Bayelsa: A borderless experience

I have just returned to Abuja from a trip to the Niger-Delta, to Yenegoa precisely where I attended the first Bayelsa Book and Craft Fair organized by the Bayelsa State Government in the run up to the African Movie Academy Awards {AMAA} which held on 27th March 2011. Sitting now at an eatery-cum-bar overlooking the […]

I have just returned to Abuja from a trip to the Niger-Delta, to Yenegoa precisely where I attended the first Bayelsa Book and Craft Fair organized by the Bayelsa State Government in the run up to the African Movie Academy Awards {AMAA} which held on 27th March 2011. Sitting now at an eatery-cum-bar overlooking the Wuse Market, taking in the vista above the tops of frangipani trees, I feel a need to relive what has come to be my “Bayelsa Experience”.

It all began three weeks ago when the Fair Director, Onyeka Nwelue, known to me on account of his debut novel, “The Abyssinian Boy”, posted a link on Facebook. I requested for more information and within days, was invited to attend the Fair. I was pleased to discover that friends of mine, other writers from Northern Nigeria, including poet Gimba Kakanda and very importantly, the female Hausa language writer Binta Spikin from Kano, had also been invited. Despite instances of complete breakdowns of communication between the Fair Director and us, we three found ourselves sitting in a 7 a.m. Air Nigeria flight out of still sleepy Abuja on the 24th of March 2011. An uneventful 45 minute flight saw us at the PHC International Airport where we were met by an AMAA official, Pauline, who made us welcome and let us know that a contingent of Nigerian writers and artists had already arrived from Lagos and were waiting at the lounge.

The internet, especially Facebook, has been responsible for building the most virile cyber-bridges across Nigeria, more than the Nigerian State has. So it was that Gimba, Binta and I already knew a good number of the southern Nigerian writers by reputation and interaction. We were also pleased to discover we were not wholly unknown. The delta weather felt oddly moist but there was always a breeze blowing, so it did not get sticky and unpleasant. I got introduced to Miss Jumoke Verissimo, the talented poet, freelance editor and critic. I had long noted her intelligent contributions to discourse across many fora and was surprised to discover she was not a much older woman. My good cyber-friend and co-publisher of the literary Saraba Magazine, Damilola Ajayi, was there as well, as was Deji Toye of the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA). I was especially pleased to meet Deji, for he is a lawyer just as I am; He introduced me to his partner at CORA, Toyin Akinosho, who publishes the Oil and Gas magazine. Binta and Gimba circulated amongst the other invited participants, including the multimedia artist Jude Anogwih of the Video Artists Network of Nigeria, Dada Books publisher Ayo Arigbabu and our own homeboy, the now Lagos based Nze Sylva Ifedigbo. Binta Spikin developed a friendship with Mrs. Mobolaji Adenubi and they spent much of the next three days together.

A Coaster bus soon arrived for us and we headed to Yenegoa.

The Yenegoa we met was a bustling town of hardworking people going about their trades, a fast growing city that Gimba and I could not help comparing to Minna which has managed only negative development over the last three decades – in spite of having so many ex-general.  After a brief stop at the Bayelsa State Culture and Tourism Bureau, we headed to the Fair venue, the Bayelsa Wetland Center at Ekike, where we were received by the Fair Director, Onyeka Nwelue.

The hall was full of secondary school students for the most part as well as some writers who were there before us, many of who I did not know. A number of sessions were held that day with a break for lunch. Amongst the most important sessions for us was the session on “Censorship in Islam” which had Gimba Kakanda and Binta Spikin as participants with Onyew Ikwue coordinating. Gimba and Binta were able to give insiders’ perspectives both on the nature of censorship in Islam as well as on censorship in northern Nigeria, a sub-topic inevitable following the disreputation heaped on that beneficial social concept by the infamous Rabo Abdulkarim, Director General of the Kano Censors Board.

It rained the next morning and I remember it seeming very strange. I mean, half the farmers I know in Jos would give their first children for just a bit of rain yet there it was falling in sheets just outside my window!

Amongst the interesting panels for the day was the one coordinated by Deji Toye comprising Naresh Sharma, the Indian filmmaker and director of CRAFT [Centre for Research in Art of Film and Television], Uche Nworah and Dr. A. L. Nwachukwu where the Indian gave us an insight into the world of filmmaking and Bollywood. Sage Hasson, the spoken word artist also came on stage to speak about his art-form, insisting that spoken word is the “original” poetry before it got written in books. This was, of course, a controversial position. Dada Books publisher, Ayo Arigbabu, coordinated a panel on “angry writers” comprising Nze Sylva Ifedigbo, Eromo Egbejule, Onyeka Nwelue and Becky Enyioma; Becky tried to put across the patently unsound opinion that “Nigerians do not pay enough [tax] for services”. My session, in which Gimba and I tried to shed light on the dilemma of a northern Nigerian writer, came up on Saturday. It was coordinated by Dami Ajayi; Jumoke Verissimo, also a part of our panel, provided the counterpoint. I tried to contextualize the sectional phrase “Northern Nigerian Writer” as having emanated from the reality of an earlier Arab-Maghreb centered worldview that suddenly shifted in the 1900s, which saw the colonial British replacing Arabic with English as the world language that mattered; this paradigm shift was followed, paradoxically, by a deliberate policy of the British and the Emirs to keep the common people of northern Nigeria uneducated in the new English-centered world. Further, the lot of the northern Nigerian was not helped by the maladministration of Nigeria by mostly his fellow Northerners. All these historical factors create a very real expression deficit for a northerner. However, this deficit is largely being overturned as there is a growing number of young northern writers in their twenties to forties who are writing quite well and do not see themselves as being in any way inferior, for whom the deficit of history is just a mere step to more authentic expression. I however mentioned that there still exists the immanent reality of stereotype, fostered by the Lagos-[Ibadan] press, which fades these efforts, admittedly modest, into nonexistence. I stated the existence of a popular sterotypification in the media, a “northernism” (a la Edward Said), which deliberately reduces and distorts the complex reality of northern Nigerian society into exotic negative images of cows, veiled women, harmattan, durbars and generals. Newspaperwoman Adunni Abimbola Adelakun also said a few words in support of this.

Back home

I am back in my cusp now, back “home”; the goodbyes have all been said and promises to keep in touch made. Home is where we find the calmness to appraise, a space where no one else’s thoughts can demand admittance. In appraising my Bayelsa Experience, I realize a further reason to believe in the oneness of my country because every imaginable difference disappears when unfettered communication exists between human hearts willing to listen and empathize. In Bayelsa, we were not northern or Muslim or Christian or Yoruba or female or whatever other category in the sense of mutual exclusions but we were all these things only as nuances; at essence, we were, simply, Nigerian. It would be impossible to emphasize how important this affirmation is to a young person, especially at the present time when the country is undergoing birth pangs five decades late. But I feel it is central to one’s sense of self. I am a part of Nigeria’s finest and my country has got a future ahead of it, for the young people are willing to speak and to listen. Despite the numerous hitches in organization, I refuse to lose sight of this last and I give due credit to the Bayelsa State Government, AMAA’s Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, the crew from Farafina, the Air Nigeria people as well as the Fair Director, Onyeka Nwelue, for giving me and my friends from the north a place on their raft on the delta – so we too could come to realize what is all the while true.

Richard Ugbede Ali, a Jos based lawyer, is Editor-in-Chief of the Sentinel Nigeria Magazine, www.sentinelnigeria.org.