Nigerian writers are weaklings – Onyeka Nwelue

Many people who know you on social media, know this fiery person who is always talking frankly, and sometimes in vulgar language about the realities of Nigeria. Who exactly is Onyeka Nwelue? Me, I don’t even understand myself. I think I am the most complicated ever. I have called myself a bag of contradictions because […]

Many people who know you on social media, know this fiery person who is always talking frankly, and sometimes in vulgar language about the realities of Nigeria. Who exactly is Onyeka Nwelue?
Me, I don’t even understand myself. I think I am the most complicated ever. I have called myself a bag of contradictions because I have realised that everyone has a flaw. When you piss people off and then realise you are wrong, you have to apologise. That’s me. When I am wrong, I know I am wrong and when I am right, I know I am right.

The Onyeka in real life and the one on social media seem like two different persons. Is this a deliberate policy to mask the real you?
I am a coward and at the same time I am not a coward. I can’t do physical battles. I can’t fight. I can’t punch anyone and can’t kill a rat. . .

As big as you are?
Exactly. (Laugh) the social media thing is that part of me that wants to kill a rat but can’t do it physically. You know some women know how to show their power by just shouting, but when it comes to physical battles, they can’t do it. Some of us derive joy in just saying things without fighting over them. I believe in dialogue. I don’t believe anyone should carry a gun and go and kill someone. It is an alter ego thing. The guy on my Facebook, I don’t know if he is a different person but I know it is the same person talking, typing, that is speaking to you now.

You have just been made the brand ambassador for Lenovo. What more can you tell us about this deal?
Yes. They said they’ve been following me on Facebook. I want to thank them for following me on Facebook for so many years and I didn’t even know. The marketing Manager said he pitched profiles of some celebrities in Nigeria, I didn’t know I was a celebrity until that day, and the team agreed on me as their first social media ambassador. They wanted someone who young people look up to and have been going to his walls to get something. I didn’t know. I didn’t realise until my Ted tad talk recently that my Facebook has been a place for people to realise they are not the only ones who are frustrated. I could be flying up and down but I still have my poverty eating up my heart. And people who think my life is too rosy will realise the reality that it is not all that is beautiful. And that is what Lenovo wants me to use their devices to continue to update.

You are the second Nigerian writer, after Toni Kan, to become a brand ambassador. What is this saying about writing and branding in Nigeria?
I remember this lady, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, who told me that very soon my negativity will pay off. And she has been encouraging me to update my Facebook all the time. If I haven’t posted anything, she would call me to ask if I am ok. She believes that we will transition from the traditional ways of communicating with the world to the digital. Sometimes some people say, this boy talks a lot. And they are the same people who will inbox me and say, can you help us share this on your wall, and I say no.
I had a young designer who someone like Desmond Elliot was using to do his designs -I like to mention names- and he would never acknowledge the guy or even credit him. He came to me and asked if I could help link him up with Linda Ikeji so she could help him. I told him he had the same power as her, why doesn’t he do it himself? You don’t expect someone who had spent years building up a brand to come and use it for your cause. And he did what I asked him to do and all the blogs picked up what he posted on his Facebook and people started talking about it. That way, the social media has given us ways to show ourselves and what we can do and writers, more than anyone, need to do this. It is fine, blow big grammar, but you need to be realistic. Some writers want to share their poems and they don’t want to talk about the realities on ground. Toni Kan mingles with celebrities. Other writers want to gossip with their fellow writers. Me, as I writer, I want to gossip with musicians. That way I was able to sell my book Hip-hop is Not For Children because people like Asa, Onyeka Onwenu and Femi Kuti have helped me market it. If I had left it to fellow writers, I will still be complaining looking for someone to buy it. In some places the book sold for N7, 000 and people were still looking for it because Asa has read it and she is a public figure. Salman Rushdie has done it. He appears on red carpets and he is a writer.

So in essence you are saying Nigerian writers need to rebrand themselves?
They need to completely rebrand and come out fully to talk about themselves. If we want to talk about things we go to Freedom Park, drink and talk about them. We need to come out, not just talking at Freedom Park. How many people are you talking to? Why are you talking about a reputation you don’t have? Toni Kan has done it and sometimes I get jealous because he has done well.

So you think the problem of Nigerian writers is that they tend to talk more to themselves than to other people?
Yes. And it doesn’t make any sense at all. That was why my interest in Flora Nwakpa was piqued. I looked at her funeral programme and she had people like MKO Abiola and Bola Ige as friends. She was a writer but she was a friend to everyone. I saw a picture of her and Femi Kuti and Zaynab Alkali in Switzerland and I asked was she just a writer or a celebrity that didn’t use Facebook. She paved way for herself and met all sorts of people; The Queen, the Duke of Edinburg. I think . . . just leave these writers alone. I don’t like hanging out with writers. They even diss themselves there. You can diss yourselves online and meet to have a laugh over it, but dissing yourselves and getting jealous and saying oh, see this Chimamanda girl . . . don’t say that. And Chimamanda has been integrating with people from other sides of the artistic society. We should do that and not get jealous when Beyonce or Will Smith wants to talk to her.

You mentioned Flora Nwapa, can you tell us more about your documentary on her?
I have never had a project that people supported this much. I am there and Soyinka would call me saying, hey, you can’t finish this documentary without talking to me because I have something to tell you. I went to Accra for the Pan African Association conference on Chinua Achebe and James Curry, who published Things Fall Apart said he heard I was doing a documentary on Flora Nwapa and invited me to his room. We went to his room afterwards and he shared stories some young writers would never know with me and I had it filmed. Because also I read There was a Country and felt strongly about something Achebe did in that book, where the only writer he mentioned, apart from Mabel Segun, was Flora Nwapa because he lived in Oguta and Flora took absolute care of him and his family. Because of that, I wanted to come and tell the world that even the god of literature in Nigeria was taken care of by this woman. The motivation for the documentary is to unearth a lot of story and to bridge the gap between the young literati and the new ones and how Flora self-published her books after no one wanted to. It is a way of motivating people and a personal vendetta for Achebe.

So what do you think the problem was between her, and Achebe and Soyinka?
Well, there was really no problem from what I heard from Soyinka. Soyinka admires Achebe a lot. He shared a lot of personal stories with me and talked about the incident that happened and people were saying he crippled Achebe. He told me stories about his relationship with Buchi Emecheta and Flora, that they all looked down on Flora because she was a woman and he was apologising for the way they treated her. But there really was no problem between them.

So apart from sexism, there was no problem?
There was no problem. The only misunderstanding was between Mabel Segun and Flora Nwapa. I am interviewing Mabel Segun on Saturday. She has been going about saying I am the first African female writer, not Flora, why should people say it is Flora. And then people ask her where is the book? And she couldn’t produce any published book. She says, no, I have been writing. It is not about writing. It is about publishing a book. It is Wale Okediran who told me this story.

When is this documentary going to be finished?
Funny enough, I am going to Harvard in January, the Centre for African Studies, that is where I am going to show parts of the documentary. I am thinking of a premiere in June next year because I haven’t interviewed some of Flora’s best friends. They say it is very emotional for them and they asked for time. When you are talking to people and it gets to how Flora died, they get very emotional. So everyone wants time.

Let’s talk about you now. We’ve known Onyeka the writer. Now we are discovering Onyeka the music producer. Where does the interest lie right now?
I am doing the Diplomatic Jazz Night. I can describe my father as a failed music producer. He was living in Jos when he came back from Italy and was trying to promote music. He failed woefully because each show he tried to organise flopped. He would invest money and not even get it back. I am very close to my father and each time he talks about the things he wanted to do. His dream was to meet Wole Soyinka, he never did that but I have. Each dream he failed to achieve, I try to do it. And every time people call him and tell him this is what Onyeka has done, he calls me and tells me how proud of me he is. My motivation is my father. I want to succeed where he failed.

Can you tell us the story of La Cave, the record label you started?
There was a book event I organised in Bayelsa, The Bayelsa Book Fair and every writer complained that they were not treated well, blah, blah. I apologised to them. Not that I cared. I don’t care. Whatever happened there was their business. I only took responsibility for what happened because that was the only way to calm them down but every time I think of it, I realised and that you can’t please everyone. Even among the writers who complained, some inboxed me to say they were happy with how things went. There were 63 of them and there is no way I can breastfeed 63 children at the same time. And then I had a problem with the founder of AMAA [Africa Movie Academy Awards] because some writers were messaging her to tell her that I didn’t pay them and there was no arrangement like that. Even Elechi Amadi did that, he called the governor. So when these things became too heavy for me, I moved to France. While in France, I was leaving in the house of a music producer and I talked to him. He helped me set up my label and told me I could actually promote African music in Europe. That was how La Cave came about and we are growing small-small. I am investing personal savings and haven’t got anything. Even the music we sell online, I haven’t got anything from it because iTunes is not paying us. I don’t know who they are paying but every month they keep sending figures and I don’t see any cash.
At this point I felt perhaps we should take this music to a different audience. So any kind of music, reggae, blues, we transfer it into jazz and play it for diplomats only. So that is what I am doing. So La Cave is the dream of a frustrated man who left Nigeria because writers chased him away.

So your quarrel is with Nigerian writers?
Nigerian writers? Those crazy people? I am done with them a long time ago. You won’t find me doing a book reading in Nigeria.
So if you have a new book out you won’t. . .
I am not doing any book reading for them.

Why?
I don’t want to have anything to do with them. I know the people I am talking about and they know themselves. These guys are crazy, I swear.

What exactly happened that ticked you off?
My inbox is filled with, Heeey, you are not inviting me to Bayelsa and I tell people there is no fund for this thing. It hasn’t come and they say, you have to invite me. And out of sentiment I will say, ok, we will buy you a flight ticket, please come. And I won’t be calling you on the phone or taking your calls because you want me to satisfy you at a particular time. There was a particular writer who arrived Port Harcourt at night and she wanted us to come and pick her. Meanwhile her flight was supposed to be for 1 pm, but she rescheduled it and arrived at 10 and she expected us to come from Bayelsa to Port Harcourt to pick her. I just switched off my phone. The woman knows I am talking about her. I don’t care. There are many instances like this.
Tolu Ogunlesi started tweeting then about AMAA and the organisation of the event and Peace felt disappointed and contacted him. And Emmanuel Iduma wrote an article and I stopped talking to him because of that. If someone finds a cockroach in his room and he is expecting the organisers of the Bayelsa Book Fair to come and kill it for him . . . I have flown myself to book festivals all over the world and if anything happens to me there I won’t blame anyone for it. That is why I believe Nigerians writers are weaklings.

In what ways?
See, some of these book festivals don’t have money. It’s your book you are going to promote, yeah? Carry it. Pay for your flight and go and sell your book. It’s your career, not mine. Your burden is not my burden. Flora Nwapa did that. She was going all over the world with her books and today we can tell her story. I am saying they are weaklings because they are always waiting. So Lola [Shoneyin] starts a book festival and everybody wants to be there. In India, every state has a book festival and every writer can start his own festival. But nothing lasts in Nigeria. They start something and it dies after one year. For every writer waiting for Lola and other Lolas to come up, it’s weakness. That was how Dami Ajayi wrote something about the Writivism Festival in Kampala. He was even complaining on the bus and I said Dami, start your own festival and look for sponsors. I know how Peace breaks down every year trying to organise her event and then some writer is there wanting to be pampered. Bull shit.

Isn’t that part of the celebrity culture, this wanting to be pampered?
If you want to be pampered make sure you have money in your pocket so that when someone does shakara for you, you find your way and leave. But they don’t have money. These writers are poor. Some of them haven’t even sold 500 copies of their books. Some are not even published, and they want to be at book festivals.

So how should this be addressed?
Every writer should start his own thing. And it is the same view I have about self-publishing. If Bibi Bakare-Yusuf doesn’t have money to publish you, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you. It means she doesn’t have money to print in Hong Kong or India and send down here. If you want her to publish you, approach her say, Bibi, can I give you money to publish me under your imprint? Don’t go around shouting, look at this woman! She doesn’t want to publish me! They sent me 500 rejection slips! If they send you 500 rejection slips, send yourself 500 acceptance slip.

Can we talk about Pontas now?
Yes.

What happened with the Pontas deal? A few years ago you signed with Pontas Literay Agency but since then you have gone the self-publishing route. What happened?
I went to Barcelona recently to meet the agents. Because Chigozie Obioma is signed to Pontas and there is Koye Oyeyinka also signed to Pontas, so there are like three of us. I have been writing but what I am writing is not sellable of publishable, as they say so I went to have that meeting. And they were surprised I flew myself to have that meeting. I asked them what is it that works? Why is it that some books would be sold but not mine? They felt all emotional about it and told me what I should do. The contract has been there since 2012. I am still struggling to see that they sell everything I send to them. All the ones I have done, I have done them on my own. I got my book translated into Spanish on my own and they contacted me to ask how I did it and I said I did it on my own. I am still with Pontas, I am still on their case. They are reading my manuscript and if anything happens, I will probably shout on Facebook and people will know.