Faced with daunting challenges, writers resolve to safeguard the future of Nigerian literature, CHUX OHAI writes
Miss Jane Aderemi had always dreamt of becoming a writer. Apart from being a compulsive reader, she wanted to publish a book of her own that many people would take pleasure in reading.
One day, she decided to actualise her dream. The first thought that came to her mind was to write a novel, like her idol Chimamanda Ngoz- Adichie, whose book, ‘Half of A Yellow Sun’, had just won a prestigious literary award in Britain.
About two years later, Aderemi’s manuscript was ready for publication. Following the advice of a few friends in Lagos, she approached a leading publishing outlet and a deal was struck. Then she paid the ‘publisher’ the sum of N400,000 for the printing of about 1,000 copies of the book.
When the new author eventually held a copy of her own novel in her hand, she was beside herself with joy. Everything had happened so fast that she could hardly believe she had just joined the ‘exclusive’ class of Nigerian writers. But that was where her joy ended.
A few weeks later, Aderemi was alarmed when some of her friends and ‘fellow writers’ advised her to withdraw copies of the novel from the bookshops. “It is fraught with grammatical and typographical errors,” they told her.
Some of the critics were honest enough to tell her that the novel should have been thoroughly edited before going to the printer in the first place.
Coming to terms with a sad reality
To cut a long story short, Aderemi eventually learnt that proper book publishing is a more elaborate and enduring process than she had been previously made to believe.
Many others in her shoes – young and bubbling with enthusiasm for literature – have had to embrace the truth that there is a dearth of proper publishing structure in the country. They have also found that in the absence of a serious publishing culture and many independent traditional publishers, book printers parading themselves as publishers have taken over the book space.
Without the right structures in place, it will be very difficult for such enthusiastic young people to realise their respective ambitions to become real authors.
While some publishing firms still try to keep faith with writers including University Press Plc, which goes as far as organising an annual Author’s Day event, Prof. J.OJ Nwachukwu-Agbada of the Abia State University stressed this point, at the 2014 International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors in Ibadan recently.
He said that though writers had made tremendous progress between 1914 and 2014, the absence of dependable publishing outlets constituted an obstacle to literary production in the country.
“Publishing continues to be left for a few daring publishers who receive no encouragement in any way from the governments,” the keynote speaker noted, adding that while Nollywood attracted attention from the government; book publishing received no impetus.
Nwachukwu-Agbada also lamented the birth of publishing outlets that exist only to promote “writings that stand to win accolades”.
The likes of Aderemi may have to contend with the fact that the same social and economic factors, which swept off proper publishing and introduced self-publishing as the only choice left to aspiring and established writers many years ago, are still existing.
The same factors, in the form of a worsening poverty index that has rendered book beyond the reach of many Nigerians; a poorly- managed and unproductive economy; unfavourable government tax policies on books and printing items; lack of positive social attitude to intellectual development; and more, are poised to stay for awhile yet.
Government sponsored initiatives to the rescue
Perhaps aware that the gap between the common Nigerian, who can hardly afford two meals a day and decent accommodation and books may continue to widen unless something was done to check the trend, the Federal Government introduced the Bring-Back-The-Book Initiative on December 20, 2010.
The campaign was primarily aimed at reviving the book or reading culture, especially among the youth who have lost the value of the book either for information or for entertainment. It was also aimed at projecting a national culture for survival, sustenance and development.
The Bring-Back-The-Book campaign took off on that day in three phases, with the formal presentation of President Goodluck Jonathan’s book titled, ‘My Friends and I: Conversations on Policy and Governance via Facebook’.
To underscore the importance of the event, even Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, participated in one of the events. Expectations were so high that many Nigerian writers resident at home and in the Diaspora turned up to witness what they felt would be the ‘mother’ of all government initiatives for literature.
Also, in 2010, the Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu International Literary Colloquium was born in Minna, the capital of Niger State. In no time, the annual event had virtually transformed the town into the literary capital of Northern Nigeria.
Apart from sharing a common objective with the Bring-Back-The-Book campaign, which is the resuscitation of literary principles, the MBA Literary Colloquium was meant to serve as a platform for literary discourse, as well as a meeting point for intellectuals to discuss issues affecting Nigeria’s development and survival.
Similarly, down town in Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State, the annual Garden City Book Festival (renamed Port Harcourt Book Festival in 2013) steadily waxed strong and had opened up the Garden City to book tourists from different parts of the world. The direct result was the gradual resuscitation of a literary culture, previously believed to be dead, in the city and the designation of Port Harcourt as the current UNESCO World Book Capital.
Unfortunately, among all the three government-funded initiatives, only the last two have, for the past four or five years, kept the literary or culture space across the country alive with various activities and programmes.
After the public launch of Jonathan’s Bring-Back-The-Book campaign, nothing much happened. While Nigerians waited, many stakeholders felt government failed to come up with a meaningful programme to prove its seriousness to revive the book culture. Several months passed before it finally dawned on many of those who witnessed the campaign that all the noise about it might have amounted to mere hype.
Responding to this allegation, however, Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Documentation, Oronto Douglas, noted that the Bring-Back-The-Book campaign was still alive. According to him, its structure is not meant to depend on government.
Uncertainty in literary community
There is a growing feeling among some writers that members of the ruling class may be sponsoring literature and literary activities for other reasons not entirely related with a genuine need to revive or bring back the book culture to Nigeria. Recent developments around the literary community seem to have given rise to such feelings.
Before it started, many visitors had feared that the 2014 edition would be the last of the MBA literature colloquium. This feeling had persisted even after Governor Aliyu signed into law a bill establishing the Niger State Book and other Intellectual Resources Agency.
Although the bill was a move designed to guarantee the future of the agency and its programmes, including the colloquium, it failed to address the rumour, which was peddled even right there at the venue of the event, that the colloquium might not continue after the exit of Aliyu from office in 2015.
Nor did it allay fears that the newly created Nigerian Writers Series, also funded by the outgoing governor, may be short-lived in his absence. The feeling of uncertainty for the future of literary development in that part of the country was further reinforced by perceived lapses in logistics during the event.
Also, despite the success of the 2014 edition of the Port Harcourt Book Festival, it was no secret that the organisers had, for the first time since its inception, had difficulty raising the funds for the event. The absence of Governor Rotimi Amaechi, who is believed to be the moving spirit behind the festival and its sole sponsor, from the weeklong event did not help matters. Many participants and guests had then returned to their various homes convinced that they had seen the last of the annual event.
A former general secretary of the Oyo State chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Seun Pinheiro, predicts that the Port Harcourt Book Festival may end up as a direct victim of the political rivalry currently playing out in Rivers State.
“Even if Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s anointed political son takes over from him in Rivers State tomorrow, the Port Harcourt Book Festival remains peripheral. The festival is peripheral because it is the personal whim and passion of the outgoing state governor. It is not central to the interest that binds him and his likely successor in the first place, not to mention the fact that a successor from another party is very likely to discontinue the event,” he says, in an interview with our correspondent.
Writers convention that almost failed to hold
Raji-Oyelade
Just as additional realities implied that those directly involved in the business of literary production must begin to seek alternatives to government sponsorship of literature, the annual international convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors almost did not take place for the first time in its 33-year history.
The earliest sign of impending doom was an official statement posted on the association’s website.
Signed by the current ANA President, Prof. Remi Raji-Oyelade, the statement had initially announced the postponement of the 2014 convention. It read in part, “We regret to inform you that the Rivers State chapter has failed to meet two deadlines set by the National Executive Council on their preparedness to host the convention. A third deadline extension, specially requested, expired today, October 20, 2014. Therefore, the National Executive has no other option than to postpone the 33rd National Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors. Clearly, it is not feasible to hold the convention on the earlier advertised dates.”
Okome
Yet, determined to find a way out of the embarrassing situation, ANA had sought financial assistance from the Presidency and eventually got it. The result of that was a two-day convention that also passed as the poorest ever witnessed, in terms of attendance.
Later, reviewing the circumstances that had led to the situation, Raji-Oyelade said ANA almost failed to hold a convention, which had since become a yearly ritual, because of its dependence on financial support from state governments.
The realisation that continued dependence on government sponsorship or funding may affect the future of Nigerian literature compels a serious debate across the literary community in the country.
Canada-based film scholar and writer, Prof. Onokoome Okome, describes the situation, which has to do with the dearth of a proper literary culture that comes from a sustained funding from private organisations and not from government, as a very Nigerian thing.
He says, “It is intricately tied to the Nigerian society, which relies hugely on a kind of corrupt patronage. One person is always at the centre of the affair. And when that person dies or leaves office, the thing dies.
“I think the way to get around this is to set up structures that will support the production of culture, literature and all other art forms. And this structure should be outside government; it should be sponsored by public organisations.”
Olorunyomi
Like Okome, another writer and academic, Dr. Sola Olorunyomi of the University of Ibadan, thinks it is not proper for writers to continue to wait for government to fund literature.
To Olorunyomi, the lack of commitment and support to literature on the part of the government represents a total lack of sense of self-preservation.
“The Nigerian experience absolutely says something of the intellectual poverty of the elite. When you close down and deny literature totally, what it means is that you have no means of having a sense of order. When it happens eventually, government is likely to be in serious trouble. That calls for writers to start shopping elsewhere for alternatives,” he says.
Time to search for alternatives
More than ever, producers of literature in Nigeria feel the need to come together to search for viable alternatives to funding and to design a sustainable organisation that must exist outside the individual writer.
Okome advocates a model that should outlive any author, such as PEN and the Nobel Prize Committee, for example. He insists that it must not be government and writers must distance themselves from the organisation that will take care of it.
Investigation shows that most writers are scared of a collapse of literary sponsorship in Nigeria. There will be nothing left, many of them believe, and it will have far-reaching negative consequences for the image of the country.
“It will mean many things. It will mean that we do not recognise what literature means to any society. It will mean that we are playing with our own culture and we don’t take our culture seriously. It will also mean that those in charge of literature are just paying lip service to it. More than anything else, it will mean that we are not policing what we do,” Okome notes.
But the writers will have to look inwards to find ways, including setting up structures by which they can collectively generate an income to fund literature. With this, it is generally assumed, they can attain relative autonomy and independence.
Also, investigation shows that it is very unlikely that many writers are prepared to turn to foreign agencies as alternative sponsors of Nigerian literature for obvious reasons. Over the years, writers have learnt to stick to their own developmental timelines and their own goals rather than worry about living up to the expectations of such agencies.
No more literature that feeds on charity
Ofili
Literary activist and poet, Chike Ofili, has joined the likes of Raji-Oyelade, Okome, Olorunyomi, Pinheiro and Prof. Tony Afejuku to call on fellow writers to unite and ensure that funding for literature no longer depends on charity.
What writers need, they argue, is a National Book Policy, an endowment fund for literature, writers’ residency programmes, establishment of a National Council of Nigerian Literature to take care of all genres of writing in the country, especially for the benefit of aspiring writers and established authors eager to revive their craft, to mention a few.
Also arguing that the reason why there is a semblance of cooperation from government is because the likes of Wole Soyinka, J.P Clark-Bekederemo, Gabriel Okara and Elechi Amadi are still active in the society, Ofili warns that writers will metaphorically become orphaned by the time they are no longer visible on the literary scene.
It is presumed that with the recent devaluation of the Nigerian currency, literature will likely be the first victim of an attendant belt-tightening mechanism that may render efforts to push things through any government agency or parastatal unsuccessful in the days ahead.
The implication, it seems, is that writers may be flung back to that era in the past when they literally had to depend on individual contributions or levies to fund their own activities or programmes.
Proposed imposition of tax on imported books
While it is necessary for writers to heed the call to look inwards for solutions to problems affecting literary production in Nigeria, there are other issues that must be considered in the quest to safeguard the future of the book. One of them is the Federal Government’s plan to impose taxation on imported books.
During the handover ceremony of the 2014 World Book Capital Project in Port Harcourt, Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, made an appeal to the Federal Government not to impose the proposed tariff on imported books.
But the writer’s plea fell on deaf ears. A few weeks later, the FG went on to announce a new upward review of the tariff on imported books from zero to 62.5 per cent.
A breakdown of the new tax regime showed that its value comprised a 20 per cent import duty, a surcharge of 7 per cent, comprehensive import supervision scheme of 0.5 per cent and a levy plus value added tax of 35 per cent.
Publishers, end users and other stakeholders in the publishing industry, as well as members of the public, kicked against the new tariff during the International Conference of the 2014 Nigeria International Book Fair at the University of Lagos.
Addressing the issue, the pioneer chairman of the Nigeria Book Fair Trust, Dayo Alabi, said the FG should have invited the stakeholders to a meeting to discuss the problems of the publishing industry before re-introducing the new tariff on imported books.
“Due to a number of factors, the cost of producing books in Nigeria is so high that the book industry cannot do without importing printed books from abroad. As a matter of fact, many books, especially medical and engineering books, are not published in Nigeria because of these challenges,” he said.
Alabi noted that part of the problems currently affecting the book chain in the country was caused by the absence of a National Book Council.
Later, in an interview with a major newspaper, he insisted that the first step towards resolving the crisis in the publishing industry should be the removal of the duty on printing materials and increase in power supply.
Then calling on government to let books printed and published in Nigeria be comparable in cost with books published in Nigeria but printed in India, Alabi warned that the situation where most Nigerian publishers print their books in India, China and other Asian countries would continue to take its toll on employment and government revenue, as well as affect the turnover of local printing companies, if not checked.
However, despite the assurance that government is willing to reverse its decision to impose tax on books, it is yet to yield to requests to engage in dialogues and consultations with stakeholders in the publishing industry to find much-needed solutions to challenges facing the sector.
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