I took after my mother, says Adeleke ‘Mainasara’ Adeyemi
I suppose the obvious place to start is your pen name, Mai Nasara. Why did a Yoruba man choose to write under a Hausa pen name? It is simply a pen name, classically referred to by the French expression, nom de plume. It is a function of who I know myself to be. We are […]
I suppose the obvious place to start is your pen name, Mai Nasara. Why did a Yoruba man choose to write under a Hausa pen name?
It is simply a pen name, classically referred to by the French expression, nom de plume. It is a function of who I know myself to be. We are bound to accept people on their own terms! Clearly, my ethnic heritage is Yoruba, hence ‘Adeleke’. Mai Nasara is the closest etymological equivalent available for the Yoruba. My adoption of it is to set up a platform from which to speak to a number of salient issues.
One, it is my conviction that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all who dwell in it.’ That’s from the Psalter, what the people on the soil from which I sprang up refer to as Zaboora. You are really a product of your environment than of your heritage. That’s something we now know for sure from the emergent science of epigenetics. I grew up where and when ‘it [took] a village to raise a child’; and everybody lived by this code: ‘Every child is your child.’
My own ‘times beforehand appointed and bounds of habitation’ was Katsina, starting in the 70s. I commenced my education at Garama Primary School, then onto Natsinta, also in Katsina. My first language of formal instruction was Hausa. No wonder I’ve written Hausa poetry and songs but yet to write any in Yoruba! I have a cognomen, what the Yoruba call oriki; part of it goes: Ga Mai Nasara/ Na Mai Iko… Go on – translate that!
I went to Government College, Katsina (GCK), situated at Yan Kutungu, where I was merely a Nigerian boy in the midst of Indian, Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Filipino, British, Ghanaian and Japanese fellow students and staff. I started work, in-between secondary school and university, at Magama, Jibiya, on the border with Republic of Niger. I grew up for the most part in Inwala Quarters, with Kofar Kaura to the east and Kofar Kwaya to the west, within Dan Marna precincts. I dropped out of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ife, in order to enrol instead at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, from where I got a degree in Geology.
I took after my mother in turning out a writer. A colonial child, she was named ‘Victoria’, a weak feminine form of my pen name. But there’s another reason for my adoption of ‘Mai Nasara’ that I’m not divulging. A little mystery does good for the soul!
The Missing Clock is your first children’s book. What inspired you to try your hand on this genre and where did the inspiration for the story come from?
I believe my calling in life is to children, and there’s no better way, I’m convinced, to help instruct, or build, them than through stories. There’s a quote that speaks to this: “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.” The present story came from early in my growing up days in Katsina. It is a down-to-earth story, literally. I merely found a way to endear to children a love for agribusiness, within the context of the family and with the tools of Information Technology as leverage.
When you were writing this story, did you envisage this much success for it?
Parents, I’m convinced, envision great things for their every child. I believe to see even greater success for it, like selling one million copies in one year and getting it translated into not a few languages around the world! I’m always asking, ‘How will you find The Missing Clock?’ because it’s my brainchild and I care so much about it.
How did you react when the news of your being shortlisted reached you?
Elated. I got down immediately on my knees to acknowledge the kindness of Goodness. I’m cognisant of the truth that everything you have and everything you are, they are sheer gifts from God. A Pauline line goes: ‘What is so special about you? What do you have that you were not given? And if it was given to you, how can you brag?’
How important is winning this prize to you?
How important is it to you for your child to win the highly coveted ‘Best Student’ or ‘Student of the Year’ Prize?
What was the writing process like for you? Did you burn the midnight candle, as they say, or was it easygoing?
It was hard but it was fun. It was hard work, but then I’m a great believer in work! It took three years, but that’s due to many factors. I lost the computer file plus every backup, a few times. And I had to work with an illustrator; finding one (I got the best from these parts: Olugbenga Oludimu) took well over a year.
Before The Missing Clock, you wrote ‘The Mandate’, a political radio drama. Any challenges moving from that to take on a children’s story?
‘The Mandate’ is really a tribute to the fact that I was brought up on the radio. It hasn’t even been produced. Taking on a children’s story, as you put it, came naturally to me; I’ve always written drama skits and songs as a teacher in children’s Sunday school, which I signed up for once I ‘graduated’ from one myself!
I have been fortunate to enjoy mentoring from a veteran of the children’s literature genre, Philip Begho. Nothing gives you an edge like having a mentor. Mr Begho was pivotal to my getting The Missing Clock right. He is such a stickler for excellence! His own entry was on the initial shortlist of six.
The judges have said that the standard of entries is high this year. Considering the competition, would you say you are anxious ahead of the award night?
I’ve never had any anxious moment; of what good is that? Faith has set my heart to the rhythm of ‘all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.’
What plans do you have for the prize money?
Set my girl-child education initiative rolling; promote my ‘Pilgrimage To Orphanage’ tours, and pitch in for the concerted fight to end deaths from malaria by 2015. Nigeria alone accounts for 25 percent of the worldwide burden; we really are a shameless people, losing people (especially children) in unacceptable numbers to such a disease like malaria; it’s all about filth, you see. When you buy copies of my book, you get to designate 10 % of what you paid to any one of the causes above.
You are passionate about setting up a children’s library network in Africa. How far have you gone with that idea?
Just imagine it: Children all over Nigeria, then Africa, being brought up on the same books, getting fed the same stories. I’ve been working on a pitch for convincing a home-grown industrialist to do for Africa, starting in Nigeria, what 19th century Scottish-born American industrialist and steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, did for America and Europe and also the Pacific island nation of Fiji: Setting up a network of2, 500 Carnegie libraries. His was a very pragmatic approach which ensured that each local library was owned and cared for by the community in perpetuity.
We are waiting to see who will take up the gauntlet to be Africa’s Andrew Carnegie in this regard. Will it be Aliko Dangote? Or Mike Adenuga? Will it be a corporate player responsive to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), perhaps Airtel? I was thinking the other day how so sad but not so surprising it is that Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese entrepreneur GSM pioneer, keeps getting disappointed year after year, and we with him, that no African leader emerges to clinch his Good Governance Award. It carries the biggest prize money of any award in the world.
Suppose Mo change strategy and go with Gandhi – who said if we are to carry out a real war against war (it has many battlefronts in Africa – hunger, diseases, child & maternal mortalities, ethnic jingoism, religious intolerance, infrastructural challenges), we shall have to begin with the children – and instead play Andrew Carnegie, by setting up a network of children’s libraries right across Africa?
Of course my team and I are not averse to starting piecemeal and not necessarily with a bang. For my next birthday, at the end of October, I’m making my alma mater at Katsina a gift of a mini-library.
What convinced you to be a writer, what was the defining moment for you?
Was there a defining moment? I don’t know, but when I entered for the impromptu essay writing competition during Literary Week in my first year at Government College, Katsina (GCK) – and won first prize – that must have been an epiphany. But my Mom, she’s passed on, provided a lot of inspiration. She wrote many songs, scripts and not a few sermons!
And how has your career as a journalist impacted on your writing?
It has provided opportunity for constant practise! As you know, writing, really, is rewriting. The more bylines you garner, the better you become in the process. Hopefully!
Finally, how have you been coping with the fame being shortlisted has conferred on you?
I don’t know what you’re talking about! Seriously, were it to be in say the UK, one would probably have to watch against getting mobbed on the streets, on the negative side, while welcoming the positive of increased book sales! Here, a depressing downside has been an upswing in requests for free (and, oh, autographed) copies of the shortlisted book! They go, ‘Haba oga Mai! Shebi it’s only N600 now’. I think I’ll ditch my phone; grow a beard.