Literature
DR. EMMAN USMAN SHEHU, founding President of Abuja Writers Forum (AWF), and Director of the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Abuja, hails from Maradun in Zamfara State. The holder of doctorate in African Literature in English has published two collections of poetry, Questions For Big Brother and Open Sesame. A third collection, Icarus Rising will soon be available. He is also working on a collection of short stories. Shehu is a veteran journalist, having worked in both broadcast and print media. He has also had a stint as a university lecturer. He is currently nurturing the fledgling Topaz Publishing House which has recently published Ozioma Izuora?s Dreams Deffered (Fiction) and Iyorwuese Hagher?s Once Upon An Eagle (Poetry). In this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, he speaks about the AWF; its objectives, activities, problems and prospects. Excerpts:
When was the Abuja Writers Forum founded and what is the main aim of establishing it?
Dr. Emman Usman Shehu: It started in June 2008. Basically, our concern is to provide interventions that will uplift Nigeria?s literature, because we believe that our literature, especially in English, has the capability of being a world class literature. If we are sounding like a mission statement of one of these corporate organisations, this is because that is the only way we can put it across. As you are well aware, even before the talk of re-branding, Nigerian literature has been responsible for giving Nigeria a positive image ? even long before independence. So the quality is there, the potentials are there, it remains for us to find ways of ensuring there is consistency in the production of Nigerian literature, especially in English.
From its beginning to date, how would you describe your development?
It is been challenging, given the circumstances of our birth. As with any new product, any new brand, the initial challenge is making people recognise and accept you. That was the initial problem we had. But gradually we?ve been able to show through our consistency, the seriousness of our commitment to what we have envisioned for the development of Nigerian literature; the initial difficulties have been overcome. But then there are structural challenges especially in this sector because you discover that not much is being done in terms of providing grants, fellowships and sponsorships in the area of creative writing or literature or book publishing and in the arts generally in this country. Whereas the musicians enjoy millions of naira being invested by the telecommunication companies, for instance, the same cannot be said of literature. So we overcome the initial challenges only to be faced with another set of challenges. But we are soldiering on.
Specifically, what are the activities of AWF?
One, we have the guest writer session which for us is an opportunity to make emerging writers and established writers have access to the public. You know very well that in Nigeria we don?t have a structure that enables people to even know that books have been published. This is a very serious structural problem. Unlike in developed economies where a publisher willingly advertises, creates an environment whereby a forthcoming book is known and by the time the book comes out there is so much publicity and the author therefore is known by the public, we don?t have that here. So the guest writer session intends to address that by providing a forum for the published writers to be publicised. The requirement for you to be a guest writer is that you must be published. It is not for just any writer, you have to be published. We?ve been inundated with requests by people who want to be guest writers, but the number one condition is that you must have a book. Because for us, this is a platform to publicise your book, not a platform to publicise yourself. It is a forum for the public to get to patronise your work, to know what your vision is as a writer. It is also an opportunity for publishers to use the platform as a vehicle to push their books across. That is the number one thing about the guest writer session.
The other thing, as you witnessed yesterday, is that we also, in terms of structuring of the event, want to carry along all our fellow creative artists. In other words, we host musicians, fine artists, performance poets, etc. The idea is to provide a forum where all these aspects of creativity can be appreciated by the audience. Through this, we become more literate and appreciate the various aspects of creativity. That will also enhance the appreciation of what writers are doing because once you stimulate the senses people just don?t sit down and listen to a writer but there is quite a lot that is going on visually and orally; other senses are also being challenged and stimulated and so people become more appreciative, more enlightened. And we have noticed that our audience has become more and more critical as a result of this, as most of the guest writers have noted that they come and face an audience that is very demanding, an audience that is very alert, sensitive and critical. So that is one intervention.
The other intervention is the weekly critique session that we have. The critique session is an intervention that enables members of the forum to have their works looked at by fellow writers. You produce your work and we have a process whereby your work is made available. The session is even more critical because it is for work in progress. As you well know, we don?t have an environment where people showcase their ideas, so this is what this platform provides. Every Sunday, minus the Sunday immediately after the reading session, we meet and tear each other?s works apart. And everybody has the opportunity therefore to have his or her work in progress assessed and have suggestions. We don?t leave it at that; our intention is that through this process we encourage writers by having an avenue to have these works from the critique session published. And that is why recently we launched Dugwe, (i.e. ?Forum?, in Gbagyi language) a journal of new writing. All the things in the first edition of Dugwe are materials that have been critiqued at the critique session ? The writers have gone back to rework them and then we publish them, minus, of course, the contributions by the previous guest writers.
As somebody has noted, people who come to these sessions gradually become confident in their writing and that is basically the intention; to provide an environment whereby we can strengthen the skills of those who are interested in writing. I feel this is necessary since we don?t have an environment where people go to learn creative writing on a regular basis.
This brings us to another intervention we have been doing of recent, which is the monthly creative writing workshop. We usually do that during the guest writer session. Either we get the guest writer to take the sessions or as we have done in the past few months, we run a series and source other resource persons to do the creative writing session. This monthly creative writing session has proved to be quite interesting; we have had people coming all the way from Enugu, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Makurdi, Jos and Bauchi, just to attend it. We?ve just finished the poetry series and hopefully in January we will start the fiction series.
Then we also have literary competition. We think there are not enough literary contests in the country so our intervention is to provide more avenues for writers to be able to showcase their works, whether published or unpublished. In fact, for us it is very important that the unpublished writer has an opportunity to have his manuscript brought into the public domain. Again, as you are well aware, we don?t have a process in the country whereby the publishing houses are organised in such a way that they get quick responses when writers send in their manuscripts. So this is an opportunity for unpublished writers to bring their manuscripts. And in the maiden edition that we did, several manuscripts actually came ahead of published works in terms of winning, which shows that we have touched on something very vital. Our hope is that from then on the winning manuscript can then be taken to the publishing houses, making it a lot easier for the process of getting books published to be hastened.
What are your future plans?
We want to expand the workshop series and not just make it an Abuja-based thing but also a nation-wide thing. So we are looking at the possibilities of doing it at various levels. We intend also to go into publishing. There have been a lot of pressure on us to go into publishing, but it is not something we want to rush into. We want to create a structure that will stand the test of time, be worthwhile and done with integrity, because most time what happens is that these things are done and you discover that they is so much self-serving nature to it and at the end of the day the purpose is defeated because the quality you are looking for, the standard that you want to establish, you fail to do them.
There are other things we intend to do. We are trying to see if we can regularly get books into the new library that has been built by the Education Resource Centre. It is also one of our interventions; to establish contacts to ensure that books are available. It will be very unfortunate if in these days and age people go to the library in the capital city of Nigeria and they don?t see current books by Nigerian writers. And that is the situation; if you go to the library now there is nothing in the library. We must commend the Education Resource Centre for doing what most people have not done. As you well know, the issue of libraries in this country has become a sore point; government is no longer interested in supporting libraries. But libraries are a very important part of our literature, of our reading culture. Because, if you cannot afford the books you can go to the library and read them. And indeed in developed economies that is what they do; they stock the libraries regularly with new books and encourage you to go and read them. And that is an advantage. For instance, if every library in this country, 36 libraries, if every state has a library, and if they all purchase nothing less than 50 copies of Hoodlums, for instance; what will that do to you?
It will go a long way.
It will indeed go a long way. In the developed economies this is what happens. The library becomes the number one place of supporting writers, because once a book comes out and they are convinced about the quality of the book, libraries make sure they stock them. In these countries there are state libraries, community libraries, city libraries, all kinds of libraries. And that is why the writers are sure that there are avenues for them to be patronised. We don?t have that here. That is why we feel that we must do this intervention of encouraging the city library. Majority of the books we will be buying are books by our own writers, not foreign writers. And that will be a plus for our writers.
So far, how have you been able to sponsor your numerous activities?
Well, you know, when there is passion you will do everything you can to see that your passion is realised. Sponsorship in this area is very difficult, it is hard; Nigerians, especially those who are in a position to provide sponsorship seem to have their values placed somewhere else. You know, the interesting thing is we all shout about poor reading culture, but what are we doing to change the situation? You invite people to come to a book launch, they will not come. And the issue of book launch; normally that is not the way a book should be publicised. But that is the way the structure has been. We have publishing houses where most time it is the author that puts his money into it and he wants to recoup all he has put in. So this is why we have come to a situation of a book launch. This has become part of our culture. But you invite people, how many people do you see? If it is a wedding, or chieftaincy title celebration or political gathering, you see people there. Look at the other day, Peoples? Democratic Party was launching funds for its secretariat; see the amount of money that was realised. That money could go a long way to turn around book production process in this country, if we could do something like that. But then people don?t do that. So we have to look for creative ways of raising money.
We started first of all by making commitments individually and occasionally we have somebody who will say ?I like what you are doing, please, how can I support you?? and then we bring in something. But we hope that gradually this will change as people see that we are serious. Then there is also the issue of integrity, people in the past who have supported such causes have found out that their money were not properly used and could not be accounted for and so people are hesitant to put in their money, because it might go into something else. But I think with what we are doing things are going to change. A couple of people have expressed their willingness to be of assistance to us. The important thing is for us to continue to find a creative means of generating funds and keep the forum going because consistency is the key to what we are doing. If you are not consistent then people will not take you seriously. But I think our consistency is beginning to pay off.
(c) Interviewed by Sumaila Umaisha and published in New Nigerian newspapers.
- Umaisha Unleashes His Hoodlums On The Public
Hoodlums, a collection of short stories by Sumaila Isah Umaisha, an Associate Editor with the New Nigerian Newspapers, and Chairman of the Kaduna State Chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, was presented to the public in Abuja,...
- Umaisha, Omalicha Thrill Abuja Writers
Writers? brotherhood never had a single event so loaded. That was what happened at the November edition of the Guest Writer Session organized by Abuja Writers? Forum (AWF). It was a literary outing packed with interesting activities. Writers from various...
- Revealed: The Untold Stories Of The National Assembly
HON. WALE OKEDIRAN, the immediate past President of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, has just completed a fictional account of his tenure as a member of the Federal House of Representatives from 2004 to 2007. Titled Tenants of the House, it was...
- Rebuilding The Reading And Writing Culture (interview)
DR. BIBI BAKARE-YUSUF is a publisher based in Abuja. She started Cassava Republic Press in 2006. The company is focused on publishing quality African writing at an affordable price. It is a social enterprise, driven by the dream to re-develop a reading...
- Gimba: 'nigerian Literature Has Come A Long Way' (interview)
This interview was conducted by me in 2005 to mark the 45th Independence Anniversary of Nigeria. Abubakar Gimba, who is one of the renowned Nigerian writers assesses the country's literary development over the years. NNW: It is 45 years since...
Literature
AWF: A commitment to literary service
DR. EMMAN USMAN SHEHU, founding President of Abuja Writers Forum (AWF), and Director of the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Abuja, hails from Maradun in Zamfara State. The holder of doctorate in African Literature in English has published two collections of poetry, Questions For Big Brother and Open Sesame. A third collection, Icarus Rising will soon be available. He is also working on a collection of short stories. Shehu is a veteran journalist, having worked in both broadcast and print media. He has also had a stint as a university lecturer. He is currently nurturing the fledgling Topaz Publishing House which has recently published Ozioma Izuora?s Dreams Deffered (Fiction) and Iyorwuese Hagher?s Once Upon An Eagle (Poetry). In this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, he speaks about the AWF; its objectives, activities, problems and prospects. Excerpts:
When was the Abuja Writers Forum founded and what is the main aim of establishing it?
Dr. Emman Usman Shehu: It started in June 2008. Basically, our concern is to provide interventions that will uplift Nigeria?s literature, because we believe that our literature, especially in English, has the capability of being a world class literature. If we are sounding like a mission statement of one of these corporate organisations, this is because that is the only way we can put it across. As you are well aware, even before the talk of re-branding, Nigerian literature has been responsible for giving Nigeria a positive image ? even long before independence. So the quality is there, the potentials are there, it remains for us to find ways of ensuring there is consistency in the production of Nigerian literature, especially in English.
From its beginning to date, how would you describe your development?
It is been challenging, given the circumstances of our birth. As with any new product, any new brand, the initial challenge is making people recognise and accept you. That was the initial problem we had. But gradually we?ve been able to show through our consistency, the seriousness of our commitment to what we have envisioned for the development of Nigerian literature; the initial difficulties have been overcome. But then there are structural challenges especially in this sector because you discover that not much is being done in terms of providing grants, fellowships and sponsorships in the area of creative writing or literature or book publishing and in the arts generally in this country. Whereas the musicians enjoy millions of naira being invested by the telecommunication companies, for instance, the same cannot be said of literature. So we overcome the initial challenges only to be faced with another set of challenges. But we are soldiering on.
Specifically, what are the activities of AWF?
One, we have the guest writer session which for us is an opportunity to make emerging writers and established writers have access to the public. You know very well that in Nigeria we don?t have a structure that enables people to even know that books have been published. This is a very serious structural problem. Unlike in developed economies where a publisher willingly advertises, creates an environment whereby a forthcoming book is known and by the time the book comes out there is so much publicity and the author therefore is known by the public, we don?t have that here. So the guest writer session intends to address that by providing a forum for the published writers to be publicised. The requirement for you to be a guest writer is that you must be published. It is not for just any writer, you have to be published. We?ve been inundated with requests by people who want to be guest writers, but the number one condition is that you must have a book. Because for us, this is a platform to publicise your book, not a platform to publicise yourself. It is a forum for the public to get to patronise your work, to know what your vision is as a writer. It is also an opportunity for publishers to use the platform as a vehicle to push their books across. That is the number one thing about the guest writer session.
The other thing, as you witnessed yesterday, is that we also, in terms of structuring of the event, want to carry along all our fellow creative artists. In other words, we host musicians, fine artists, performance poets, etc. The idea is to provide a forum where all these aspects of creativity can be appreciated by the audience. Through this, we become more literate and appreciate the various aspects of creativity. That will also enhance the appreciation of what writers are doing because once you stimulate the senses people just don?t sit down and listen to a writer but there is quite a lot that is going on visually and orally; other senses are also being challenged and stimulated and so people become more appreciative, more enlightened. And we have noticed that our audience has become more and more critical as a result of this, as most of the guest writers have noted that they come and face an audience that is very demanding, an audience that is very alert, sensitive and critical. So that is one intervention.
The other intervention is the weekly critique session that we have. The critique session is an intervention that enables members of the forum to have their works looked at by fellow writers. You produce your work and we have a process whereby your work is made available. The session is even more critical because it is for work in progress. As you well know, we don?t have an environment where people showcase their ideas, so this is what this platform provides. Every Sunday, minus the Sunday immediately after the reading session, we meet and tear each other?s works apart. And everybody has the opportunity therefore to have his or her work in progress assessed and have suggestions. We don?t leave it at that; our intention is that through this process we encourage writers by having an avenue to have these works from the critique session published. And that is why recently we launched Dugwe, (i.e. ?Forum?, in Gbagyi language) a journal of new writing. All the things in the first edition of Dugwe are materials that have been critiqued at the critique session ? The writers have gone back to rework them and then we publish them, minus, of course, the contributions by the previous guest writers.
As somebody has noted, people who come to these sessions gradually become confident in their writing and that is basically the intention; to provide an environment whereby we can strengthen the skills of those who are interested in writing. I feel this is necessary since we don?t have an environment where people go to learn creative writing on a regular basis.
This brings us to another intervention we have been doing of recent, which is the monthly creative writing workshop. We usually do that during the guest writer session. Either we get the guest writer to take the sessions or as we have done in the past few months, we run a series and source other resource persons to do the creative writing session. This monthly creative writing session has proved to be quite interesting; we have had people coming all the way from Enugu, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Makurdi, Jos and Bauchi, just to attend it. We?ve just finished the poetry series and hopefully in January we will start the fiction series.
Then we also have literary competition. We think there are not enough literary contests in the country so our intervention is to provide more avenues for writers to be able to showcase their works, whether published or unpublished. In fact, for us it is very important that the unpublished writer has an opportunity to have his manuscript brought into the public domain. Again, as you are well aware, we don?t have a process in the country whereby the publishing houses are organised in such a way that they get quick responses when writers send in their manuscripts. So this is an opportunity for unpublished writers to bring their manuscripts. And in the maiden edition that we did, several manuscripts actually came ahead of published works in terms of winning, which shows that we have touched on something very vital. Our hope is that from then on the winning manuscript can then be taken to the publishing houses, making it a lot easier for the process of getting books published to be hastened.
What are your future plans?
We want to expand the workshop series and not just make it an Abuja-based thing but also a nation-wide thing. So we are looking at the possibilities of doing it at various levels. We intend also to go into publishing. There have been a lot of pressure on us to go into publishing, but it is not something we want to rush into. We want to create a structure that will stand the test of time, be worthwhile and done with integrity, because most time what happens is that these things are done and you discover that they is so much self-serving nature to it and at the end of the day the purpose is defeated because the quality you are looking for, the standard that you want to establish, you fail to do them.
There are other things we intend to do. We are trying to see if we can regularly get books into the new library that has been built by the Education Resource Centre. It is also one of our interventions; to establish contacts to ensure that books are available. It will be very unfortunate if in these days and age people go to the library in the capital city of Nigeria and they don?t see current books by Nigerian writers. And that is the situation; if you go to the library now there is nothing in the library. We must commend the Education Resource Centre for doing what most people have not done. As you well know, the issue of libraries in this country has become a sore point; government is no longer interested in supporting libraries. But libraries are a very important part of our literature, of our reading culture. Because, if you cannot afford the books you can go to the library and read them. And indeed in developed economies that is what they do; they stock the libraries regularly with new books and encourage you to go and read them. And that is an advantage. For instance, if every library in this country, 36 libraries, if every state has a library, and if they all purchase nothing less than 50 copies of Hoodlums, for instance; what will that do to you?
It will go a long way.
It will indeed go a long way. In the developed economies this is what happens. The library becomes the number one place of supporting writers, because once a book comes out and they are convinced about the quality of the book, libraries make sure they stock them. In these countries there are state libraries, community libraries, city libraries, all kinds of libraries. And that is why the writers are sure that there are avenues for them to be patronised. We don?t have that here. That is why we feel that we must do this intervention of encouraging the city library. Majority of the books we will be buying are books by our own writers, not foreign writers. And that will be a plus for our writers.
So far, how have you been able to sponsor your numerous activities?
Well, you know, when there is passion you will do everything you can to see that your passion is realised. Sponsorship in this area is very difficult, it is hard; Nigerians, especially those who are in a position to provide sponsorship seem to have their values placed somewhere else. You know, the interesting thing is we all shout about poor reading culture, but what are we doing to change the situation? You invite people to come to a book launch, they will not come. And the issue of book launch; normally that is not the way a book should be publicised. But that is the way the structure has been. We have publishing houses where most time it is the author that puts his money into it and he wants to recoup all he has put in. So this is why we have come to a situation of a book launch. This has become part of our culture. But you invite people, how many people do you see? If it is a wedding, or chieftaincy title celebration or political gathering, you see people there. Look at the other day, Peoples? Democratic Party was launching funds for its secretariat; see the amount of money that was realised. That money could go a long way to turn around book production process in this country, if we could do something like that. But then people don?t do that. So we have to look for creative ways of raising money.
We started first of all by making commitments individually and occasionally we have somebody who will say ?I like what you are doing, please, how can I support you?? and then we bring in something. But we hope that gradually this will change as people see that we are serious. Then there is also the issue of integrity, people in the past who have supported such causes have found out that their money were not properly used and could not be accounted for and so people are hesitant to put in their money, because it might go into something else. But I think with what we are doing things are going to change. A couple of people have expressed their willingness to be of assistance to us. The important thing is for us to continue to find a creative means of generating funds and keep the forum going because consistency is the key to what we are doing. If you are not consistent then people will not take you seriously. But I think our consistency is beginning to pay off.
(c) Interviewed by Sumaila Umaisha and published in New Nigerian newspapers.
- Umaisha Unleashes His Hoodlums On The Public
Hoodlums, a collection of short stories by Sumaila Isah Umaisha, an Associate Editor with the New Nigerian Newspapers, and Chairman of the Kaduna State Chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, was presented to the public in Abuja,...
- Umaisha, Omalicha Thrill Abuja Writers
Writers? brotherhood never had a single event so loaded. That was what happened at the November edition of the Guest Writer Session organized by Abuja Writers? Forum (AWF). It was a literary outing packed with interesting activities. Writers from various...
- Revealed: The Untold Stories Of The National Assembly
HON. WALE OKEDIRAN, the immediate past President of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, has just completed a fictional account of his tenure as a member of the Federal House of Representatives from 2004 to 2007. Titled Tenants of the House, it was...
- Rebuilding The Reading And Writing Culture (interview)
DR. BIBI BAKARE-YUSUF is a publisher based in Abuja. She started Cassava Republic Press in 2006. The company is focused on publishing quality African writing at an affordable price. It is a social enterprise, driven by the dream to re-develop a reading...
- Gimba: 'nigerian Literature Has Come A Long Way' (interview)
This interview was conducted by me in 2005 to mark the 45th Independence Anniversary of Nigeria. Abubakar Gimba, who is one of the renowned Nigerian writers assesses the country's literary development over the years. NNW: It is 45 years since...