Among prominent writers who hail from the northern part of Nigeria, Alhaji Abubakar Gimba is a force to reckon with. The writer who has produced works in prose and poetry genres has worked creditably in the private and public sectors. He first rose to the position of Permanent Secretary in his home state, Niger, before moving on to the Banking Industry in Lagos.
While in the Banking sector, Gimba also had opportunity to serve first as Vice President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), after which he became President, following the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa in1996. It is significant that at the same period when he served as Executive Director of both Union Bank and United Bank for Africa, Gimba was quite prolific, exploring his creative talents in virtually all popular genres of literature. Some of his works include Trail of Sacrifice, Innocent Victims, Sunset for a Mandarin, Sacred Apples(prose), Inner Rumblings, This Land of Ours (Poetry), A Toast in the Cemetery (Short Story), Letter to the Muslim Fundamentalist, Letters to My Children (Social dialogue) as well as Once Upon a Reed and Why am I Doing This (Essays)
Gimba has equally been a columnist with a number of Nigerian newspapers such as the Nigerian Tribune and Weekly Trust. Recently, SOLA BALOGUN visited Gimba at his home in Minna, capital of Niger State for a chat on his robust literary career:
As a leading voice of the literati in the Northern part of Nigeria, what major factors have influenced your writings?
A writer is essentially influenced by his environment – the happening around him. But most importantly he must have interest – feelings for those things and feel very strongly about them. He or she would also want to communicate these thing and share with people either of like minds of those who are not. This is what creativity is all about – voicing out your feelings and looking at thins from your perspective and also consider other people’s perspective so that you can get people to appreciate and understand your ideas, so that you can possibly effect the kind of change that your message is trying to convey.
For me, I have been largely influenced by my environment where I grew up and the schools I attended and the people I mixed with. But most importantly, I’m influenced by what I thought about certain issues, my assessment of happenings and events, circumstances in my environment. All these go along way to shape my writings. But also one must be able to have confidence to communicate these feelings to the readers. Every writer must be able to communicate his or her feelings to the people. This doesn’t mean that one has to embrace the superlative in terms of language use or chance of language. But you have to have the ability to let people understand what you are talking about.
Is it right to say that the quality of education you received actually propelled your ability to communicate your feelings to readers?
The education aspect should not be interpreted to mean education in the Western sense attending primary school only. This is because I personally attended the Koranic school and what they taught us not just the normal school work but about ethnics what the God likes and what God doe not like. And by the time you see the contradictions in the society would begin to create impression in the individual.
I also attended another school where I learnt about Western education. That was where I learnt about literacy of universe values and people from different societies and cultures. This created curiosity in me and increased my inquisitiveness about things happening around me. It also afforded me my own rational thinking and why I should be able to question certain thins which happen but which I think are not right. And in the process, I discover the ability to communicate my feelings to the people without necessarily being a prophet or a teacher – but as a novelist o creative writer.
You have turned out works in poetry and prose genres. Which of these is your main area of strength and why?
From the outset, I preferred the prose fiction for obvious reasons. First people can easily read and understand the narratives very quickly, particularly he young ones. For example, I too started reading very early, as I was fund of reading many authors from Africa and beyond. I discovered how most African writers used their novels to mirror the history and cultures of their people from various parts of Africa.
That created a lot of curiousity in me. The authors write their histories through their novels. So I also learnt that the novel could be used in several ways, including historical narrative. I then thought of using the novel to convey a lot of messages about the social condition in which I was living in. I eventually discovered the power of imagination in the sense that one can use the narrative to convey messages in fiction form without referring to any one in real life.
But as I grew up later I came to discover poetry as a powerful medium. I noted that whatever I could spend weeks on to convey in a novel form, one can do so in one short poem and it would be very straight and very effective. This was why I delved a little into the poetry medium.
Your first novel, Trail of Sacrifice, condemns killing of innocent people particularly in war situations, what was your mission at the time you wrote it?
The novel was written immediately after completing my NYSC, not long after the Nigerian civil war. My young impressionable age then was to question why we had to fight the way we did and why we had to waste so many lives? As someone from the North who served in the South Eastern part of the country, I discovered essentially that the nature of people in that part of the country is essentially the same with that of my own people. Of course I was not into politics then but I was worried that we had to go into that civil war only to lose so many lives in the process. I was particularly worried that many of those who died were young people. I was then barely 24 years old.
Despite the thematic depth of such works as Footprints, Sacred Apples and Inner Rumblings, why do you think people refer to Sunset for a Mandarin as your most popular work?
Somehow I do not know but some other people also say Witnesses to Tears (a Novel) is my best and most popular work. Again, others would say it is Sacred Apples. I think it also depends on which of them people have access to. But my first novel was Trail of Sacrifice while Footprints remains the most matured in terms of message because it is also the most politically motivated. This is probably why it is not being read in most secondary schools but in most universities, Footprints is being studied in the departments of English and Literature.
Considering your thematic preoccupation in Trail of Sacrifice and that of Letter to the Unborn Child, would you say the Nigerian people have learnt how to value lives and shun violence?
No. People have not learnt anything at all. Quite a number of the works I did centre on reasons why we should not have repeated what happened during the civil war. But because we have taken so many things for granted and we are now moving dangerously towards a repeat performance of what happened at that time and in a needless manner. So it shows that the rottenness of the society which I observed in some of the works have continued to be with us. It has led us degeneration, retrogression, neglect of values and everything is now going down the hills.
And we may be wrong to say that it is history that is repeating itself. Rather, it is human folly, which shows that human beings are not always ready to learn from the experiences of the past.
As a Muslim and a writer, you wrote a letter to the Muslim fundamentalists, under the same title, Letter to the Muslim fundamentalist. Can we say you have forewarned people against religious extremism in your work?
I wrote Letter to the Muslim Fundamentalist as a reaction to the September 11, 2001 attack of the World Trade Centre in New York. I tried to assess the situation as it relates to Nigeria. It was also meant to draw a distinction between a fundamentalist and an extremist. There has been a module of how people confuse the two. For example, if people call me a fundamentalist, I would be happy because it means I always get to the fundamentals of my religion.
As a fundamentalist of any religion, be it a Muslim or a Christian, if people do anything to you, you would not overreact or misbehave because you know the values of patience, tolerance as well as fairness and justice. But justice becomes more crucial because no one should arrogate too many powers to himself as if the other people do not exist. Also no one should arrogate paradise to himself even before he or she dies. This is because salvation is from God and not from anybody.
But there are fanatics who claim that they fight and kill because of Al’janna or heaven. What’s your take on this?
Everybody is free to do whatever he or she likes to reach heaven. But there are many roads to heaven just as there are many roads to hell. One can be on the path to hell and thinks he or she is on the path of paradise. Our religion (Islam) makes it clear that one could be busy doing a thing that can lead one to paradise, till it remains just a cubic foot from paradise and then you do a wrong thing and end up in hell.
So what I said is that a typical Muslim fundamentalist is humble, patient and would not make noise. Even when he is oppressed by the rulers, the Muslim fundamentalist would not resort to violence, but he can tell the leaders the truth even at the point of death. In the same way, if we follow the teachings of Christ, one must embrace the virtues of patience and humility. That is why Jesus said if your fellow brother slaps you on the right cheek, you should turn the left one, what this means is that it pays to be patient and that there are better ways to even talk to the angry person in order to make such a fellow have a change of heart.
It is better to win a soul through this means instead of destroying one though anger. So a fundamentalist tries to win souls while extremists try to force people to their ways through cohesion. The latter do not reason at all because they believe in their own righteousness and excluding every other person from that path. And we can always find fundamentalists and extremists in other aspects of life. We also have them in politics. We have politicians who do not reason at all and they are unjust and never see the wrongs their parties do neither do they serve the people the way it is expected of them.
There are even fundamentalists of the extremist type because once you push to them wall, and there’s nothing for them to resort to, they resort to God but with anger and when you do that, you make a great mistake, and you do that through oppression and injustice. And given our situation where poverty is pervasive, the middle class is virtually extinct because some people somewhere are doing the havoc. They call them cabals and other names. But the problem really is that of injustice and people not showing any concern to the poor and the underprivileged.
Can we link that to the various insurgences in the land such as the menace of Boko Haram in the north and the militancy from the Niger Delta? Are your works against these sects in any way?
The poverty level at the time of the civil war was not as alarming as we have it today. And even with the advent of Boko Haram, poverty level was not as alarming. But after pulling down the rebellion of Boko Haram, you cannot keep them down forever under arms and threat, you have to mix the carrot with the stick and the manner you deal with the criminal can also have effects not only on himself but also on other people looking at you.
If you dealt very harshly with Boko Haram for instance from the beginning, and you did not see anything wrong with it, that would amount to a cruel act which should not be done to a dog or a cat. Unfortunately the retaliation from Boko Haram has now got out of hand. In the same way we have not also learnt how to handle our security checkpoints well. Until recently people were forced to wait and queue for longer hours to enable our security operatives conduct search on people. But this is rather frustrating to people who have their daily businesses to attend to.
The lesson from this experience is that our leaders must be able to find solution to the problem. The solution must be multi-prone, and not just one-way traffic. We can also be diplomatic in the way we handle crime and criminals, most especially when we’re fighting enemies that we don’t know.
What can be the role of the writer in all of these?
The writer can only try to address the fundamentals that led to the crime and which have equally sustained it. What led to the crime is lack of justice. For example there was no sense of justice when the Boko Haram leader was killed. The fact is that he was bad but his followers may be worse and so when you succeeded in killing the bad one, you would not be too sure of succeeding in getting the worse ones.
So the writer can step in and address the situation especially though live theatre. A good writer can address these issues in a stage play, which can be taken around to pacify people and make them have a change of heart. The bottom line is that we should learn to be humane even when administering justice. I believe that rather than for government to spend billions on combating the Boko Haram menace, they can in fact spend well below that to address the issue of injustice and widespread poverty in the land.
It would only make sense then that we address the root cause of the menace rather than combating it with violence?
Yes the situation is like in preventing people from drinking bad water, all you do is to buy more drugs. We should first get rid of bad water before we start thinking of the drugs to cure victims of bad water. If you don’t treat your water, every year, you would spend more money on drugs but if you remove the cause of the ailment definitely the money you spend on drugs would be gradually reduced and everyone would be happy.
You served the late Ken Saro Wiwa as Vice President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Ken was president then and was eventually hanged by the Federal Government along with eight other Ogoni men for their activism and the alleged killing of security operatives. Why was it impossible for ANA or writers to stop Saro-Wiwa’s assassination?
ANA or writers could not have rescued Ken Saro Wiwa at that time because writers and their body were perceived as anti-government. Personally, I had a lot of contact then which showed that we were being watched by the state. While ANA was pleading that he should not be killed, other prominent writers like Prof Wole Soyinka, Prof Chinua Achebe and Prof. J.P. Clark also pleaded on Ken Saro Wiwa’s behalf. But all of these did not work. It appeared the government then was bent on eliminating him.
We did our best as an association and in my capacity as vice president. In fact, I never believed he was going to be hanged. I was in Lagos at the time and when I heard the news, I was shocked and extremely sad.
How would you describe your relationship with Ken Saro Wiwa and how was ANA run when both of you were in the saddle?
Ken was a friend before we both served ANA. In fact during one of the ANA conventions, we both sat in my room in Minna and ate together. So when I heard of his death, I was totally devastated. It was a terrible loss for me and the Nigerian literature in general. All these have nothing to do with what they said he did, but he was a human being, a friend, a confidant whom I met at close quarters and a very nice person to me.
As a friend, he was very nice to me. I was in the bank then and I was not able to attend many of our meetings in ANA because of my busy schedules. I appreciated his gesture because he actually nominated me, and stood by me to become ANA vice president. At that time, we tried to grow in terms of number and in trying to get people interested in creativity and writing. ANA at the central tried very well to assert itself as a body and to create an image for itself. And when I took over, I worked with other active members like Dr. Wale Okediran to get new writers enlisted and give them leverage. At that time, we tried to spread the word that we have many Soyinkas, Achebes and Clarks amongst us and that everybody has in him or her great talent to become creative writers.
We didn’t have the money but we were able to talk to so many people. I remembered I personally gave letters to so many companies to support our dream. And without necessarily saying that the NLNG prize came about through that initiative, at least, we contacted them too and got across to many writers both in and outside the country.
Aside serving ANA, in what other ways have you supported creativity and the arts?
I have always served as a pillar of support to whatever anybody or group wishes to do on arts and creativity. At a time, people like Lukoji Ismaila and Dangana mooted the idea of a Festival of Arts and Culture in Niger State and I was able to give them my moral support and ever since, then we always held the festival which is called Annual School competition for Arts and Culture Festival (ASCAF) in Niger State. This year’s edition was earlier stated for February but may be postponed through this festival, a lot of young people have shown great interest in writing and many schools invite writers for talks. And in a way, writers from other states have been invited to be part of the competition.
You were on the Jury of the NLNG prize, how was the awards organised and what roles did your jury play in selecting awardees?
In fairness to the NLNG, they allowed our group to set the agenda. How it should be done and what awards should go to certain categories of writers. At that time we deliberated on the genres of drama, prose, poetry and children literature and the fact that all the awards should not be given at the same time.
All we agreed on then was to give the awards to Nigerians who are resident here. So we did not quite open it to Nigerian writers in Diaspora because of our own peculiar situation in the country. Many of the writers abroad have access to many opportunities which writers in Nigerian may not have access to here. So our intention was to raise the creative standard here irrespective of the bad situation in which we write.
Of course there was a year we didn’t award a prize because we felt we don’t really have to give a prize if the works did not meet up with the standard and quality we set. Although people criticised us but we stood our ground because we were confident of the decision we took.
What about nine authors who were short-listed but none was eventually awarded the prize?
The mistake then was that people were not even informed about the first three among the short listed entries. The jury should have listed the writers from the second position to the last such that only the first (the winner) would be vacant because the standard was not met.
This is akin to the African athletics whereby athletes are being selected for the Olympics. It is possible for an athlete to win at the African level, but if the athlete doesn’t meet up with the set standard, he or she cannot go for the Olympics. Yet he or she can be the best in his or her country.
How do we address you – a Nigerian writer or a writer from Northern Nigeria?
People can see me as a Nigerian writer or as a Northern Nigerian writer. But sometimes these terms are used interchangeably. But for every writer, your ambition should be to write a level that you would be recognised the world over. By this I mean that tour aim, as a writer is not to fall below the acceptable standard, even when other writers win awards and you do not win.
You should always be concerned about the standard of your work. And it would be a great mistake to judge the quality of writing by the awards people are winning. It shouldn’t be so. So people may call me a Nigerian writer, a Northern writer, a Minna writer or a writer from my village, all what is important to me is to produce good and distinct works of literature that can be accepted beyond the confines of my home.
Could this be why you have not been sending your works for awards? Or why you haven’t recorded many awards despite the huge volume of your work?
I have never entered my works for any awards somehow, to me, my works should be read and people appreciate them. There is no greater joy to a writer than for him or her to be called by somebody saying he or she appreciates the work after reading it. To me, this is a greater award. Even for ANA, I have never sent my works for any prize. The fact is that I like what I’m doing and I don’t feel second-class to anybody. But I really do cherish the style and contents of the works of other writers.
You have served in various capacities –Executive Director of both Union Bank and United Bank for Africa, President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Permanent Secretary in the Niger State Ministry of Finance, among others - why haven’t you used these achievements as basis to seek political office?
I am not in the profession of politics but as a political animal I do react to issues, which I feel passionate about through my works. But I did not climb the soapbox to campaign for votes like most of our lying politicians do. Many of our political office seekers lie to the electorates and they too know they lie to the people.
Also, people too lure our politicians into lying. If people want service, they should learn how to get service from people. But for them to be involved in self-glorification, it is wrong indeed. “In my religion, Prophet Mohammed (MPBUH) teaches that if a man comes to you, to seek authority to do something you should not live him because he would betray you and end up doing nothing. Until we learnt not to deceive ourselves, we won’t have honest people serving us in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, politicians spend money to canvass for votes to serve people. This is wrong. It’s like someone who wants to wash your cloth and gives you money for soap. He is expected to wash your cloth, buy soap and yet he is willing to give you money. There’s need to be suspicious of such a fellow because after washing the cloth, he would end up stealing your cloth and give you a fake one.
In a typical African village, you don’t go campaigning for a position. People know you. And as a young man, you must have your age group, if you are so good in farming for instance, they can make you the best or chief farmer of that group. But this won’t make you sit in the village council because you do not have the age and the required experience.
This is our own culture. The western culture in the other way round allows a young man to push his father aside and claim to know better. Even if you know better, our culture does not permit you to outsmart your elder. It is sad that we have now jettisoned our own culture of self-control, morality, fairness and good sense, which our forefathers transferred to us.
People like yourself, Prof Zaynab Alkali, Prof Shamshudeen Amali, Dr Jerry Agada, Dr Emman Shehu and a few others remain the popular voices among writers in the north, why do you think we don’t we have many younger voices in the north as we have in the South?
Unfortunately we have a lot of other voices but they do not have microphones to enable people hear them. First, there are a lot of young writers who are active and working. But because they don’t have access to publishing outlets or the media, they are not published and some don’t even know what to do. But if they have a chance or the exposure they will be known. Even some of us who have voices don’t have the microphone any longer, except for people like you (The Sun) who can trace us out.
As far as I am concerned, I can boldly say that a lot of people who helped to popularise my works are actually from the South. My best friend, Ben Tomoloju was at The Guardian when a lot of people criticized my work. He was one of the few people who believed in my ideology and help projected my ideas as a writer. So the Nigerian literature has really been supportive of me. This is despite a handful of critics who said I was either too Islamic or that I do not even know how to write.
Do you still write actively now and what has been the role of your family in your writing career?
I no longer write the way I used to but right from the beginning, my family has always supported my writing career. They have always encouraged me and they’ve always served as my first editors in all my creative works. They always read my works and pass their honest judgements.
What advice would you give younger and prospective writers?
They should be persistent. Writing is all about determination. A lot of them are joining ANA because of the interest to publish. But even if they are yet to get publishers, they should keep in writing many of the young writers are after awards, but the role is for them to write and express themselves
Most importantly, ANA should not also degenerate to the level of becoming a mere political platform. Although the new leadership comprises very productive and committed writers, but the association should desist from the kind of politics which forced its members to be using text messages to campaign for elections as we had it during the last convention in Abuja.
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