‘Survival’ is an allegory for the Nigerian youth – Yusuf

Bookshelf: There are movies about people lost in the middle of nowhere, sometimes due to a shipwreck. Why did you decide to write your novel, ‘Survival’? John Achile Yusuf: This book was written back in 1999 when I had little knowledge of movies about such events. I had lost a friend in a ghastly accident […]

Bookshelf: There are movies about people lost in the middle of nowhere, sometimes due to a shipwreck. Why did you decide to write your novel, ‘Survival’?

John Achile Yusuf: This book was written back in 1999 when I had little knowledge of movies about such events. I had lost a friend in a ghastly accident involving a lorry where about a dozen other people died. I kept wondering afterward if he had survived and waited to be rescued somewhere in the forest.

 

 

Bookshelf: Now, in your novel it’s a plane crash. What did it take to pull that off?

Yusuf: It wasn’t easy. Back when I wrote the book I didn’t have access to a computer, not until 2005, years after the book was finished. So I researched in libraries a lot. Documentaries helped piece some of the experience, especially Air crash Investigation on National Geographic. It was a work in progress over the years. I kept researching and editing.

 

 

Bookshelf: The students involved were on their way to represent Nigeria in an Annual African Colleges Competition, of which Tony, your central character, is part of. What did it take to create such a plot?

Yusuf: I had just finished secondary school when I started the work, so my characters were based on schoolmates and old friends I had lost touch with. It was fairly easy to wrap the story around the characters as they came to life. A particular character could be made up of attributes from three to four different friends and so on.

 

 

Bookshelf: Those involved in the plane crash in ‘Survival’ were young and also representatives of Nigeria. It was as though you were trying to say, what if we lost our youth and our brains…

Yusuf: This work actually took me down that lane. Can the youth survive hostility? In the forest it wasn’t about fighting back. You can’t fight nature, you will lose. In the same way the youth are constantly faced with situations that always leave them by the sidelines and they are unable to bring out their potentials. Programs are put up to showcase such talents and eventually abandoned. The youth holds the key to development and as long as a nation does not recognise this, its youth will remain in the jungle.The Nigerian youth can’t be left to find their way, they need to be guided and engaged at all times. If a nation is poised to rescue its youth and it succeeds, then it must not spare recourses to ensure they are well taught. There is no excuse or reason whatsoever to ignore education.

In the story, survivors of the plane crash were of the opinion they would not be made to sit for their final exams in school, but they were wrong. They were made to take the exams nonetheless. Two of the survivors were to get married but one of the parents was vehemently against it. Izuchukwu used the influence of his father’s resources to make that parent change his mind.

 

 

Bookshelf: How did you delve into creative writing?

Yusuf: I started writing early. I can’t remember how early but it was from primary school. I still remember my first completed story; it was a picture story. I gradually started writing in secondary school. I resolved to write a book when my English teacher couldn’t believe I did my essay homework myself. She made me do it all over again in class. That was when I knew I should take writing more seriously.

 

 

Bookshelf: You wrote your novel in 1999. Why did it take this long for you to get it published?

Yusuf: I had been trying to get published for long. I had gone from publisher to publisher but in all cases they turned me down and I had no money for self-publishing, until I heard Chioma Nnani’s interview on radio and got in touch with her. She is an amazing woman.

 

 

Bookshelf: What are you working on at the moment?

Yusuf: I have a couple of unfinished work. But at the moment the issue of herdsmen has got me working on a book that’s still very sketchy.