Ujubuonu: 'Writing will always mirror society' (interview)

Odili Ujubuonu: I was born under the zodiac sign of Gemini, June 13 1964 in Ukpor, Anambra State. The Ukpor peninsula is a quiet hill country that boasts of rocks, valleys, a river and rivulets. Its culture was agrarian, but its system worked perfectly. Its environs were clean, the people were organised. Thieves were known and good men too. Everyone knew the other?s father, history and lies. We lived communally and hardly used the words cousin, uncle or aunt to describe relations. It was more of father, mother, brother or sister. At the age of 8 Lagos became my home. New realities replaced old. Family names were replaced by house numbers. Character was defined by identity. Everyone acted like they were catching a bus to a belikewhitemanland. I grew faster here. My senses were sharpened and I became extremely observant. Coming from my background, I became eager to tell tales.

I grew up in Ajegunle. Its unconventional culture fed my imagination and grew bigger dreams in me. Its arts, its pains and laughter and its lifestyle formed the building blocks of my Freudian id. So my life is a product of that creative kitchen and I am proud of it. I have grown with Lagos through its cycle of good, bad, ugly and now becoming beautiful again. I have at one time or the other left Lagos briefly for Secondary and University levels of education. Other bits of my bio may include a diploma in salesmanship, a degree in Political Science and now an M.A. in the works for a degree in History. I am married with children and I am a member of a very large extended family.

I began serious writing in Jos, where I did my NYSC in the Public Relations? Department of the Nigerian Police Force. There I wrote a lot. In the day time, I wrote articles for the op. Ed pages of Standard Newspapers. I also wrote speeches for the Commissioner of Police and briefs for Press men. In the evenings, I kept a diary. Everyday, after work, I recorded all that happened in this fat book. It was one of those big ledger books that were hardbound. I recall I could not fill it even with the exciting life I led serving Nigeria. After my service, I began to nurse the dream of one day filling a book that big with a gripping story. The chance came in June 1993 when the election was cancelled and we were doing nothing except once in a while drifting into protests. I was a foundation member of Concerned Professionals as I attended the first peaceful protest at the Western House, Broad Street with my sister, Oby Ezekwesili. But that was not the exciting part of this for me. It was when I bought a 120 page exercise book and filled it in 3 days. I abandoned the struggle and faced my writing. I wrote from Lagos to Onitsha, Jos, Kano, Katsina travelling and tapping my mind for wine of stories. The produce of those long miles of writing are the novels of today.

On the primary level I would claim a desire to avert boredom. On the secondary level, I would blame an urge to fulfil a childhood wish. That is to tell stories that are as captivating as those my grandaunt told when we were children and in the village. But on a more sublime level, I would believe, it is an answer to a deep call to right the wrongs of the new culture. I mean a culture that derides everything African and elevates, to hypnotic level, an obsession with everything western. I see it in our languages, in dressing, in the manner we raise our children, how we build and decorate our homes and even our worldview of what development is and ought to be.

Two books. Pregnancy of the Gods and Treasure in the Winds.

I am a bit sentimental towards Treasure in the Winds. It is a book that wrote itself, called its editors and critics and adjusted itself as we moved along the line. It is a chunk of the same book I started in 1993. The first is Pregnancy of the Gods. The third is the one currently in the works. Coming back to your question, it is a good feeling to know that one is gradually been taken seriously by readers, fellow writers, Prize judges and critics. The first chapter of that book was workshopped in a British Council sponsored Internet project which I attended with a couple of young and brilliant African Writers both at home and in Diaspora. My group made a lot of contributions to the development of the story. It also enjoyed the masterly hands of good critics and editors. I must say, that the joy of its literary success is hardly mine alone. This is one broth that was not spoilt by too many hands. Above all, a greater credit must go to Okey Okpa, of blessed memory, who took the book as a personal project. I am happy he lived to see it all. He believed more than I even do of the environmental depth of the book. Talking about the environmental depth of the book, I would say, that I read a lot on the environment after writing Pregnancy of the Gods. It was not a deliberate plan to influence the canvas of the new one. I was doing this, honestly, to clear my mind of vestiges of the old story. I wanted to fertilise the soil of my mind in order to grow new crops of story. I did not know that these would, in the end, paint the book a subtle colour of green. It was Okey who detected it. I think Obunse did too. Being the editor of the book, Okey insisted and fought the book designer to give the book cover its environmental hue. And when the Chevron officer was commenting on the idea of the Chevron Prize, he mentioned that their idea is to find books with a subtle treatment of the environment. I was shocked that Okey was right even in the beginning. It was also he who put the book for the Prize. I said all these, to let you know how I feel. Great and very fulfilled.

I love history. I love it so much so that I have returned to school to study it. That is the central theme of the story. I explore the River Niger and the communities around it before the arrival of the colonial masters in Treasure in the Winds. It also touches such sub-themes as freedom, unity and exile. Freedom from the slavery of man over man and the uncanny bondage the mind suffers in the hands of matter. The River is used as metaphor for the unity of the peoples of Nigeria living together in the different communities treated in the book. The book contests, without polemics, such ethnic notions that the river divides Nigeria. It is, rather, a rallying point for the empires, kingdoms and the republic communities of old. Finally, the challenge of abandoning ship in times of crises is treated in the sub-theme of exile.

I do. I also subscribe to the fact that such a book would fit at best as a brilliant political or economic literature. That is not the kind of book I would be quick to pass as fiction. If I write them then it is the Political Scientist in me that is writing them. When I write fiction, I become a storyteller; I consciously remove such academic mindset that breeds pedagogy, didacticism or grand advocacy. I am a slave of the tale. If I tell the story well enough that lessons are learnt, I would be happier. If people learn a lesson off me without enjoying the story, I would be sadder. I think subtlety is the plumb rule for measuring the social rectitude of my tale.

I believe that a writer is, above everything else, an artist. In that regard, art is a vehicle that is used to convey a worldview. Art, therefore, is not a world view on its own. Art can be used to convey aesthetics, language beauty, politics, economy, culture, technology, etc. The choice is the writer?s. You may find me more on the arts divide than on advocacy.

It is unfair for us to define one writer as committed and another as not being so. Of course protest writing is committed writing. So is subtlety. In fact, it takes more energy to submerge the sharp spikes of issues in a subtly delivered story. In all they are all committed writing.
In life, we must agree, there is a dark side, a bright side and a grey side. Good writing, like good art, should capture all these. I think writing will always mirror society. What I am against are situations where a mirror chooses what to reflect and what not to. It is not science. It is subjective and limits and kills creativity.

I believe that is where my strength lies. I came into the scene too late. It may be unwise to experiment. So, for now, it is better to stick to what I know best. I write poems but they are very private to me. They are not created. They spring from the deep well of my soul. As a result, my poems are personal, natural and irreverent of any literary laws or forms. I watch drama and that is just good enough for me.

Above all, the discipline of writing prose is spellbinding. In a novel, you encounter the mystic hands of God. The power to do and undo sometimes confers on us that god element. It is almost aphrodisiac like all other forms of power. In some cases, the story glides smoothly writing itself while the writer simply follows. It is so much fun writing a novel where the characters are the friends of the author. I doubt if I would have as much fun writing a book of poetry than I have doing the novel.

It is rich and vibrant. We are blessed to have the crop of writers who are writing now. These are good middle class people engaging the challenges of everyday life in their works. From the works of my friends - Kaine Agary, Jude Dibia, Tony Kan and El Nukoya and lately, Adunni Abimbola Adelakun - you would witness strong voices crying in the wilderness. Some of us might have bloomed late but we are happy that we found our voices in this time, clan and clime.

The future would be as bright as our midnight candles can burn. What I mean is that we must continue to work hard and turn our challenges to opportunities. We need the publishing firms to move with us at the same speed. My place, like the future of the scene, is dependent on how hard I work. It is easy to become complacent after a few books but my fervent hope is that I would overcome that devil and write my way into the future with a smile.