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.

http://www.praxismagonline.com/in-conversation-with-denja-abdullahi-i-will-lead-ana-to-sustainable-prosperity/

Denja Abdullahi: What makes you a writer are the books you write

Denja Abdullahi: What makes you a writer are the books you write

By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim | Publish Date: Apr 10 2016 5:00AMSince his election as President of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Malam Denja Abdullahi has had to contend with a number of issues including the furore over the purported death of the Nigerian Writers Series, accusations of sexual molestation leveled against a member of the association and dealing with dissenting voices within the association. Daily Trust sat down with the poet and playwright to discuss the challenges facing the association.

Grappling with the beast of ANA and “unbundling” its convention
We met in a bookshop in Garki. Surrounded and hemmed in by shelves loaded with books, it seemed a fitting place to discuss Nigerian writing and writers with the president of the Association of Nigeria Authors, ANA. Denja Abdullahi, tall and imposing, has been occupying that position in the last few months, since he was elected at the association’s annual convention in Kaduna last November.
Many people expected Denja’s administration to hit the ground running. He has been the vice president of the association in the last four years and the Secretary General in the previous four. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he threw his hat into the race to lead the association established by the likes of Chinua Achebe, who happened to be its first president.
“It has been very challenging,” Denja Abdullahi said, “this is an association that doesn’t have a stable source of finance because to do anything at all, you need to sacrifice your time and resources and put on hold your personal affairs.”
Booming voice fills the bookshop as he spoke for the next hour or so about the state of the association, the politics that has characterized and stifled it, allegations of sexual molestation brought against one of its members with another member thrown in jail for defamation while another is battling a film producer for allegedly stealing her story.
Denja did not shy away from these issues, taking them head on with gladiatorial verve. Perhaps it was this energy that most members expected to see when the new executive was elected in November. Denja Abdullahi is all too aware of this.
“At least this first year there must be a sign that we can deliver. We have to hit the ground running,” he said.
As a cultural administrator of many years standing, he knows that the success of any project will be hinged on the ground works, and this is what they have been working on, he said.
Already, he said, they have constituted a National Advisory Council, something that the association’s constitutions provides for, but which had never been utilized by previous executives.
The council has three former national presidents of the association and two “elder statesmen.”
Alongside these, they have set up a Strategic Planning Committee, whose objectives would be the review of ANA’s strengths and weaknesses, and come with a rolling plan for the next years.
 “In the second quarter of the year, when we have funding, they will kick the ground rolling,” Denja said.
While running for the president of the association, Denja had proposed to “unbundle” the association’s flagship event, the ANA Convention. I asked him what he meant by that and he was quite clear of the answer, even if the details are still not clear.
 “What we mean by unbundling the convention is that we are going to pull out some programmes from the convention because they have become difficult to sustain. The convention is usually choked up with events that some of them are not done properly. The plenary session is one of the ones we want to take out of the convention and see the possibility, maybe next year, if that is not possible this year, of holding a major conference to be held by ANA maybe in partnership with some universities - that will focus on contemporary realities of writing in Nigeria and Africa, or that will draw attention to critiquing Nigerian writers by diverting attention to the newer writers. So we are trying to pull that plenary session to stand on its own as a conference of Nigerian literature to be held annually,” he said.
The plenary session, which has always drawn academics from across Nigerian universities to present papers on literature, will not be the only one to go. Denja has grand plans for the convention drama as well.
 “We hope to take the prize winning play, which will be staged and taken round schools or to different cities. These are ways of promoting contemporary writers and making the convention a purely writerly event,” he said.
The ANA Awards Night too will become a stand-alone event, where Denja hopes to draw sponsors to fete the writers like other prominent prize awards.
Making the convention a writerly event is key. The mix of politics and a tradition spanning some thirty-five years have conspired to make the ANA convention fairly predictable and consequently boring. There is drama every other year when the writers try to outdo the politicians as the association’s election come by.
The rise of international literary festivals across the country and the continent may have exposed writers to other ways of doing things. Denja Abdullahi realizes that though ANA needs to maintain its traditions, it will still have to make changes to remain relevant.
“We will not go the way of the literary festivals because I believe there should be varieties. ANA will maintain the fundamentals of the convention because we are an association and it is also a group devoted to promoting the writers’ welfare. What they do is also important because it glamourizes literature. Whatever we see that works with these festivals, we will also do it,” he said.
The plan is for these changes to kick off at this year’s convention. Denja knows it is a daunting challenge but one he is committed to. “We have started work on the convention; we won’t wait until August and September. We are trying to make those changes this year and if we can’t do it all, we will do most of it because this will be the 36th convention. It will no longer be a choked convention because we want this to be a convention that will celebrate the writers and the books that are available,” he said.

Documenting ANA’s history
Alongside these, are plans to premiere a documentary on the history of the association, which is being filmed at the moment. The lack of any historical account of the formation of the association is something that Denja is worried about.
“We are already doing a documentary on the history of ANA because we have discovered that no one has really told the story of ANA. Filming on the documentary has already started and we plan to premiere it at the convention,” he said. There should be a record of ANA, maybe even in a book form where people can know where the association started from, and where it is going. The book form may take a while so we have gone the audio visual way.”

On intellectual theft.
In December 2015, a few weeks after Denja took over the reins as ANA Chairman, a member of the association, Ify Asia Chiemeziem, took to social media to announce that Nollywood producer Reginald Ebere had stolen her work and adapted it into a film without her consent.
This caused discomfort within the writing sphere and many members felt that ANA didn’t come out to lead the charge on Chiemezlem’s behalf.
Denja Abdullahi disagrees, saying they have done a lot and they are still doing more.
“When this case came up, I quickly got in touch with her and said ANA will gladly take this up and I gave her links to intellectual property lawyers and have given her advice as to what steps to take and she has been doing that,” he said.
Beyond this work in the background, Denja said ANA will be going to war on the writer’s behalf. “The case is going to court very soon and what we will do is to join in the case to help see it through and insist on a judgment that will be of benefit to writers.”
The association, according to Denja is building relations with copyright bodies to protect the works of its members and ensure they get justice when there is an infringement.
“At the level of ANA, there should be a copyright committee where authors can lay formal complaints so that when members write in to notify us of any copyright infringement we can take it up.
“We are constantly in touch with the copyright commission. Only a few weeks back they wrote in to say they want to amend the copyright law and they sent us the draft. I gave it to our legal adviser who read it and wrote back more than 40 or 50 pages in response and they wrote back to thank us for our contribution,” he said.
It will be interesting to see this scenario play out and how far ANA is willing to go with this. What is important is that for the association to be relevant, it has to stick its neck out for its members who feel cheated.

And then there was sexual molestation
There are others too who need protection and they felt ANA couldn’t do that for them. When poet Chijioke Amu Nnadi was accused by a retinue of girls of sexual molestation, ANA towed a cautious line.
“We were conscious to avoid victimizing anyone,” Denja said.
It was important to be cautious in approaching the case which created quite a storm within the writing community, but perhaps it was this line of thinking that the victims had when the issue happened. This much Denja admitted.
“According to the report by the Whole Woman Network, which investigated the allegations, when the girls were asked why they didn’t report the molestations to ANA, they said they were afraid of patriarchal tendencies that may offer protection to the person commiting the crime than the victims.”
But he assured that the case has necessitated that ANA took another look at itself and made proper provisions for such eventualities while protecting younger members of the association.
“In the ANA constitution, there are disciplinary procedures and any one accused of misconduct would be investigated and measures will be taken. If such an allegation comes to us we would investigate it. Two or three years back, we were thinking of bringing out a separate code of conduct but we realized that the constitution has already taken care of this even if not fully. With the development of this case, it is an opportunity to put in place a code of conduct, even if to regulate the interactions between us, the public and the government,” he said.
But that does not imply that the association will sweep these allegations under the carpet. The report from Whole Woman Network has been formally submitted to ANA and Denja said the association will take measures, starting with sending the report to Mr. Amu Nnadi and asking for a response from him.
“When the report comes back from the accused, there is always a disciplinary committee that will sit down and recommend what needs to be done to sanction him if found guilty. If there are no sanctions, there must be justifiable reasons for not having them. We are not a law court but we must find ways to caution ourselves, discipline ourselves.”

Is the Nigerian Writers Series dying?
One other controversial issue that has been trending with regards to the association is the Nigerian Writers Series, inaugurated by the last administration. Under the series, ten novels by first time Nigerian writers were published by ANA in collaboration with four publishing houses with grants from the Niger State government.
There is no fund to run a second batch and Denja Abdullahi had in a separate interview indicated that the faith of the series is up in the air. This caused a furore among writers who wanted clarification from the president.
Denja said, “What happened was that when I took over, we contacted the publishers and asked them what the picture is like since we have saddled them with the responsibility of marketing and distributing the books. They wrote back formally and listed the copies ANA collected, the copies given to the authors and the copies that were sold. When the numbers came in, I saw a situation that is precarious if the series will be self-sustaining. If we use, say five million, to publish 10 books then we should make seven million or at the very least make our five million back for the business to be self-sustaining.
“So when they wrote back, the figures were nothing to write home about. We got back figures from two out of four publishers and what we have seen from the figures that have come in is that it is not sustainable unless we find ways of boosting sales, either by doing more for book promotion or getting the books on the syllabus of schools.
“The Nigerian Writers Series is not going moribund because the books are still there. They can still be sold so we can make a return on investment. When we are doing a second phase, we will have to reassess the model and possibly consider other genre. And we have been advised to go into something that is lucrative, which is children’s literature, which is easier to market.”
One thing the authors published under the series complained about was that ANA hadn’t done enough to push the book into the market. Denja realized this, but also admits that since ANA was not set up as a publishing house and doesn’t have a compliment of full time staff; it is quite a challenge to do that. But the realization that the association may not make its money back from the venture might be the push it needs to do more to promote these books.
What the debate about the Nigerian Writers’ Series threw up was the existence of a faction that intends to demand answers from the current executive. This is clearly a fall out from the acrimonious campaign that resulted in the emergence to the Denja Abdullahi-led administration with the elections.
“There was a public extension of goodwill and we intend to extend a hand of fellowship so that everyone will know that the time of politicking is over. There is no way we can work without involving everyone because this is voluntary work and we must work together to move forward.
“There is no point having someone who is competent and then deciding not to work with him because you don’t like his face. You have to work with the best hands.”
Denja said, “And those who didn’t win the election should also reciprocate when we reach out to them with hands of fellowship to accept and work with us because in ANA once elections are over, we come together to work. That is the pattern we expect. We also expect constructive criticism. What we don’t like is the trend that some people will form themselves into an opposition to actively oppose this administration. When Jerry Agada lost to Remi Raji four years ago, did he constitute himself into an opposition? He didn’t and his supporters kept their peace and allowed the government to work. But those who want to oppose me or oppose my administration, if they do that are only wasting their time. I know I have work to do for the association, and we are going to do it.”
One thing you can’t take away from ANA is the prevalence of politicking, sometimes at the detriment of the craft, of writing and promoting writing, Denja acknowledges this as well.
“People that think too much of politics may not even know what is happening in the association because if they do, they won’t be doing what they are doing. Being the president of ANA doesn’t mean it will have any direct bearing on my writing or that I will get a lucrative publishing deal or that I have huge resources at my disposal. People just want to attach portfolios to their names.
“In the end, what makes you a writer is the book you write so if you put politicking ahead of your craft, it will show in your work. If people read the association well, there won’t be any point in fighting.”

https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/art-ideas/denja-abdullahi-what-makes-you-a-writer-are-the-books-you-write/141704.html

We are set to make more writers millionaires

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.

http://sunnewsonline.com/denja-abdullahi-we-are-set-to-make-more-writers-millionaires/