for a father, as well as the first female registrar of the same University as mother. “I have the most amazing, lovely parents,” Adichie said. Her parents gave room for questions. “We ask questions, seeking to answers to them.” And of course, “I made my choice.” The choice to write rather than continue the one and half year of studying medicine and pharmacy that she had put in at the University of Nsukka, before she went to live with a relative in the United States of America. She went on to study Communication at Drexel University, at which time she had begun to pen Purple Hibiscus which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005. When the question as to the importance of vision for her where writing was concerned was raised, she said, “the vision for writing is important, and, yes, I am somewhat obsessive about it,” recounting in some detail how she didn’t want to let go of the manuscript of Half of A Yellow Sun, as she had kept calling it back for “one more revision.”

As the Question and Answer session continued, issues of publishing and marketing of books got the author drawing out her daggers. To the complaints that being outside Nigeria may be an advantage in getting a publisher, she said, “I know a woman who is published recently in the US, she wrote the book in Nigeria .” That rhymes with the position she usually took, “If you have done your work well, it will find a home (publisher).” She went on to state that there was something for everyone to do in the effort to overcome the challenges that confront writers. It was clear from her argument that she is one author who does not believe that writers should sit in a corner and complain about how the government or organisations that sponsor literature did not do it well. She believes every writer must sit up and do something to correct whatever is wrong in the system. “What are we doing ourselves? These are important questions we need to attend to,” she had said at the Abuja reading.

And she had set out her own target. “I will like to go to primary schools all over the country.” That, as part of her effort to continue to promote literature by improving quality of writing as well as get people to read, even the younger ones. Tall dream, it may seem. But someone once remarked that a ‘vision is not big enough, until it shocks those that hear it.” Adichie’s is not only daring, it dares, sending out messages that she wants writers to sit up and take back the system from anyone who may be sending it in the wrong direction. From her explanations about going to primary schools, it was obvious she envisioned younger generations raised as consumers of literature materials and who will be potential market for literature when they grow up

Editors of big publishing houses have not been left out of her vision for literature. Earlier this year, she organised a workshop for editors in an effort to improve the quality of reading materials that children in the nation are exposed to. “A newspaper may be all that a young child in a remote place is exposed to,” she argued, “and he may think that all the wrong styles of writing he finds in a newspaper is the best.” She was concerned that this, not only newspaper but any badly edited work, has actually influenced a whole generation. And there is the generation of Nigerians who don’t read beyond what they need to pass examinations. “We must begin to brainwash Nigerians,” Adichie announced. Her audience had made noises, indicating they didn’t get what she actually meant. Not many quickly got wise to her idea of setting in motion a revolution that will change the whole face of literature in the country. So she added, “in a good way,” to clarify her comment, which meant reorienting Nigerians with regard to reading and writing. Yet she had more to say in order to arrive home with her listeners. “If my dream of brainwashing comes true, we will change things.” That was a challenge, and more than that, a voice of encouragement, hope, a dream. “We can do it in spite of our setbacks,” she had added, before she left the ‘hot seat.’

Poetry massive

This trio was photographed at last night’s performance of A Feast of Return at the Muson Centre in Lagos. L-R: Ismail Bala Garba, Odia Ofeimun and Gabriel Okara (author of ‘The Voice’).

So, as promised in earlier post, here’s decoding the mystery of this Lagos Black Heritage Festival event - ‘Readings & Performances by Odia Ofeimun’ – on today at the Agip Hall of the Muson Centre in Onikan, Lagos (3-6pm).

The following poets are on the bill: Ghanaian Kofi Anyidoho, South African Lesego Rampolokeng – along with Nigerians Uzor Maxim Uzoatu (author of God of Poetry), Emman Usman Shehu (Open Sesame), Jumoke Verissimo (I Am Memory), Ogochukwu Promise, Amanze Akpuda, Ismail Bala Garba, the 80-year-old Mabel Segun etcetera etcetera.

Femi Fatoba’s widow, Lanre, will read her late husband’s poetry (They Said I Abused The Government); Actress Joke Silva will perform the poetry of Aime Cesaire; and The Crown Troupe of Afrika will render poems by Leopold Sedar Senghor.
There’ll be music too. Highlife maestros Orlando Julius and Tunji Oyelana will do their thing on the stage, before joining The Crown Troupe in a performance of ‘I Love This Lagos I No Go Lie’. Oyelana of course was a singer on the original song from the 80s, ‘I Love My Country I No Go Lie’, a record on which Soyinka also performed.
Oh, and there’s the Baba of Yoruba poetry, Adebayo Faleti, on the bill too. Not to be missed.

Some of today’s other events

• Children’s Black Heritage Village (on account of which the traffic was impossible around Allen Avenue yesterday. A 10 minute journey took an hour!) – LTV 8 Grounds, Ikeja. 10am-4pm.
• Presence Africaine Exhibition - Terra Kulture, Tiamiyu Savage, Victoria Island, Lagos. All day.
• Contemporary Dances – Civic Centre, Ozumba Mbadiwe, Victoria Island, Lagos. 11am-2pm.
• Cultural Performance – Artists’ Village, National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos. 3-6pm.
• African Traditional Games – Campos Square, Lagos Island. 3-7pm.
• Film Expo – Glover Memorial Hall, Ikoyi (and Badagry Town Hall), Lagos. Watch great films for free. 3-8pm. Continues till Thursday April 8.
• A Season in the Congo, a play – Terra Kulture. 7-9pm.
• Steve Rhodes Orchestra – Agip Hall, Muson, Lagos. 7-9pm.
  

And not forgetting the Danny Glover event at the Southern Sun Hotel (7pm), which is by invitation only.

• Photo: MW

Book Places on the net

Visit the stylish new website for the book, Celebrated - Nigerian Women in Development, written by Ayona Aguele-Trimnell (Toyin Sokefun Bello took the portraits in the book, published by Kachifo Ltd).

Kachifo also publishes Farafina. The magazine's website has been redesigned and is worth a visit. The last edition out, Farafina no 9, is now downloadable in pdf format.

The website for Abuja's chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors has gone live. ANA Abuja's site was launched at the end of August, same time as the branch kick-started plans for creative writing workshops. There will also be a new prize for Hausa Literature, to be overseen by ANA Abuja. More details on the site, where you can read short stories, poems and other outputs of Abuja writers, led by the branch chairman, the poet Emman Usman Shehu

Songstress

You stand on the stark platform
under the lone glow
an island of attention,
a vulnerable picture –
pouring out your heart,
a river of candid songs.

How come such tenderness,
from a heart full of scars?
You teach me forgiveness
under a tungsten lamp.

O Songstress, O Songstress,
I hear this river of songs –
sometimes as fast as a flood,
now and again slow as twilight –
pouring out of your wounded heart.

How come such passion
from a soul full of fissures?
You teach me endurance
on a loney island.

O Songstress, O Songstress,
I hear this river of songs
sometimes soft as a whisper,
streaming out of your heart.


© Emman Usman Shehu

• Published in the Sunday Sun, Lagos, on 26 November 2006. Reproduced with permission.

More Than Just A Widow's Mite

On 25th October, 2007, three writers would emerge in Abuja as winners of a brand new literary contest. Almost four months ago, the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Abuja Chapter, proposed to the Executive Secretary of the Federal Judicial Service Commission, Hajiya Bilkisu A. Bashir, to consider endowing a prize for Hausa literature in memory of her husband who had died in October, 2006. In a country where values have not just been misplaced but turned totally upside down, the Association was pleasantly surprised when Hajiya Bilkisu agreed to immortalise her husband through a prize for Hausa literature.

The Engineer Mohammed Bashir Karaye Prize for Hausa Literature will run in a three-year cycle covering fiction, poetry and drama. For starters, the top three contestants would share three hundred thousand naira. The first place winner gets one hundred and fifty thousand, the second collects one hundred thousand, while the third receives a consolatory fifty thousand naira. This too is unique in the annals of the country’s literary prizes because usually, including the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Literary Prize, the top winner carts all the money home and the runners-up don’t even get a handshake from the organisers. The approach adopted for the new Hausa literary contest will hopefully make the competition keener.

The Mohammed Bashir Karaye Prize is also significant because it is the first non-governmental intervention in the history of Hausa literary contests. Indeed the growth of Hausa literature seems to have been largely propelled, with one significant exception which shall be addressed later, by literary contests. The first competition took place during the colonial era. In 1933, the Education Department of Northern Nigeria, through the Zaria-based Translation Bureau headed by Rupert East, organized a creative writing contest in Hausa. The records show there were only five entries in manuscript format but this small field would provide the formative canon of imaginative prose-writing in Hausa. One of the writers, Abubakar Imam, would eventually have a dominant effect not only on Hausa literature, but also on the use of Hausa language in journalism.

The five entries were Bello Kagara’s Gandoki, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s Shaihu Umar, Muhammadu Gwarzo’s Idon Matanbayi, John Tafida’s Jiki Magayi and Abubakar Imam’s Ruwan Bagaja. Of the lot, Imam’s entry stood out and he was encouraged to put together a collection of stories which after several revisions appeared as the three-volume classic, Magana Jari Ce. The momentum generated by the contest led to the establishment of a publishing house - the famous Gaskiya Corporation, a newspaper (“ Gaskiya Tafi Kobo”), and the publication in the 50s of three novellas; Ahmadu Ingawa’s Iliya Dan Maikarfi, Garba Funtuwa’s Gogan Naka and Ahmadu Katsina’s Sihirtaccen Gari. From the 60s to the 70s, Gaskiya Corporation (later to become the Northern Nigerian Publishing Company) would publish four more novellas reminiscent of the pioneering five. These novellas were Sa’idu Ahmed’s Tauraruwar Hamada, Jabiru Abdullahi’s Nagari Na Kowa, Umaru Dembo’s Tauraruwa Mai Wutsiya and Dare Daya.

Another defining period was triggered by two contests that ran almost at the same time. In 1979 the Northern Nigeria Publishing Company organized a contest and got twenty-two entries out of which half were rejected. The top three entries were Suleiman Ibrahim Katsina’s Mallakin Zuciyata, Hafsatu Abdulwahid’s So Aljannar Duniya and Magaji Danbatta’s Amadi Na Malam Amadu. The next year a contest in some Nigerian languages was organised by the Federal Department of Culture with manuscripts as the entry format. Suleiman Ibrahim Katsina once again led the pack in the Hausa category with Turmin Danya. Three other noteworthy manuscripts were Musa Mohammed Bello’s Tsumangiyar Kan Hanya, Bature Gagare’s Karshen Alewa Kasa and Manir Mohammed’s Zabi Naka.

The two post-colonial contests heralded the emergence of a significant novelist, Suleiman Ibrahim Katsina. He would consolidate his prominence with a third novel in 1983 titled Tura Ta Kai Bango, a work described as radically different in content from the typical Hausa novel. The contests also signaled the arrival not only of female writers, but also of the love theme that would be the fulcrum for “Soyayya Novellas” boom in Kano and some other major Northern Nigerian towns. The preoccupation of these novellas, mostly written by women, with “love, passion, and the power relations between men and women” , as Graham Furniss has put, has generated much controversy. This is to be expected since traditionalists and purists are unsettled by the uncompromising reflection of contemporary existence.

The emergence of a new Hausa literary contest, this time emphasising published works rather than manuscripts, creates a number of challenges. First, publishing will be taken more seriously as the contest openly demands that entries must be well produced. Second, writers will need to be more skillfull in the realisation of their stories, poems and plays, so that the handling of contemporary issues will have more depth and the storylines will have realistic but imaginative motivations. Third the consistency of the contest may attract a variety of contests with even more lucrative prizes. The maiden award features a launching to sustain the funding, and a lot of heavyweights in government and business have promised to support the endowment, with the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Lawal Uwais giving the keynote address. If this becomes a watershed in the development of Hausa literature, then the Engineer Mohammed Bashir Karaye Prize for Hausa Literature will be more than just a widow’s mite.

Emman Usman Shehu
*Published in his GRAFFITI column, page 37, Leadership Newspaper, October 19,2007.
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• Shortlisted writers: Maje El-Hajeej for Kankana; Ibrahim Sheme for Yar Tsana; and Balaraba Ramat Yakubu for Matar Uba Jaraba.