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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