For a blossoming literary culture to emerge and be sustained in 21st century Nigeria, some of these steps must be taken and maintained.
1. To stimulate and enhance literary creativity, literary competitions and contests, which used to be the practice in the colonial days, need to be resuscitated. The colonialists did it in the 1930s. Even the radios and TVs did it. It should involve all departments of creativity in indigenous and foreign languages—drama, prose, poetry, short stories, film and video, etc. Attractive material rewards should be attached to winning texts. The successful texts should be distributed. Government and corporate bodies must embark on wide distribution of the winning texts in schools and public libraries. The winning texts must be toured and read in many public institutions. If the colonialists did it with the result of an appreciable growth in the writing and reading culture of the time, there is even a greater need for our governments – at the center and in the States – to do so.
"Governments, voluntary agencies and organizations should endow writers fellowships and offer literary prizes to motivate writers to train and write in a sustained and enduring manner...In very specific terms, the National Endowment Draft Bill, which I believe has been with the National Assembly since the year 2004, has not been signed into law."
2. Journals, magazines, newspapers should show greater interest in the publication and serialization of literary texts. The growth of a literary and reading culture have benefited tremendously from the spaces which literary journals and newspapers devoted to works of literature. Black Orpheus, The Horn, Nigeria Magazine, Okike and so on, consciously helped to nurture literature. The example of Dandali which I mentioned earlier is worth emulating. The defunct New Nigerian, Daily Times and many of the more serious newspapers and tabloids in circulation today give prominence to serialized creative works, especially prose and poetry. They also give focus to literature and to book and play reviews. The fresh impetus began with The Guardian and it has been replicated in many of our newspapers. This is a direction to go. Indeed, the print media in Nigeria can move a step further by publishing the final products of the books they serialize after careful editing. To put it firmly, I am suggesting that newspapers should become publishers of literary work, if they wish, and they should ferment robust synergy with the creative arm of the pen fraternity.
"In spite of the provision in our Constitution for funding the arts, and in spite of the robust achievements of Nigerian artists, especially writers on the international scene, there are no grants or fellowships to support creative arts in Nigeria. This is simply unspeakable..."
3. Governments, voluntary agencies and organizations should endow writers fellowships and offer literary prizes to motivate writers to train and write in a sustained and enduring manner. The fellowships should cater for writers’ needs—feeding, accommodation, and honoraria that will enable writers complete creative works in progress with less difficulty than it is now. In very specific terms, the National Endowment Draft Bill, which I believe has been with the National Assembly since the year 2004, has not been signed into law. Government should expedite action on this. In July 2004, during a courtesy visit to the President of the Federation, ANA under my leadership reiterated this fact that Nigeria is perhaps the only country of its stature where such an Endowment does not exist. In spite of the provision in our Constitution for funding the arts, and in spite of the robust achievements of Nigerian artists, especially writers on the international scene, there are no grants or fellowships to support creative arts in Nigeria. This is simply unspeakable and we must constantly remind the Nigerian government to desist from the business of consciously setting aside a mandate of our Cultural Policy, which states, unequivocally and heart-warmingly, at Section 6.1.2., that ‘The State shall promote and encourage the establishment of writers clubs, art clubs, creative centres for encouraging creativity and popularizing the arts’. Section 6.1.3 more germanely and directly states that ‘the State shall support the associations and clubs through government subventions, grants and other forms of assistance.’ Government must stop provoking these high cultural people to resort to rough tactics before getting their rights! The Pen is lethal, I must warn!
4. The tragic issue of piracy and intellectual property crime is still very much with us. Whatever reward that should attend the intellectual labour of writers and other artists are carted away by privates. I appreciate the effort of the Nigerian Copyright Commission in dealing, legally and administratively with the burning, raging crime. I also appreciate the Commission’s partnership with the Reproduction Rights Society with regard to licensing on reprographic work. It is time however, that government committed more resources to dealing with the menace of copyright violations, which like fake drugs, and drug trafficking, is synonymous to pronouncing a death sentence on creative artists. This may be an opposite point to raise the issue of the National Creativity Prize which the Obasanjo Administration introduced in 2000. Its first and only edition was won by the venerable, octogenarian literary patriarch, Chinua Achebe. I recall, with pangs of nostalgia, the remarkable ceremonies that heralded and adorned the Prize. A government that is continuity-conscious would have sustained such a noble gesture of recognition to the creative literati and a promotion of creative excellence. Government should urgently revisit that Prize and revive it.
5. Associations related to literature—writing and reading—should enhance their activities of promotion and nurturing. ANA has created many literary prizes and is collaborating with government and corporate citizens on workshops, prizes endowments and seminars. Others, like Readers Association of Nigeria (RAN), the Literary Society of Nigeria (LSN) and the Association of Non-Fiction Authors of Nigeria (ANFAAN) should work more conscientiously to promote literary awareness, help build a reading and writing culture.
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| Femi Osofisan (L) and Olu Obafemi |
6. Our libraries are virtually dead. There are only very few public libraries in this country. There are fewer reading rooms around. Government should adopt a policy of acquiring at least 5000 copies of one successful creative text of every Nigerian author registered with ANA and distribute them in libraries and reading rooms, which should now be rehabilitated, or rebuilt, as the case may be.
7. The electronic media have been of tremendous help to the growth of creativity in the country, and especially in the north in the past. I have mentioned the role of the FRCN. The radio audience, of the Hausa programmes, for instance, is in millions. This could be replicated in the other languages of Tiv, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Idoma, Okun, Igbirra, Nupe, Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Igala and so on. Radio Kaduna encouraged literary development by regularly broadcasting poems, short stories, drama sketches and story-telling sessions. The broadcast of their creative works have availed the authors access to wide audiences. My first dramatic text, Pestle in the Mortar, was broadcast on the Radio/Television Kaduna in 1974 and it was of tremendous inspiration for me. The Hausa television drama evolved out of the broadcast of radio plays by FRCN. This tradition of media intervention and propagation of literature has been long established in the Southern parts of the country—Village Headmaster, Cockrow at Dawn, and so on, nudged our creative consciousness. This trend should be re-energized, even now when profit consideration is a foremost preoccupation of the electronic media.
8. Literature is the soul of the society and no subsidy to develop, sustain and nurture it would be excessive. Fifty years after independence, literacy and the reading culture in Nigeria is still dismally poor. We are in a knowledge-driven, global world in which literacy is a critical element of economic development (knowledge, including literary knowledge). All arms of society—government at all levels, cooperate societies and citizens, genuinely rich Nigerians, etc, should commit resources and resource-input to the nation’s creative enterprise and the creative community, if our civilization and humanity will be both enhanced and ennobled indirectly by all involved. Governments should invest in the literature of the nation and grant generous subsidies to literary institutions and literary people in their domains.
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