Emir Sanusi And The Aborted Probe

By Paul Onomuakpokpo 

With the abrupt termination of the probe of Emir of Kano, Mallam Muhammad Sanusi 11, we have been denied the opportunity to witness a shamefaced confirmation or a smug rebuttal of the allegation of financial sleaze against him. Is the allegation that he mismanaged N6 billion of his emirate a mere canard peddled to sully his hard-earned reputation? This remains unresolved. It was the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission that first started a probe of Sanusi before the state House of Assembly launched an investigation into the same matter.

*Emir Sanusi

The investigations were provoked by his trenchant criticism of the northern establishment. He drew the ire of his highly conservative leaders when he accused Zamfara State Governor Abdulaziz Yari of not only failing to take action to check the outbreak of meningitis but for regarding the affliction as a direct comeuppance for his people’s violation of divine stipulations against fornication and adultery.

It is by no means a surprise that Sanusi has been embroiled in another controversy. For him, controversy is a veritable staple of life. Therefore, if controversy does not come on its own, Sanusi courts it with aplomb. Then the approbation follows. He is seen as one of the enlightened people from the north who could speak truth to power. It was a controversy that he triggered by accusing the Goodluck Jonathan government of corruption that led to his removal as Central Bank governor.

Nigeria: Gen Bamaiyi’s Heroes And Villains

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

When the odd-defying English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking quipped that “we spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly history of stupidity,” he did not do justice to the relevance of history to a people’s development. But if he had people like a former Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi in mind when he said that, hardly can we find his postulation impeachable.

Babangida, Obasanjo and Buhari 

For in most cases, history panders to the dictates of power. Such history unabashedly transforms the foibles of its originators into virtues.

This accounts for the centuries of the denigration of the black population as a benighted segment of the human race, without history, culture and philosophy, and thus their appropriation as hewers of wood and drawers of water for their white counterparts. But we need not go far to understand the manipulation of history to suit the purpose of its writer. We find enough evidence in the history of the Nigerian civil war as different participants and observers in the crisis tweak the history of that period to suit themselves.

This trajectory of the manipulation of history has been replicated in the case of the June 12, 1993 election crisis that has defined the nation’s subsequent democratic experience. What we have witnessed is a preoccupation with a Manichean bifurcation of participants in the crisis into heroes and villains. But the tragedy is that there is hardly an agreement on whose perspective is right since the real masterminds of the crisis have refused to apologise and tell the nation the truth. The further danger is that the generation who did not witness the crisis would be left with a welter of perspectives from which they may not be able to sift out the truth.

Those Who Killed (And Are Killing) Nigeria

By Dan Amor

Every real nation state is an historical product. It is, in Marx's celebrated phrase, "the official resume of the antagonism in civil society", but under historically determinate circumstances. As such, it is the product of the historically specific constellation of class relations and social conflicts in which it is implicated. It may, therefore, indeed, it must, if it is not to rest on its monopoly of the means of coercion alone, incorporate within its own structure, the interests not only of the dominant but of the subordinate classes. In this quite specific sense, then, every real nation state has an inherently relative independence, including, as well, the independence to understand the dynamics of its made-made domestic crises. In consequence, therefore, the general characteristics of the Nigerian nation state today may be seen in terms of the enormity of its domestic crises and social contradictions. 

Therefore, those who murdered Nigeria, and are still killing its residues include, but not limited to: a big and comprador bourgeoisie that has abdicated its political aspirations and allied itself to semi-feudal interests; a discontented small and medium bourgeoisie made up of a certain class of professionals and intellectuals, potentially revolutionary, but which hesitates to renew the struggle for its national liberation. There is a sleeping working class which is supposed to be the prime revolutionary force but which cannot define clearly its trade union tasks and political aims. There is a large crowd of youths, the student body that constitute about 60 per cent of the national population, which has abdicated its responsibility of serving as light to the national ideal due largely to intellectual dishonesty, ignorance or docility arising from poverty of ideas. There is also, a peasant mass of small landless factory hands, artisans and motorcycle operators otherwise known as "Okada riders", who need a clear vision of their tasks and a framework within which to organize their own action in unity with the working class. Above all, a group of shameless, opportunistic and sadistic Generals (retired and serving), domestic tyrants and usurpers who, because of their prolonged crime against the people of this country, do not want political power to shift to its rightful owners for fear of being probed. And, of course, a handful of totalitarian Devils called traditional rulers who, having been aware of their gross irrelevance in a democratic society, strive to ally themselves with dictators, expired warlords and anti-democratic elements in power in order to entrench feudal power in the local government councils.

It is in this context that we must examine critically the way forward to the present logjam in the country. It would be recalled that the deepening crises that resulted in the Nigerian Civil War were the aftermath of the cumulative anger of the forces of real change against the reactionary superstructure that was the First Republic. After the bloody civil war, and thanks to the oil boom which provided them with the rare opportunity to line their pockets, the military rulers in collaboration with the agrarian mercantile big bourgeoisie, together with a small sector connected with industry, tied their future more and more to the semi-feudal structure inherited from the colonial system. Because of their quantitative and qualitative weaknesses and the fear of the workers' movement and the surge of the masses, they were, at the beginning, disposed to ally themselves with whatever was acceptable of foreign monopolist capital, then in the process of conversion to a neo-colonialist framework.

June 12, Not May 29, Is Nigeria’s ‘Democracy Day’

By Mike Ozekhome

On Sunday, June 12, 2016, leading lights in the human rights and pro-democracy movement in Nigeria, gathered at the late M.K.O. Abiola’s house, to mark “June 12”, 23 years after this talismanic, watershed and cornerstone of a people’s election. I was one of them. We paid tribute and sang solidarity songs. We x-rayed the state of the nation. We laid wreath at his tomb. We did not forget his lovely wife, Kudirat, who was martyred with him. We prayed by her graveside. An amazon that carried aloft the liberation torchlight after her husband’s incarceration in military dungeon, she epitomised women’s potency, fervour  and ardour.

June 12 is very stubborn. It is simply indestructible, ineradicable, indelible, imperishable and ineffaceable. It sticks out like a badge of honour, the compass of a beleaguered nation. It cannot be wished away. Never. Aside from October 1, when Nigeria had her flag independence, June 12 remains the most important date in her annals.

Nigeria and June 12 are like Siamese twins. The snail and the shell. They are inseparable.  Like six and half a dozen. Like Hamlet and the Prince of Denmark. You cannot discuss May 29 without its forebear and progenitor, June 12. To attempt that is comical, droll chucklesome, even bizarre and freakish. June 12 is not just a Gregorian calendar date. It is Nigeria’s authentic democracy day. That was when genuine democracy berthed in Nigeria. Nigerians had trooped to the polls to vote for Abiola. On June 12, 1993, Nigeria stood still. Nigerians became oblivious to religious sensibilities and ethnic nuances. They did not care that Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Bashorun and Aare Onakanfo of Yoruba land, was a Moslem who was running with another Moslem, Alhaji Babagana Kingibe. The gods and goddesses of ethnicity, tribalism and religious bigotry were brutally murdered and interred.

The apparitions of gender, culture and class discrimination, were sent back to their graves. Abiola, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, squarely won the election under Babangida’s option A4. He trounced his challenger, Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). He had campaigned with “Hope 1993” (a message of possibilities later adopted by Obama in 2008). His was “Farewell to Poverty” manifesto. Both resonated well with Nigerians. Abiola, who had joined politics at 19 under NCNC, in 1959, had used his stupendous wealth to water the ground and build bridges of unity, understanding and acceptability across the length and breadth of Nigeria. He had Concord newspaper and airline to help propel his ambition. He regarded money as nothing but manure with which, like plants, human beings are nurtured. Abiola had defeated Bashir Tofa, even in his Gyadi-Gyadi Ward, Kano.

Can Buhari Get It Right?

By Chiedu Uche Okoye 

Most Nigerians who are conversant with our po­litical history know that our country’s problem is a fail­ure of leadership. Our country’s stalled economic and technological growth is traceable to poor political leadership as well as military inter­ventions in our politics.

*Buhari 

Military interventions in our politics contributed in no small ways to our national woes. The Soldiers who deemed their regimes corrective ones plundered our economy and ruled us with iron-first. General Babangida (Rtd) em­barked on rigmarole of transition to civilian rule. Since 1999, Nigeria has been enjoying democratic gov­ernance. But none of our national leaders has lived up to our expec­tations since then. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who believes he is in­fallible, squandered our collective goodwill and the opportunity given to him to lift Nigerian out of eco­nomic quagmire. He sunk millions of naira into the power sector with­out recording any success. Rather blanket of darkness was thrown over the country during his politi­cal reign.

Dr Goodluck Jonathan got into the most exalted political office in Nigeria by providential interven­tion and luck. His tardiness and vi­sionless marred his administration. It’s obvious to us that he’s ill-suited and ill-prepared for the leadership of Nigeria. But he will be remem­bered for his uncommon act of pat­riotism: he accepted his defeat at the presidential polls. Dr Jonathan’s vanquisher at the polls and succes­sor in office, Muhammadu Buhari, rode to victory on the coat tails of his famed zero tolerance for cor­ruption and Spartan lifestyle. He is with messianic complex, forth­rightness, and hyperbolic moral uprightness. But is president Bu­hari’s leadership ability not hyped?

It should be noted that one’s eagerness and hunger for political power cannot confer leadership qualities on one. Is president Bu­hari’s personality and leadership capabilities not unraveling and un­folding? Soon, he will mark his first anniversary in office, but he has committed some grave missteps. It took him long period to assembly his executive cabinet. Yet the pedi­grees of members of his cabinet do not compensate for the long period he took to form it. His members are recycled politicians, who had held political offices in the past. And Dr Fashola, who was saddled with the responsibilities of three ministries, has not banished darkness from our country.

Onyeka Onwenu: Another Case Of 'That Ibo Woman'!

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Onyeka Onwenu was, on September 13, 2013, appointed the Director General of the National Center for Women Development (NCWD) by the Jonathan admin­istration. The all-changing Buhari government relieved her of the position last month.

 

*Onyeka Onwenu

On her ten­ure, she claimed thus in an open letter: “I served for two years and five months and did my best under very difficult conditions. We hard­ly had money to operate and the place was badly run down. Worst, there was low moral and lack of commitment among the staff. Most spent the day loitering and gossiping. Many would not show up for work or arrive 11 am, only to leave before 3 pm. Some were absent for months and were just collecting their salary at home. My administration changed all that. Most staff were turned around and became passionate about the work, appreciating also the changes they thought were not possible but were happening right before them.”

Is she correct? The answer would seem to be positive because, nearly two weeks after the claim, no voice has controverted her. This should cause botheration in conscientious quarters because she protests that her sterling service to the country was repaid with the objectionable coins of injustice: “There remained, though, a rem­nant who felt that the Center was their personal preserve and that the position of Director General should only go to someone from their part of the country. I was ini­tially dismissed as just a musician. When that did not work, I was tar­geted and abused for being an Igbo woman who came to give jobs to and elevate my people while side­lining them. When these detrac­tors could not provide answers to the spate of improvements we were bringing, they resorted to sabotage and blackmail. The first such salvo was fired when a Senate Commit­tee visited on an oversight mission a few months after my arrival. All three Generators at the Center were cannibalized, overnight, just hours to the visit.”

Onyeka stated in her open letter that, to begin with, she hadn’t lob­bied to be appointed DG-NCWD. Nor was she ever minded to grovel in order to retain the post. Once word arrived from above that she had had her day at the Center, she made to leave. “But some people were going to exact their pound of flesh. They organized some staff, mostly Northerners, invited the Press and set about to disgrace themselves. By mid-afternoon, while the Heads of Departments were putting together the hando­ver notes, they seized the keys to my official car, even with my per­sonal items still inside. Threats be­gan to fly. ‘That Ibo woman must’, ‘We will disgrace her.’ Their chief organizer, the Acting DG, went about whipping up ethnic senti­ments against me. Late 2015, the same officer had gone to the Cent­er’s mosque to ask for the issue of a Fatwa against me, claiming that I was working against the inter­est of the North. We nipped that in the bud by calling a town hall meeting and asking that proof be provided. The Fatwa was denied and peace reigned for a while. Po­lice was called in to the Center to escort me out and avoid bloodshed as I disengaged. Eventually, in the midst of insults and name calling, with an angry baying crowd, some of whom were brought in from outside, I entered my official car and left.” 

Of Nations, National Heroes and Tribal Bigots

By Dan Amor
Nigeria is a nation of experts without roots. We are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot even take a step. And when the culture has finished its work, the weak institutions handcuff the infirmity. But what is at the centre of the panic which is our national culture since we are not yet free to choose our leaders? 

*Buhari and Obasanjo 

Seeing how ineligible dunces who don't even understand the secret of their private appeal, talk less of what the nation needs jostle for power, I realize all over again that Nigeria is an unhappy contract between the rich and the poor. It is not that Nigeria is altogether hideous, it is even by degrees pleasant, but for an honest observer, there is hardly any salt in the wind.

Yet, in Nigeria, the myth of politics and the reality of life have diverged too far. There is nothing to return them to one another: no common love, no cause, no desire, and most essentially, no agreement here. Nigeria needed a hero before the exit of the White man, a hero central to his time. Nigeria needed a man whose personality might suggest contradictions and mysteries which could reach into the alienated circuits of the underground, because only a hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation. A hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow. Each mind can become more conscious of its desires and waste less strength in hiding from itself. Roosevelt was such a hero, and Churchill, Lenin, De Gaulle and Mandela. Even Hitler, to take the most odious example of this argument, was a hero, the hero-as-monster, embodying what had become the monstrous fantasy of a people, but the horror upon which the radical mind and liberal temperament foundered was that he gave outlets to the energies of the Germans, and so presented the twentieth century with an index of how horrible had become the secret heart of its desires.

Change, Nigeria’s Political Challenges, And The Canadian Example

By Nduka Otiono

The generally peaceful conduct of the March 28, 2015 Nigerian presidential election and the gracious acceptance of defeat by the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) strongly signaled that Nigeria may have turned a new page, politically.

Other indicators of a new turn for Africa’s largest democratic country and economy are the following firsts in the country’s annals: the widespread innovative use of technology for the process—the use of card readers; the overthrow of the ruling PDP by the General Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) through the ballot box after 16 years of dominance; the election of four none indigenes of a state (Lagos State) as members of the Federal House of Representatives; and the above-average performance of the National Electoral Commission in ways that suggest considerable independence of the electoral umpire.  

Although news reports suggested a poor turnout for the second-tier of the 2015 elections into governorship and state parliamentary positions, the relative voter apathy did not becloud the overall plaudits that the current political process has earned locally and internationally. So, too, did the reports of violence leading to death in sections of the country and the localized electoral malpractices not detract from the respectable scorecard of the electoral commission.  

Count Me Out Of 2019 Presidential Contest - Babangida

Excerpts from a press statement issued on Tuesday, November 10, 2015, by former military head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida 

I have heard whispers from different political arenas that one of the rationales for the rebranding of PDP was to prepare me for future elections in 2019. How ridiculous! God’s willing; by 2019 I will be 78 years old. If I called it quits in 2011, why would PDP contemplate fielding a 78 years old man in a presidential election in a country that parades very vibrant men and women of lesser age?

I have no intention whatsoever to run for any office again in Nigeria. I will consistently pray to Almighty Allah to grant me good health and sound mind to watch my dearest beloved country grow from strength to strength during my lifetime and beyond…

I wish to make some clarifications concerning the invitation extended to me on the scheduled PDP Rebranding Conference slated for Thursday, 12 November, 2015, aimed at repositioning the party after its poor outing at the last elections. While I welcome the invitation to the event as a mark of respect as one of the founding fathers, I want to be excused on the grounds that I have long bid bye to partisan politics.

Four years ago at an elaborate event at the Transcorp Hilton Hotels Abuja, I announced my retirement from partisan politics after my failed attempt to contest for President and having attained the gracious age of 70, in a society where life expectancy stands at a ridiculous 47 years. In appreciating what Allah has done for me in life, seeing me through many challenges, stabilizing me during periods of tribulations, and safeguarding me through the thick and thin of political risks, I did state at that event that Journalists would not push me around again.

The President of Northern Nigeria?

By Abiodun Ladepo

Hurray! It is September and Nigerians from the South can now expect to be called upon to serve their country as members of President Buhari’s cabinet. No, they are not going to be the National Security Adviser. They are not going to be Accountant-General of the Federation. They are not going to head DSS, EFCC or INEC. They are not going to head the Nigerian Ports Authority or the Nigerian Maritime Administration, Safety and Security Agency (NIMASA). They are not going to head Customs or Immigrations.

Listen; there is quite a long list of serious positions they are not going to have because those positions have gone to the North. In the infinite wisdom of President Muhammadu Buhari, after having searched the length and breadth of Nigeria looking for competent people who are also not tainted by the stain of corruption, these positions will only go to the North where there is an abundance of incorruptible and competent Nigerians.

Nigerians And Their Anti-Corruption Charade

By Chinweizu

Sundoor999@gmail.com

26jan15

Anybody who thinks that, under Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, any government, party or president can eradicate corruption is like a man who expects a worm to give birth to a lion, or who wants to go to heaven but doesn’t want to die.

If Nigerians are at all serious in their endless noisemaking against corruption, they must, as a first step, get rid of their 1999 Constitution. Anybody who is claiming he can end corruption but who isn’t campaigning to get rid of the 1999 Constitution is a fraud.

But Nigerians are not serious. First of all, they love what they call corruption, they became addicted to it right from the 1950s. They want to loot and squander, that’s why they don’t really want corruption tackled.  Secondly, they love their noisemaking against it. If “corruption” was eliminated, they would lose their favorite topic for complaining. In this matter of denouncing corruption, Nigerians are like a rich hypochondriac who is addicted to his symptoms and to the attention he gets because of his condition, and doesn’t want it cured. He refuses to go for the diagnostic tests that can determine the cause of his symptoms so it can be treated. Instead he keeps going from one quack doctor to another, each of whom claims to have the magic cure for his condition. Of course all that each wants is to get at his money and take his share and run. So each denounces his predecessor and gets his chance until the next quack doctor displaces him, and he leaves the patient uncured and even worse, and the hypochondriac is happy that his symptoms are still with him.

Which coup maker in the past 50 years hasn’t claimed he has come to get rid of corruption only to get even more corrupt than those he threw out? Which presidential candidate hasn’t claimed the same intention and ability only to fail when he got into office? Why has that been so? There are three main reasons why that has been so since 1999:

OIL SUBSIDY: To Be Or Not To Be?

By Dan Amor, Sebastine Eko & Omini Oden

Over the years, Nigeria's four decrepit refineries which were built to refine crude oil into petroleum products for local consumption and possibly for exports were left to rot just to make room for the importation of petroleum products by the governing elite and their contractors. This makes it pretty difficult for the importers or oil marketers to bring the products to the reach of the final consumers without incurring additional costs. The effect of this excess tax on the consumers in the name of landing and other costs of carriage from the ports to depots across the country is what government tries to cushion so that the products would be affordable for the common man. This extra payment government makes to the oil marketers in order to maintain an affordable price regime for the products is what is generally referred to as oil subsidy.

*Buhari

Subsidy is therefore a government policy that would act as a palliative due to fluctuations in the international market. But what makes this policy so controversial in Nigeria is that everything about the oil & gas sector is shrouded in secrecy. Ever since the military administration of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1988, whose major intention was to vend juicy national assets to willing buyers, those companies not sold to government officials or their cronies, were allowed to rot in other to attract the sympathy of Nigerians for their privatization. The refineries, two in Port Harcourt, one in Onne near Warri and one in Kaduna, are part of those assets. Since the Babangida era, Nigerians have been living with this menace. It triggered a lot of civil unrest during which several Nigerians including university students were killed.

The Military junta under the late General Sani Abacha which inherited the crisis set up the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF) headed by the current President, Muhamadu Buhari to manage the excess charges from the pump prices of petroleum products. The fund was meant for the provision of infrastructure across the country. In 1999, when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo assumed leadership of the country as a democratically elected president, he disbanded the PTF and insisted on the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. But the move was resisted by Nigerians who thought that they had long been shortchanged by government in the oil and gas industry. 

Illiberality In An Age Of Conspiracy

By Dan Amor

For those who have a profound appreciation of power and its most penetrating insight as well, the fact of the matter, as the Italians once succinctly put it, is that power cannot be wrested no matter the paradigm one uses without certain attributes by the group or individual that jockeys after it. Popularized as the Three Cs in political parlance, any group that earnestly seeks power must be cohesive. It must be coherent. And it must be conspiratorial. 

*President Jonathan 

In an attempt to wrest power from President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, even before the Senate's Doctrine of Necessity following the untimely death of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, some hawks have tried to employ certain machinations including coercion and brigandage to humiliate him from the pinnacle of power.

Few Nigerians have been so persistently, so perversely and so pertinaciously maligned in the folklore of our political evolution. Even before Yar'Adua was officially pronounced dead, there was  cataclysm in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) arising from the sharp division between defenders of entrenched interests who insisted that the North must retain power and those who insisted that the sanctity of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must supervene.  That is where Jonathan's problem started. With the intervention of the Senate, he assumed the Presidency in acting capacity and later as substantive President. In 2011, northern politicians insisted that Jonathan should not run, which is grossly unconstitutional. Again, the Constitution gained upper hand, and Jonathan, in what was considered a free-and-fair election by local and international observers, won a pan-Nigerian mandate as the country's fourth democratically elected President.

Nigeria: Seasonal Brinkmanship Again

Banji Ojewale

An old star departs, leaves us here on the

Shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star

Approaching. The new star appears, foreshadows

Its going, Before a going and coming that goes

On forever … 

 –  Christopher Okigbo, in Path of Thunder.

*President Jonathan (right) and General Buhari

Nigeria appears to be falling again under the excruciating spell of a star presaged by this remarkable poet of limitless possibilities.   At the time Christopher Okigbo wrote the poem shortly before his death in 1967 the young republic had writhed in a series of setbacks dating from the Western Region upheavals.

Okigbo  had a keen mind that correctly interpreted these rocking crises as the shadows of some bigger, more devastating whirlwind into which we were being drawn.  As he studied the events of his time, he decoded an abiku-like character in them.    The details and nuances which chroniclers ignored or gave little attention to, he noted and scrutinized to find out why they exerted such powerful but hardly visible influence.

I Will Tell General Sani Abacha

By Dan Amor

Sunday June 8, 2014 indubitably marked the sixteenth anniversary of the death of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most treacherous tyrant and who ranked with Agathocles and Dionysus I of Sicily, as the greatest dictators, not only of antiquity but of all time. 

*Abacha

It is true that the degree of cruelty and loathsome human vulgarity that the Abacha era epitomized is already fading into the background because of the mundane and short character of the human memory. But his timely exit ought to have been marked by Nigerians just as the United Nations marks the end of the Second World War not only for posterity but also as a thanksgiving to God for extricating us from such epoch of human misery.

Soyinka’s Utterance Against Me Is “Aggravated Libel” – Maja-Pearce

Interview With Adewale Maja-Pearce

BY YEMI ADEBISI

Wole Soyinka


How would you describe your experience so far in Nigeria’s book industry?

I’m right now a consultant for Evans. Evans bought over Nelson Publishers and they want to develop together a literary series. I told them we shouldn’t leave the foreign publishers to be publishing Nigerian writers. Some of these old publishing houses publish textbooks for schools. We are ready to publish six papers every year. Instead of waiting for other series, let’s publish the first two so we would generate interest. We would begin to launch our first papers in November at the Lagos Book Fair that is run by Toyin Akinosho. We have to make things happen in Nigeria. Apart from that I have a small publishing company since 2005 called New Gong. So that is really a small fascinating publishing house we have and we don’t physically publish books. We load up a book and then they print, sell it as Print On Demand (POD). We don’t have probably any physical book in Nigeria. If you want to buy it you have to go online to purchase the book. The only problem we have in Nigeria is distribution because in small developed country like South Africa and even in America, the publisher is not involved in selling the book. The publisher goes to train that we have so, so and so copies, bla, bla, bla. So the train has bookshops all over the countries and they will distribute it. So the publisher doesn’t know how they sell the books; we don’t have that in Nigeria.

Adewale Maja-Pearce

Let’s talk about the POD you spoke about. Judging by probably what you have been able to put together, what would you advise an author that wishes to publish through such medium too?

Anybody can do it. If you simply go to our site, there is an icon in the site called ‘create space.’ When the book is ready you upload it, the cover and the inside pages. They will give you a file page so that every of your work will be filed. What you see about a week is your book on our site. We print and sell as requested. And it is a big advantage, a very big one.

There is this rumour that you have some personal grudges with Wole Soyinka over your comments in your review on one of his books. It was even gathered that you were exchanging abusive words publicly. Can you throw more light into this?

Grudge! No! I first met Soyinka shortly after he won the Nobel Prize because I used to work for a magazine in London called Index On Censorship. I was their African editor from 1983 to 1997. So, before I joined, Soyinka had already been published by them and also had written for them. He was familiar with the magazine. So when I joined, I told him, “I am the new African editor. I hope you will continue with us.” We have a means he used to send us materials; we had a good working relationship. The problem came when he published You Must Set Forth At Dawn. I was asked by the London Review of Books to review it. I didn’t like the book so I gave my reasons. So, when it came out people told me that Soyinka didn’t take it kindly with criticism. I was just working for a magazine anyway.