I grew up loving books (interview)

Bello Musa Dankano: I challenged myself, sometime in 1992, to write fiction books of my own, just like other writers which I enjoyed reading. I decided that if I could write news items, speeches, memoranda and reports as a journalist and administrator in the several years? career of mine in those fields then why not delve into fiction. I challenged myself to rise from my anonymous-writer status into a writer with a public face. I think I grew up loving books. My early textbooks in elementary school seemed so wonderful, especially with the many illustrations in them. I never believed human beings wrote them. I thought they just cropped up like wild flowers. But in my senior primary school days, I discovered that they were after all written by humans; and I thought those humans must be super humans to possess such awesome creative abilities. I remotely nursed the desire to emulate these wonderful people one day. However, what I never told anyone before is how I attempted is as early as 1972, at about the age of twenty-two years. I failed woefully. I was the judge of myself; I easily realized that the story that I wrote had neither head nor tail. Somehow, I kept the story, visiting it after some six years? interval until about fifteen years ago when I lost it completely. In that first attempt, I tried to fictionalise the euphoria of civil servants at month ends in the old Kaduna State civil service; how the euphoria was short-lived as the salaries could not last more than a week. Therefore, I entitled the story Month End.

I have published four novels so far: A Season of Locusts (1999); Petrol Station (2004); My Cousins and I (2005), and The Last Caravan and Other Stories (2006). The first one is on the sleaze in the third tier of government in Nigeria. Petrol Station is on the scarcity of petroleum products in Nigeria during the military days. My Cousin and I is on the history of my Fulani lineage and their modest role in the Jihad of 1804 in Katsina sector. Finally, The Last Caravan explores the mythical adventures of various characters covering rituals and wizardry among others.

It is amazing how people get excited every time someone they know brings out a book. That is where it ends mostly, from my experience. Readers expect free copies from you the author after all the trouble you passed through to publish the work. To worsen matters, the publishers turned out to be selfish. One is left in the dark concerning the books and how they are faring in the market, after the initial euphoria. One may blame it generally on the lack of aggressive pursuit by the writer over his rights. But, more especially, the publisher?s refusal to open up on activities on the book is not encouraging at all. In many cases, the publishers lack the necessary publishing structures to get the books they published over to their readers. The result is the extension of low reading culture among Nigerians and an unrewarding venture by the author. This is not helping literature in Nigeria at all.

As a writer, I could not afford to take my eyes off the sorry state of affairs in my country that has been turned into an open theatre of the absurd. I saw it as my responsibility to at least record the happenings in fictional form, if only for posterity, assuming they cannot bring about outright change. Our kind of politics that disregards rules, regulations or decorum is very worrying. It is more confounding to see how the so-called common-man being used freely as cannon powder to fight the oppressors? war just for a pittance, despite knowing that his hero will disown him later after a successful rigging at the polls. I get worried that many a politician would encourage these poor people with all his resources into dishonourable deeds. Even the law enforcement officers and electoral officials are not spared. The politician has mystified and mutilated democracy and electoral processes and has cornered it as his own personal possession whose rights over it are sacrosanct.

One may be a serious minded person. But in the locality that I grew up, humour is part of the daily discourse where stories of misery or joy are presented in their humorous garbs. It is part of the therapy to mitigate sorrows and I was never bored listening to them because they are always loaded with meaning more than one can say in ordinary language. For me they represent illustrations for the stories; and you know that it is said: A picture is worth more than a thousand words. It helps give you more of the meanings, the lessons, the nuances, the colours and shapes. It gives you the gravity, the implication and the humour to boot. It is memorable and nostalgic. Indeed, humour can have equal force to make one cry or get sober just as a reprimand. It is in humour that you hear the real message. There is a saying here that it is from the humorist that you get to hear it as it is. It is all a matter of choice. After all, literary exploit isn?t the same as academic work. One needs to be free in literary undertakings to convey what one wants to convey in one?s own unique way because it is one?s own creation. There should be less and less inhibitions. As I said, it is like watching an open drama where you see all the actions at the same time. Sometimes you see something that calls for serious commentary and you comment. Sometimes you can?t help laughing when you notice the absurdities, the foibles, and we have them in abundance. I assure you there are lessons out of humour just as there are out of sermons, and they tend to stick more. When you take yourself to watch a drama, you do it most of the time to unwind and at the same time to draw whatever lessons there might be from the play. It is so with work of fiction. As a writer, I reflect what the society is. My role, as the maxim dictates, is to inform, educate and entertain. Besides, people need to laugh more nowadays. My hope is that after enjoying the humour, the underlying lessons will come to the fore and sanity will prevail.

My first influence is the late Abubakar Imam of the Maganar Jari Ce fame, and his contemporaries: Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Shehu Umar fame and those trailing them who wrote in Hausa like Ruwan Bagaja and Iliya Dan Mai Karfi.? There were primary school English books whose authors I can?t remember. Later influence are the likes of Camara Laye and Chinua Achebe. These have influence on my formative years. Later I read Albert Luthili?s Let My People Go and Peter Abraham?s Mine Boy?. I also read Mission to Kala, and The Beggars? Strike. These Hausa and English novels by Nigerian and other African writers really influenced me into writing being a novelist with the special bend toward social realism.

Shakespeare comes first. After him is perhaps James Hadley Chase. There is Robert Louis Stevenson and a few others. I prefer the old writers.

I would love to write in Hausa. In fact, I have translated one of my books into Hausa and written a political comedy in Hausa. But they are yet to be published. Beyond that, writing in English gives one a wider audience. Therefore, I keep to writing in English.

Yes, I?ve been working on a new novel entitled Green Grass. It is a work of fiction that draws large materials from my personal experiences over the years, but especially, from recent occurrences such as political blackmail, violence, vote stealing and rigging and other unprintable practices associated with our party politics. There are other issues as well: unemployment, kidnappings, robberies, human rights abuse, collapse of infrastructures ? roads, hospitals, schools, power and water supply, restiveness and the biggest of them all, growing poverty and massive corruption that in itself has become a status symbol that people fall over themselves to out-do one another. The richer you are, the more chances you have of becoming a law on to yourself, and the sky is your limit. I appeal to the conscience of the good ones amongst us to get up and halt the drift. The rest of us too, should get involved in our little ways to change this fraudulent culture. One ardently hopes that the electoral reform instituted by Mr. President will cure these ills. But my token contribution is in my recent work of fiction.

A world of difference: in this project more than anyone else, I have had the privilege of tapping very closely professional guidance of Ahmed Maiwada, an Abuja based poet, critic, writer, and a stickler for literary excellence, and who gave me his time to set standards in my new literary undertaking. I wanted to make this new novel a truly standardized one, which passed through the regular courses of publishing. Therefore, I had to endure for almost four years working on it: two years on my own with the assistance of my literary friends Denja Abdullahi, Prince Martins Uka, Prince Jerry Adesewo and Henry Akuiburo. Maiwada came in about two years ago and gave it a massive but exciting facelift and direction that I dedicatedly followed with passion.

There is no better guidance to give than to tell them to endure and never to give up. Write anyhow, but on something of interest and then rework and rewrite until you are exhausted under the guidance of a literary critics and editors in the mould of Ahmed Maiwada, who are rare anyway. Endure all the criticism and the pains of writing and rewriting your book. Be warned that without patience and discipline, little can be achieved and you may end up writing without meaning or direction. Also, be prepared to work on your novel for years. The bane of most of our writers is to rush their works. Avoid it like a plague.

(c) Published in the New Nigerian edition of 15/11/08

Tweet