Monday, December 23, 2019

In Conversation with Denja Abdullahi: “I will lead ANA to sustainable prosperity


In Conversation with Denja Abdullahi: “I will lead ANA to sustainable prosperity.”
By Jennifer Emelife- October 16, 2015 




Denja Abdullahi is a poet and dramatist, and the outgoing vice president of the Association of Nigerian Authors. A long-standing member of the Nigerian literati, he talks to Praxis’ Emmanuel Dairo about his views on literature and his ambition to pilot the affairs of ANA for the next four years.
What does literature mean to you?
Literature is life; a lifelong engagement and a preparation ground for the multi-layered encounters of life. Literature re-enforces the truth that nothing really new can be found under the sun. No matter the situation: tragedy, happiness, treachery, chicanery, perfidy and what have you, it has happened before. You only need to go into books to see them described. And if you are fortunate enough to have read enough books, you will discover that no situation catches you off guard and people are easily readable. They must have their foils or counterparts in some books somewhere.
You count as one of the few Nigerian writers of any repute who have dabbled into drama in recent times. What do you think is responsible for the decline of dramatic works in Nigerian literature?
Drama is not in decline; what is absent is a lifelong commitment to the art as it used to be with the first and second generation Nigerian playwrights and theatre practitioners. Drama as a genre demands a measure of cultural fidelity and authenticity. It is a genre tied to dialogue, action and performance and needs artistic discipline to distil out its beauty. How many of our later-day playwrights bother to quarry into the mythical, the legendary and the extraordinary aspects of culture that ennoble a dramatic text or performance? Drama as a genre has a longer gestation time than the other genres. You muse on a dramatic situation first, work out the dialogues. conflicts, actions and scenery and then allow it to simmer before shaping all within the framework of a stage, even before finalising it as a published text. The process takes years and the logistics of dramatic creativity is not easily circumscribed. That may be why it appears there is a decline but I can tell you we have many playwrights writing a lot of beautiful plays today. The problem is the inability of many of them, mostly not due to their own faults, to get their works produced on stage.
You have degrees in English and Literary Studies from two Nigerian universities. Do you believe that writers who have studied literature have creative advantages over those who have not?
At the risk of being accused of literary chauvinism, I will say yes. In the course of undergoing such studies, you are taken through all kinds of writings and the motives and methods underpinning them. Sometimes you are even taught the principles of creative writing. If all these spark off an interest to write in you, you will be doing that from an informed position and there is a slight likelihood that you will write better or be more impactful as a writer than someone who just stumbled on the art in the search for a hobby or pastime. Not all who studied English and Literature write well; many even do not write at all. Inbuilt talent and disciplined practice also play a great role in fashioning a good writer. Of course, there are examples of writers from fields farther from literature who write very well.
Much of your work addresses social and political issues in different Northern cultures. Do you write for the North or merely about the North?
You cannot write entirely outside your lived or acquired experience. I am from the North, from an ethnic minority and from a region that still struggles to enter into the mainstream of national literary discourse. As a writer, the first subjects that attract are those of direct impact on my life. That should not be seen as pandering to low-hanging fruits but as an attempt at being relevant and useful to my immediate environment. I do not write for the North by way of being a mouthpiece but I write about the North often in a critical manner. Sometimes what you call writing for the North or about the North is just by way of setting; the creative world depicted in most of my works can be transposed to any other part of the world and it will still be a good read. Good literature and canonical texts, no matter how local they may be in their referential world, are eventually salvaged by the universality of their subject matter or form.
You’ve been in the executive council of ANA, in various capacities, since 2001. With the benefit of hindsight, what aspects of the association’s structure do you think are in need of overhaul?
The Association’s administrative structure is still too fluid and perfunctory and is no longer working well in a world that is fast becoming constrictive to associations that survive only on avowed passion. No one really minds, as a full time job, the affairs of the Association. As a result, ideas take longer to come to fruition and are at the mercy of someone somewhere willing to make personal sacrifices. Opportunities for greater achievements are daily missed because there are no set targets and things are done without proper planning. Modern associations are no longer run successfully in such a way. The Association has to work towards overhauling its administrative structure. Introducing some permanency and regularity to some of its basic operations would be a step in the right direction. It must also begin to learn how to set achievable targets and design blueprints towards their implementation. Most importantly, the Association must acquire physical assets and rework the financial commitments of its members towards ensuring its sustainability.
Denja at UNESCO EXPERTS’ workshop
There are whispers in some circles that there was a gentleman’s agreement for you to be the next president of ANA before your opponent threw his hat in the ring. Can you elaborate on this?
You are dead right in this assertion. There was even indeed more than a gentleman’s agreement on that matter. My service to the Association has been unwavering over the years. I have held, with popular acclaim, nearly all the important executive positions in the Association. I have discharged all my duties in a most effective and selfless manner. While others who are throwing their dubious hats in the ring now abandoned the Association at some points to pursue their individual private objectives, Denja Abdullahi has been steadfast. Members of the Association realised this and as Vice President, they have all reconciled themselves to my becoming President. Even my opponent recognised that I am far ahead of him in tangible and widespread service to the Association. That was why he had been singing it to my ears in both private and public spaces for over two years now that when I become President, he would like to be my Vice President. I have evidence of where and when he made such assertions in public. I also have documented private correspondences we shared up to as recent as April this year, where we muted on a possible team in my presidency with him as Vice President. I and many others, including the people he now calls his supporters, were thus taken aback when he started sending surreptitious text messages about his aspiration for presidency. I got a barrage of calls from all over Nigeria wondering what was amiss between me and him when his text messages got to people’s phones. They all expressed anger and consternation over his attempt to violate codes of friendship, camaraderie and logicality. When quizzed about his motive, he usually resorts to the denial of a gentleman’s agreement (I am not surprised about this as people do this regularly on national political space, particularly when naked ambition and lust for power are the shadowy premises) and a rather vague Machiavellian game theory.
But I suspect his real reason may be the feeling that I do not want him as Vice President or the futility of his succeeding to become my Vice President as he would have to face the congress who may decide that with Denja as President, his Vice has to come from a different region. A spin master around him may have intoned “common man, your best bet is to challenge this fellow for the ultimate position, who knows, you may just succeed in dislodging him.” Some people have read his coming into the picture as good for the sake of contest by telling me “Denja, it is good you are challenged so that your eventual emergence will not be a form of coronation and your victory will be sweeter that way.”
Why do you need to be president before some of the ideas contained in your manifesto can be implemented? As the vice president for four years and the general secretary before that, couldn’t you have tabled them before the previous presidents for implementation?
This question can be compared to asking President Obasanjo what he came back to do as President in 1999 and President Muhammad Buhari why he had to contest four times for Nigerian Presidency when he had been at the helms in 1983. Times evolve and do change things and different times require different approaches. I have said somewhere else that ten kings equal ten different milieus. I have never been President of ANA and you can never compare that to any other position in the Association. Agreed I have been General Secretary for 4 years in the past (2005-2009) and had the power and indeed implemented many good programmes and projects for the Association in line with my vision then. I have also been Vice President and I have not been found wanting in any way in helping this present President to achieve his objectives. The fact remains that there are many things still undone and approaches that have not been utilised. I have my manifesto with well articulated and achievable objectives that I intend to pursue doggedly with presidential affirmation if elected.
There is nothing in your manifesto that overtly addresses the plight of writers in indigenous languages. Does it mean that your vision of ANA is inclusive of only those who write in English?
I disagree with that as all the developmental objectives in my manifesto in reference to Nigerian writers are inclusive of writers who write in the indigenous languages. A writer is a writer regardless of the language in which he writes. We should actually stop this artificial segmentation we have in Nigeria as a result of our devaluing our indigenous languages. I, as General Secretary of ANA, oversaw the celebration of two indigenous language writers (Abubakar Imam and Adebayo Faleti) with a colloquium for each in Kaduna and Ibadan respectively. As President, definitely, I will design programmes for writing in the indigenous languages, encourage translations from one language to the other and creatively integrate writing in our indigenous languages into the mainstream of our activities.

A sizeable number of Nigerian writers are domiciled in the Western hemisphere. What is your campaign position with respect to the creative diaspora?
I will make use of their talents and reach to assist and develop Nigerian literature. I have been part of several schemes in the past to bring them home regularly to interface with the literati here. I will reach out to them as individuals and as a group for them to identify tangibly with what we do back home. The problem at hand is that we hardly reach out to them with any tangible scheme that can elicit their interest and participation. What we do as a pastime is to denigrate them for pandering to the West in their writings and for having it all while we sweat it out in the impossible and mediocre situation back home. In my Presidency, Nigerian writers at home and abroad, should be ready to be called upon to contribute their talents, resources and expertise to the development of Nigerian literature and our literary spaces. There is no other way and real progress and development cannot co-exist with biases, prejudices, sentiments and other like baggage.
The Nigerian Writers Series, one of the initiatives kick-started by the outgoing ANA executive, is, in its current format, slanted towards the publication of fiction and creative non-fiction. If you emerge the next president, should we expect to see similar initiatives established for drama and poetry?
I coordinated the series and was largely instrumental to those books being eventually published. This is the fact, against those who go about ascribing collective achievements to their narrow self for envisaged political gains. I know how we arrived at publishing fiction and creative non-fiction at the series’ first outing. As president, the series next outing will either be drama or poetry, depending on the decision taken, and this will be achieved within my first year in office.
You have often spoken of a need to divest ANA of government funding. Is there a way to make Nigerian literature more attractive to private sponsors?
Nigerian literature is already very attractive. In the past, corporate sponsors like Cadbury, Chevron, NLNG, Spectrum, Literamed etc. did sponsor one activity or the other for the Association. Discontinuity came by way of economic recession that affected those sponsors and ANA’s sheer inability, after some years, to maintain and cultivate relationships with private sector sponsors. I intend to reverse this trend by rethinking and refocusing our relationships with the corporate world, grant giving foundations and agencies, literature loving individuals of means and even the governments at all levels. I have it in mind that if elected I will lead ANA to sustainable prosperity. I will not joke with that objective and it involves a lot of work.
Thank you for your time, sir.

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