Making the 30th ANA convention memorable

As the International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, draws near, the General Secretary of the association, Mr. Hyacinth Obunseh, in this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, speaks on the prepaprations so far. He also speaks on the efforts of the present EXCO to re-posotion the association, calling on members to re-elect them at the convention for a second term in order to complete what they started.

NNW: ANA convention is 30th of this month; how far have you gone with preparations?

Hyacinth Obunseh: Indeed the ANA 30th International Annual Convention is on hand. We have continued to work hard with the Local Branch/Organising Committee to make the celebration a memorable one.

What are the activities lined up for the occasion?

We have an extra day added to our usual four days, to make five. We will have our usual cocktail on arrival, opening ceremony, convention drama, site seeing, plenary sessions, dinner/awards ceremony and then for a change we are bringing a musical group from one of our branches to entertain members. One or two other innovations.

How has it been in terms of funding?

Funding as usual has been our headache! You will recall that the convention should have taken place already, but for funding, which necessitated the Abuja branch to request a shift in date to enable them get some more funds. It has been as bad as always, but we are weathering the storm.

Being the 30th convention, in what way is this one going to be special?

One or two ways, as I have said earlier. We have an extra day added, we have a musical band coming, and then one or two other things we will keep to ourselves for now.

It is also election convention, any possibilty that your team will be given a second term?

Well, the voting members will decide that. On our part, we have served and are willing to serve another two years, finish up the things we started or are about to start, like the Writers Village. We have explained the reasons for the ‘seeming’ inertia. In the end, we have high hopes that the electorate will give us another two years.

There are allegations that the exco’s performance over the two years has not been impressive. What do you say to this?

Well, if one says our first two years in office is not impressive, then it behoves him to be specific. We delivered on our campaign manifesto, except on the ANA land development which we could not have done anything about, seeing that the matter had not been disposed of in the court. As you may well know, judgement will be given on the matter on 29th November. If we are being compared to our predecessors in office, then one would have to look at the financial burden they passed on to us. It was not easy for them either, which is what led to their leaving such financial debt behind.

What problems have you been facing in administering the association?

The same that practically all previous administrations faced! Funding for our projects. There is a general literary arts funding aparthy out there! We have good projects lined up and seeking funds to prosecute, but funds are not forthcoming!

What do you have to say to ANA members regarding your quest for re-election and the convention generally?

Aha! Dear colleagues, in the last two years, my colleagues and I have given of our time and resources to make our dear association better. There are so much we planned to do from the onset, that we have not been able to do yet, due to constraints. After two years, we are in the best position to lead ANA to a better day. Two more years and we would work with the new friends we just made, the old ones that came on board, and the governments (states) we have managed to woo to our side. The world economic recession is not affecting the national body alone, it is also affecting the branches. Take a look at your local branch and you will see that in the last two years, you achieved little, if anything. We want to serve you for another two years and leave with our heads held up high, knowing that we are leaving behind a stronger and better Association.

Remi Raji posed to re-write ANA’s history

 

PROFESSOR ADEREMI RAJI-OYELADE a.k.a. Remi Raji is a well known name in the community of writers and academics, having authored a number of creative pieces and critical works in the areas of literary theory, African and African American Literatures, popular culture and creative writing. The Professor of English and African Literature at the University of Ibadan has served as Publicity Secretary, Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Oyo State chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA. He has also been Editor of the Association’s yearly journal, ANA Review. Now he wants to be the president of the association. In this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, he speaks on the forthcoming ANA election holding at the international conference of the association coming up on 30th November, 2011, which he hopes will usher him to the exalted seat. He also speaks on the problems of ANA and how he intends to tackle them when he eventually gets the seat.

NNS: Tell us briefly about yourself.

Remi Raji: My name is Remi Raji, which is a simple reduction of my formal name – Aderemi Raji-Oyelade. I was born in Ibadan in 1961 to a family of artisans and farmers, extended from one of the major progenitors of the huge war-camp by the Savannah which lends its name to the city. I had primary and secondary education in both Islamic and Christian mission schools and completed my Higher School Certificate in 1981 at the prestigious Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo. That same year, I entered the University of Ibadan to study English with secondary interests in Communication and Theatre Arts. I graduated with a Second Class Upper degree in 1984, a Master of Art in Literature in 1986, and a PhD in 1994 from the same University. I have been a lecturer since then, teaching, researching and publishing in the areas of literary theory, African and African American Literatures, popular culture and creative writing. I became a full Professor of English and African Literature in 2007.

I have edited or guest-edited, co-edited over ten books, and published five collections of poetry apart of other appearances in journals, e-journals, and literary festivals in Africa, Europe and America.

What prompted you to decide to contest for the post of president of ANA?

A time comes when a man sits and reflects on his work, his interests, his legacy and his value in society. A time comes when you begin to query your own significance vis-a-vis the more enduring project of the literary tradition to which you belong. I reflected on the drift, negative I will say, in the direction of the Association of Nigerian Authors to which I belong. At the local level, I have served as Publicity Secretary, Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Oyo State chapter of ANA; I have also been Editor of the Association’s yearly journal, called ANA Review; and I have been a communiqué writer for the 2004 Congress in Lokoja, as well as co-editor of the collection of short stories to commemorate the 2008 Congress in Minna. Those were tangential and secondary works for the association at the national level.

I have been an unacknowledged or non-commissioned critic of the activities of ANA over time, believing that we are running half-steam at a certain time, believing that we have not been able to harness and exploit all our God-given talents to serve ANA and put it where it rightly belongs in the scheme of art administration, not only in Nigeria but also on the African continent. More recently, I shudder at the grim fact that ANA has suffered real inactivity. So if we complained of running half-steam some years ago, we are talking of running without feet, and flying without wings at the present time. No well-meaning member of ANA who is capable of delivering should sit down and watch the gallery of inertia and anarchy continues.

This was what prompted me to contest for the post of the President of ANA, believing that I have garnered enough experience over the years to deliver, believing that I have associated with the best minds in creative writing/arts administration all over the world to know what to do. We do have the main elements – an eager youth willing to do well if they get the right direction and encouragement. I want to do that, not alone, but with others who believe in my abilities.

Do you think you know much about the workings of ANA to be able to solve its problems?

As I said earlier, it does not take much to know the workings and the problems of association like ANA, but it does demand so much to be able to know how to solve the problems. The problem currently is that those at the helms of affairs of ANA do not think there is a problem. I have been a member of ANA National since 1988 to know enough about these problems. But even those who are new members, not more than five years in the fold know the problems.

Then would you say are the main problems of ANA?

We have the problem of identity; we have the problem of definition; we have the problem of interest and focus; and indeed, we have one problem that everybody knows, that is the problem of funding. But these other problems which I have identified apart from that of funding are very crucial to the body politic of ANA. We have lost track of the main agenda set forth by Chinua Achebe and his other colleagues at the formation of the association. I am sorry to say that there are many real writers who are no longer part of ANA because of our loss of focus, and because the chicanery laundered by those who have no business being in the loft of the house of writing in the first place. What makes a writer? What are the requisites for a writing tradition, and who should be involved in the administration of a writers’ body? What are the benefits of a writers’ association for the upcoming as well as established author? These are main issues which the current leaders in ANA National have failed to address.

Are you sure you can win the election considering the fact that the incumbent excos still have a term to go?

I am told that there are smses flying around from their stable begging and pleading for a second term, to consolidate on what has been done in the past two years. That enough sounds like an insult to the imagination of a true writer. You cannot consolidate on nothing, nor can you build something on nothing, except if you are in the fictional world of castle-building. Whether I can win the election is actually immaterial. What I have done in the past one year, consistently, is to bring the matter of the state of ANA to public glare. Very few people actually want to discuss it, that we have a secretariat that has been overly corrupted, that we have a presidency that is ineffectual and half-hearted and politicised, that nothing holds at the centre and therefore it has been a free fall of things in the house of writing. It is indeed sad. As for winning the election, I can.

What is your level of preparations for the election?

Let me just say here that I have reached out to all members of ANA in all the state chapters letting them know my intentions, reasons and plans for ANA within the next two years. The electorate will decide. The rest waits till when we get to the venue of the election in Abuja.

Now, specifically, how do you intend to solve the problems when you are elected?

I have noted three major matters to address when elected as President of ANA. We are going to focus on Outreach, Mentoring and Advocacy as a matter of urgency and strategy. Outreach will involve connecting with other organisations related to our own interests, governmental parastatals, corporate organisations, the civil society in need of literary support and collaboration; it is from these that we hope to re-launch ANA. We will also reach out to our potential audience, in secondary and tertiary institutions in hope that we will find market as well as recruits for another generation of Nigerian literatures.

We will make it a rule to get each state chapter to create a Mentor-Author twinning programme in a way that younger writers will benefit by association to ANA. Besides this, we will address the issue of the identity of the writer as member of ANA because we have different cadres of membership – full, associate, honorary and life memberships. We are going to find a place for the younger ones to occupy, although I am aware that one or two state chapters are already ahead in this. We will tap into this.

Also, in the area of Advocacy, we want the voice of ANA to be distinct in the matter of national development; we want to contribute immensely, as writers, as constructive critics, as imaginative people to the literary tradition and by extension we want to mean more than mere decimals in the matter of representations in our country’s culture and information industry.

What do you have to say to ANA members regarding your candidacy?

To the constituency of writers, I offer myself to serve. I am not hesitant in offering myself. I have well thought-out the demands, and the sacrifice of service. So I depend on the vote of every member of the association, from Maiduguri to Asaba, from Lagos to Sokoto, from Kano, Kaduna to Port-Harcourt, from Owerri to Lokoja, and from Makurdi to Abuja. I want all of us to converge in Abuja and use our God-given intelligence as writers, to re-write the history of ANA on its thirtieth anniversary.

FJA joins the race for ANA EXCO membership

FRIDAY JOHN ABBA, former chairman of Kaduna State chapter of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, is a well known name in the Nigerian literary circle for his radical comments on how ANA should be run. Several members of the association have always challenged him to be part of the national exco if he is serious about changing it. Now he is taking up the challenge, contesting for the post of Assistant General Secretary in the election holding at the International Convention of the association this weekend. In this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, he reveals his reasons for contesting and his priorities for ANA.


Q: Who is Friday John Abba?
ANS: I was born on the 2nd day of May 1969. That day happened to be a Friday and, so for reasons which I am still trying to figure out, I am called Friday. I was born in Kaduna but soon my civil servant father had to move with us to Nguru, in Yobe State. I had my first taste of formal education at Kasungula Primary School, Nguru. After leaving primary school, I got admitted into the prestigious Nigerian Military School, Zaria (NMS) for my secondary education before going on to study Computer Science at the Kaduna Polytechnic. I worked as a soldier in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State for a while as demanded by my training in NMS. Later I joined the services of Nigerian Tobacco Company which later transmuted into Brittish-American Tobacco Company.

I have been involved with the Rotary International. I became the president of a Rotaract Club at the age of 18 and went on to become the District Rotaract Representative, the highest position a Rotaract member could attain. I was responsible for over a hundred clubs in 19 states and that gave me the opportunity to travel across the country, understanding the people, their cultures, their pains and their triumphs and also identifying ways through which people’s lives could be made better. I joined the Rotary club of Zaria-city and became the president in 2005.

I have been involved severally with government and other agencies. In 2006, I was one of 24 chosen from across Africa to fine tune the Protocol setting up the Peace and Security Council of the African Union.

I have since left the services of the tobacco company to start my own concern. First it was House of Abba publishing but this was truncated by my 9months detention in 2007. Today, I have set up Wright Words Consulting, a firm that works with writers to make their manuscripts publishable and to help identify certain other imperatives that make for successful publishing. I also serve on the Board of the Centre for Community Relief Initiatives (CCRI) as the Director of Research and Publications.

I have been involved in literary activities since my days at the polytechnic when I took time every Thursday to meet with the Creative Writers’ Club of the Ahmadu Bello University. I joined the Kaduna Writers’s League where I served as editor for 4years and later served as Vice Chairman and Chairman. I joined the Association of Nigerian Authors in 2001 and have served as Editor of my branch. Today I am the immediate past Chairman of the Kaduna State Branch of the Association of Nigerian Authors.

I am primarily a prose writer and my works have been published severally in anthologies and through other media.

This, I guess, summarizes Friday John Abba.

Why do you want to contest for the post of Assistant General Secretary?

Shortly before the last elections, I wrote about what I thought was an ineffectual election. I looked at the way we ran our campaigns and realized that we were not addressing issues. And the most fundamental of these issues is the structure of the association. I wondered back then, as I do now if any magician could come and build on what is known to have basic structural defects. And like I wrote back then, and still believe, we have to look at the very foundation of the association and work to correct the defects that have inhibited our growth as individual writers and as an organization.

Sometimes I wonder at the fact that all a writer in this country can manage is a paltry print-run of a thousand copies, two third of which end up in shelves that never get visited. I wonder why with a population of about a hundred and sixty seven million people, the Nigerian writer cannot capture just a percentage or 1.6 million. I read about a hundred books each year and I see things. We must address these concerns and I think that my inclusion on the National Exco will enhance my sharing of ideas with the others to chart a course for the Nigerian writer and ANA.

What makes you think you can win?

I really do not see it as a win or lose thing. I think that anyone who has taken the step I am taking does it in an altruistic way. The most important thing here is the association and how we can make it better. If the electorate - and this is an enlightened electorate - see in me their dreams and aspirations then I will definitely be elected. I really think that the Nigerian writer has the capacity to move mountains but we must address the fundamental issues that have held us down here. Through the years I have made my thoughts known to other writers and I am sure that they will also agree that my voice will be of more effect as a member of the Exco.

What will be your priority when you win?

My primary role if elected will be to assist the General Secretary. But beyond this I think that priorities must be the synergy of the workings of the group. Every individual comes with the ideas that will make the association grow and the group prioritizes these ideas. As a member of the Exco, I will endevour to always insist on prioritizing the welfare of the Nigerian writer because the organization is the sum of the individual members. In ANA today, members cannot even pay the paltry five thousand naira annual dues. And come to think of it how many writers net five thousand naira annually from their literary activities in Nigeria? I think that if we address some of these challenges, ANA will grow with its members.

Another area we have neglected is the need to strengthen the state branches of the association. I have always maintained that the effectiveness of ANA lies with the branches. Strong branches will inevitably result in a strong body. This I think, we must look at very seriously.
How prepared are you for the election?

As a matter of fact, I have been a little unprepared in respect of developing the Politian-style campaign. I have spent all the time thinking strategies to make the association better. But I know the people I have chosen to serve. They are intellectuals with the capacity to see beyond the cheap antics of politics and I am sure that the other contestants are aware of these facts. However, I am still getting across to members across the country and sharing my thoughts with them.

What is your message to the electorate?

ANA can be better. Writers in Nigeria can have their books read and they can make a lot of money from their works. And on the election, we must live above petit sentiments and elect into office those who will work with us to make our dreams come true.

Your advice to other contestants

I respect your decisions to run for the various offices and I know that your decisions are borne out of genuine concern for the association. We are not politicians, we are intellectuals who are seeking to make our trade worth the while. We must not allow other considerations to destroy that which we have struggled to keep alive for thirty years.

Niger holds the First National Literary Colloquium in grand style

Chief Servant receiving letter of appreciation (in which the Writers' Village is named after him) from Gimba 

                                                  Children performing at the ocassion 

The fact that Niger State is fast becoming the headquarters of Nigerian literature was re-confirmed last week with the state government’s hosting of the First Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, MBA, National Literary Colloquium. The event, which marked the 56th birthday of the Executive Governor of the state, popularly known as the Chief Servant, took place last Saturday at Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi International Conference Centre, Minna, under the Chairmanship of Professor Abubakar Rasheed, Vice Chancellor, Bayero University, Kano. It was held under the theme ‘Building Intellectual Power to Fix Nigeria’ and the Guest Speaker was Odia Ofeimun, social critic, writer and journalist.

Highlights of the occasion were musical and poetry performances, paper presentation, discussions on the paper and literary parley.

The grand event began with the national anthem beautifully rendered by the students of Government Secondary School, Minna. This was followed by the first segment of the performances with renditions by Great Kids Musical Perfomers, poetry performance by Saddiq Dzukogi, Jimoh Olawale and cultural display by the stundents of Government Girls Secondary School, Minna.

After the scintillating performances, a welcome address was presented by the initiator and host of the event, Professor Muhammad Kuta Yahaya, Chief of Staff, Niger State. In the address, Professor Kuta explained that the event was aimed at giving Nigerians the platform to share ideas on social regeneration. Stressing the fact that no meaningful development could take place without a proper intellectual foundation, he said the Chief Servant has resolved to promote literature in order to ensure an enduring development.

In the same vein, the chairman of the occasion, Professor Rasheed, observed that intellectual power is the main driving force of most developed countries, and commended the Chief Servant for his vision and foresight.

The second segment of the performances featured musical presentation titled ‘Talban Minna, We Love You’ by Amad O, poetry performance by Professor Karen King Aribisala and a dazzling dance by a Nupe cultural group.

This was followed by the presentation of appreciation letter to the Chief Servant by Alhaji Abubakar on behalf of the Niger State Chapter of ANA for his donation of 23 hectare of land to the association to build writers’ resort. There was a brief citation on the Chief Servant, read by the Master of Ceremony, Benjamin Ubiri, and then the main item of the event – paper presentation on the theme of the event by the Guest Speaker, Odia Ofeimun.

Speaking on the topic, Building Intellectual Power to Fix Nigeria, Ofeimun observed that the literary achievements recorded since Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu assumed office as the Executive Governor of Niger State in 2007 surpasses the achievements attained by any state in Nigeria. The free education policy of the state government, he said, was a step in the right direction worthy of emulation by other state governments.

Odia also spoke extensively on the national language question, stressing that conscious effort must be made to develop the Nigerian indigenous language if meaningful development is to be achieved. He said language is instrumental to the people’s way of thinking and acting and that unless the people’s mentality is domesticated through reading and writing in indigenous languages they will continued to think and act like the Whiteman in circumstances that require local solutions. Nigerians must do away with colonial mentality because, according to him, the world is at the stage it was in the colonial era and “we must be on guard and fashion out the best indigenous way of defining our political and socio-economic entity.”

These point were subsequently summised by the discussants – Dr. Salihu Bappa, of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Dr. Vicky Sylvester and Dr. E. E. Sule of the University of Abuja.

The session was rounded off with speech by the Chief Servant, in which he expressed appreciation for the impressive attendance.

The literary parley segment, which began from 4.15 pm, featured six sessions. The first session, comprising three panelists; Ahmed Maiwada, Jumoke Verissimo, Dr. E. E. Sule and Akeem Lasisi, and moderated by Alkasim Abdulkadir, focused on the definition of poetry. The second session centred on the arts for art’s sake proposition, the third session discussed the future of writing in indigenous language in Nigeria.

The other three sessions featured the art of literary criticism, the fate of drama in modern literature and publishing in the digital age, respectively.

The event came to an end around 10 pm with a mouth-watering dinner.