A CONVERSATION WITH AHMED MAIWADA

By Isaac Attah Ogezi One of the few arresting places to a stranger in Abuja as he heads towards Mpappe, KM2 off Abuja-Zuba Expressway is the Mamman Vatsa Writers Village nestling in the valley bordering the road, the colossal property in its various stages of completionthat belongs to the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Upon taking further quixotic steps to enter, a white imposing structure royally standing alone welcomes the pilgrim. A few yards away are long rows of two-storey buildings among other edifices. Granted to the association by the then FCT Minister, late General Mamman Vatsa, this village is not without a chequered history of its own. After several years of legal battles with Abuja’s land speculators and encroachers, the Association could now have every reason to smile. The man behind these smiles is none other than the lawyer-poet, Ahmed Maiwada, the legal generalissimo who has won a succession of legal battles on the land for his beloved association. In this engaging interview with the Nigerian playwright, Isaac Attah Ogezi, Mr. Maiwada bares his heart on grey areas of his writing that students of his work will find interesting, his forage into ANA's politics as well as his secret in combining full-time law practice with creative writing. OGEZI: In his Introduction to The Mid-Century English Poetry 1940-1960 published in 1965, the editor, David Wright, rightly wrote that, 'It is a commonplace that at any one time there are few genuine poets compared with the many who have talent; and the result of the large crop of published volumes of verse has been to make it difficult to see the trees for the wood.' There is no doubt that you belong to the former group as evident in your debut poetry collection, Saint of a Woman. Strangely for a debutant, you appear to have cut your teeth in poetry in terms oforiginality of voice and language, uninfluenced by older Nigerian poets especially in an era where most poets, to use an unflattering term by Prof. Tanure Ojaide, are 'copy cats'. What is your secret in taking 'the road not taken'? MAIWADA: I am really glad to hear that my poetry has come through as original. This may have to do with how I started writing in the genre, which is, after I have encountered poetry first in the classroom, having to study its nuts and bolts and then sit for examinations on them at the end of the school terms. That process brought me into knowing the raw materials needed for writing poetry, which means I was taken right to the sources from where those poets we were studying in school then had mined their own poetry materials. I think one normally doesn’t settle for pilfering from the finished works of others once one could easily walk down to the sources and fetch one’s own things to work with, which becomes especially so if one is like me: a person that wishes to dance only in my own robes and not in the robes of others, no matter how nice those borrowed robes might be. In summary, I have encountered the poetry of others in the past, even before I started writing my own poetry, and to be honest, I did as every other poet out there had done: walked in the shadows of the forebears. But, I deliberately decided that there would come a point when I had to stand up and walk on my own. That came after I had been taught the basics of poetry in class, followed by receiving guidance from my elder brothers, like Mu’azu Maiwada. The decision to discard those poems I had written in anxiety of influence was a conscious one. I think that’s how I ended up publishing the poems that you observed to have “originality of voice and language”, to the glory of God. Writing, and writing poetry especially, is a tradition. One must take time and learn it, in order to put out works that may stand the test of time or be up to the standards. OGEZI: Despite the hue and cry that greeted the comment in question by Prof Ojaide, you hardly find a poet who is not churning Osundaresque lines or bowdlerising one older poet or the other in your generation. What is your take? Do you subscribe to that statement by Ojaide? MAIWADA: I was privileged to meet Professor Tanure Ojaide in Abuja this year (2021) at a reading organised in his honour at Veritas University in Abuja. I did ask him the question, whether or not he called younger Nigerian poets as copycats. The amiable professor actually denied the charge, saying that it was a term coined by Henry Akubuiro, who interviewed him, possibly so as to give the interview a catchy caption. He however observed that there is present in many of our poetry substantial anxiety of influence from the older poets among us, citing a few examples, which I totally agreed with. However, anxiety of influence is a normal thing in budding poets. Its manifestations are all over in English Literature, involving classical poets such as Ben Johnson. In that sense, one could say that we’re doing nothing out of the usual, and that no eyebrows should be raised. Nonetheless, it would be a criminal offence for such works to receive canonisation over and above those others that do indeed exhibit originality and true, authentic voices. And, who should be told this: those saddled with the responsibility of grading our poetry in various competitions being organised annually, or so. I think that feting a work that contains anxiety of influence amounts to committing a crime against literature: it destroys the growth processes that we have been witnessing in recent times, when quite a few younger poets have been coming out with original works of outstanding quality. However, this is easier said than done, because the person sitting to grade those works in any competition must be the kind that has read quite widely and studied poetry deeply. Sadly, there are not many of them out there. And that’s why we keep witnessing one doggerel after the other being announced as winner of our poetry prizes. OGEZI: Though dedicated to 'Mama! (True Saint of a Woman)', which I suppose is your mother, the titular poem, 'Saint of a Woman', at pages 34-45 is obviously not about your biological mother that the persona called Wordsmith is referring to but a lover's lament about his beloved who 'chose to depart alone' to Heaven without him. Is this rather elegiac, modern-day Song of Solomon where the love birds 'swapped rings' and made 'torches of/passion and barter/saliva by volts of tongues' autobiographical in any way or about someone that you once knew? MAIWADA: In my formative years, I wrote poems that could pass as "autobiographical", that is connected to my own life happening at that very moment. However, being poems that contained heavy influence of William Wordsworth, I discarded them all at a later stage of my development as a poet. Therefore, my answer is: no, the poem in reference had nothing to do with my mother nor any lover whatsoever. It was a poet that came from my own imagination, and I tried writing it down in the style that you have observed: that of Song of Solomon. As a matter of fact, it was an experiment with the "collage" method in poetry. Much of my poetry of the past came from pure imagination, with nothing autobiographical at all in the lines that you see. OGEZI: Your second collection of poetry is titled Fossils. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English 5th Edition, a fossil is 'the remains of an animal or a plant which have hardened into a rock.' Invariably, it conjures up the images of precious things like gold, diamond, columbite and what have you, excavated after long centuries of decay of both plant and animal. Why Fossils? Are the poems in the collection to be viewed as fossils? Could you shed some light on this? MAIWADA: Yes, that's the title of my second collection of poems: Fossils. However, as much as I agree with the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (5th Edition), I want to believe that the word didn't have only that meaning. It could also mean a person or thing that is resistant to change or a word or phrase that has become outdated. In essence, the title might conjure in a different reader's mind different images from the ones that it has conjured in yours. And that is actually the purpose of the title and poetry in that collection: to suggest to the reader not one meaning, but a number of meanings enough to invite into the text in order to ascertain which. I won’t even be surprised to hear that the title has conjured in a reader the complete opposite of whatever the title could suggest, because that has been intended by me when I decided to name the collection “Fossils”. As a poet, I am interested in avoiding spoon feeding my readers with what I think should be the meanings of my poetry. I don’t like that when other writers do so to me. Therefore, I think this is the most light that I can shed on the title, as it relates to the contents of the collection. To give more details might amount to being dictatorial. OGEZI: The panel of judges for the NLNG-sponsored Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2009 called this collection 'pure poetry.' Do you see yourself as an apostle of the school of art for art's sake who sees art as pure and sacred, unsullied by existential issues? MAIWADA: Yes, the NLNG judges did call Fossils “pure poetry”, for which I am glad. I didn’t set out to write poetry mixed with any other thing when I was putting together the collection. And I entered it for that year’s NLNG Prize because it was the year for the poetry category, otherwise I could have sent another book other than Fossils. In my opinion, any book that should win a prize in any competition must satisfy the conditions for winning the prize. Therefore, a book that is called “pure poetry” must be seen by all to have made the grades, because poetry and poetry alone was the issue in that competition for that year. Nevertheless, I am yet to see any poem that has failed to mean something, not even those that wear the garb of “art for art’s sake”. The moment something is put forward as a poem, even if it is a single word, then a true poetry reader should be able to see that that poem, or that one word, is used connotatively rather than denotatively, in which case, it is suggesting a meaning to the reader. To say therefore, that I have any leaning to writing poetry that is devoid of issues, whatever they may be, is false. Such branding could only come from people who are unable to understand my poetry, and such people have nothing at all to do with serving as judges in any poetry competition. OGEZI: In 2009, the year for poetry, the Nigeria Prize for Literature was not awarded to any of the nine poets on the shortlist on the ground of lack of 'social relevance'. Would you say literary prizes are a form of censorship? To what extent do you feel literary prize administrations or censorship has impactedon the quality and productivity or otherwise of literary works within the context of Nigeria? MAIWADA: The 2009 NLNG Prize was not awarded because, according to the judges, none of the nine titles on the short list for that year qualified to be awarded the prize. I can recall that a group of about four titles, which included Fossils, was branded by the judges as being high in art but lacking social relevance, while the other group, consisting of five titles, was branded as being high on social contents but low on art. I think it was just a way of shirking the responsibility of awarding the prize for that year, for reasons best known to either the judges or the NLNG Prize is a censoring literary prize administration. There is nothing on the face of the qualifications for entry being made year in year out that suggests censorship. In the past, many titles have been declared winners of the prize, including those that one might think have crossed the lines in terms of public morality. What happened in 2009 was an isolated case and it should be left at that. That said, I do believe that literary prizes all over the world are mostly designed in manners that dictate what the writers might write on if the writers hope to win such prizes. A literary prize that demands for entries from writers of only odes, for instance, or poetry on women or men, is a censoring prize; so is the one that requires that entries must be hardcore literary pieces rather than romances. Who pays the piper dictates the tune, if you would permit the cliché in that aphorism. And I do not see anything wrong in that at all. That is why prizes cannot really tell you which writer is the better of the pack. It’s all about satisfying the taste buds of the person paying the bills. In Nigeria, I think the NLNG Prize has impacted positively on the quality and quantity of writings by Nigerian writers. NLNG has made a policy of honouring only literary pieces of high quality. As a result, we started seeing books by Nigerian writers that are printed, particularly in Nigeria, with standards that could match any other all over the world. This is a welcome development. The four-year period within which one might publish a suitable book for the NLNG Prize in a particular genre has also helped in the release of books that show higher standards in terms of contents than what obtained in the past. So, my verdict is a positive one. But, I am careful to restrict myself to only the NLNG Prize. I cannot dare to say that other literary prize administrations in Nigeria have gone in that positive direction. OGEZI: You may well be called an environmental critic in your strong denunciatory poem on the city of Lagos titled 'Lagos welcomes you' at page 52 of Fossils, where you employed striking metaphors of waste and decay personified in an undesirable and repulsive woman past her sell by age, reminiscent of the Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah, who used faeces to describe the rot and corruption in post-Independence Ghana. Unlike your older fellow compatriot J. P. Clark's 'Ibadan', your poem on Lagos appears a one-sided indictment without a redeeming feature to be cheerful about, no, not with such harsh, crunching alliterative lines: 'her lusts/Her rusts and rats that mate...' and 'Cleaning done, dark dung dribbles/Down her southern route'. Do you not think such a damning portraiture can scare would-be tourists to the city? Or is it such a very hard thing for a poet to be a patriot? MAIWADA: My late mother would have all of us children on rosters for cleaning the house and washing the plates. I guess that contributed much to my awareness of the environment. In my later years in Zaria, but before I left home, I had concerns about the advancing Sahara Desert into the Nigerian territory, through the northern parts, as well as the bush-burning activities of hunters, during dry seasons. Therefore, I was only being myself while living in Lagos, after my Law degree in ABU, to notice the images I have used in the poem, Lagos Welcomes You. And I think it would be an achievement for the entire poetry communities around the world to celebrate if truly the poem had scared any would-be tourist from visiting the city; I am sure that there are fictions and films and documentaries are out there, full of images that could even dwarf what I have in Lagos Welcomes You, which had not achieved that feat. Nonetheless, when I wrote that poem, I was in a position to really see the Lagos that I had lived in for several years in the past, for what it really was: largely environmentally unfriendly. I saw it clearly only after I had left. And so, writing the poem was like writing back to myself my own experiences, in those lines, which I was too carried away by the good sides of Lagos to take notice. And if poetry, like other genres of literature, could mirror the society; and if the mirror could serve to startle the patient enough to resolve to deal with the disease, then I do not see the place of working out a redemption for the rot mentioned there, since the redemption is there in the very disease. There is nothing difficult about poets being patriotic in my realistic take on Lagos in that poem. It may interest you to know that my personal opinion on Fossils is that it is a book of patriotic poetry; patriotic about Nigeria and how we, the different ethnic nationalities within the nation, could reconcile with each other for the sake of living in peace and harmony: it is there in the symbols that I have employed in the book. But, I am not the one to point it out. It should be excavated by archaeologists of poetry, just like the real fossils are excavated. That might take time, but there are chances that it might never be discovered. OGEZI: In your Author's Note to Eye Rhymes, you stated that Milton snatched the quill from your hand and that you didn't write those poems in that collection with your hand. Also, in the opening poem, 'Enter, Rhymes', you made allusions to Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Where I do not only find this enigmatic, it is a rather peculiar way of paying homage to a fellow writer with centuries between you two. What is the extent of Milton's influence on your work as a writer generally as well as on this particular collection? MAIWADA: Paradise Lost by John Milton was one of the earlier classical English literary books that I opened my eyes to see at home. My elder brother, Mu’azu Maiwada was studying for his first degree in English, and that was one of the recommended texts, or so I thought, because he had it among many others in his room. The title was the first attraction: Paradise Lost. I did wonder whether it was Scripture. Then, the painting on the cover page, of the naked Adam and Eve and the Serpent added to the attraction. But, when I opened it and saw that it was, to me then, a long and an incomprehensible poem, attempting to rewrite the otherwise simple Scripture account of the Fall of Man, I lost interest, which I was to pick up later in life, after reading more about John Milton and Paradise Lost. There is a part of The Short History of English Literature (Second Edition) that Andrew Sanders devoted to Milton, running from the middle of page 226 down to the middle of page 236. In my reading of that book, I paid particular attention to that very part, during which I was introduced to him as a prose polemicist, noted as “a masterly and at times vituperative defender of the various public causes he chose to espouse”. And that is the very point where I and Milton became partners, in my writing of Eye Rhymes, in which I thought I was defending the “good book” against the tyranny of quack literary judges.In Milton’s arguably greatest and most lastingly persuasive pamphlets, Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing to the Parliament of England (1644) there is the following quoted statement: “As good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye.” I thinks it should be obvious at this point that Eye Rhymes was influenced more by the prose of Mr John Milton than by Paradise Lost.I only made the poet persona in Eye Rhymes to be a Milton disciple, who had the privilege of writing with Milton’s pen (and therefore his ideas about the “good Book”), but this time in poetry, Milton’s more popular genre, so to speak. OGEZI: Poetry is perhaps the most intimate form of expression such that writing poetry is one of the most subtle ways in the world to vent one's personal grievances in confessionals however cryptic. Are some of your poems confessionals like the late American poet, Sylvia Plath's? For example, in the poems 'When she wants to burn the paper' and 'Limestone around his neck still roams’ in your third collection, Eye Rhymes, you seem to be responding in a creative way to the non-announcement of a winner in the NLNG Prize of 2009 on the grounds that the entries on the shortlist were not 'socially relevant' enough? Permit me to quote the latter poem at page 45 of the said collection: 'The gallery drowns in blood wine, In the Nazi Party’s banquet hall. Chemical Ali flows, From Goebbels’ swastika teeth, As the German shepherd yelps – Anthem meet for Pogrom of Poets - The banquet’s baptismal name. Oh the Fuehrer needs Nine bards for the Gas Chamber! In tune, bad-bass banjo bandies Hard-shell refrains; And when the hands cue him on, Doctor Death gasses the chosen nine!' MAIWADA: I think I have responded to this very question in my answer to the previous question: Eye Rhymes is a poetry collection written against the arbitrariness of the quack literary judge against the “good Book”.I think I did all of my arguments in the verses of that collection, seeking to persuade the reader into agreeing with me in what I believe, as Milton did, so passionately. One area that Nigerian Literature could have made some serious gains against literature from other countries, particularly other African countries, is this: transparent judgments in literary competitions. The perennial absence of this has left us where we are today, with just a few laurels in world literature, and even those, coming after long spells. We should be better than just a single Nobel Prize in Literature! OGEZI: In the poem, ‘Their holes in walls cause culture shock', your angst against the jejune versified lines that pass lately as poetry is evident and in consequence you followed it up with what appears like your mission statement of what a good poem should be. Is that not rather prescriptive? I mean who legislates on what anybody should write? Permit me again to reproduce the relevant section of the poem at page 13: I hear of slam and sister scam - The hall of poetasters brooks no trope! The classics waste; the trash is raised, O, musing now is by power and might. The plates on my table make maggots. Till a pinch of salt is added, Sham is that banquet! The roll call of bards Crab is the line I’m trudging on, Marshland the pathway! It wouldn’t irk if you left The child, asleep in the manger; But Herod, you raised your hand And, Herodias my anger! MAIWADA: Permit me to refer you to my earlier answer above, where I did say that literature is a tradition. If truly so, then traditions are taught; meaning that, the learner should be taught “how” to go about practicing the tradition, in order not to deviate or corrupt that which had existed long before the learner dropped on the scene. I agree with you that it would amount to being “prescriptive” to legislate on “what” a writer should write. But, as long as the legislation is on the “how” rather than the “what”, there is nothing wrong at all. To argue otherwise, in my view, is to lay the very foundation for the apocalypse of literature, after which nothing close to what we know as poetry, prose or drama might be left for anybody to recognise. Rules exist in all traditions of the world that I know. And I think they should be sustained in this our chosen tradition of literary practice. OGEZI: In his essay 'What is really wrong with publishers in Nigeria?' Prof Sule Egya talked about the 'hermetic formalism' in your work, which is more evident in Eye Rhymes and your last collection, We're Fish. In the latter collection, you not only dwelt extensively on end rhymes, internal musicality, but on a profusion of dizzyingly experimental pyrotechnic artistry such that you even drew a tadpole with one of the poems. The beauty of a great literary work is the blissful correlation between subject and form. If form takes priority over subject in the name of formalism, will it not distract the reader's attention in a rather intrusive and obstructive manner and in the process make the reader lose grip of the writer's message? Secondly, is We're Fish also fifty percent Reason, and fifty percent Rhythm as you said of your first poetry collection, Saint of a Woman? MAIWADA: Professor Sule Egya has been of great support for my writing over the years, and his views must be respected. However, if poetry is recognised easily by one of the many forms that have been developed for the genre and formalism means “excessive adherence to prescribed forms”, then I ought to be grateful that I have scored high marks in keeping to the forms in my poetry writings. For me, poetry has to “be” first and foremost, before it tries to “mean” anything to the reader. And I think the forms have been developed for the sole purpose of helping the reader to recognise the type of poem he is reading easier than if the words are presented to the reader in prose. No, I don’t see how forms, being guides to the poem on paper, if done properly, can ever intrude or obstruct the reader; guides are meant to make the traveller pick his way through his journey easier. On whether We’re Fish is “fifty percent reason and fifty percent rhythm”, my answer ought to be that, once again, I shouldn’t let myself be drawn into passing judgment on my writing. I prefer for the reader to judge for himself or herself, what I was able to achieve and what I have failed to achieve, and thereafter score me for the failure or success that his or her judgment permits. OGEZI: One of the charges levelled against your poetry is that it is cast in stone, inaccessible to the uninitiated, the same way Chinweizu et al in their Toward the Decolonization of African Literature, Vol. 1: African Fiction and Poetry and Their Critics said about Okigbo's and Soyinka's poetry. What do you say to that? Do you view arch-obscurity in art as the pinnacle of high art? MAIWADA: Over the many years that I have been reviewing feedbacks on poetry from poetry readers, I have come to one conclusion, which is that most of the people who find poetry difficult usually box themselves into thinking that they are obliged to decode the poet’s meaning of the poetry that they are reading. No! What a good poet does is to assemble his words on paper carefully in such a manner that each of those words, or all of them together, suggest something, with the better poems capable of suggesting more than one thing to the reader. I think I did my own part, as a poet, by presenting the words on paper and inviting the reader to make meanings out of them. In order for those who have branded my poetry as “poetry cast in stone” to see things differently, they would need to change their old approach, develop the boldness to declare for themselves their own meanings of what they have encountered on the paper. And I think that the same result could be achieved while reading Soyinka or Okigbo, two of Nigeria’s masters that I don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with. As for my view on obscurity, I'd say that obscurity isn't an objective state of a thing. Rather, it exists where there is ignorance in the person who cannot deal with information that is placed before him, for whatever reason. C. S. Lewis, in his Experiment in Literary Criticism, posits that a reader must be as sophisticated as the poet in order to have a full appreciation of the poetry of that very poet. Where that sophistry is absent, accusations are labelled against the poet, which include such things as obscurity. OGEZI: Although the term magical realism was more popularised by the works of the Spanish writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for students of African literature, it was not new, as Amos Tutuola's works blazed the trail before the former even started writing. Perhaps owing to the blurred lines between the world of magic and reality, most works of this genre find their post-modernist resolution escapist in nature, oftentimes with unsatisfactory denouement. Would you agree with me that due to the deus ex machina in most works of magical realism their endings like Musdoki are rather contrived? MAIWADA: There are many types of novels and no rational critic of the genre would expect a realistic novel to be ended in the same manner as a romance novel is ended. According to E. M. Forster, in his Aspects of the Novel, the story in a novel is to have a beginning, middle and ending, and it is like a tapeworm: starting abruptly, somewhere, and ending in the same manner. One reader may be satisfied with an ending of a novel more than another reader, and there is no science to it. However, I have read about ending the realistic novel by killing the hero of the story as an unacceptable ending, generally speaking. Now, magic realistic novels are not considered as realistic novels, and so their expected endings should meet the standards of endings of magic realistic novels. Having done that, they need not to do more. Coming to the term “deus ex machina”, it means the ‘God from a machine’ that is lowered to the stage by mechanical contrivance in some ancient Greek plays to solve the problems raised by the plot or plots, at a stroke. This term is today used pejoratively for any improbable or unexpected contrivance by which an author resolves the complications of the plot in a play or a novel. I don’t see any such “improbable” or “unexpected” contrivance in the ending of my first and only novel, Musdoki. The two characters who start the story, in a park in Birnin Kebbi, are the same characters who end it in a restaurant in Kaduna. Nobody else is introduced to finish the story for them. Therefore, I wouldn’t agree with you that a deus ex machina is used in the ending of that novel, even though it could be termed as magic realism. I can agree if the ending doesn’t come as satisfactory for you; I am not satisfied with it myself, which is the reason why I have decided on writing two more sequels on the same characters. And I am at an advanced stage into the first sequel OGEZI: In Musdoki, what informed your use of the word 'Verse' to mark off one chapter from another instead of the more conventional 'Chapter'? Is it the dense poeticity of the language in the novel or the poet in you proving oppressive over the novelist? MAIWADA: I used the “Verse” marker in Musdoki to suggest that the novel could pass for a poetry book. No oppression intended or executed on the novelist by the poet in me; not at all. However, it may interest you to know that I wrote the first draft of that novel in what one might term as “hardcore” poetry, which my first editor had found “unreadable”. Thanks to that opinion, I had to do a few rewrites of the story before it finally became “readable as prose”. I have received many other opinions as well, including that of Professor Egya Sule, which helped a great deal in what we have in print today. He never suggested that I should do away with the verse marker. And so, we have it out in that form and style, if you like: as a novel or as a poetry book. OGEZI: One of the areas that some critics especially from a section of the country have taken you up in Musdoki is on the treatment of Nigeria's Civil War. Admittedly, there is a paucity of creative writing on the said war from the north and it is understandable if the novel is a kind of the north writing back to the south from one of their own. In that case, you will seem to be in agreement with the danger of a single story which Chimamanda Adichie warns strongly against. Is Musdoki a narrative told from a Northern perspective with a set agenda in mind as largely perceived by those critics? Secondly, how do you think a writer can maintain his neutrality in the face of a history that is susceptible to diverse interpretations? MAIWADA: To be honest, I didn’t know of one critic that held such a view on Musdoki. Yes, a book reviewer or two might have written on the treatment of the Nigerian Civil War in the novel, or about the north talking back. But, those are mere opinions that couldn’t be supported with textual references from the story. My novel tells a coming-of-age story of a Zaria-born teenager in the late Eighties, opening the account in Birnin Kebbi, a north-western Nigerian border town, where he meets a young lady whose humanity he continues to question until the end of the novel, many years later, in Kaduna. As the story progresses, the Zaria young man travels to Lagos, where he lives for some years, meets another young lady that is a shadow of the one he has met in Birnin Kebbi. While they get to know each other better, a political unrest happens, in the form of June 12 debacle in Nigeria, re-enacted. This forces the young Zaria man to flee back to Zaria from Lagos and the southern part of Nigeria. It is only during this episode of fleeing back to the north that the young Zaria man, while in a packed car with some people of northern ethnicity fleeing back to Kano in the north, listened to a conversation of some of the car’s occupants, regarding what happened during the Nigerian Civil War, which happened before he was even born. How does just one episode in a whole novel become the subject matter of that very novel? I also read some reviewers’ view that the novel is a regurgitation of the history of the Nigerian Civil War: a work of fiction! I think those opinions by those book reviewers are perfect reflections of the state of our literary appreciation. No, a literary critic cannot make such a conclusion; cannot determine the subject matter of my novel, or any novel whatsoever, on the basis of an episode in the story. Musdoki, for the umpteenth time, is neither a history book nor is it about the Nigerian Civil War. It is not a “single story”, which I don't know any reason why I shouldn't if I have decided to. It is, especially, not a northern perspective with a set agenda: a story parading such an array of characters from all over the country, speaking up in their own language freely; a story that follows those characters all over the country (and I make bold to say that no other Nigerian novel covers the Nigerian geography as Musdoki) cannot be justifiably accused of such parochialism. Finally, I think almost all well-written fictions, not being historical works in any form, are politically and historically neutral. Fictions are made up stories. They do not tell real stories of things that happened, otherwise they cannot be fiction. Therefore, let the accusers of Musdoki go and seek more knowledge concerning the differences between fiction and history. OGEZI: Chinua Achebe once said that 'Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.' Simply put, every form of creative writing is politics and a writer should never leave anyone in doubt as to where he stands on issues especially in writing. In other words, one cannot divorce literature from politics. Do you honestly feel a writer can truly be apolitical or non-partisan in a work like Musdoki? MAIWADA: That quotation credited to Chinua Achebe looks to me like a proverb. If so, then I don’t think he used the words “historians” and “history” in a literal sense. Therefore, we’d be doing injustice to his saying by giving it a literal interpretation. Personally, nobody has paid me to write for or on behalf of any section of the Nigerian State. I also didn’t feel the need to do so. However, just like all other writers before me had chosen the stories they wanted to write about, I made my choice and I went on to deliver it in the book that I have titled, Musdoki. Like all other books, my novel knows its audience, and it is very conscious of the fact that people without the necessary sophistry to process what it presents in-between the covers are likely to misunderstand it. Should I, because of this experience, decide that next time I must write a book that could make everybody happy or satisfied? No! I am a disciple of John Steinbeck, who was equally called unprintable names, including a communist, for daring to write the story that he thought he should write. There is politics in all human affairs, and in so far as the novel is written about human beings (and it must be so, even if animals are used in place of humans) then politics is a necessary part of it. But, there are people who, even in real life, decide that they will not acknowledge the politics being played around then, who simply go about their lives without factoring politics in them. Such is the attitude of a seasoned novel reader: enjoying the story being presented and understanding human nature and cultures better than when he first opened the book to read. That’s what I will advise my readers, now and in the future. OGEZI: In real life, most writers tend to shy away from politics as though being actively involved in politics taints the sacredness of their art. What is your take on the relationship between writers and politics? MAIWADA:I don’t have anything to say to a writer who decides not to be involved in politics, or to even associate with politicians. Such a writer may have already decided on his priorities in life. So, he should go on living his life along those things that he sets his focus on. Those of us who, by design or accident, have decided that politics is a necessary aspect of any people’s cultures, and that to understand a people one must understand their cultures, let us live in that atmosphere and pick up whatever meat or bones are there for cooking our stories for our chosen audiences. I think the most sacred art is the one that is presented in a very honest way, after its subject matter has been thoroughly researched into and known well enough by the author making the presentation. Therefore, I don’t share in the view that politics taints the sacredness of art; I should rather take the opposite view, that art that has been stripped of its politics is lacking in integrity, or missing an important part of what makes it complete. OGEZI: For quite some time now, you have been active in the politics of arts administration in Nigeria, specifically, the writers' body known as the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA for short. What motivated you to go into ANA's politics? MAIWADA:I started getting involved in the politics of literary administration in Nigeria at the ANA Abuja Chapter level. I did so in the intention of assisting the then Chapter executive with my presence, funds and advice regarding how the chapter might be ahead of its peers. And, I am happy to observe that during my service as ANA Abuja Legal Adviser, the Chapter made such giant strides that one was right to think that it was the National Executive Council itself. Under the then Chairman, Dr Seyi Adigun, we had always had no less than two professors in all our monthly readings, which were covered in many national newspapers. We organised the Karaye Prize in Hausa Literature, sponsored by Hajiya Bilkisu Abdulaziz, the then Executive Secretary of Nigerian Judicial Service Commission. Award ceremonies for that competition were held about three times in Abuja, with winners’ entries for the competition and winners emerging from different parts of Hausa speaking Nigeria, and accolades coming from all over, even as others made frantic attempts to emulate. It was our advocacy that made the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Aliyu Moddibo, to rename the Cultural Centre in Area 10 after Cyprian Ekwensi. Several Nigerian writers in diaspora were hosted to a reading by us, including Amatoritsero Ede, who was then in Canada, and we were the only ANA Abuja Chapter executive that held readings in the library of the prestigious Yar’Adua Centre, in the heart of the Abuja metropolis.Our attempts to publish an anthology for the Abuja Chapter then was only aborted by the publisher that we had chosen, whose shoddy handling rendered all our contributed creative works, polished by the painstaking editing works done by no other than Professor Ihiechukwu Madubuike, a waste of time and resources. However, we had had robust critique sessions on our works-in-progress, which resulted in ANA Abuja writers becoming forces to reckon with in Nigerian literature, as shown in our titles making the NLNG long and short lists of that period. At the rate we were going, we would have started going for major things internationally by now, due to our resolve and our ability to attract those elders among us and those living abroad, in order to guide and inspire us. Now, it was that contribution that I think I have made at the ANA Abuja Chapter level that I decided to take up to the National Executive level, which necessitated that I should continue in the politics of ANA beyond that effort. My contributions are not all out there to see, because, as National Legal Adviser, or member of the ANA Land Committee, the words of advice that I gave to the National Executive Council, the then President, the Land Committee and the land developer, were shared in private. However, I am bold to state that the edifices that we can see standing on the ANA Land at this very moment, could not be standing there without my efforts in the courts, which are still ongoing, several years after we had started, as well as the development agreement that is still being executed, after we had carefully negotiated with the developer for those developments in exchange for some parts of the lands that belonged to us. My motivation, as you might have seen already, was nothing more than to see that Nigerian Literature find the necessary atmosphere that it needs in order to develop into a truly global brand. I have been there long enough to know that Nigerian governments do not really care about the literature part of our cultural development, with the exception of a few individuals such as the former Niger State Governor, Alhaji Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, Late Mamman Jiya Vatsa and the former FCT Minister, Aliyu Moddibo. Therefore, we needed to find a means of sustaining our needs towards achieving such a lofty goal. And the most feasible means was to have our own investments in place, which would keep giving, so that those resources are channelled down to the areas of need, thereby watering the budding literary flowers that can bring us glory in the near future, both as Nigerians and as a nation. I have used my personal resources in this direction in the past. And I shall continue to do so, for as long as I can afford to. But, to be supported by the added resources from a collective such as ANA, so that what I have mentioned earlier as our visible and observable strides might be expanded and sustained. OGEZI: You have published four collections of poetry and a novel. Between poetry and prose, which one comes more easily to you? MAIWADA: Right now, I am as much at ease when writing poetry as I am when writing prose. But it wasn’t like this, until I had mastered it; it took me time. There was a time when any prose I had started writing ended up becoming a poem. That explains why I had to appease the poetry demons by publishing a few collections before I turned my attention to prose, and I had mentioned earlier how the experience had not been smooth. That led me to drop poetry entirely, until Musdoki got published. After that, I returned to poetry and discovered that I had lost touch. It was another struggle to get back to where I had dropped it. After that, I started writing in the two genres without dropping one for the other, until I got to where I am today: writing in both with as much ease as possible. Poetry is more jealous of the two, I have to say. But, I have succeeded in forcing it to co-exist with my prose writing. So far, we’re happy working like this and we have been covering quite some grounds in both genres. OGEZI: As a significant contemporary poet of the post-military era in Nigeria, do you have other poets or writers of this generation that you admire? MAIWADA: I can always defend my claim to being a poet. But, I am not a significant poet. Doing justice to this question requires that I have read as many poets of that generation as possible, which is not the case. Again, since some of the poets of the military era are still writing, we must face the problem of determining who among the poets are post-military era Nigerian poets and who are not. That said, I am currently reading the collection of poems by Ismaila Bala, titled Line of Sight, and I admire nearly everything that he does there, particularly the display of excellent poetic diction that can rival even that of Seamus Heaney. The collection is a product of long patience and careful selection processes, with the result coming out in the form of charming poetry that focuses attention deep into things that the world scarcely considered as important. I may have a couple of other names to mention. But I haven’t had the privilege of reading their books of poetry, if they have some. OGEZI: What are you currently working on? And when should your readers expect to see a new work from you? MAIWADA: I have been working on the sequel to my first and only published novel, Musdoki. The work is at a very advanced stage right now. It’s been a whole new writing experience for me, because I started writing the story from the ending parts, before I settled on the beginning. I’m at the point of connecting the dots now, in order to complete the story in the novel. Why am I writing the novel in this fashion? It is because I write in fear of failing to write a novel that is familiar in style to the reader. I am satisfied by some of the comments on Musdoki, stating that it is an important addition to Nigerian Literature. One or two readers have even asked the question many times: what is this book about? This might have come from the way and manner I wrote the story, not starting from the beginning and progressing from there to the ending. And, that is the experience that is becoming fitting for me. Therefore, I am experiencing a repeat. It is my hope that this novel shall be released sometime in the second half of 2022, God willing. I have also been working on a collection of poetry, which is, for the first time, truly reflective of my childhood experiences in Zaria and my Lagos experience: a contrast of small town and big city experiences rendered in, hopefully, contrasting styles. I am not in any hurry to release the poetry to the public. So, I cannot put a timeline for its publication. I might possibly progress to rework on my earlier novel manuscripts, which I wrote long before I left home for Lagos: one set in Kano, with the Maitatsine religious upheaval as a setting and the other flowing set in a fictional border town of Nigeria with Niger Republic. I am hoping that all these titles will be published in the next three years, if God keeps me alive and in good health. Amen. OGEZI: You are not only a successful lawyer but can hold your own in a comity of other writers. What is your secret in excelling in these two demanding albeit apparently jealous fields? MAIWADA: I am neither a successful Lawyer nor the type of writer that you say I am. However, I am growing into that successful Lawyer and that kind of writer. Amen. Until then, I take things one day at a time and keep a keen focus on the files at my table. I am glad of the sound foundation that I think I have got both in school and at home. That has helped me to remain disciplined and diligent concerning any assignment that I have chosen to embark upon. I can live with problems, both mine and the problems of others that are on my shoulders to carry. But I can only do so long while fashioning the methods I can get rid of them. And, by the grace of God, I have always overcome. I think that is a good attitude to success in anything one is doing, not least legal practice and creative writing. I have also done my best to manage my time, not letting myself have much of the luxury in idleness. I don’t miss any opportunity to drop my loads in order to catch a rest, because doing so has helped me to regain my strength for forging ahead with the struggles. The fear of looking back, in my old age, if God grants me the grace to live longer, and blaming myself for not doing my best when the opportunities had presented themselves, have been my ultimate driving force. And I am sure to accept any result of the outcomes, as long as I know that I did what I could, when I had the chance.

The Threshing Floor

by Isaac Attah Ogezi

A collection of a dozen short stories that has just a bit of everything. From religious hypocrisy, marital infidelity and human deception and fraud, to spiritual mysteries, the limits of justice (in our land), the many and uncertain shades of love, and the redemptive value of suicide, Isaac Attah Ogezi skilfully and sensitively explores the human condition in its social, psychological and spiritual dimensions. The stories are both universal and uniquely individual as everyone can identify with one or another of the characters whose experiences are portrayed in The Threshing Floor. The author's mastery of language and power of narration will surely seduce any reader.

The Coffin-maker

By Isaac Attah Ogezi ‘The Director-General of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) further warns that all owners of illegal structures erected three metres along the Nyanyan-Abuja Road are to demolish same within two weeks’ time as this Announcement shall not be repeated. All those concerned should please take note of this important Announcement ….’ The stern voice from the car stereo went on repeating this riot act several times before it lapsed into silence. Kanadu finally turned it off to digest the Announcement just relayed. Crazy people, he muttered under his breath. Dis El-Rufai wan’ kill people. ‘Im an’ Baba Iyabo. Abi dis country na dem papa propati? And the casualty rate would be high. People would die like the fire incident that razed Wuse Market a week ago. While the fire raged, some ill-fated traders who couldn’t watch all their earthly possessions go up in flame, dived into the fire to be cremated along. Yes, dis country hot pass hell. But the more people died, the more money he made. Na so life be! He smiled ruefully. Suddenly, he saw the on-coming bus like a bat out of hell. Quickly, he swerved his Honda Accord to the kerb almost pitching into the ditch. He swore under his breath. But for his luck rather than the reflex action that averted this accident, he would have made one undertaker richer. Yeye man! He spat after the man with blood-red eyes of marijuana smokers behind the steering wheel. But that was an effort in futility, for the accursed man was far beyond his spit. Wrong overtaking. This lack of patience on the part of our road-users has long become world-famous. De country bad; na so so plenty people dey beg Baba God may dem die for roads. People whey life done tire dem. Dis one na anoda suicide people de carry style kill demself! As he neared his shed, he could see the coffins conspicuously displayed by the roadside by his rivals. Stupid ignoramuses, he spat again. He slowed down, took his left and drove slowly on the dirt road to his office. He stepped down importantly, and hurriedly made his office within a few seconds, acknowledging the greetings of his boys with a dismissive wave of his hand. His one-room office was air-conditioned, expensively rugged from wall to wall, and well-equipped with ultra-modern gadgets in vogue. An inner door led to the large showroom where he normally ushered in his numerous customers. The eerie feeling a stranger would have was that this was another graveyard, what with the empty coffins occupying every little space in the room. They were sixty coffins in number and of different sizes. He always counted them the first thing in the morning and the last thing before he left for home to ensure that none of his smart boys would be greedy enough to sell anyone in his absence. Person no fit trust dis agbero boys whey I get here. The backdoor of the showroom led to the large carpentry workshop where his large army of employees was always at work, sawing and hammering at wood to make beautiful works of art that would convey the remains of dead people to the earth. Kanadu did not become a rich coffin-maker by a sudden leap into the soft, cosy lap of fate. No, his was by a dint of hard labour. He clawed and clawed his way to the top first as an ordinary carpenter in Abuja before the idea of making coffins dawned on him. This money-milling idea was triggered off by the daily happenings in Abuja. A voracious reader of many inspirational pamphlets, he believed that the world was ruled by ideas. Idea na money, was his philosophy of life. And he lived by that philosophy like his daily prayer. It was one simple idea that made him what he was today – bought him a car, a house, plots of land and even married a wife for him. Surely, idea na money! The high rate of deaths in Abuja had never inspired him to become a coffin-maker until one fateful night. He was home that night in his roach-infested single room he shared with five other loafers, after emptying a big bowl of soaked garri and kwukwuli into his stomach. He brought out his crumpled pamphlet, No Condition is Permanent, written by one Onitsha-based author who claimed it had sold over two million copies world-wide and made many poor people millionaires overnight. No sooner had he begun to read it under the weak light of the bush lamp than a hard thump came on the door, almost removing it from its hinges. ‘Who be dat na?’ he asked. ‘Na we, broad Kanadu. Please, make you open de door.’ He obliged and opened the door. A whole family of six was gathered at his doorstep in all manner of bereavement. A look at them was enough to discern their mission. He took the lamp and locked the door. ‘Who be dat?’ He asked so as to know the size of the coffin he would make. ‘Na my husband Ike, broad Kanadu. ’E die today’, replied the mother of the house. Death had ceased to shock him ever since this new government came up with its plan to restore the city of Abuja to the master-plan, thereby destroying many illegal structures. Yes, Kanadu was not surprised. The deceased was among those whose houses were destroyed by El-Rufai’s men some few weeks ago in the name of illegal structures. All his investments went down with the building. Poor man, he died of hypertension. Lucky for him, he had finally gone home, home whey better pass ’im yeye country. At the shed, Kanadu brought out his tools and went straight into work, sawing and hammering away into the night. After three long hours, a coffin was ready. It was during this time that he received the great inspiration that was to affect his life tremendously. There were so many carpenters in Abuja, yet nobody thought of specializing solely on coffin-making. Yes, he would be the first to specialize in this new, undiscovered terrain. Like any original idea, the society at first attacked it unreasonably. For when his first set of coffins were displayed, he became the laughing-stock of his fellow carpenters. They leered at him behind his back even to his face. He soon became the Coffin-maker to them instead of Kanadu that his father, may his soul rest in perfect peace, gave him. But this mockery was in few days replaced with envy when the money began to pour in. First he bought a car, followed by a plot of land in an expensive area and a wife to boot! All these within three months! No, there must be some money in this venture. The envy of his mockers was instantly transformed to rivalry. Every carpenter wanted to be a coffin-maker in Abuja. The market was soon flooded with coffins of different sizes and makes. To distinguish his coffins from his arch-rivals, Kanadu had to improvise on all imaginable designs on his coffins to stand out of the crowd. He knew what the public wanted and strove hard to satisfy them. At one time, he discovered that the gold-embroidered coffins were in high demand by the rich, and he saw to it that some of his coffins were gold-plated. The coffin-maker is like a doctor or gravedigger who knows how to keep his personal emotions from his professional life. It is a morbid art that must be worked to perfection devoid of petty emotional feelings like all creative arts. However, nothing seemed to amaze him like man’s senseless craze to be buried in a well-designed coffin as if that automatically meant a special place in paradise! All dis wahala self, na worms go chop am finish! He mused. Was it not the other day that he heard how some spoilt rich people were busy scrambling for spaces that they’d be buried in for over four million naira in Victoria Island in Lagos? Wetin person no go hear for dis yeye country? Well, as a coffin-maker, he had to earn his living by humouring them along. He took his time to make beautiful coffins that would soon be food for the worms like their human contents. Na so life be! Person whey die no go ever come back again! Kpafuka na kwench!

The Cricket and the Clay

By Isaac Attah Ogezi We alight from the school bus onto the pavement in the front of our house. With our school bags strapped on our backs, my younger sister and I race to our gates and climb up the stairs. After a couple of rings of the doorbell, Ori, the housemaid, ushers us in. As usual, we don't expect to see either of our parents at home by this time of the day, but as from four p.m. above. Instinctively we pause in our strides at the sight before us. Who is this? For reclining on one of the sofas in our sitting room is an old woman, half-asleep. Our parents didn't tell us that we were expecting any visitor. Perhaps awakened by our loud cheery entrance, she opens her eyes. 'Is that you, Egwurube, Ogabanya?' she asks rhetorically. ‘Come to your grandmother's arms, children,' she invites with outstretched arms. What a surprise! Happily we run into her arms. She doesn't call my sister and me by our English names, Edward and Evelyn, but our native names. We are always delighted to see her because of the air of hilarity that pervades our house with her arrival. Again she tells us children stories of yesteryears. 'Grandma, could you please tell us a story?' requests my younger sister, Ogabanya. 'Dear me! Don't you see that she's tired and needs some rest after a long and tedious journey from our village?' queries our mother. We have all trooped outside to sit on benches in the open-air verandah after we have had our supper. It is a breezy, moonlit night and the heat within is unbearable, coupled with the power outage. 'You didn't hear me complain, did you?' asks our grandmother. 'Besides, we can't begrudge her of such a privilege which you yourself enjoyed at her age,' she adds mischievously. Turning to my sister, she asks, 'What story will you have me tell tonight, my dear?' 'Just any one with animals in it.' 'All right. Here you are.' There is a slight pause as grandmother stuffs her pipe with tobacco leaves and sets it alight. Suddenly a faraway look comes on her face as if she is magically beholding the bygone period of the story she is about to tell. 'Long, long time ago, in the animal kingdom,' she's begun, 'there lived Cricket and Clay who were always at loggerheads. As at the time I'm talking about, crickets' teeth were as spotlessly white as peeled cassava tubers. One day, Clay brought a complaint of stealing against Cricket before Lion, the King of all animals in the kingdom. According to him, Cricket stole some yams from his barn under the pretext of foraging for food. After listening carefully to the allegation, Lion asked Cricket if what Clay had said about him was true. Cricket denied vehemently, muttering curses under his breath. He challenged Clay to prove it. In those days, one of the ways to settle a dispute, as the custom was, was for the accused to challenge his accuser publicly to a fight or contest. In order to prove his innocence, Cricket challenged Clay to a contest, and a day was fixed for it. Before the race, Cricket went and held a secret meeting with the ancient rainmaker of the land and paid him a hefty sum of money. Unknown to Clay of what Cricket had done, he went about boasting, thumping his chest that he would defeat Cricket in the contest. At last, the long-awaited day of the contest dawned with fanfare, and all the animals in the kingdom gathered at the grandstand to watch the great contest. The drums rolled, the flutes sang. The okanga, the talking drum, sang praises of both contestants, regaling the audience with the exploits of each of their ancestors, which made their bare bodies throb with palpable excitement. The starter's shot was fired into the air from a dane gun and the two contestants swung into action. As Clay, a mere lump of clay that he was, leaped from one point to another on its head, Cricket sprinted away. No sooner had the contestants begun the race than the rainmaker unleashed torrents of rain from the skies upon them, pelting the earth mercilessly. Both of them were thoroughly beaten by the rain, soaked to the skin. It was a downpour never witnessed within living memory. Unfortunately for Clay, at every step he took, he began to disintegrate. At first, he was alarmed, but he vowed never to lose the race to Cricket. He continued to melt away gradually until nothing was left of him except for some wet soil spread haphazardly all over the place like ashes. Meanwhile, Cricket panted ahead despite the poor invisibility induced by the heavy rain. On arrival at the agreed point, he began to feel cold and went to dry himself by a nearby tripod hearth. It was while he was comfortably warming himself that news got to him that his challenger, Clay, was no more alive. He had been slain by thunderbolts and shafts let loose by the rain, his remains melted away in the flood which flowed down the stream. When Cricket heard of this, he burst into laughter, chirping jubilantly. He laughed and laughed and laughed until tears were coursing down his cheeks. How dared Clay imagined that he could defeat him in a race? Seized by an uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter, he didn't know when he fell into the fire. Though rescued quickly by kind bystanders, it was too late as his once handsome face had been severely burnt. The healer did his utmost but he could not restore Cricket's face to its former state; his teeth were burnt beyond repair and have remained ever so. That was how Cricket got his burnt teeth and his generations after him.' At the end of the story, we children are asked to tell the lessons we have learned from Cricket's downfall, his vices that should be avoided like the plague such as cheating and its attendant repercussions, and how over-confidence in life and excessive celebration of one's achievements could ruin a man.

The Secret of Power in Oyedepo's Understanding the Anointing

By Isaac Attah Ogezi Since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden until now, there has been a palpable tension or fight between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, God and Satan. These two diametrically opposed forces or powers operate in the realm of the supernatural where the lesser bows to the greater in obedience to the scriptural injunction, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers ...' (Romans 13:1). For one not to be a victim in a world groaning under the magnetic field of wickedness, one must align with the higher power and ensure that he is imbued with power from on high against the onslaught of the enemy, the accuser of the brethren. That is why David Oyedepo's Understanding the Anointing, though first published in 1998, cannot fail but be timely and ever relevant today. It lays bare in an easy-to-comprehend manner the subject of the anointing without an assumption of previous knowledge on the part of the reader. The opening chapter begins with the definition of what the anointing is all about. 'It is the empowering of the Spirit of God for supernatural accomplishments. It is the Holy Spirit at work in a man, producing extraordinary results. The anointing is God's devise for equipping men to do exploits' (page 10). For until the anointing came upon Jesus by the descension of the Holy Ghost on Him, He was for the first thirty years of His life without an identity, a mere carpenter's son. Thereafter He returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee and His fame was noised abroad, all the regions round about. However, an understanding of the anointing is impossible without first knowing the person of the Holy Spirit, for a discovery of His personality makes it easy for one 'to know how He empowers people for supernatural feats' (page 11). As the Third Person in the Godhead, the trinity, the Holy Spirit is the Chief Executive of the divine programme on earth and is in charge of the affairs on earth, behind every exploit in the Kingdom of God. Until the Holy Spirit moved at every command by God the Father upon the face of the waters at Creation, the earth was without form and void and darkness prevailed. In like manner, until He came upon the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost in the form of cloven tongues of fire and birthed the Church of Christ on earth, the erstwhile timid men became bold and fearless. He is the promised Comforter, Helper, fulfiller of vision, teacher of things to come and seven-dimensional in operation: the Spirit of the Lord, wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:1-3). Who then is the source of the anointing? In Chapter Two, the reader gets to know that God the Father is the Anointer while Jesus the Son is the Baptizer. And when the anointing comes upon a man, it is a form of initiation into the world of power in life and ministry, it empowers him with the unction to function and to operate in the supernatural. When this happens, he is turned into another man, he is given an identity, put in command, endued with the ability for the recovery of anything lost, propelled for progress, clothed with an aura of favour, become a sign, surrounded by a wall of divine protection and empowered with Elijah-like anointing that will make him go beyond his natural strength. However, like all good things of life, the anointing is not without a price. Just as there is a difference between the anointing 'upon' of the Old Testament and the anointing 'within' at Pentecost (page 43), the baptism of the Holy Spirit does not qualify as the anointing alone. 'It is like an introduction to life in the spirit. But the anointing brings you to the power realm of life. In other words, while the baptism is a form of initiation, the anointing is the enabling' (page 56). The anointing must cost the believer the price of a genuine thirst (crave) for it by first having an encounter with God in person in order to receive it, as reiterated by Jesus: 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink' (John 7:37). This is the foundation for the anointing before any other sources of encounter in the course of studying anointed books as well as by impartation via the laying-on of hands as in the case of Joshua by Moses. Chapter Four dwells further on how to receive the anointing. A combination of factors must be in place for the empowerment or enablement by the Spirit, to wit: consecration (purity) after conviction and repentance, thirst (heart-seated longing or desire) which can be generated by seeing one's helplessness without it and one's need to be empowered, fasting and supplication and the study of the Word. The anointing is in measures. The degree to which an individual is anointed is 'not God-determined but man-determined' (page 96). At new birth, the journey of the anointing is said to have begun at the seashore level which could further be grown to the ankle-level (baptism of the Holy Ghost), and then to the knee-level of great power, before the loin-level of exceeding great power and finally to the immeasurable level in the class of Christ where you get 'strange insights into the deep of the deep of God that bring you to the realm of powers' of the world to come where you practically experience heaven on earth (pages 113 and 114). The all-important question then is how can one grow from one level of the anointing to another? Chapter Six examines the factor for growth, the vital forces that will ensure increase in the anointing. The key factor is the Word of God, the wood for the fire of the Spirit. For until the Word is embraced, 'there will be no increase in unction' (page 121) nor will the fire that will keep the wild beasts of life at bay be sustained. The level of unction one operates is a function of one's depth in the Word, whether it is at the milk (babyhood or ankle level) or meat (knee level) or strong meat (loin level), or honey level (river level where you swim in the anointing). The Word is a vital source of power and no one 'can grow in the anointing without growing in the Word' (page 127). It is not enough to be anointed, one must know how to operate under it. The key to this is what the writer called the law of divine signals in Chapter Seven, which is the art of being spiritually sensitive. For until 'you know how to be led in the Spirit and are wise enough to move when He leads, you can never manifest your sonship' (page 136). The mystery of divine signals is being sensitive to know the things that are commanded per time and doing them, then shall one experience overflowing unction and the quickening of the mind. Sensitivity to divine signals is tied to righteousness and faithfulness of the believer. In Chapter Eight, the reader is forewarned that once anointed is not forever anointed. Put differently, the anointed believer must consciously do certain things as a lifestyle to sustain the anointing in his life. It takes the combination of vital forces such as wisdom, consecration (purity), fellowship with the brethren, dedication or total commitment to God and the affairs of His Kingdom, the Word and meditation on it as well as prayers without season coupled with periodic fasting for the anointing to be preserved. From the foregoing, there is no doubt that for a believer who is cutting his teeth in the things of the Spirit and is desirous to grow in power, this book is an indispensable companion as it will carry him through an in-depth understanding of what the anointing entails, how to be anointed, the person of the Holy Spirit vis-à-vis the anointing, His operations and what it takes to experience His infilling. There is no gainsaying the fact that if the precepts in this book are followed to the letter, the believer will experience an end to all struggles in life and be ushered into a world of sweatless, stress-free triumphs, uncommon favour, signs and wonders, staggering results in life and ministry, endless victory and breakthroughs, which the anointing enforces as there is no substitute for it.

CONVERSATION WITH DR. HALIMA SEKULA

By Isaac Attah Ogezi Dr. Halima Sekula attended the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where she obtained her B. A., M.A and Ph.D in literature. She cut her creative writing teeth while as an undergraduate and was an active member of the Creative Writers’ Club. Her early works were published in the anthology, Poetry from A. B. U, edited by Muazu Maiwada. Since then she has never looked back in her dream to bring African literature to a higher height both as a teacher and a writer. Her published works include Tongues of Flame (poetry, 2005) and Honour Among Thieves (drama, 2006). Some of her poems and short stories have also been published in various national and international literary journals and anthologies such as Transverse, The Halifax Review, Drumvoices Revue, Lorraine and James Penwomenship among others. Her first novel will be published later this year. She currently lectures at the Department of English, Nasarawa State University, Keffi. Her hobby is collecting of beads from different parts of the world. In this interview with Isaac Attah Ogezi, she bares her mind on issues that inspire her, her views on writing, background, publications and many others. OGEZI: Can you tell us a little about yourself? HALIMA: I’m Halima Sekula. I lecture with Nasarawa State University, Keffi, in the Department of English. I teach literature. My reading English at the University brought me into contact with some of the best writers in Africa and other parts of the world. I went to ABU, Zaria again for my M. A. and Ph.D after my first degree there. OGEZI: When and how did you start writing? HALIMA: I started when I was an undergraduate in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. We had this Creative Writers’ Club (CWC). I was a member. So, you know, meeting with like-minded students made me realize that writing fiction is something achievable. And also in the university, I took creative writing courses where we were taught as students the craft and forms of creative writing. Of course, as a student who majored in literature, I came across numerous poems and plays written by truly great people and it served as an inspiration. And also I published in university journals as an undergraduate, for example, Poems form A. B. U, edited by Muazu Maiwada. After graduation and national service, I went back to school for my M. A. and during that period, I concentrated so much at specializing in my field that I didn’t write much. Of course, I kept on reading even outside the prescribed texts. You know, ABU, Zaria, has this huge collection of literary works in Kashim Ibrahim Library, Samaru Campus, which I took advantage of. I read other literature from other parts of the world – Russian, English, French and American. So far, I have published two books – a collection of poems, Tongues of Flames in 2005 and a play, Honour Among Thieves in 2006. OGEZI: What is your collection Tongues of Flames all about? HALIMA: I don’t know if a writer is supposed to discuss the themes of her work, but since you’re forcing me into a corner, I’ll say the poems in that collection look into aspects of existence in post-colonial Nigeria. In general, I’m concerned with issues of individual survival in a nation that is struggling to achieve true development. OGEZI: In the opening poem, ‘Rupture’, perhaps, the manifestoe poem of the entire collection, you celebrated your resilience in singing again after a storm. What does poetry mean to you? Is it a kind of consolation after the trials and travails of life? HALIMA: Poetry for me is beyond consolation because poetry itself deals with every aspect of existence. So like I mentioned earlier, what I’m celebrating in that poem was as if a dead part of me has come to life. Poetry should be like a living vibrant thing. It was just like a period of three to four years but it was like a decade or more for me. That is not to say all the poems here are personal experiences. OGEZI: I’ve also discovered that in the first part of the collection, you dwelt at length on themes that affect women generally, such as polygamy, wife inheritance, betrayal, poverty and divorce. HALIMA: Yes. First of all, my gender is female and the issues or crises of daily living which concern women especially from the Northern Nigerian angle, I’m not saying that the other regions do no have these problems, but I’m more acquainted with this part of the country which I know very well. For instance, the issue of wife inheritance in ‘The New Wife’, it’s supposed to help the family’s continuity but where does the woman’s individual needs come? Must she always love or accept her husband who is a relation to the late husband? Polygamy is Islamically correct but when it is practiced in ways that negatively impact on wives and children, it becomes a social problem. ‘The Old Pot’, we’re talking about a woman who is already in crisis because there is no enough money to feed the family yet the husband is bringing in a new woman to share in his little earnings. However, it is not in all the poems that crisis situations are shown. ‘Black Mother’, for example, is a celebration of the African woman as a farmer, a mother who feeds not only her own children but the world. OGEZI: In the second part of the collection, your thematic concerns went beyond the plight of women to encompass themes such as hypocrisy in ‘My Good Friends’, child labour in ‘Boy Hawker in Nyanya’, inordinate affection or love in ‘Closed Spaces’ and jealousy in ‘Tears They Shed’. ‘Closed Spaces’ particularly appeals to me in this part because of the philosophy behind it and the universal truth that it preaches. Do you mind to read the poem for us? HALIMA: Yes. [Reads] When we touch and cling To people with such force Tenderness and true care Are stifled for lack of breath The birth of a new era Forces closed spaces To breed rank weeds Of putrefied weariness Steeped in disdainful need Hands clasped tight Around craning necks Force out clean breaths of love. OGEZI: Thank you. What experience informed you to write that poem? HALIMA: Sometimes when you say what informed you to write a particular poem, it could be a conglomeration of many experiences or many things seen or heard. It might be one’s profound experiences or somebody else’s. I love watching people interacting. Perhaps, it was one of these experiences. This particular poem was probably informed by my observations of human interaction. Like I said earlier, I’m interested in how the individual survives in the society and I realized that interrelationships are mutual but when one party is asking too much, too early of another, it can create the opposite of what is intended. OGEZI: In ‘Tears They Shed’, about the most formalistically accomplished poem in the entire collection, I’m impressed by how the line arrangement is able to depict the theme of jealousy very aptly in the poem. How did you achieve this feat? HALIMA: Through experimentation. Sometimes, the poem is influenced by what I want to say. And, of course, it also deals with universal values of people who find it easy to attempt to destroy successful people. OGEZI: In the last part, which contains four poems centred on social commentary, you expressed your cynicism at the ineptitude of our leaders to fulfil their promises especially in the poem ‘Independence Day’. Must a poet always be cynical and gloomy? HALIMA: It’s unfortunate that I’m living in an era where the facts of my country are often gloomy. So perhaps that’s what is reflected in my poetry. Daily experiences, facts and figures, show that Nigeria is an underdeveloped country. Daily we talk about corruption, inadequate leadership, about lack of opportunities for young people to grow, that is, grow socially, politically, and economically. Year in, year out, we cannot come out and say this situation was terrible last year or five years ago but we’re better this year. For the past five years, we’ve been without electricity, water and other social amenities. Can’t we be gloomy? For instance, in this year’s Independence Day, are we sure we are going to get a trickle of water? The poem, ‘Forty Years’, I personified Nigeria as a human being of forty years and I could only depict a human being in despair. OGEZI: I’ve noticed that in your poetry, the reader hardly knows anything about your personal life, your emotions, pains and triumphs as a writer unlike the American poet, Sylvia Plath whose poems are confessionals or Victoria Kankara’s Hymns and Hymens which are overtly erotic. Why are the emotions expressed in your work not personal like in Okigbo’s poetry but vicarious? HALIMA: OGEZI: Does that explain why you’re more at home with narrative poetry rather than lyrical poetry? HALIMA: OGEZI: You’re also a playwright and have published a play titled Honour Among Theives about disloyalty between two thieves. Did you consciously use the impotence of Danjuma as a leitmotif for the inadequacies of men generally? HALIMA: Certainly no. Not men generally but certain type of men. If I say men are generally impotent, that will label me a man-hater and I’m not a man-hater. The play is generally about role-playing, the social dislocations that occur when people are unable to adequately play their roles. The book is not really about men and women but social and cultural forces which prevent people from being honest to themselves and to one another. OGEZI: The feminist undertones cannot be written off in your play. Christiana’s act of taking in for her husband’s friend, Joe, is obviously the celebration of a new dawn for women where they refuse to be docile as the society would want them to be but rise up to take their destinies in their hands. Do you share that view? HALIMA: That’s a very interesting question because it bothers on several issues but I’d just mention just my motivation in creating Christiana as a character. I see her as an individual forced into an uncomfortable situation as a result of poverty and cultural norms and values. And the point I’m trying to make in this play is that morality is often relegated to a secondary position when people are in very, very difficult situations. I don’t think I’m the only Nigerian writer to hold such a view. Ben Okri’s characters are often forced into crimes and immorality as a result of their economic and social situations. But to talk of Christiana as a celebration of a new dawn for women, my perception is that it goes beyond the woman issue. I’m talking about an individual adopting strategies or rather unusual strategies in order to cope in a society that is not ready to give her own space. Everything seems to be against her – her birth, educational background, her family background and the Nigerian culture which demands that a wife must also be a mother. OGEZI: As a writer and a scholar, I’ve also noticed that you’re well at home with your dramaturgy in the use of mime, flashback, caricature, code-mixing in language, absurdist play-acting and alienation effect. HALIMA: OGEZI: The alienation effect in particular as popularized by the Marxist theatre of Bertolt Brecht and our Femi Osofisan, was also highly used in your play. Don’t you feel in a bid to make a piece of stage work highly theatrical, the Marxist playwright sometimes succeeds in killing the verisimilitude which is the whole essence of the theatre? HALIMA: OGEZI: What did you seek to achieve by the last scene of the play? To work out a pathos in the audience or hilarity? In my review of the play, I called it an indeterminate play – neither a tragedy nor a comedy. As the writer, do you subscribe to that assertion too? HALIMA: Certainly not. It’s not an indeterminate play. The ending for me is part of the crisis situation. Why will I end a play while the events are still being played out in daily life? For me, the crisis of characters such as Christiana, Danjuma and Joe, is that they’ll always be involved in police cases and I didn’t want a situation in that particular play where readers or the audience will think that the young woman’s problems have been solved. So, the tragedy for me in the play is that, unless society finds a place for a young, orphaned girl, there is always a possibility that her life will play itself out among undesirable characters. In short, what I’m trying to say is that, the tragedy is that Christiana’s tragedy continues. OGEZI: During a writers’ conference in 2007, E. E. Sule once put a question to the womenfolk which I intend to ask you now. When will you women stop telling the woman story, writing from the kitchen, to use Professor Charles Nnolim’s expression? HALIMA: I’m surprised that Dr. Sule feels that there is anything called the woman story. I thought that writing from different writers is a mosaic where different perspectives come into play to form a social convention. For instance, I believe in the Nigerian literary convention and within the Nigerian literary convention, there are men, women and youth writers. There are men who write about women, there are women who write about men, and there are men and women who write about children. Why should any critic or writer prescribe what other writers should write about? Besides, it’s a trend for certain critics to judge any work from a woman writer feminist or concerned with woman issue. So ultimately, when a woman publishes a work, the first thing those critics look out for is that her central character is female and she discusses issues from the female perspective. But these female characters are part of a bigger social milieu which some critics ignore. For instance, are we going to say that Chimamanda Adichie, Sefi Atta and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo are less concerned with fundamental issues which affect the human beings in Nigeria because most of their central characters are women? Therefore, talking about the woman issue is simplifying what women writers are concerned with. They’re concerned with social stability and if their perspective is from the female characters’ experiences, does it make it less relevant? In fact, one of the strongest writings I’ve read in recent times about the woman issue is by a male Nigerian writer, Abubakar Gimba’s Sacred Apple. OGEZI: You were in the USA for a writers’ conference in April, 2008. What was the conference all about? HALIMA: I actually went there for African Literature Association’s conference which took place in ……………………………..It was such a beautiful experience. I had the opportunity of meeting African writers and critics of African literature who have made a big impact on African literature, namely, Bernth Lindfors, Eustace Palmer, Helon Habila, Niyi Osundare, Remi Raji, Chika Unigwe, Helen Chukuma, and Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo. It was generally about African literature, the way forward, problems, critical perspectives and how to integrate African literature into the mainstream of World literature. OGEZI: Since the publication of your play, Honour Among Thieves in 2006, we’ve not had anything from you again. What’s happening? I mean, when do we expect any more work from your forge? HALIMA: In-sha-Allahu, this year. It’s a collection of short stories between seven and eight. Also, I’ve finished a full-length novel and it will be published, hopefully, a few months after the short story collection.

Halima Sekula: The Emergence of a Female Playwright

By Isaac Attah Ogezi That there is a sharp decline in playwriting and dramatic productions in Nigeria in the last two decades is an obvious fact. In the words of the critic and writer, E. E. Sule of Impotent Heavens fame, “drama is the Cinderella of modern Nigerian literature”. In his introduction to Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria (2006) edited by Nduka Otiono and Odo Diego Okenyodo, Otiono writes: “Clearly, the least patronized genre is drama – there is only one playlet in this volume! And there have been years when ANA could not award its annual Drama prize because of paucity of quality entries”. Delivering the keynote address at the Playwriting Workshop organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) in collaboration with the National Theatre and Centre for Black Africa Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) at the University of Lagos, Lagos, on March 31, 2006, Professor Femi Osofisan openly lamented the dearth of dramatic productions in recent times when he said: “Plays and playwrights are too obviously in short supply. At every literary competition that has been organized over the past two decades at least, it is this area of creativity that has been deficient and problematic, because very few play scripts are submitted, and even these few ones are mostly of indifferent quality. Whereas prose fiction shows a more or less robust growth, and poems are proliferating like water hyacinths, plays do not seem to inspire an equal devotion or enthusiasm among our writers. Mention Ahmed Yerima, Stella Oyedepo, Oguntokun, Julie Okoh, Chima Uto, and Irene Salami, and you exhaust the list.” The inclusion of Ahmed Yerima in the above list is a glaring subterfuge to widen the list because Yerima is not a playwright of this generation. On the contrary, he rightly belongs to the second generation of Nigerian playwrights such as Femi Osofisan, Bode Sowande, late Sonny Oti, Sam Ukala, Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Kalu Uka, late Zulu Sofola, Iyorwuese Hagher, and Tess Akaeke Onwueme. His first work, Three Plays in Transition, was published in 1977, almost three decades ago, during his undergraduate days at University of Ibadan, Ibadan. The recent literary competition organized by ANA on the stage adaptations of Wole Soyinka’s works (excluding his published plays) to mark the 20th anniversary of Soyinka’s Nobel Prize for Literature, attracted a meagre output of sixteen entries at the expiration of the deadline on 30th May, 2006. What a shame! Throw such challenge to our poets and prose-writers, and you will count entries in tens of thousands. The issue becomes more worrisome in the area of female playwrights of this generation. Mention Stella Oyedepo, Julie Okoh, Tracie Chima Utoh, Irene Salami, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and you exhaust the list. Little wonder then that the emergence of a new female playwright like Halima Sekula in the depleted fray deserves to be greeted with pomp and pageantry. Halima Sekula debuts into the world of the stage with her first published play, Honour Among Thieves (2006). Before the print production of the play, the present writer was privileged to witness the stage performance of it by the Nasarawa State University Student Troupe on the 28th July, 2006 before an excited audience. The enthusiastic responses and praises showered on it were quite gratifying for a new playwright on the scene. The play opens with the two friends, Danjuma and Joe, celebrating their conquest over their innocent victims. Through the use of mime, they tell us how they operate as professional pickpockets. However, they pledge to be loyal to themselves to the end. Danjuma seals this promise when he says: “I would never do that to you, you are my partner and my friend, I would never steal from you. There is honour even among thieves. Apart from my wife Christiana, you are my only true friend. My trusted one. I trust you that is why I go hunting with you. (pp. 7 and 8). And what better way to put this honour to test than through a woman? In the next scene, we meet Danjuma’s wife, Christiana, and her friend Bridget. Through a skilful use of Brechtian alienation effect, mime and a flashback-within-a-flashback, Sekula tells us how Christiana was abused as a little child by Aunty Afiniki. While her age-mates were in school, she was busy hawking to feed the family of Aunty Afiniki. In the process, she met Danjuma and ran away to live in his house. But there is a snag to this otherwise blissful marriage – Danjuma is impotent! While infertility is the ruse Baroka, the Lion, uses to trap Sidi, the Jewel, in Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel, in Sekula’s play as in J. P. Clark’s verse play, Song of a Goat, it is the root source of conflict that culminates into a full-scale tragedy. The difference between J. P. Clark’s play and Sekula’s is that while in the former a wife (Ebiere) commits incest with her husband’s younger brother Tonye, in the latter, it is with the husband’s closest friend and partner in crime. Apart from the theme of infertility, Sekula draws the attention of her audience and readers to the plight of the girl-child and how women politicians who parade themselves as feminists use her as a front to launch their political careers. The greatest strength of any good play lies in the masterful use of dialogue and action or movement and not mere themes alone. According to Charles R. Larson, “…. The dramatist Wole Soyinka, becomes famous among his own people (including those who cannot read) because a playwright need only depend upon the sounds of his words and his listener’s ears, while the writer of fiction must depend upon the printed page.” Sekula deserves to be commended for her brilliant use of dialogue. On page 12, she puts the following words into the mouth of her character Bridget: That is the great moment every man seems to wait for. To be told by a woman that the often watered garden has sprouted fruit, that his back did not ache in vain This is as ribald as Soyinka’s Sadiku in The Lion and the Jewel, when she celebrates the victory of women over men, thus: …It is you who run giddy while we stand still and watch, and draw your frail thread from you, slowly, till nothing is left but a runty old stick. I scotched Okiki, Sadiku’s unopened treasure-house demanded sacrifice, and Okiki came with his rusted key. Like a snake he came at me, like a rag he went back, a limp rag, smeared in shame…” (p. 32) On page 14, Sekula makes her characters Christiana and Bridget engage in the following lewd dialogue: BRIDGET: Are you saying…? Is Danjuma a mere horse in the photograph? Strong, glossy appearing ready to mount but…But…. CHRISTIANA: But quiet. But unmoving night after night, day after day loving me with words, with presents not once no, not a single time has Danjuma loved me with his manhood. The way your husband does I suppose. Also, the use of Hausa words such as “shege daniska” (p.4), “shegiya” (p. 17), “kai!” (p. 17) and a few others adds some local colour to the dialogue, thus fixing the locale of the story in a nameless northern city of Nigeria. Writing on the need for playwrights to fashion their own kind of English to reflect the socio-economic realities of their environments, Martin Esslin, a world-renowned critic of the Theatre of the Absurd, says: In that case there might be very strong arguments, for their concentrating on a realistic treatment of life of English-speaking Africans. This would enable them (the playwrights) to use an actual language, or different shades and idioms as spoken by different strata of that particular – and surely immensely important – segment of their society…. The playwrights concerned are faced with the task of evolving a new, truly African brand of English which will eventually be able to embody the emotions, customs and daily life of the people concerned as efficiently and beautifully as West Indian English expresses the character of the people who use it in daily life as well as in literature. The only problem a reader or critic will encounter with Sekula’s play is that it defies dramatic categorization. It is neither a comedy nor a tragedy nor a tragi-comedy. In fact, it is an indeterminate play. Similarly, Danjuma’s amateurish revenge on his friend Joe lacks the emotional intensity of Shakespeare’s Othello when he is tricked into believing that his wife Desdemona had an affair with Cassio. The ending of her play is more predictable and melodramatic than realistic, in consequence, robbing the work of the necessary pathos of a great tragedy. One can almost quote the entire comments of Martin Esslin on Clark’s Song of a Goat as also relevant to Sekula’s play. Esslin observes, and rightly to, that: I found Song of a Goat not quite convincing. The motivation of the tragedy, which is simply the husband’s inability to engender a child, is far too simple and unoriginal to support the weight of full-scale tragedy across the generations. Moreover, the wife’s seduction of the husband’s younger brother is also, at least for my admittedly quite differently conditioned feelings, far too clumsily straightforward. Instead of primeval tragedy (of which the second part of the diptych [The Masquerade] undoubtedly has the atmosphere) we are, in this crucial first part, merely left with a rather predictable incident from the pages of any popular newspaper. In a word, the ending of the instant work is as predictable as the films in our Nollywood industry. So long as our playwrights refuse to be original like our filmmakers, they deserve to lose their audience to the home-video industry, for a bad film is by far better than a bad play. At least in a bad film, the viewer can be treated to beautiful scenery, posh cars, soul-stirring soundtracks, and palatial houses, but do the playwrights have such resources in the stage? No. His two basic resources are the listener’s ears (dialogue) and a very good story. Also, there are a few typographical and grammatical errors such as “she stress ‘a’” (p. 12), “a podium in the front face the arranged chairs” (p. 20), “Her majestic excellence Chief…” (p. 20), “her stiff headgear extend…” (p. 21), “all these while I have “ (p. 41), “ he will loose his manhood” (p. 43), “jumps up as if beaten by an ant” (p. 45), “no a home” (p.50), “he lounges at her” (p. 51) and “He stares at her …then matches out” (p. 51). Be that at it may, this play marks the first cutting of Sekula’s teeth as a playwright and not yet her magnum opus. Playwriting is still like a virgin terrain in our literary landscape that needs to be explored. And the modern playwright who seeks to carve a niche for himself, must not tread the path of threadbare stories of our home-video industry. He must be very experimental in form and content if he must be relevant in an age of Nollywood.