Nigeria as a literary superpower

Olayinka Oyegbile

THERE is no doubt that this is one of the most exciting periods to be alive and be literate. By literacy I am using it loosely to mean ability to read and be ready and occupied in doing so. This is because I know a lot of people who are literate but have decided to make themselves illiterates. For what is the essence or benefit of being literate when you decide not to read or engage your brain?

Reading has been cited as one of the best exercises the brain can engage in because it grows the brain and makes the mind richer. Reading here does not mean studying; because the two are equidistant and could be mistaken for one another. For instance, a student of literature who is reading any of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels as a recommended text is engaged in studying while another who is not a student of literature and is reading the same novel is engaged in a better search of knowledge because he/she has gone to the turf of the literature student to get a morsel of knowledge.

It is common to see people who boast that they are bored. You ask such people what they do with their time and they can’t give you a clear cut of what they do with it. How can one be bored without anything to do while waiting at an airport, office or public space when one could easily find a book to read rather than engage in endless reading of all those lazy jokes and banters making the rounds on WhatsApp and other such social media spaces? I wrote at the beginning of this piece that this is about the best time to be alive and literate. When I look at the numbers of good books that have been published and are still being published in Nigeria or by Nigerians alone, I wonder what boredom means. Can’t one just bury one’s head in any of these books and plead for God to increase the hour in a day to forty eight instead of twenty-four?

An American friend, Scott Pegg, a professor of political science at the Indiana (IUPUI) University in the United States, was in town last week to attend the funeral of the human rights activist and environmental campaigner Patrick Naagbanton, who was recently killed by a careless driver in Port Harcourt.

I had the privilege of picking up Scott at the airport when he arrived. He had earlier saddled me with the task of finding Ayisha Osori’s Love Does Not Win Elections, which he had looked for in America without success. He had also promised to get for me Ayobami Adebayo’s soar-away novel Stay With Me. We had dinner together at his hotel and engaged in hearty discussion about literature and politics in Nigeria of which he has deep understanding. In fact, his deep contact and connectedness with Nigeria’s contemporary literature was so fascinating that I couldn’t help but marvel at his engagement with Nigeria.

On Adebayo’s book, he has this to say when I posted the picture with him on my Facebook in reaction to a friend’s comment: “Borrow Stay With Me … and let me know what you think. One of my most favourite Nigerian novels, indeed novels from anywhere, I’ve read in the last few years. Comparable to Adichie’s work and Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go. Ola might object but I would say better than Chigozie Obiama’s The Fishermen. Not everyone recognises it, but your country is a literary superpower.” Is this in doubt? No.

Nigeria as a literary superpower is what I note here. This is not in any doubt and Pegg is not the first to say it. But the truth is that many of us do not realise this perhaps because of the political shenanigans that pervade our polity.