Bane of Nigerian literature is absence of mentors, editors in the publishing space

… Ultra Criticism Of A Country Becomes The Forte Of A Frustrated Writer

A former president, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), researcher and poet, Professor Remi Raji-Oyelade teaches English at University of Ibadan. In this interview with ANOTE AJELUOROU, Raji-Oyelade speaks on various issues plaguing Nigerian arts and culture sector

What are you working on at the moment?
Well, multi-tasking is the main source of a dynamic life. Right now, I’m working on a new collection of essays. I’m trying my hands on a novel. I’m doing many things at the same time. I’m coordinating the most exciting thing in the literary space in Nigerian poetry now, Ibadan Poetry Foundation, which is an online residence thing.

A lot of things seem to be happening in Ibadan. 
There is also Ibadan Literary Society, recently launched. The city seems to be in a cultural ferment or renaissance, isn’t it?

Ibadan Poetry Foundation is mainly online, which would snowball into direct contact and interaction about established poets, who will act as directors or mentors and potential poets who we refer to as mentees. We have been on for some time. We started in January this year. We launched on June 18 and we had a poetry party. So the foundation is curated by me and co-coordinated by Jumoke Verissimo. It is more like a School of Creative Writing online.

We did a call for submissions. So, there was a kind of mini-competition in which poems were submitted. They submitted five poems each. We had about 60 submissions all over the country and even from Nigerians in diaspora and we came up with a short list of 13. These 13 are the ones who are in virtual residence now. It is the first Nigerian Online Poetry Residence. That is what we have done. We felt it was very important for us to circumvent some of our limitations. We should turn our limitations into elevators. Limitations in terms of reaching out to somebody in Borno State, to a person in Bayelsa or even somebody in the waterside area of Lagos.

With good internet connection on social media, we were able to reach out to people by placing the notice there and people sent in their applications. We got about 50 and picked 13 of them. It will run for six intensive weeks. Mentors would then compare notes and decide on one mentee per mentor. For now we have five mentors and each mentor will now nominate one. So those five will be people we will invite to Ibadan to come into physical residence for one month. We will take them to important places, legendary places where Professors Woke Soyinka and J.P. Clark have been. They would walk through all those places. They would compose poems and we will have roundtable interactions. We can then go and multiply.

For now it is powered by personal efforts and volunteerism because that is the best way to go for now since funding is very hard to come by.
That is what Ibadan Poetry Foundation is all about.
One of the things that has been plaguing Nigerian Literature but which is more pronounced in prose is the absence of mentors, editors in the publishing space.

Are there steps being taken to bridge such gaps?

Ibadan Poetry Foundation is a pilot project. It is futuristic and we are hoping that we will stretch it beyond our imagination. We have other online programmes apart from the online residence. We have archival projects online in which we introduce a new person in Nigeria poetry every Tuesday. We are developing content for the web – that is, the history of Nigerian poetry; which poets do we write about so that even scholars can easily access the Ibadan Poetry Foundation website and get materials. We may extend further and introduce electronic texts and even for sale to a worldwide audience. We will have an audio section, an online studio and a physical studio where poets can come and record their poems so we can stream them online to enable people read the lines and listen to the audio at the same time.

That seems a revolutionary idea in the country’s literary space. How do you translate it into action?
They are really not new ideas. It may be new on this site. I took the idea from lyrikline.org. It is the largest online portal for world poetry. It has many nationalities extended over 20 languages so that you can have your poem in English and someone from Germany can still read it in German language.
You can’t compare the steps that lyrikline.org has taken to the steps we are taking. They are fully funded by the Ministry of Culture in Germany and by the European Union.

We can’t even talk about a Nigerian local government or the state government or the Federal Government supporting poetry, not to begin to think of the African Union. Somebody has to start. We can’t just fold our hands and wait and complain about lack of government funding. The platforms for literary and cultural engagements are so few but the talents are so many.

Why is it that those who studied in the humanities don’t look back and support the arts even when they are in established places, where they can make a difference?
Survival is the word. Some people who finished from English Department and even others who did creative writing all end up as creative writers. Some are lucky to find themselves in facilities or organizations, where their expertise are needed, like being copywriters working in television or advertising. What do you expect from somebody who read English, but ends up in a bank as a cashier? So, that is the problem. Everything is about orientation. It is about letting people know that everyone can contribute his or her own quota to the development of our literature, arts and culture.

You do not necessarily have to be a writer to support writing. An engineer who just loves the whole idea of writing can become a patron to a number of writers. Things are even getting better now. In those days, there used to be only one poetry club where students and lecturers come under. For me, I think the more the merrier but the synergy is the key.
As a former President of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), it is expedient I do things that will get more people to know what the association is all about in a proactive and dynamic way. I cannot just fold my hands and say things are not being done well. Rather, I will do it.

The funding we got, which was meant to support publishing was actually meant for prose. I couldn’t practically turn it around for poetry. If I was given the chance, I would have given all the money to poets. Now, I have the opportunity to choose what I want to focus on. It is not that I wouldn’t support novelists and dramatists. My collection of poetry has been staged. So there is that synergy. The synergy of the genres, the literary form is as important as the synergy of the practice so that we do not supplant one because our focus is on the other.

There are more awards coming up for prose compared to poetry. The Etisalat Prize for Literature is for prose. So, I’m waiting prayerfully for an organization that has the funding not just to give prize to poets, but give the enabling environment to support residencies. I’ve heard of other organizations that are developing and encouraging poets. In those days, the poet was the one who was actually a writer and the novelist will be on the sideline when we were growing up but not now any more.

How did that change?

I think the culture of prize-giving diverted interest away from poetry. It was probably what made Wole Soyinka to institute Christopher Okigbo’s Prize for Poetry. That was the first gesture in this country to have a special prize for poetry. When the Pat Utomi Prize came up, it was for prose. The Nigeria Prize for Literature sponsored by Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) embraced all the genres of literature, but for me it was a failed prize. The Etisalat prize is for prose and only for first book, which is limiting and Nigerians are falling short of that prize because publishing and packaging matter a lot.
I’m only saying that the generality of the publications we have in this country usually fall short compared to submissions from other countries, especially South Africa.

I was one of the invited guests to the last award of Etisalat Prize for Literature. From what I gathered, there was a particular submission from a Nigerian who had to put a note in the novel to say, ‘Oh! I am sorry. My publisher rushed and there are a number of pages that are not there.’ So that kind of apology is really shameful because the panel is an international one. If the panel was Nigerian, then that would mean not washing our dirty linen outside. We can just laugh it off and say, ‘look at what this person is doing.’ So, there are some kind of shortcomings in the publishing strata.

Are there no way practitioners like you who are also teachers should mediate in publishing?
It will continue to lack because we are not putting our priorities right. I would like to take time from my scholarship, from my teaching, my students, the nitty-gritty of theory and all that and form a colloquium, so to say, of editors, publishers and authors who are already writing and those who are about to start writing and bring everyone together towards an efficient and error-free publishing and marketing industry in Nigeria. You may want to have something like that, but how do you fund that? How do you get people to come together? First of all, as a scholar I’m not trained in marketing. When you go round people will think you are doing it for your own pocket because there should be that arm of our literary tradition that is interested in arts administration, and that can approach experts in their various fields for funding – whether international funding or local funding – and invite them and say, ‘please, come and give a paper on this and this will be your audience. It is going to be a workshop where you tell them the truth about funding.

These fellows have been publishing, but then you find errors in their work all the time. When you want to invite them, they will say, ‘what do you know? Are they not just lecturers? They do not know anything outside the four walls of a university.’

There are also lecturers who will not want to step out of their comfort zone and confront what is there in the market and say, ‘this is how things should be done.’ So, you can’t teach them. They think they know everything, especially now that publishing is so easy as people can now publish online. Everybody is a potential editor of a potential journal.

How can the issue of funding and marketing in the creative industry be handed better?
I will create two scenarios. The one is very futuristic, and the other one very realistic. The futuristic one is that the federal, state and local governments would be that a socially mobilized and educated community is easier to govern than a mis-educated or poorly educated one. How do you even get educated while you get entertained if not through literature? So literature is our conveyor belt towards real cultural development in the country. So when they begin to sow the result may not be immediate; that is when things begin to turn around in this country.

Therefore, the kind of residency that Dr. Wake Okediran started in Iseyin, Oyo State, some years ago is a dream that good government should learn from and even appropriate. So that if you are working on a Senatorial District or zonal level, you will want to have that kind of residency in three parts of the state, meaning that you have it in more than 100 places in Nigeria. When you have residencies, there are people who have real talents, but who can easily get swayed into alcoholism and terrorism, but whose life will change when they go into residence and then begin to establish their own creativity. It is going to be a cyclic thing, as residency does not end. This is because as a set is coming in another is going out. One way or the other when you have so many you will have stars that shine brighter than others and that is why we need more writers and that is how we are going to launder the image of our country.

A writer is an ambassador without borders. He does not have a particular country profile where he is, but with his writing he can reach to the other end of the world and people will know about the country. That is why the average Nigerian writer who does not have any allegiance to the country, who has not gained anything from the country cannot become a patriot. He will be as critical as possible against the country. Ultra criticism of the country becomes the forte of a frustrated writer.

The futuristic view is for states to be major partners in the push for that cultural resurgence. The multinational corporations will certainly follow suit. Government should establish Creative Writing Fund different from Education Tax Fund. The Education Tax Fund is meant to service scholarship that eventually does not translate to development. As a scholar you may have designed certain things, but policymakers or government person will tell you, ‘you are doing has already been done in Germany so we don’t need it.’ So, the professor gets dejected.

Therefore, the Education Tax Fund is for the promotion of scholarship at the university and the polytechnic levels, but the Creative Writing Fund will be without borders. It won’t be just for those of us who are lucky to be within the university. There are writers outside who are natural writers but are not within the system. They would also have the freedom of applying to that funding avenue. I have seen a type of this happen in South Africa not just for creative writing but for people in portraits, in weaving, basket making, drama and dance having residencies and funding for such artists by the government.

I was a beneficiary of a South African fund even though I was a Nigerian; it allowed me to travel to major cities, universities, clubs, museums and government ministries in South Africa to read my poetry, because they want to know what is happening in other parts of Africa. They want to know from that Nigerian his views of South Africa. When they give you funding, perhaps your view about their country will change. That is why it is also very important for our own country to begin to think of cultural revolution and expansionism to other parts of Africa, even to writers who do not speak English and that will help our translators. That is the futuristic one.

Then the realistic one is, who will I go to? I will sift out those who have been partners, who will be potential partners, who will support writing, who we find out as friends of literature to support us so that this dream will not die. But that is just like casting a net in the river.

What friends can the cultural sector attract to itself to move it forward?
This is really not a good one. If only we had been colonized by the French. The British Council has its own, but I do not think that the tradition of organised support for the art was well ingrained as at the time we had our independence. After independence, the French came in through Alliance Francaise because they were smarting from their loss of control of the Nigerian territory; they needed to win that huge capital, that space, not with weapons but with culture. So, that is why you have the French cultural centres everywhere. They are more active than the British Council in Nigeria. This is because soft power is what they are bringing into play.

The British, let us be frank, took the Nigerian space for granted. What they needed they had taken and they are still taking oil and cocoa. Look at the map of our rail lines. The British Council used to be in Ibadan, but suddenly they folded. To them, Nigeria is a failed project but the French felt they needed an environment where their own nationals can easily mix. They needed a soft cultural point where people can meet and mix. Of course, we can speak the English language; we have been speaking English for years, so the British do not need our expertise again. These are some of the facts that we won’t be able to read in newspapers since we know that the mandate to rule Nigeria was only to take all that they can get.

It is okay! Maybe because of personal interaction some people would benefit from it. I’m really not bothered about their lack of support because we hold it as our own decision to develop ourselves and our space.

What has changed in Nigeria’s Ministry of Culture? What is it that the government has been doing before that it should not be doing? Or what is it that they have not been doing that they should be doing? What they have not been doing is that they are not supporting writers. In other places I do not need to know who the Minister of Culture is. I have never met directly the Minister of Culture in Germany; I was directly relating with the coordinator and I got invited to present my work because I would be dealing with technocrats who will translate my poetry. I don’t need to know Minister Lai Mohammed before the right thing should be done.