Imagine Nigeria Without Writers

This year, I read opinion pieces and articles on Nigeria's newspapers and blogs than I had read in years. From Elnathan John's weekly humorous, but reflective satirical pieces to Tolu Ogunlesi's deep, and debate provoking articles. I read pieces from Nigerians who learned to write, effectively, out of strong interior need to say something relevant. These articles flooded the newspapers- hard and soft copies- and while some of the writers were angry, others guided their humane, not losing their sense of humor in the process of reflecting on the conditions of the country. Regardless, however, they all have proven that Nigerians are conscious of their challenges, and are ready to keep strewing words together until we get it straight in the country.

If words were swords, we would have had a war sprung out of our writers' opinions this year. While some discerning citizens could sense the senseless directions of our situation- from bad governance to deep-rooted corruption- others, whose purpose it is to defend a system that they know is sick, and is dying from terminal diseases, are willing to keep defending the rot because of the benefits they are anticipating in the disjointed polity and system; or have apparently lost their faculties hence, will defend any rash thoughts from our decision makers. Replies to letters, articles countering articles, and opinionated essays all stretched the writing process.

In the end, the best writers, for me, were those who didn't have to benefit or stand the chance of benefiting from any side, who didn't have to be paid or contracted to write before they wrote. They were those whose gift of the art assured me that though we all may sleep in the same bed, we all can't lie in the same direction. To me, they have best governed Nigeria than any government may have attempted in the country this year. It terrifies me to imagine this, but picture a Nigeria without writers. Can you? What do you see?

These writers wrote when the country re-based and millions of Nigerians had no idea what re-basing meant; and provided clear writings when we devalued our Naira, and Nigerians weren't sure if it was a destructive or a constructive decision to devalue. Since millions of Nigerians are deprived of the skills of reading, these writers were hopeful that the population that could read would read these articles and disseminate the ideas to those who couldn't read; therefore, spread the word.

The enlightenment kept coming because the one-hour or half-hour news on TV and radio, they writers were sure, may not be seen or heard by everyone, because everyone, it seemed, was tired of the filtered news, the produced news castings. No wonder we have the most heated and healthy debates at the newspaper stands. With online writings, also, people could talk back at the comment sections. Nothing liberates the human minds like having an outlet to drop their opinions following other opinions. They hate to be spoon-fed.

We had a turbulent 2014, and were sometimes relieved of this tide with comic-reliefs from our politicians and their cohorts. And so the two instances mostly weaved, produced reliefs that made us remember that we, too, can still laugh, that we haven't been overwhelmed by tragedy. And that has consistently been done by writers. Writers who stayed up nights to sink deep thoughts into ideas that invoked emotions that sometimes provoked reactions. Writers who made us remember our girls in captivity. They constantly reminded us that people in the north east are Nigerians who die everyday. Writers who crafted unbiased reasons regarding our country's need for a change of leadership, and desperately so, with accurate analogies. Writers who dared to challenge, whose words were often published the way they were submitted. Writers whose writings didn't put food on their tables, yet they wrote.

Towards the end of every year, series of awards – from music to movies – are often organized to appreciate the efforts of people who distinguished themselves in various activities in these fields. While I am not concerned about an award like this for our writers, I do hope that someone, even their publishers, would give them some appraisals at the end of every year. This may not be necessary, you might think, but these efforts keep everything- from politics to entertainment, sports to academics- going. They stir-up the human consciousness, making the dailies one of the first things we want to see when we rise up every morning.

I grew up reading books that nursed my desire for writing. Then when I started weaving words that appeared to me like magic, I was sometimes confused with where to channel them. The validation came when I began reading newspapers and online contributors. From them, I subconsciously learned the bitter truth that the chief aim of the writer, amongst other things, is to instruct and excite. It is, above all, to speak the truth without any hope of retribution, without any fear of being reprimanded. 

@olaomojarabi

Views From a Workshop Participant

I have always imagined the classes of writing workshops. A group of thinkers, whose opinions of life are formed into creative words, gathered in a room over coffee or bottles of water, poring over books with experienced facilitators presiding over the debates and discussions that drive the workshop. I often imagine the facilitators. Self-assured writers extolling their accomplished works, maybe opinionated or cynics, who are graceful of several prizes, grateful for the fact that a collection of beginning writers trusted them so much to take time out of bill-paying schedules just to learn ways of improving their crafts from the facilitators' "wealth of experience".

My imagination was often inspired by stories from people who had attended past workshops or writings on how workshops were organized in anthologies. Getting into workshops, I was almost made to believe, was like getting into Harvard. Highly selective, rigorous work loads and competitive class styles. So, you might want to wait to have your works published in Granta or The New Yorker before sending-in a sampled work to any workshop that steals your fancy.

I applied to Chimamanda's Farafina workshop once and was not accepted. It was two years ago. I paced the lenght of my room, worried about the fact that I had specifically written the story that I sent for consideration, sinking thoughts and ideas just so it is fresh and poignant, yet did not make it. I gave up applying in subsequent years, partly because I felt betrayed and partly because I stopped thinking of my works as good enough. Instead, I sank more time into reading great books- from fiction to non-fiction, short stories to articles- and carved the ideas that flowed out of excessive readings into writings that spoke what I wanted to speak, and how I wanted it spoken.

I stayed with my works and breathe life into them, believing they would someday be good enough to have them get me into workshops. I desperately wanted to be a workshop participant because I thought of it as a measuring tool that would assert how ready I was to create a world with words, to see if my ideas were ready to grip millions of imaginations across the world. I was right. Your fellow participants are critiques who try to make their words ring true of your work, trusting you would do same to theirs.

The Abuja writing workshop facilitated by Elnathan John opened the first door to this world that would end delirious and disturbing thinkings of workshops. A one-day workshop that sparked interesting debates among promising writers. Set in a cozy environment with a seminar-style sitting arrangement, I had an experience that revealed to me that getting into workshop is like getting published.

Imagine the workshop facilitator as your publishing agent. She has several works published (couple of non-fiction inclusive); you are still scribbling down ideas to sharpen your craft. The facilitator, like the publisher, doesn't discuss her published works in the workshop. She hates to do that. She discusses yours, like an agent who has seen your work as promising, but is beggging that you re-work it so that it is better improved. It is the dream of every agent to have a work published that would sweep the world off its feet. So does the facilitator, whether said or unsaid, wishes that her students go out to be an excellent ambassadors of her programme.

Therefore, an ideal workshop facilitator won't define grammar or teach you how to use tenses and punctuations. If your primary school english teacher deprived you that, and this inner voice calls you to be a writer, better hit the bookshop and grab a brighter grammer. Workshops start with basic attributes of writing that helps improve your styles, choice of words, brevity, and skills that help strenghten your use of sensory languages. Like Toni Morrison once said, that she can't teach writing, but she can help with the comfort. Writing workshop is not for non-writers. Your writing sample would even say it, if you're being honest. They are experienced people whose familiarity with words over the years can easily reveal who is gifted and who isn't.

Upon my return from the workshop, however, some friends who also write, wanted to know how it went. If we were given per diems. Did we have fat meals? What was Elnathan really like? And from my past experience of how I had heard and read misleading stories about workshops, I decided to pass on a belief that I have always had, which the workshop helped strengthen, to others: write for the love of it, write for your inner voice. Once you do this, and learn to do it well, you would possess the skeleton key that would unlock doors to workshops and, maybe, publishing houses.





 

When Campus Politics Mirror a Divided Nation

The two major entrances into the Samaru campus of ABU Zaria have long, tiled paths. Flanked by these paths are trees and neatly trimmed flowers barricaded with lawns, dry carved woods hanging loosely from them with stern warning: No lawn crossing. This is to protect the blooming flowers and evergreen landscaping from being trampled. The trees, some of which look like they've been planted since the school was first built, have trunks, large enough to accommodate students' posters for social programs on campus or pitch politics to you with campaign posters. The posters on wall paths and tree trunks are bits of what to expect as you approach student hostels and lecture theaters.

You'd find the students in clumps. Cohorts are either devising winning strategies for their candidate or an opposition group is discussing the stunt pulled by their opponent overnight. You might be run into, by a contesting candidate himself, distributing flyers and canvassing for votes for a particular office. The semester is fast folding to an end, and despite the rigor that comes with the preparation for exams, the students are driving campaigns around the campus, heating it up with strategies.

The student union elections in ABU, like in most Nigerian campuses and like the general elections in the country, is not devoid of sentiments. This bitter reminder of how divided we are re-surges as soon as the election bells are rung. And so, out of the desperation to win by any contesting candidate who perceives himself as an underdog that is neither a Muslim nor core arewa, there is an intense search for a name that is northern-like, and an outfit that portrays him as "one of us" on campaign posters.

Bello Rilwan, the president of political science students, a yoruba-muslim, thinks this as plain folk. According to him, "it's a strategy that has been working over the years for some students who think the only means of winning an election in a school on the northern soil is dressing and bearing the names of people from such region." The campaign posters come in different qualities and styles. On it, some candidates give a phrasal line of their manifestos; and some boldly flaunt names and pose in pictures with traditional outfit on the posters, beaming as if nomenclatures could be an automatic tickets to victory. You may find a northern-christian with a name like Audu Farouk John. The "Farouk" may be a middle name that has never been adopted before. A daring contestant may even abbreviate the John as "J", blurring every possibility of outright rejection.

While the political science president perceives this as a working means for some, another candidate contesting for a post of secretary general, Nathaniel Haruna, a southern-christian, thinks it is pure inferiority complex to conceal your identity just to win an election. He believes that "competence and responsibility" are the tools he possesses, and these will ultimately help him win the election. In a country where merit has been clouded by tribe and religion, some may perceive his clairvoyance as illusions. His opponent, a northern Muslim may not be as half competent, or could be better competent than he is; but so many are of the opinions that past experiences show sentiments prevail over competence, regardless of who is better qualified.

There has been raging debates ranging from where this problem of ethnic and religious politics stemmed from. The social background, including family upbringing, religious homes and parochial beliefs have often been attributed as the breeding spots for such myopia. Bello Rilwan agrees, too. And most students from the department he is currently leading thinks he has done a tremendous work as a leader. Born and raised in Lagos with education being his only touch with the north, he thinks service should be the forerunner of any political aspirant. It is, however, not certain if this quest for service was the strategy that worked for Rilwan when he emerged as the president of his department last year.

Another contestant, who chose anonymity, thinks the environment influences the disguising choices aspirants make. Just like majority of voters in Nigeria's general election would weigh money and material comforts over competence, students, he claims, often prefer a fellow religious partner and tribal person over any other candidate not inclined towards their beliefs. He is frank about this and wouldn't budge when I sighted Rilwan as yoruba who had won, beating a northern candidate. Nathaniel, however, thinks politics of sentiment is fast dwindling in his faculty due to the orientation the social science students are receiving from their enlightening courses. He is of the high believe that it may, someday, totally end.

While doubters may disagree with Nathaniel's opinion, an event which recently happened in his faculty have been perceived by some as a beginning to an end of such polarization. A president of a department in the faculty was charged with misappropriation of funds and the duos who raised this alarm with constructive petitions were a southern-christian and a northern-muslim. Their courage was a bold step that opened the eyes of many to what they were seemingly blinded to. Even though this president may have misappropriated with impunity, the charge by these whistle blowers was a conscious awakening that though we may not unanimously vote you into office, we will collectively expose you. This may be a first bold step, optimists like Nathaniel are likely to think, towards fighting a political ill that is pervasive in a nation divided across thick ethno-religious lines.

Twitter@olaomojarabi

Dear Jos, We Still Remember

When the tension and trauma that trailed the Jos crisis began to subside, people started sharing stories of how they had managed to outlive death. In the house where we first lived when we moved to Jos, the story had been that the entire block of apartments had been thrown into disarray the night the crisis started, forcing frailed, old men and women and the young to scale fences and jump ridges of farmlands behind the house as the marauders who helped fueled the pandemonium stormed houses owned by Muslims with machetes and knives in retaliation of what they heard were been done to their fellow Christians who owned houses in the Muslim-dominated areas.

It was a time when people lived in Jos without any delineation of residential areas across religious and tribal divides. That same night, the landlord of the previous house we lived in, Baba, went missing and never returned. Three days later, his body was found, washed up by the riverbank, reeking a fusty smell that seem to assail my nostrils right now as I recollect.

The story of Jos, like that of any happy town once blessed with steady calm then shattered by the ruins of violence, is of mixed feelings. Home of peace. A community of people who lived and pursued the happiness of life without sticking their noses into the affairs of others. You could worship the sun and no one would care a hoot; and people only mimicked your Hausa or English when it was heavily accented by the mother tongue.

They didn't want to know why you spoke it. It was a way of life that was not truncated by one's state of origin or the religion you professed. Hence, there was no need to ask which area had the highest number of churches or mosques before you rented an apartment. You did not have to think that a people who didn't even want to know where you came from would overnight turn wild wolves that would make you flee the comfort of your home with frayed mind into the dark night.

Burnt cars and half-razed houses still litter some streets in Jos today. The atmosphere is peaceful and calm, created by an air of tolerance that seemed to have been forcefully accepted because of the daily hustles for a descent living. You'd not fail to notice how the slightest irritation could trigger an altercation; by the jingles trailing the radio stations advocating for peaceful co-existence; by the careful selection of the markets you patronize and the areas you visit.

The town, sometimes paraded by armed soldiers, is bustling but shrouded with fear because people are aware of the fact that we all still remember.

We move on quickly as Nigerians. And it's amazing how. Some perceive this as an unusual strength, while others see it as just being trauma fatigued. We are either so used to being plagued with trauma that we tend to have settled in for it as a norm; or we just don't see any sense in wasting time gathering sensible, sentiment-free information to truly find out why a people who lived together for years suddenly turned monsters that feared each other.

And this is why soon, too soon, after an incident occurs, just before we catch our breath from it ruins, another sways in. We cover the fire with the ash, forgetting that the ash is also the remains of the fire. We just have to move on, our Nigerian clock seemed to be reminding; after all, funerals should only be depressing when they are your own, how odd when we tend to believe this.

Come September 7, it would be exactly thirteen years since Jos was plunged into a mindless ethno-religious crises that scooped thousands of lives away, spanning almost a decade. The date resounds for me who didn't lose anyone or property, and it makes me think of those who did. The family of Baba, our former landlord, keeps a visible memory of him.

Some of them are his pictures. In one them, the 70's type of picture you refer to as 'old school', he wears a cone-shaped dashiki, smiling softly with anticipation. He had the photograph taken in front of the house he first built only after a few years that he arrived Jos. In another, he stands behind Mama, his only wife, seated on a wooden chair, the glow of a newlyweds clearly etched on their young faces. Together, they must have envisaged a rewarding future that could only be achieved as Nigerians, in Nigeria. I also think of a distant neighbour whose father had gone out, during the time when the crisis would suddenly resurge, after a period of rescission, not to come back again. The family, I am sure, still hopes he walks home someday.

I think of relatives who sold their houses in a hurry just to relocate and start a new life, and are still finding it difficult to pick the pieces of their former life in their new settlement. And I wonder if we have truly moved on. Chances are that when we forcefully move on as a people from trauma just because our lives depend on moving, and not because we need to avoid reoccurrence, we might be pulled back to the spot where it all started to clean the mess we left behind.

Here was a crisis that left indelible marks on a state for a disturbing long period of time, and we think memories will be forgotten? We need to understand that true healing and forgiveness only occurs when the hurting have seen reasons to heal, not when soldiers are sent to the streets to avoid grieving people climbing on each other. The soldier and the state, we fail to remember, are seldom in good terms. We must move on, yes! But we can't afford to leave the senseless cause that initially stalled our movement behind without properly smashing its ugly head.

For if we fail to do that, that ugly head may re-surface and scare us back to our initial spot.

May all the lost souls of the Jos crisis find peace wherever they may be.

Twittter- @olaomojarabi

Taken Away by Ebola

                     
I imagine her office. Oval shaped, behind her busy table is a huge see-through shelve that displayed her plaques and awards -- a hardworking doctor who had dedicated long years of service to saving life, and to humanity, some revealed. The table is wide, and amidst the objects of medics strewed on it is her family picture, all smiling, all exposing a set of excellent teeth. On that day, when a patient was wheeled into the hospital, she might have taken another look at her accomplishments; another look at her beautiful family well-framed in a nicely shot photo before dashing out to attend to him.

When she passed, as preparation for her cremation begins, the husband and the son may take a last visit to this office-- not to remind themselves of her death, but to have a last connection with her dedication to service, to sniffle the objects that smelled of her and touch the things that felt like her because they may never touch her again. Even the smother of ash, the sad remains of her's, may be disposed, unsympathetically, by a government with preoccupied mind, a government that care less. And so she passed. From the same life she was desperate to save; from curbing the spread of a disease that may have sparked beyond its current spark had she discharged Sawyer, despite pressures that trailed his admittance.

Ebola drifted into Nigeria from Liberia. It had come, unexpectedly, from a comfortable looking Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, who seemed to possess all the comforts of life. Dr. Adadevoh, on duty the day he was admitted, must have received him, perhaps unalarmed because the initial symptoms of soar throat, pains, vomiting may have all been mistaken for a common fever. Perhaps because Sawyer didn't look like someone who could possibly have Ebola. Perhaps because Adadevoh must have trusted the Nigerian government to have the borders well screened of visitors from the troubled countries. She must have wrongly thought. Because she would end up being the first known Nigerian to contact the disease, and the fifth to die of it, after two nurses who had attended to Sawyer in that same hospital had initially died, followed by an ECOWAS official.

Adadevoh had a son and a husband. She was a daughter, an aunt, a cousin, maybe a niece or a sister. I imagine her circle of friends and colleagues. Graciously hoping, all praying that she recovered. I imagine her in an isolated ward, only visited by few friends and families all masked, barely touching her, only gesturing and nodding, leaving almost immediately they came. In one of her pictures, she had firm eyes, Adadevoh's, like those of a woman who seemed to have them fixated on a goal, and is intent to have that goal achieved. She must have been courageous; or otherwise, would have sent anything from Liberia to a no-sight distance. In her isolation, during her battle with the deadly Ebola, she must have thought of all these and that and become embittered, sad that she couldn't live to see her exuding more courage; or see her boy and husband clap her out of isolation like Kent Brantly, the American doctor. Death, in its grieving state, must have clasped her with firm arms, luring her into a sound sleep in her wildest thought. In the words of Decontee Sawyer, wife of the deceased Patrick Sawyer:

                              "I share the pains that the family members
                             of the Nigerian doctor are going through.
                             It is just a pity that Patrick had to cause 
                            this damage both in Liberia and Nigeria. I
                           want to reach out to them and express how
                          deeply saddened and sorry I am for their
                          loss and pain...I pray for all of the families
                          whose loved ones were taken away by this 
                          merciless killer Ebola, especially those
                          affected by Patrick's actions."
       
May we all have the courage to bear our irreplaceable losses. May the souls of all the departed from the Ebola scourge be in peace wherever they may be.

A Notebook of Lost Memories

               
I recently had a list of books that I wanted to reread sent home. A few days later, the list came back with a couple of books. Behind the list is my father's thin but legible handwriting: could not go any further; carton too dusty. Among the books sent, however, is a notebook that I had once used when I started reading and when I was beginning to scribble down ideas that swirled in my head as inspiration for what seemed like writing struck. When I called to thank him, I did not bother to ask what informed his decision to include the notebook, or if it had been mistakenly added; he, in turn, did not say a word about it. His decision, whatever must have prompted it, has decided to take me on a tour of how I collected the literary pieces that awed and inspired me as a teenager.

It is a red-covered long note with white pages divided by blue horizontal lines. The edges of the sheets are now a fainted yellow from what seemed like an exposure to sunlight. The first page was dedicated to a quote by Maya Angelou, one of the few women in whose words I had understood that language could pull an enormous power that could trigger a change. The five pages that followed were not dissimilar from the first. Just that the quotes had come from random writers and poets who nothing, but their craft must have moved me to have an excerpt of their works written down. Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, Earnest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston all had a few lines from their poetry, essays, short stories and autobiographies directly lifted and quoted. What struck me most was that as a beginning and inexperienced reader, I had found comfort in quality words and courage to have me led by these words to a destination that I could not tell; a place where no prescience could inform me of its safety, or risks.

The middle page is a bit busy with list of books and beside them were start and finish dates of each book. Their Eyes Were Watching God caught my attention. I had started reading it in February and had finished it in three days. Now I remember it was not such a book with much contents. Written in Haiti during her stint as a folklore collector and an anthropologist, Zora succinctly tells the tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey where she learns what love is. The book had nourished my curiosity about Zora. Later that year, in September, I would read Dust Tracks on a Road- an autobiography of her's. Through that I met other writers and poets like Langston Hughes. I would come to know the Harlem Renaissance as a period when a community of fastidious black writers and poets possessed the power of words and had also learned the economy of words to say so much in so little pages.

In 2005, a period when Jos was plunging in and out of series of sectarian crises, I had read autobiographies of Fredrick Douglas, Maya Angelou, and had taken a swift turn, during that same year, to read short stories of Checkhov, Poe, Woolf and Welty. In Welty's stories, I found a smooth blend of relationship between the white and the black race. To this day, I marvel at her gift of imagination; at how she carved out existence between different people with seemingly struggling and flourishing lives. They had all, in a strange manner, equipped my laboratory of words to describe experiences that someone within my age gap may have found uneasy to describe then. The black American authors had painted the horrors of slavery and emancipation of blacks in so clear terms that I could not stop explaining the travails beyond the content of history textbooks to a group of horrifying classmates. And so when Jos began experiencing a relative calm, and everyone saw peace and healing, I saw a town of smothering ruins. I met a people who still harbored hatred, but literature, my feeble mind must have oddly believed, could help bring solace to the minds of these people. Welty's works had exposed me to a realm of possibilities.

Flipping my notebook reveals further books that I must have read at random places and varying times. In class. At my father's desk in office while he worked on Saturdays. During long vacations. When I'm hurt or just having the fleeting moments of moodiness. Some I remembered by instances that had provoked them; some are hazy, but I try to figure out by vaguely written timelines. These books and stories and poems all had a significant impacts in me as a beginning reader who would end up becoming a budding writer. I didn't just want to read, now I realize. I wanted to become a better reader. The reason must have stemmed out of the desire to recount, to retell and to chronicle; or otherwise, I wouldn't have kept a notebook that I couldn't have told what I would make of it today.

I held the notebook in my hand and the thought of how it all began flooded me with memories. The red cover back is beginning to get dotted with white spots -- the signs of having been held for a long time before being packed. The edges are becoming rough, as if constantly browsed by termites. It smells of damp and the ink from written words are becoming erased with time. Poring over it for the last time, I turned to the last page. Amidst dates, names of books and authors scribbled, Langston Hughes' Dream Deferred loomed. I read it again and it felt new, like words carefully spoken by someone who has not spoken in years.

Hard to Find

                                                                 

Mother had an excellent memory that traumatized me. She held on to dates and events immediately they happened, and kept holding on to them for a disturbing and amazingly long time.  She held on to dates and timelines of children’s death, of bad dreams, of disappointments. Like they were catalogued in a sort of mental archive, a part of her memory that would constantly allow her remind people of the evil of the devil, and of how much prayers and Jesus can work wonders.

And so after a certain incident that stole five years of my life, in a manner of speaking, she began to nag me like an ill-tempered ogre about finding Jesus. It was simply an incident. Yet her pastor had advised her, and asked her to warn me not to speak of it carelessly.

For how else could she explain the sudden death of one man, and the disappearance of another, months into their relationship with a young lady like me? I hated her idea of religion. If mama had brought Christianity to this world, I once told my Aunt Kemi, then no one would be a Christian.

It was August. Twenty-one days into the university lecturers’ strike, two years after Ade had gone without prior notice, and three years since Onimisi’s death, she reminded me. What are you doing about your soaring age? What are you doing about finding Jesus? What are you doing about having a man? You are in your second year at the University for Christ’s sake!

And when I tried to absolve myself of any of these accusations, saying that it wasn’t my fault, her retort would bite even harder. Whose fault is it that you are chasing thirty? She would bellow. She would remind me about how irresponsible the men in Lafia were, and how much she disliked Ade the first day I brought him home and how he had validated her presentiment of being dangerous the way he had abandoned me like a sour business deal.

 As I left Lafia for Jos that day in August, her words slashed my flesh like shards of broken glass. Aunt Kemi’s arms were as warm and open as ever. She understood me very well. Your mother asked me to tell you to accept Jesus, Aunty Kemi said with the grin that often made her look my age. She’d just called her sister to keep her mind at ease about my whereabouts. I was happy to be with her. Jos felt like nirvana.

Jos in August is radiant. It rains almost every day. And I seemed to get the idea that God was pleased with the way the flowers sprouted out of the mountains. Whenever I visited Aunt Kemi at her shop in Abuja market, the place further sealed my love for the people of Jos. Everybody worked with an air of confidence here.

It was in this soporific mood I met Toyo. “Has everyone found Jesus in Jos?” I asked with a sarcastic smile when he told me that he worshipped in the same church with Aunt Kemi. “I think so,” he replied with a flash humour that lightened my face. “Jos is an acronym for Jesus Our Saviour”, he added. And every day after that, with the exception of Sundays, I always met Toyo whose printing shop was two shops away from Aunt Kemi’s.

In the intervening months between August and December, I bonded effortlessly with Toyo the same way it happened with Onimisi in Zaria. We talked randomly about everything: the lingering lecturers’ strike; my mother; the weather. I liked his idea of calling me a nonconformist because it often nudged me out of the frame of mind that my mother was getting me into. So on one hazy December morning, I received the news of the strike’s ending with mixed feelings I couldn’t describe.

I kept faith with Toyo. In March, he came to the university in Zaria to see me and to apply for a post-graduate program. “I’m in love with you,” he told me matter-of-factly, “and I forever will”. I captured that moment and froze it in my mind for eternity.

In May, one hot evening, in the sweltering heat, the television screen came alive whilst the students lounged in the Common Room. Abuja market had just been bombed by the insurgents! I went outside for some fresh air. The gust of hot wind enveloped me. In the days and months to come, the tears would keep flowing whenever I remembered my mother’s words that all the shops on Aunt Kemi’s lane had been affected by the blast. It will be hard, I thought. It will be hard to find better memories.

Read Me Without Prejudice

The art of writing has a way of eliciting good tidings from discerning and intelligent readers. Everyone—book reviewers, literature teachers and ordinary readers—all have ways of expressing their love for a book, leaving them to devour the pages of such books like a nicely iced birthday cakes. One of such ways of showing much love for a well-crafted book is through blurbs. Book blurbs could come from editors, reviewers, writers and even readers. Regardless of where they spring from, they have come to capture my attention, forcing me to run to them immediately I grab a book before flipping to the first chapter.

Imagine this about Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Staring unflinching into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as lullaby.  Wouldn’t you rather spend some time appreciating the similes that helped breathe life into this praise before poring over the book? One of my best books of all time, James McBride’s The Color of Water, still holds one of my most admired blurbs. The Color of Water [will] make you proud to be a member of the human race. The first time I read this blurb, I nursed a sensational feeling that a separate award should be designed for blurb writers. If I ever wrote a book, I would wish a blurb writer would exert as much thought-through process into the blurb as I would have into the book. I could have a praise go like: Vivid and poised. This book would make you cringe, laugh and cry. Above all, it would have you place it at arm’s length.

Over the years, disciplining myself to become a better reader has taught me a great lesson. We should never read books to admire the beauty of words and skills alone; otherwise, we would have our laboratory of words built without that of the ideas refined. The theme, which is the central idea of a book, is arguably of immense importance than the cluster of words formed into admiration. Just like a preacher uses a story in a scripture to pass a message to a carefully listening congregation, followed by a resounding halleluiahs and praise Jehovah with one hand placed on the Bible and the other swaying from left to right in the air, writings however graciously written they are, should never fail to pass their messages. Readers, after each chapters, should like the preacher’s congregation, hold the book to their bosoms, grateful for the fact that someone is telling a story they never would have told.

Don’t get me wrong. For what is the beauty of writing without a well-crafted language? Our languages, whether in metaphors or similes, should help advance our work, not just show how gifted we are with words. These days I am becoming too uncomfortable with blurbs, as well. It seems to be the booming business of the writing world and I have this feeling that people are becoming trained blurb writers. Some occupy first-three pages of a book, with the exception of back covers, saying almost the same thing (praising the writer, the styles, the languages). They do this altering the reader’s five senses of judgment—sight, smell, taste, feel and hear. The readers are left prejudiced. The opinion of the writer still lurked in the pages of varying blurb writers’ opinions. In the end, some readers come out of reading a book with mixed feelings: either it’s been over praised or under praised. The readers, therefore, nurse the wishful feelings of making profound decisions not initially clouded by other’s senses. They are left betrayed.

Even though blurb writers are great editors and good writers themselves, the conscious human intellect is sometimes suppressed by the subconscious human intuition. It is therefore not surprising to find hidden in blurbs the sheer personal appraisals of writers, leaving the idea of the books drowned in beautiful lines of personality and gift praises. 

I love blurbs. They are my windows to the world of the unknown. But care should be taking in writing them.  Most readers cast their expectations of a book on them. They should come without helping readers make decisions. They would better be appreciated when they come with suspense, urging the reader to want to know more. When blurbs are carefully written, they become compasses that help navigate the reader to a destination having hanged them with a thin rope of suspense.

Helping Our Girls Heal

I grew up hearing this story from my siblings. Our oldest sister schooled eight hours away from home. Being the first, she had been asked to stay back and complete her school at the Government Girls College, Gajiganna. Father’s transfer from Borno to Jos had come almost unexpectedly. And being one who despised changing schools for children, except under pressing need, he compelled her to stay back in Borno to complete her school, suppressing the only fear that parents nursed then—the fear of distance.

Her coming back for holidays used to be like a return from pilgrimage; her home entry a triumphant one. A private car was always hired to pick her up in Maiduguri. Her younger ones would line the walls of their room with colorful card board papers etched with words like: welcome back sis; Jos is cold. They swept and cleaned. These they did while Mother prepared the type of meal you ate on New Year’s Day. Father and Mother anticipated her return to warm up to her. To constantly remind her that leaving her to school thousands of miles away from home wasn’t unkind. It was a belief in the school and trust in the state. My other siblings, however, wanted to see her to trade memories. Of friends they left back in Borno. Of how much grasshoppers my sister ate, and if stand storm had scooped any body’s child away. She left Gajiganna with gratitude. There, she met her best friend with whom they still hang out. Her joyful stories must have inspired Father to further send his two sons and a cousin to school at the University of Maiduguri.

I called my sister to hear her opinion when the Chibok girls were abducted. There was silence, a clear-cut one that I could hear her daughter, my little niece, giggling in the background. It was then followed by a despaired voice. A voice that spoke volumes. It could have happened to anybody, she said. I have a daughter and can only imagine it better. I hung up and wondered if we would have had the best of her had she been abducted and returned; if she would have ever had any gleeful stories to share.

The Chibok girls are sisters and daughters. While they may not have been schooling far away from home, they had people waiting on them. They had stories to tell about Chibok and friends and life. The foot path they trod to school; the boys who made them giggle; their aspirations for higher institutions. But those stories, it seem, may now be blurred by sheer callousness.

Bring back our girls is now trending, globally. The clamor amazes and inspires me. How interesting that the world is indeed watching. It gives me hope that the girls, by some mission possible, will be rescued and brought back home. But I am also worried. I am worried that the girls may not be able to unloose the terror wrapped around them by Boko Haram. This terror, like post traumatic stress disorder, may plague them to a blind, obscuring their visions of joyful past memories. Yes! They will tell stories. But I hope where these stories would emanate from would not leave them paranoid and withdrawn for a disturbing long time.

Only time heals, they say. But I also understand that we need someone, astute and patient, to constantly remind us that we are waiting to be healed by time. Chibok is a sleepy town; Borno is displaced. I doubt if such persons, discerning and settled, will be on ground to help these girls heal when they are rescued and returned home.

So when next we raise placards or hash tag bring back our girls, we should also remember that our girls will be brought back hurt. This may not be a physical injury. But it sure will be one that might take time to get healed. Are we ready, fellow activists, to take our protests off the streets and clamor off twitter to help these girls heal? They may have spent weeks in the forest. They will spend more time learning to recount better stories. Only our continued shared efforts will help them remember how beautiful the world used to be, and still is.