I spent the past week at a university in New Hampshire with writers and poets, talking, teaching and thinking about writing. Last month, I co-facilitated a workshop with my brother-friend, Adam Abubakar Ibrahim. Young Northern writers wrote stories of the past, present and future. Next month, school starts, and I’ll be back to teaching, talking and thinking about writing full-time.
What this means is that many of the conversations I have had this past week/month, and will have in my classroom when we discuss the texts I have set and the narratives that they themselves will write, have touched on/will most likely touch on how writers are gifted with the ability to foretell the future. Think Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Think Octavia Butler’s Parable of The Sower.
We talk about the “timeliness” of fiction, of stories conceived and written long before they are published at a time that makes them “timely.” Sometimes, we read a novel or a story, think how far-fetched the plot seems, only to hear of a similar scenario later. According to Ngugi wa Thiong’o, writers are like Cassandra, blessed with the gift of prophecy but doomed to never be believed. According to Octavia Butler, she—and by extension, writers—have no such gifts. She was simply “paying attention to the state of the world, what she could see at the edges of her vision.”
I agree with Butler. This imaginative process isn’t from prophecy. It’s a distinct form of envisioning that allows writers to explore realistic, possible outcomes based on current realities and trends. And that is why I think that our governments would do well to pay attention to writers and to their fears and dreams for the future—the latter to chart that future and the former the better to keep away from potential dystopias.
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But I have heard that our leaders in Nigeria do not read. In fact, I recall a certain state governor in the 2010s, one with a literature degree no less, proudly proclaiming to a room full of writers that the last novel he read was Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which he read as an undergraduate student, and at the same time denigrating contemporary writers whom he hadn’t read for not writing anything worth reading. When I challenged him, he said nobody was writing about affairs that concerned Nigerians. Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun had come out, Habila’s Oil on Water had come out, and my On Black Sisters Street had come out. Fiction about a war whose consequences are still being felt in Nigeria today; fiction about the oil industry in Nigeria whose consequences are still being felt today; fiction about human trafficking in Nigeria whose consequences are still being felt today: not narratives that concern Nigeria? He hadn’t read any of them, didn’t care to read any of them, but he felt enlightened enough to pontificate on what he saw as the wretched state of Nigerian writing, and then announced unironically that he would build a state library and name it after a beauty queen.
This anecdote underscores a broader issue: the disconnect between Nigeria’s leadership and its, fortunately, vibrant literary community. What we miss in leadership, we are blessed in literary talent. This former governor’s attitude suggests a missed opportunity for policymakers to engage with the critical reflections and insights that literature (this includes poetry) provides. Writers and poets are not merely creators of entertainment; they are chroniclers of society, whose works often offer profound critiques and foresights about the direction of the country. Listen to any Dike Chukwumerije poem. Listen to Wana Udobang poetize on what it is to be a woman today. Ignoring these voices is not just a disservice to the arts but to the broader project of nation-building.
I’d like to see our leaders take literature and its creators more seriously. I’d like to see them read (more). We are not Cassandras. We just listen closely, ponder deeply, and see, at the edges of our vision, what others who are hastier might miss. That is the gift we offer. Literature has the power to illuminate truths, provoke thought, and inspire change. By embracing the insights and critiques offered by writers and poets, rather than dismissing them, our leaders can gain a richer perspective on the issues facing Nigeria and perhaps find new avenues for addressing them. This engagement is not just about appreciating the arts; it’s about recognising the value of our diverse, artistic voices in shaping a better, more comfortable Nigeria and engaging with them.
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