As the sit-at-home order over the Covid-19 pandemic continues, more artists and writers are discovering new ways to write more books to keep themselves busy. In this interview with Edozie Udeze, Mallam Danja Abdullahi, the immediate past president of Association of Nigerian Authors, a playwright and culture technocrat speaks on the pains and gains of this period for writers
This is a very difficult moment for writers all over the world. Do you think some remarkable works can emerge from authors’ desk in the end?
Times like the one we are into now make us all to realize the truth of the universality of art and literature. Why literature of the fictive mode has endured over the ages is in the timelessness of its mooring. The human condition expressed in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Achebe, Soyinka, Pamuk, Kafka, Marquez, Solzhenitsyn, Narayan etc are the same, though foregrounded within different cultures and socio-political environments. In a period like this, we find prophesies in books already written and we also get to learn about the resilience of the human spirit and most importantly, we get the affirmation that “this too shall pass.” On the emergence of works, obviously the “lockdown”, “isolation” and: “social distancing”, new lexicons getting to be the new buzzwords, have always been what the writer has been familiar with all through the ages. Writers have been lock -downed in prisons and concentration camps from whence they produced great literature or made one from the experience. Through times, to write anything worthwhile at all, you need to isolate yourself mentally and physically from others and writers across cultures often maintain a form of social distancing when they are creating. So for creative people, writers and authors, this difficult period is one of boom that will lead to completing work in progress or starting others.
There have been many classical literary books, more so drama in times like this. Are we expecting some from you being a playwright yourself?
I was challenged publicly by a most respected literary and critical figure late last year to adapt a popular book by a popular Nigerian writer into a play in order to re-interrogate an archaic belief and practice in a particular society. I intend giving serious thought to this challenge at this period. The challenge was thrown to me after having watched my play Death and the King’s Grey Hair, and after reading the text. The play has been performed by different groups across the country lately, the last being that of the Theatre and Film Unit of Taraba State University on the 22nd of March, 2020. The run the play has had in the performance circuit in the last two years has been wonderful and I am beginning to feel I should write another play to build on the success of this one, which was also shortlisted for the 2018 NLNG Nigerian Prize for Literature.
You made the shortlist of the Nigerian Literature in drama two years ago. Do you foresee the judges expecting works on coronavirus basically henceforth?
Not necessarily or topically as the situation is. Writers will respond to the situation in various ways. Even if someone should write a work situated within the time of the coronavirus crisis, what will endure is the human story told, with the crisis period used only as the backdrop. If you have read Gabriel Marquez Love in a Time of Cholera, you will realize it is the incredible story of love told within the text that is gripping and not the cholera itself. We have started seeing titles like “Love in the time of Coronavirus” popping here and there on the social media. More of such pieces will be written all over the world but the ones that will endure will be those that explore the universal human conditions in their unique local colourations within the global human experience.
The culture sector is unduly dull now. What is it like being an author in a moment like this?
The culture sector is always the first casualty of a state of unease. When there is war, social unrest and a pandemic, there is no room for festive exhibitionism for which the culture sector is prominent in this clime. Yes, in our clime, we seem to have divested deep reflection from what we take to be culture. Culture to us is festivals, arts and crafts exhibitions, singing and dancing. When not more than 20 can gather and are asked to stay far apart in the manner of social distancing, the communality of cultural experience of any kind cannot take place. In a moment like this, the author can still create without a hindrance of any kind. As a writer who cannot be indifferent to culture and also as a worker in the culture sector, I have been reflecting lately on our cultural practices that can be used to enforce the lockdowns, to fumigate the land and even cure the pandemic. Where is our Indigenous Knowledge System and practices in all these?
Is there anything special the sector has in place to encourage and assuage artists?
I have not seen anything co-ordinated yet being done by the sector on the government side to encourage or assuage the artists. All I see is the various government cultural organs struggling within their limited resources to fulfill their separate mandates with scant cooperation among them though there is a lot of justified overlap in their various functions. Most of the government cultural organs have been caught flat-footed in this period of the Coronavirus pandemic just as they could devise no role at all to play in the Boko Haram Insurgency that has plagued the North Eastern part of Nigeria in the last decade. The exception to this at the present moment I have seen is the National Council for Arts and Culture’s advocacy skit on preventing the spread of the coronavirus being aired on the NTA. A lot of perceptive Nigerians have been asking what all these governmental information and cultural agencies are up to in these days of the coronavirus anxiety. On the private sector side of culture sector, a lot is happening and collaborations are happening which will unfold in the coming days. Many great literary and cultural outings from the private sector that would have defined the times have been put on hold because of the pandemic.
As a former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, what is the state of the writers’ body now?
ANA is still in a state of succession crisis or you may call it leadership impasse. It is very unfortunate the desperation that has set in and the befuddlement of collective vision that has been forced on the Association. It is a phase nonetheless that the Association has to pass through to get better and make it wiser in tightening up its operations against the formlessness and laxity that has characterized it all these years since inception. Well –meaning elders and members of the Association are presently working hard to get the Association over the impasse. This crisis has brought the relevance of the Association into greater reckoning in the sight of its members and the society they serve. Those who went overboard to plunge the Association into this needless crisis must be silently regretting their action in their closets now. They must have realized that it takes only a moment of self-righteous anger to destroy a collective patrimony but it will take a life-long period of regret to build back trust, systems and blocks that have been carefully laid down over a long period of time. ANAI am sure will soon come back on stream and it will be better and saner when it comes back.
Please name some books that came from some great authors in times of solitude and self – isolation, and what the books have done for humanity and lessons learnt?
The Man Died by Wole Soyinka is a prison memoir and written during his solitary confinement in captivity during the Nigerian –Biafran Civil War of 1967-1970.We learn a lot about the psychology of the oppressed and the jailers in that book and how to survive under tyranny. The Gulag Archipelago series by the Russian writer Alexander Sholsetnitzyn was also written under the same condition or maybe parts of it under the horrendous mass purge of the Josef Stalin era in Russia. In the books we learn about man’s capacity for evil and how to resist such happening in our contemporary society.
What is your take on the postponement of this year’s International Theatre Day due to Coronavirus pandemic?
Like I said before, art is always the first casualty in a state of unease. It is not unusual. There cannot be a celebration in this kind of state we are in now globally. The theatre and celebration will return after the pandemic. It will return to tell and show us how to avoid the threats to common humanity in the future.
Leave a Reply