Snap Shots

Author: Bello Sule Reviewer: Iliyasu Gadu If you asked any avid reader or established author to tell you what type of book poses the most challenge to write, chances are that many would readily agree it is the book on a collection of stories. Is it about putting the stories written at different times under […]

Author: Bello Sule

Reviewer: Iliyasu Gadu

If you asked any avid reader or established author to tell you what type of book poses the most challenge to write, chances are that many would readily agree it is the book on a collection of stories.

Is it about putting the stories written at different times under different conditions together or the different themes and subject matter? Then there is the structure, style; and above all, the presentation. 

Authors who have successfully navigated through the labyrinth that writing a collection of stories is, are always celebrated because they are deservedly considered as having achieved the equivalent of reaching the stratospheric heights of writing.

Bello Sule, the author of this book, which is a collection of stories he had written over the years in several platforms on the topics of his years in public life, can be considered as belonging in this pantheon of writers and authors in Nigeria.

His trajectory in life from his early years in Katsina, where he was born, through his education and his long successful career in Nigerian Television are aptly captured in the various stories in this book of 200 pages. In a way, it is a moving biography of his life through personal experiences severally as a witness, participant and from stories and accounts on episodic happenings in his journey of life.

Bello Sule’s journey to becoming a writer was first forged at the Abdullahi Bayero College of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he graduated in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in English and Geography (Combined Honours). It was further perfected at City University of New York, United States of America, where he obtained a master’s degree in Cinema and Media Studies.     

His writing skills took a definite direction when he got employed at the Nigerian Television Kaduna in 1977, rising through the ranks in Nigerian Television Authority to become the executive director, programmes at the peak of his career and retiring in 2012. In between his first employment at NTV Kaduna in 1977, he rose to become a general manger of NTA stations in Kaduna, Sokoto, Bauchi and Minna, as well as becoming the principal of NTA Television College, Jos, the nation’s apex institution in the training of television stars of every cadre and work descriptions.

It is par for the course to expect that Bello Sule’s career in Nigerian Television would entail a lot of script writing for news, drama sketches, discussion programmes and the like. It is also not surprising, as the creative writer he is, that he would think to put the various episodes of his life’s experiences in personal and public life and his observations on the sights and sounds of the many places he had travelled to in his diary of accounts.

Snap Shots, therefore, is a series of snap chats on the seemingly unrelated events in the author’s experiences presented in a bird’s eye view running to 204 pages. It is a rich anthology of anecdotes put together to chronicle the author’s life trajectory through his personal experiences as a participant, witness, and in his creative imagination as a writer.

His long unbroken career in television helped a great deal in providing him with the creativity to craft and write the events he covered in the course of his work.

Professor Kolawole Olaiya, a Fullbright scholar who teaches English at Anderson University, Anderson in the state of South Carolina United States of America and who wrote the foreword to the book, pointed out the talent of script writing imbued in the author. He said this of him: “Within a short time, he became a frequent contributor and an integral part of the script writing team at NTV Kaduna (sic). His talent was recognised when he was assigned to write the station’s entry for a national competition, securing third place. He progressed to crafting drama scripts and eventually became the lead scriptwriter for ‘’Magana Jari Ce’’ a classic Television series of Nigerian Television Kaduna in the 1980s.’’  

The author’s acquired training and skills in this regard enabled him to write about those aspects of his background and interaction with people across the country and outside it. This formed a rich pool of experiences from which he sourced to write the stories captured in the book.

And what are these stories?  They are stories of his Katsina background, including the famous Gobarau minaret built in the 16th century, which still stands today; everyday life in the form of the hustles and bustle of urban and rural life; of the contrasts in foreign cultures and monuments as in the Diwali in India and the imposing Eiffel Tower in Paris; the environment and its natural bounties like the medicinal and healing effects of the Moringa miracle leaves; the daily struggle in households to make ends meet and the contentious issues about housekeeping money and inflation.

There are also stories about culture and traditions and the creeping but inevitable challenges of modernity; the fast-fading influence of parental care and institutional supervision.

There are many more themes and subjects that make the book a tapestry of life and its struggles, hopes and disappointments, power and its various forms of expression by those who wield it in society, valour, anxiety and all the throbbing vibes and vivacity of the Nigerian system. 

Before the advent of the internet and social media, these were the sort of books that served the appetite of literature aficionados for simple but powerful imagery of our everyday lives. It is ironic and lamentable that the coming of the internet has contributed immensely to the waning of the reading culture in which books like these may find it difficult to attract the readership it deserves. The author himself recognises thus: “Snapshots is a challenge of sorts begging to be pigeonholed…

“As the reading culture wanes and the flow of ideas and knowledge shifts from pen to paper to keyboard and remote control, may these 50 or so Snapshots find abode in your bookshelf, inbox, and most importantly, heart to enjoy and share.’’