The Voice Interviews: Ayodele Arigbabu

What are your fondest memories of childhood?

Chasing lizards in the backyard and getting lost in the fantasy world of comic books. I am the son of a brain surgeon. There are insinuations that he must have performed some experiments on my brain while I was a kid . . . either way, I have no proof, so I’m keeping an open mind.

What happened to the reading culture in Nigeria?

The reading culture never really went anywhere. Perhaps it’s the publishing culture that took a dip after Nigerians inherited the publishing houses from the colonials who founded them or perhaps Nigerians just found alternative reading material since publishers weren’t producing for them anymore. Nigerians have always read and will continue to read.

Why did you start DADA stores?

I’ve always been interested in retail and finding myself in publishing where I’ve found the supply end to be the real problem, I decided to experiment with a long-held idea for a media store. The real catalyst was having my wife come home from India with amazingly cheap personal items and fashion accessories, and we decided to do an interesting mix and have a test run for DADA stores. We ended up being satisfied with how much we sold.

What books did you read as a child?

I grew up on the same kind of stuff that people of my generation grew up on--comic books, the Peter and Jane, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Three Investigators, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Indiana Jones series. Then the more gritty James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter series. Of course the Pacesetters and African Writers series formed part of my literary education too. I got to read lots of Nigerian authors published by publishers like Onibonoje (I love that name), Heinemann and others because I had an aunt who worked with the ministry of education and always sent me box-loads of books to read. I think the final unhinging happened while I served as Librarian of the Pen Circle, a literary association we ran as students of the University of Lagos, and we got a donation of over 250 titles from the British Council Library and the books were in my custody for a while. I read my heart out to say the least.

On reading culture again: what was different when you were growing compared to now?

I would say the access to books. I don’t know if I was just lucky in finding books around me all the time, but now, sometimes even I have to struggle to fork out the money to buy the books I’m interested in--this is one reason why I always try to make our books, DADA Books, affordable. The internet is changing the game gradually though, because now, you can access millions of books on a gadget as accessible as your mobile phone. The question is whether Nigerian publishers would be ready to exploit this shift as quickly as possible because with the convergence of different media on the digital front. All that talk about reading culture is soon going to be glib, and the real question will be: ‘how proactive is our publishing culture?’

How do you encourage people to read through your efforts there?

At DADA stores, we’ve taken books from publishing houses that we feel share our brand ethos together with our books, and we are working at stocking up on choice music and film content as well so that we’ll be offering a one-stop fun-shop. We started with the notion that even if other things attract people to the store, there is a strong likelihood that they will pick up books because of the way we market them, and we buttress this by holding regular book events at the CORA House at 95 Bode Thomas, Surulere, where our store is located, not just to sell our books, but also to give the literary crowd in Lagos a cool hangout spot on the mainland. It’s a work in progress, but that’s the general idea.

What projects have you been involved in that encourage reading in Nigeria?

The Lagos Book & Art Festival organized by the Committee For Relevant Art. It’s an amazing model built on the simple thought that literature should be firmly promoted within the broader context of arts and culture, so at the festival, you have book stands and book readings, live music performances and theatre presentations, crafts workshops and craft displays, art exhibitions and discussions, all aimed at promoting literacy and the joy of reading. It’s a festival in the real sense of it. I’ve been actively involved in the planning of the festival since 2002 and have always found it to be a refreshing highpoint for every year since then. Recently, I’ve been running creative writing classes for children at the Garden CityLiterary Festival in Port Harcourt, and I must say I always look forward to being awed by the creativity of the kids. I also collaborate with different organizations on their projects and on projects initiated by DADA for various book readings, creative writing workshops, and other such activities.

What do you think is the biggest challenge to promoting a vibrant reading culture in Nigeria?

I’d say the publishing sector. The sector definitely needs to get organized and get imaginative. It is currently not a publishers’ market, it is the education sector’s market because if the education ministries stop recommending books by Nigerian publishers for Nigerian schools, many publishing houses would fold up, which is really sad because if publishers sold to a mass market as they should, then books should sell like MTN recharge cards, like Omo detergent and Gala beef rolls, not because some civil servant made them compulsory for students or housewives, but because the inherent value in books had been marketed to people successfully and they were exercising their choice out of the sheer pleasure of reading. Talking about the poverty matrix, look at beer, people celebrate in times of plenty by consuming alcohol, yet when in depression, they still drink to lift their spirits. There is no way you can tell me people in this country are too poor to buy books when they’ve made the telecoms sector rival the oil and gas sector for profitability in just one decade. The people are not too poor to buy books, the publishers have just not touched them in the right spots to make that critical decision to spend less time and money talking on MTN and spend more on DADA books. Believe me, our core competition is MTN.

What’s the major challenge you face as a publisher?

The greatest challenge used to be about the lack of an effective distribution network, but currently, with the benefit of experience, I’m able to say, it’s all about the cheddars baby! Give me enough money and I’ll build me an effective distribution system. Right across this country. MTN did it (yes, I’ve mentioned them again), Dangote did it, the oil companies are still doing it. But everybody does it with money. In the publishing industry however, we seem to keep up this inbreeding thing, a few of us will sell a few books to a few of us in Lagos and then fly to Abuja to sell a few more books to a few more of us in Abuja and feel fulfilled afterwards . . . it’s not because we don’t have megalomaniac tendencies to take on the whole African continent, it’s because we don’t have the war chest to make this happen. How can this be corrected? Fewer people should call my phone telling me about some amazing manuscript they want to publish, I admit that I meet truly fantastic people and their great writing through these enquiries, but more people should call about wanting to sink a few million dollars into a publishing initiative. Yes I’m calling everyone out, this thing takes money, let’s find us some serious money first, and then let’s talk business.

Why did you decide to publish the first DADA book?

My days with the Pen Circle at the University of Lagoshad really sharpened my interest in publishing and from 2006, I had started conceiving DADA as a platform for bringing all my interests together under one umbrella. The first DADA book was supposed to be my own book, A Fistful ofTales. I find it very interesting that one of the first people I shared the idea with was Jumoke Verissimo, she was interviewing writers for The Guardianthen and I still have the pull-out of the edition where she got me to talk about the forthcoming book. It turned out that Jumoke’s poetry collection I am Memory was published as the first DADA book in November 2008, then came Onyeka Nwelue’s The Abyssinian Boy in January 2009. A Fistful of Tales only came later in September 2009. On publishing myself, while it does feel weird engaging in self-promotion at that level, being published by one of the coolest imprints on the planet (*wink*) makes up for all that, besides, I think my writing was tailor-made for DADA . . . how many other imprints can handle the kind of stuff I turn out? I don’t know how else to put it without sounding more cocky than I already do.

How can the Nigerian publishing industry grow?

With some serious lateral thinking. Notice that I’m not saying anything that sounds like ‘government must do this’ or ‘government must do that.’ People need to get organized and then government would fall in line behind them, not the other way round. I must credit Farafinafor shining a torch in the darkness, if there had not been a Farafina, there would never have been DADA Books, or at least not as we know it today. They showed an inkling of what was possible and have continued to play a leadership role in expanding the possibilities. People should study the Farafina model and then decide for themselves what should and shouldn’t be done.

What should be done differently in local publishing?

We should go digital, I mean we should really take charge of the digital space. The internet scam artists aka Yahoo boys have done it successfully, blanketing the internet with their spam emails, and if they can go viral with their internet ‘publishing’ with little education and zero infrastructure, then there is nothing stopping Nigeria’s literati from legitimately taking charge of cyberspace. It’s happening in some fashion already, but to paraphrase Marcus Garvey: to really effect a revolution, there’s no other way to do it but to get organized.

What advice do you have for anyone thinking of going into publishing as a career?

I don’t have any advice to give, just a very pertinent question: Are you sure you really want to do that? If the answer is yes and you have actually taken time to meditate over all the attendant issues, then go for it, but if you waver for even a fraction of a second over an answer, just take it easy on yourself and go into oil and gas or something. Life really doesn’t have to be so hard.

Interviewed by Temitayo Olofinlua.