We
are set to make more writers millionaires
— 14th October 2017
Denja Abdullahi
is saddled with the task of shepherding Africa’s largest writers’ guild, the
Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). In this interview with HENRY AKUBUIRO
in Abuja, Abdullahi, who has been at the helm of affairs for two years,
responds to some critical issues in the Nigerian literary community, especially
the omission of writers from the recent federal government-sponsored creative
industry summit, the new Nigerian Writers Series, the non-award of ANA prizes
in some categories this year, developments in the ANA Writers’ Village and the
preparedness of the association to host this year’s convention in Makurdi later
in the month.
What’s the state of affairs regarding the hectares of land
belonging to the Association of Nigerian Authors? One is wondering whether it
won’t be better to sell part of the land to raise money to develop a writers’
village rather than giving it to a land developer. Which do you think serves a
better purpose?
The current agreement we have with the developer is
something similar to what you have just said. In development agreement –it is a
common thing in Abuja –if you have land but lack the resources to develop it,
you can get a developer, who will come into the land, and, with the funds that
you lack, help you develop the land and give you the features and the
structures that you want in return to some of his own interest where he will
recoup his investment. All along, the land had been fallow because of the lack
of resources to even do anything on it. And the agreement the association
signed five years ago was to give the association structures that were
definable with sustainable profit regularly for the developer’s interest in
terms of recouping his investments by using some parts of the land for his own
investment. So, it is a bit better than selling the land off.
The problem we have is that we don’t have the resources to
go in directly to start building structures; we also lack the expertise in the
association. Even if we have the expertise, we still have to engage them in
commercial terms, because they won’t work for free. So, you have to engage
somebody who is already into that. However, emotional responses have been
ongoing concerning the ANA land for years, with some thinking some people are
profiting from it. But all these are not true. Before the present developer
came into the land, we couldn’t even enter the land, because we had no
resources to clear the bush. Recall that ANA first entered into an agreement
with a developer in 2001, who couldn’t deliver, and we had to take that
developer out of the place. We only succeeded in getting him out of the place
in 2012. With the present arrangement, ANA can have assets that can generate
income for it so that our basic operation can be taken care of from the income
we make rather than over dependence on sponsors, donours and insignificant dues
members pay.
The Nigerian literary community has expressed dissatisfaction
over the recent Creative Nigeria Summit organised by the Ministry of
Information. What accounted for this omission?
When I saw that summit on financing the creative industry
and I didn’t see ANA being represented anywhere, I was taken aback. I was thinking,
had they redefined the concept of creative industry in Nigeria to the exclusion
of writers? From what they were doing, which I watched on TV, I saw that they
had broken it down to film and music, and the writers were excluded. My first
thought was that they might have some other programmes for the writers after
devoting this to Nollywood and the music industry. Does the federal government
think the literary arts doesn’t need any intervention to encourage literary
creativity? To produce a film, you must first write a movie script. If you
don’t engage professionals like creative writers to write the scripts, the
films won’t come out well. Again, when you study most film industries in the
world, their basic foundation is the adaptation of great literary works.
Nollywood started like that. Bollywood started like that. Every film industry
begins by adapting outstanding novels, plays and poems into films. The
classical films we have today are adapted from works of fiction. If you look at
some of our members in the film industry in Nigeria, they are producing
fantastic films. Tunde Kelani has collaborated with writers like late Adebayo
Faleti and Prof Akinwumi Ishola, among others. Don’t forget the adaptation of
Chimamanda’s Half of Yellow Sun into a block buster.
When you are talking of the creative industry, the writers
are at the centre of it, because they are the concept makers; they are the ones
who conceptualise what goes into film and music. Ours may not be that showy
–Nollywood can easily appeal to most people because of the direct impact they
make on the society –but I must tell you writers produce books that appeal to
the intellect and promote our culture, and most of what we do stand the test of
time. A film can also reign for a few months or years, but a good literary work
can endure more than thirty years. Again, most of the people they paint on
buses today as Nigerian icons are writers: Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor
Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie. These are people known all over the world.
We have many of them respected all over the world. Why should government not
pay attention to support this industry so that writers will write books that
our children will read? If you want to reorient the society, writers are your
best bet. I think the government should not leave out writers if they want to
redesign programmes for the creative industry unless it tells us there is
another programme for the writers different from what they are doing. If you
are financing the creative industry and you are only financial music and films,
who, then is financing the art galleries? Who is financing the theatre? Who is
financing creative writing? Though writing is a solitary thing, to get the work
published and out to the public, you need financing.
The inability of judges for this year’s ANA literary prizes
to announce shortlists in some categories has continued to generate heat.
What’s your reaction to the hullabaloo that the money meant for some of these
categories of prizes has been diverted, which accounts for why there are no
shortlisted writers for the affected categories?
(laughs) I am also worried about that. I have noticed some
regularities in terms of what comes from the adjudication panels for some two,
three years now. The judges have consistently maintained that some entries for
some categories are not good enough to be awarded. The most recurrent is that
of the children’s literature. The judges have been complaining that the
writings for children today are not making any mark. They have criticised the
shoddy storyline, the lack of imagination, and poor production output.
NLNG did the same last time by refusing to award the children’s literature
prize.
But, in those days, unpublished manuscripts used to win some
of these prizes…
I will come to that. For the prize for critical works, the
judges who adjudge this category are also scholars who write critical works for
publication, and they have not been too impressed with the essays being
submitted. The same thing happened in the NLNG. Apart from the prize won by
Professor Isidore Diala, the prize hasn’t been awarded, yet our scholars
publish beautiful articles in international journals. What I suspect is that
Nigerian scholars don’t enter for this category of prize, because they feel it
of no use; what they are after is to gain promotions, so they prefer publishing
in reputable journals where they will be applauded. But I think they should
redirect some of these essays to the ANA Prize to encourage our creativity.
It is not deliberate that we did not have shortlists in some
categories of the ANA prizes this year. We don’t influence the judges in anyway
so that the integrity of the prizes will remain. Maybe we have to redirect some
of these prizes. ANA prizes, at the beginning, were meant to encourage new voices.
That is why in the old manual, there was a provision that, if the a known
author, a published text, is going neck to neck with an unpublished author and
unpublished text, the prize should be awarded to the new author. This is the
philosophy of ANA prizes. We have not changed this philosophy. That is why
sometimes manuscripts do win some of these prizes. But we have come to a stage
where we can upgrade on our prize philosophy. Those who criticize these prizes
need to find out the philosophy behind these prizes so that when they are
announce, you don’t go all the way to say something untoward has been done.
Most times the politics people think are there are not there. It is basically
the preference of the judges.
Two years into your tenure as ANA President, to what extent
have you impacted the writers?
Along with my team, I have done my best to achieve nearly
everything I have promised when I was aspiring to become the president of the
association, and one of it is drawing a development plan for the association,
and we are already implementing the plan as we speak. Then, I promised to
restructure the association on internal governance by making sure chapters are
more democratic, and I have done that by enforcing the conduct of elections in
most of the chapters. I have also been able to do the documentation of the
history of the association. I have also done the second edition of the Nigerian
Writers Series. The latest edition is dedicated to Children’s Literature. I
promised the internationalisation of the association by liaising with
organisations that we can partner with some projects and programmes. I have
been relation with Ghanaian Writers Association and the Pan African Writers
Association very well, with ANA participating in their programmes and them, in
ours. We encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas with other countries. I also
promised to fast-track the development of the Writers’ Village. Last years’
convention, I took writers to that place, which had never been done before. A
land committee has been monitoring development on that land on monthly basis,
interviewing the developer and accessing what he has done so far. If you go
there now, our structures are coming up.
As I speak to you, the first completed structure of the
association will be ready in the next few weeks. We asked the developer to give
us quickly a prototype office, which we can use as a national secretariat of
the association, pending when the whole land would be fully developed, and that
is about being completed. That was facilitated by the foundation laying
ceremony five months ago where some of those we invited, out of their own
volition (it was not a fundraising ceremony), decided to contribute some money
to help us to speed up things. We got at least I million from Hon Jerry Alagboso,
which I channeled to the developer to use as a seed, apart from what he had
been doing already, that would lead to the completion of a structure, and he is
now about delivering the structure. I have achieved about 70 percent of what I
promised before the election. We can’t achieve everything due to limited
resources and the recession we have found ourselves. We have achieved what we
have done so far due to determination and passion.
The first edition was done with all good intention and ten
titles were published, and schemes were laid out to ensure those books sold so
that the series could be self-sustaining. We gave the titles to four
publishers, who were mandated to market the books. But what affected it is
still the same thing that affected the book industry in Nigeria. It is a
general problem that books don’t sell in large numbers to warrant the authors
getting fantastic salaries. The publishers make some modest sales and return to
us some paltry royalties based on the economics of book marketing and sales in
the country. So, there is nothing extraordinary that happened to the first
edition of the series that should warrant anybody saying he is not getting
royalties. The books are with the publishers, and they are being marketed here
and there. From the sales, they are not that too substantial to warrant any
author receiving fantastic royalties. We spent about seven million naira on
that series, but what we have realised after more than four years is not up to
300,000 naira. When the money came in, I reached out to the authors to send
their account details. Based on what we had and the agreement with the
publishers to pay 10 percent, their royalties ranged from 5,000 to 20,000
naira. The authors refused to send their account details. They went to the
social media to make all sorts of noise.
However, I am not saying that’s the picture we wanted with
that series. I wanted a better picture were there would be heavy marketing of
those titles; where schools and regulatory agencies would buy those books in
large numbers so that we that invested in those titles, along with the authors,
would smile at the end of the day; but that was not happening. It is nobody’s
fault. Books generally are facing that problem. We should think of how to solve
that problem so that we can smile to the bank. The way out is for ANA to
directly take charge of those titles and market them, or we can think of
innovative ways of marketing books. Despite the lack of profitability in book
marketing, we have seen Nigerian authors who say their books sell in thousands.
When I asked how they did it, they told me they directly marketed their books.
So, if individuals can talk like that, we have to understudy what they are
doing, and ANA that has bigger capacity than individuals can do better. I have
seen a publisher who approached JAMB, and his book is purchased in millions.
The author was even complaining that he got royalty of 30 million naira. If an
individual could strike that kind of deal with JAMB, why can’t we, as an
association, do better?
We chose children’s literature for the 2nd series, because
children’s book, with contents, can sell. We intend to make these texts sell so
we can recoup our investment and also make the authors get substantial sells in
return. I am also trying to use these titles to power the A Book-A-Child
Project nationwide. We are going to collaborate with individuals and corporate
bodies nationwide who are going to invest in the distribution of some of these
works beyond keeping them in bookshops for people to buy them, and we are
talking of sales that will enter the school curriculum. We have already started
marketing these books greatly across the country. We expect that when these
books are maximally distributed, we should recoup our investment in them and
also pay the authors substantial royalties and be able to permeate the
educational psyche of our children, because the works are talking about
ennobling virtues of education, empowerment and gender issues. Of course, we
have a publishing imprint now, NWS Publishers. So, we are directly taking
custodies of the books and its circulation. This is a way of overcoming the
obstacles we faced in the first edition of NWS.
How prepared is the association to host this year’s
convention in Makurdi?
We are very prepared. We have gone to Makurdi to inspect all
the facilities we have in place for the convention: accommodations and venues.
We have also seen an indication of the readiness of the state government to
support that convention in spite of the general economic problem facing states
in Nigeria. In spite of the environmental challenges currently facing the
state; the governor has extended the hand of fellowship to writers. The Special
Adviser to the governor and the commissioner for Education that is minding our
business have assured us of the governor’s readiness to host us, and the
governor has approved some money for the convention, which will soon be
accessed. Benue is ready to showcase their culture to Nigerians. It has
hosted the convention twice in the 1980s and the last in 2003.
Will you be running again?
In ANA, it is the convention for midstream election not to
be contested. Once a regime has set out and it is relatively doing well, people
would like it to finish the second term before electing new set of people.
Midstream election can only be contested if those elected have performed below
average, but I must say my exco hasn’t performed before average. And, if our
performance has been above average, I am certain the ANA Congress will give us
the full support before passing the baton to a new set of people.
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