You are releasing three children’s book. Could you tell us what they are about?
Actually, I have just released four new books for children, to the glory of God. The first, Emeka and the Kidnappers came out last years. The other three: Haunted House, The Great Medicine Man, and The Great Wrestler were released in the month of March, 2018. Let me talk briefly about them. First, Emeka and the Kidnappers is the second book in a trilogy of what I call ‘The Emeka Adventure Series’. The first in that trilogy was The Secret Place. It was one of the 109 entries that the Nigeria LNG Prize for Literature in 2015 received. The Prize, as you are aware, was never awarded that year. But the book made the list of the 17 the judges selected. Haunted House is the third in the series. The publication of the Secret Place gave me the opportunity of attending the Children’s Literature Master Class Workshop organized by the Nigeria LNG. Further, the book sold thousands of copies. This naturally encouraged me to do a sequel. And I ended up with a trilogy.
The two other books are in fact yet the last two of a trilogy. The first is The Great Hunter, which was published in 2015. The last two, The Great Wrestler and, The Great Medicine Man has just been released. The books tried to take the children of Africa to the past while at the same time trying to put in them the need to be upright. The books appeared in the Mazariyya Junior Literature Series, which was designed for teenagers and young adults with the aim of providing exciting stories set in Africa for pleasure and supplementary reading. Some of the stories (like The Secret Place, Emeka and the Kidnappers and Haunted House) are set in contemporary Nigeria, and deals with contemporary social problems. For example, The Secret Place deals with the problems of fake drugs, Emeka and the Kidnappers as the title indicates deals with the evil of kidnapping. Finally, Haunted House deals with religious fraud. The others: The Great Hunter, The Great Medicine Man and The Great Wrestler are set in the past. The aim remains to provide a pleasurable reading for children and young adults while keeping them away from the computer. On the whole there are two trilogies of six books published between 2015 and 2018. God has indeed been gracious to me.
It seems you are specializing on children story. Can you tell us why?
You see, before the publications of the last six books for children, I have published two other children’s books: Cobwebs in the Sky (2005), and On the Lap of the Gods (2008). With eight books for children, I can unashamedly claim to be a writer of children’s book. Many reasons account for my interest to write for children. To begin with, I was and still remain an avid reader of children’s literature. During my teenage years, I devoured them in the dozens. I was always in public and school libraries reading children literature. The more I read, the more I feel the urge to write. My favourites are works by Cyprian Ekwensi, Kola Onadipe, Ifeoma Okoye, Teresa Meniru among others. These books always set my imagination flying. I felt I could share my own experience. Secondly, I am strongly convinced that the best way to build a nation is to catch our children during their formative years through good literature about Africa. Good literature for children today will give us a better world tomorrow. Our world is sick and I am offering my services to cure it. I want to change the world through a revolution of well-written children’s book. Finally, I enjoy writing. Writing to me has become part of life. I can’t imagine how my world would look like if I do not share my views through the art of creative writing, particularly writing for children.
Speaking about the 2015 NLNG Prize, did you feel like the non-longlisting of children story was a negative indicator for the genre in Nigeria?
I must confess that I was not happy with the decision of the management of the Nigeria LNG Prize for Literature not to make a long-list of my work and others who made the list the judges initially selected. I had the opportunities of reading some of those books-I mean the list that was never published, and I can say that many of them were well written and could compete favourably with other previous long list of NLNG. This decision inevitably denied some of us the opportunity to give our works a boost. But then the decision to invite us to a workshop was great and I am grateful to be at that workshop. I do not see the failure to publish a long list as a negative indicator for children’s literature. Just as I said earlier, I read many of the books that did make the initial selection and I was impressed with them. The truth is that every judge has his own opinion of a literary work. I do respect the judges’ opinions and indeed the decision of the organizers of the Nigeria NLG Prize for Literature. But I have given suggestions on how they could improve. Nigerian writers should be grateful to Nigeria LNG Limited for the opportunities they are giving to them.
A workshop was organisned by the NLNG for some select children literature writers in the fallout of that no longlisting in 2015 and you were one of the people at the workshop. Would you say that workshop has been helpful to the genre?
It was very beneficial to those of us who participated in it. The workshop taught me so many things about writing for children which I never knew before. The organizers even sent me a book of proceedings not long ago. There were very brilliant facilitators like Prof. Kim Reynolds and Dr Helen Limon. Most of the texts that they used for the workshop were written by foreigners except for Chike and the River by Chinua Achebe and a book by Prof. Ezeigbo. I suggest that in future they use more of children’s classics by Nigerians such as Ekwensi, Onadipe, Meniru and so on. Then they should use more of Nigerian resource persons – we have many good ones.
Your books pose and tackle moral dilemmas. How important do you think moralising should be in children literature?
Yes some of them pose moral dilemmas not just for children but for adults too. Take for example, The Great Medicine Man.
A native doctor was approached to use his expertise to kill a very wicked king in the course of curing him. But the fact remains that nobody has the right to take life! When you are writing for children, you are not just writing to keep them away from mischiefs through reading, you are also writing to tell them what is right and what is wrong while entertaining them with your tale. Put differently, a good children’s story must be didactic. Beyond entertaining the children, the writer should use the opportunity to make them live right. The bible enjoins us to train a child in the right way and he will not leave that right path when he grows up. Moralising is very important in children’s literature. That is one of the ways of catching them young. Our world is sick. Changing our world is not easy. I am therefore on a course of changing our world through quality children’s literature. I cannot go to the street to protest. I cannot engage in politics. I am a civil servant. Yet I am suffering from the impact of a sick Nigeria. Part of my reaction to our national problem is my books for children. I tried to tackles these myriads of problems such as fake drugs, kidnappings, religious fraud, unethical medicinal practices and so on through children’s books.
Yet, some of the most popular children literatures in the world such as Pippi Longstocking are not overly concerned with moralising and have somehow remained classics in children literature. How do you think this came about?
Children’s literature must not necessarily moralize for it to be good. Yet, one of the qualities of good children’s literature is that it should be didactic. Yes, some of the best children’s books ever written were not moralistic. These books were good because they are very entertaining and educating. Many of today’s musicians produce lyrics that do not moralize but they still gain fame because they are danceable. But it is for the writer to decide for himself whether to just entertain. In my own case, I chose to use writing for children to have a better world tomorrow. So I had to be didactic and entertaining. My experience is that you may lose the readers’ interest if you are just didactic without being entertaining. So I try to mix both. The success of The Secret Place, in my view, was that it was a thriller. Or so I was told by the readers and teachers who used the book. Yet my primary purpose for writing the book was to call the attention of the world to the dangers posed by the manufacturing and distribution of fake drugs.
How difficult would you say it is for Nigerian writers to find publishers for children literature considering how expensive it is to produce this books and the amount of finesse required?
Writers have been having things rough practising their arts in Nigeria today. The economy as it is today does not favour the publishing industry. The cost of paper has gone up as well as other factors of production. Many of the publishing houses have packed up. Those in the industry are only looking for big names. The result is that many have resorted to vanity and self-publishing. Then there are distribution problems. There is editing problem and so on. These are the challenges the Nigerian writer is facing today. The fact that we have been withering the storm shows the resilient spirit of the Nigerian writer. Publishing children’s literature in Nigeria is not easy. For the upcoming writers getting a publisher is not easy. If he decides to go for self-publishing, it is not easy either. For as you know, children’s literature is a specialized field. Graphic artists and illustrators are required. Then you need a good children’s literature editor. So production cost is high. These are some of the reasons people are keeping away from writing for children. Getting these four new works out was no mean task. But Mazariyya Books Limited the firm that brought out my books is committed to promoting good quality children’s literature and it is not surprising that it has invested millions of naira into the venture.
Beyond workshops and talks how do you think the challenges in the children literature genre can be handled?
Workshops are some of the means of handling the challenges of writing for children. But beyond workshop talks, reading is yet another means. I encourage upcoming writers of children’s literature to read very good children’s literature. And there are many of them out there.
Thank you for the pleasure of this interview.
It has been wonderful talking to you. Thank you and God bless.
