‘I was warned not to publish my poetry collection about Chibok’

Poet Ben Ubiri is the author of the poetry collection The Book of Chibok, which features poems about the Chibok abductions. He is also an on air personality with a popular FM station in Abuja where he is also known as ‘Ben 200’. He is an event compere and currently acting chairman of the Association […]

Poet Ben Ubiri is the author of the poetry collection The Book of Chibok, which features poems about the Chibok abductions. He is also an on air personality with a popular FM station in Abuja where he is also known as ‘Ben 200’. He is an event compere and currently acting chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Abuja chapter. He talks about his book, and why he had made several attempts to lead the writers association in Abuja and more. Excerpts

Your poetry collection, The Book of Chibok, happens to be your first publication. How did the idea come about?
The Book of Chibok is a collection of poems in honour of Chibok, the girls of Chibok and the entire struggle of Nigeria against terrorism. It started two years ago when I started writing the poems when I was invited to MC a memorial in honour of the Chibok girls 30 days after their abduction. As an MC, I felt I had a great angle in my job, which are mostly jokes.
But because this was a solemn event, I couldn’t use jokes so I had to rely on another skill I had, which was poetry. So I wrote about four or five poems I rendered at that event. That made me to begin researching the abductions because I wanted to tell my story in poetry.
So from that day, when it was 30, when it was 90, I was called. When it was a hundred, I was called so I kept writing different types of poems to present. Eventually, when it was about a year and it coincided with my birthday, I did an outing with a discussion around the theme, “When the Girls Return” and people came. I felt we needed to look at the Chibok story beyond the clamour for them to be returned, to whether the society would accept them when they returned.
The Book of Chibok is written in five chapters. Chapter one focuses on the experience of the kidnapped girls, chapter two focuses on the dead, on people who would never comeback, like the boys who were killed in schools and the soldiers who died in battle. Chapter three is titled ‘Will the Girls Return’ and it focuses on the people who have been waiting for the girls to return, like the Bring Back Our Girls campaigners. Chapter four is a tribute to other women while chapter five is a tribute to hope and attempting to answer whether or not this girls were actually kidnapped.
Interestingly I am curious about your position on that. At the point you got involved with the BBOG movement, there were debates about whether the girls were really abducted or not. What was your position?
The tipping point for me was the day I met the parents of the abducted girls. Seeing them you could see the genuine tears in their eyes. On the day the girls who escaped came to Abuja, I was not around but the people who sat with them and heard their stories concluded that it was something you couldn’t easily fabricate. Some of the parents had their flights paid for but when they missed it, they took the night bus and arrived here at 2am, 3am. It was genuine concern that made them do that. What I think they need is closure, they need to know if the girls are dead or have been taken somewhere. There has to be a destination to this story and I think we have to help them get there.
In structuring the book, what were the things you considered?
I tried to do poetry differently so we could have a book that would appeal to the young and the old, the intellectual and everyday people. The idea is to honour and immortalise the memories of these girls and have intellectual discussions around this thing. And to give hope that the girls could come back.
So have you had reactions from the parents, from other people?
Yes. At the presentation we had some of the parents come. We had the BBOG campaigners, Oby Ezekwesili was there, Bukky Shonibare was there. Some schools are beginning to indicate interest in adopting the text, but that discussion hasn’t been concluded yet. We are talking with heads of departments to finalise this. We are planning book readings and we have been getting a lot of reactions. I was afraid because when I set out, I had intellectuals, people who should be listened to say, Ben, are you sure this is something you want to do for your first book? Why don’t you do something else?
Why?
People were worried about the controversy surrounding the reality or otherwise of the Chibok abductions. And these were serious people that I should take seriously but I said I wanted to give it a shot. Perhaps I would have had more patronage if I had written about love or something like that. But I have no regrets writing about the Chibok abductions.
Why poetry? Why not other forms of artistic expressions, like prose?
I am primarily a poet. I don’t think I am strong in the other genres. The novel is beautiful, especially the big ones, they will take a long time to finish but I am looking at poetry like an everyday meal. I take one and wrap it up every day. It’s just like eating a balanced diet. So instead of waiting to hear the entire story in one big novel, I think it is wise to take a small piece to bed every night.
I noticed also that the poems celebrate or acknowledge the main protagonists in the entire Chibok saga, the bad guys like Shekau and the campaigners like Oby Ezekwesili and others. Why did you choose to single out certain individuals in this book?
In the beginning the poems were written for a particular audience. Poetry is unlike stories were you get the story line and get to the end and that’s it. For me, the poems just came in that form. I could just hear someone talking and the idea would come, or I could be reading a newspaper and something would trigger a reaction. The truth is it wasn’t intended to be a collection, but when I put the poems together I realized I had a collection.
Considering that you had a single theme you wanted to run through this book, how easy or difficult was it to streamline the poems into this theme?
It’s something I am trying to do. This is the third book I am doing with a single theme. I have a collection, Songs for the Village Boy, the story of the Niger Delta, which has about 100 poems focused on a single theme. It is in press now and will come out soon. I read poetry and there is a lot of themes, which may be beautiful for some but I wonder why not tell a single story, like a novel, where you know the story is about a certain person. It is an experiment I would like to encourage other poets to try. I could be reading a collection and the first poem would be about love and then the next would be about war and the third could be about the environment. There is no connection. I am not saying that is terrible but why can’t we have a single theme? You still get the sense of a difference but then you have a single theme running through. It is something I want to do for a long time.
What do you have to say to people who would want to categorise your work as someone exploiting national sentiments?
I think every writer should do that. I want to use exploit in a positive way. Why don’t people blame journalists who exploit national sentiments by writing about his issues every day and pushing the bad stories to the front page?
Perhaps because the writer is expected to have more introspection . . .
But the journalist is a writer. And if not for the constraint of time, I would say every writer should write a book every day and publish it every day just the way newspapers come out every day. I read a book recently that chronicled the 9/11 attacks from the planning stages to the what happened, to the discoveries that were made afterwards to when they got Usama Bin Laden and I thought it was a great book. Books should be different. I am happy I wrote this book, even if it exploits national discourse. I don’t think I have sold as much copies as I have given out for free. Because I have a project tied to this book. I collect sandals from children in private schools who may not need them anymore and give them to children in public schools who do. Sometimes I have to buy new ones so I fixed the price of the book at the rate at which I buy these sandals so if you buy one book, I buy one sandal.
Where did this idea of giving out sandals come from?
It started when I wanted to help dress my son for school and he has a sandal I love because it was expensive and beautiful. So I tried getting him to wear it but he told me it no longer fits. I asked him to go and get me the shoes that no longer fit him and he went in and brought out six, which I gave to my neighour’s children. When the man came back he was very excited and thanked me effusively. So it occurred to me to collect shoes from my friends, fix them up and give them to people in schools who need them. Sometimes we have to buy new ones for students whose sizes we can’t get and now we have gone into a partnership that will see us buying these shoes for half the price.
And where is the money coming from?
From my personal savings, from friends, from my fan base, because I am also a radio presenter and I have a fan club called the Ben 200 Fan Club and sometimes they put something together to buy these shoes. We do a whole lot on radio. We have a programme where we link prospective employers with job seekers and we have one where we help people get free surgery.
So you make things happen. And one thing you have been trying to make happen is being elected chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Abuja chapter. Why have you been determined to keep trying?
For about four attempts I have tried to be the chairman of ANA, that is about eight years. It’s been a story of partly betrayal, partly lack of trust and partly fear. I am currently the acting chairman and I have seen that in the last eight years we have had the problem of the super chairman. We have instances of individuals who are not writer or inexperienced in the administration of writing coming to support somebody who is very wealthy to head the association. We seem to think we need a chairman who has money to put down and for the past four administrations we have had the people with money, but who are not willing to put their money in the association. What we need is not the superpower, and we are about to make the same mistake again. What we need is a person who has connections. I have someone who is ready to give us a place for a residency in Abuja. He doesn’t need to be the chairman only the friend of the chairman. We know many people like that.
In the last one year that you have been acting chair, what have you done to alter perceptions about the fear, betrayal and lack of trust that have hindered your ambition to chair the association?
I won’t say I have been acting successfully because to be honest there wasn’t any formal handover. We just assumed that the constitution says when the chairman is no longer in the town, the deputy takes charge. If we had a handover we would have had a note that says this is where we stopped. Since September last year when I started acting, I haven’t had access to the association’s account and that means anything I did between then and now, anything I have done is down to the resources I got from my friends.
But you are a part of that administration. . .
I am not a signatory to the account.
But you are in the know about the programmes of the association?
Yes. Many of them are my initiatives but you can only do so much when you are not the chair. I had a friend who last year agreed to institute a prize for literary journalists in Abuja and he was ready to put down some money for it. We had a press conference to announce it but the idea was never seen through because it was my idea. There have to be people willing to set up the structures, make the call for entries and reach out to the man and say this is where we need your money for the prize. Last week we had a prize for the World Poetry Day. It was a token sum because that was what I could afford and we had very new writers coming to read their works. It was an initiative I had two, three years ago but no one was willing to fund it. To be fair, these super chairmen funded some things they thought were necessary but you can only push so much when you are a vice chairman. But in the time I have been acting, we have had at least two events every month.
Being someone with so much initiative why do you feel you have to head the association in order to bring your ideas to fruition?
I have always been a member of the association and nothing precludes me from being its chairman. I have been vice chairman twice and I can tell you that if you have an idea when you are the vice chairman, it is not the same as being on the seat to drive it. There is a lot we can do with ANA. ANA can be different. It can be successful. It is supposed to be an umbrella body of all writers in the country but you have other newer associations doing more than ANA has done. We need to bring back our critique sessions, we need to have a residency. ANA doesn’t even have an office in Abuja. And above all we should have ANA members working together, not a super chairman presiding over the association. We don’t need a situation where people compete and the side that loses go away for two years and only return to contest for the next election.