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Abubakar Gimba is a
popular Northern Nigeria writer based in Minna, Niger State. The former
banker and author of about 13 works including novels, short stories,
poetry and essays, chats with NEXT about his writing career and related
issues.

Some of those who
have read Abubakar Gimba’s ‘Letter to the Unborn Child’ (Kraftgriots,
2008) believe it is a veiled rejoinder to Chinua Achebe’s ‘The Problem
With Nigeria’. Critics suggest that Gimba unduly defends leaders
against accusations that they are the cause of Nigeria’s current state
of underdevelopment.

But naturally,
Gimba does not see it this way. His central argument in the work, he
says, is that both leaders and followers are part of Nigeria’s
problems.

“It’s not a
rejoinder, but a take-off from where I thought we ought to refocus our
attention. There is truth in what [Chinua Achebe] is saying, but I
think we should broaden our horizon and look at issues from another
perspective.

What the book was
trying to do is to make all of us think and look at ourselves. We say
leadership is the problem, but leaders are people we know, grow up
together with, and criticised the previous government together. Where
do leaders come from? They don’t fall from somewhere; they emerge from
amidst us, the people.

“So, we should look
at the society. If you uphold some personal values, when you get into a
position, you will be able to effect changes because you have the
willpower. It’s not really the leader; the prophets were sent to
deliver particular messages and they were leaders. But if the people
hadn’t followed them, they wouldn’t have succeeded. Jesus [was here]
hundreds of years ago but if people don’t listen to his words, he won’t
have followers now.

“If you see
somebody leading, you have to make your own contribution to make sure
that, yes, what is being preached about works, because he alone, no
matter how good, cannot accomplish it. It seems we are not convinced
about what our leaders tell us, or we are hypocrites.”

Farewell to fiction

His concern with
the state of the society, the former president of the Association of
Nigerian Authors (ANA) adds, made him shelve fiction for essays.

“I think our
situation is so desperate that there is no time to fictionalise. When
you are an old person, you better start talking about reality. The
young ones can fantasise or fictionalise, but the old have no time to
do that. They must say the truth as they see it. I have written fiction
as a young man but now, it is better to do essays because we are in a
very bad situation.”

The limited time and the need to say what needs to be said concisely, he discloses, lured him into poetry.

“Poetry is
beautiful because it enables you to say a lot in very few words and it
encapsulates your emotions, its intensity and wit. With that, you‘ll
get across and in the process, unburden yourself. You get a lot of
ideas bottled up but until you write, you feel unsatisfied.

But once you’ve
written, you feel happy. It’s like talking to somebody; you have to
complain to somebody. A writer complains to his paper using his pen so
that people will listen. The best form now, if you are in a hurry, is
poetry.”

Unburdening himself

‘Trail of Sacrifice’, published in 1985, is the first novel by the Economist, trained at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

“I really wanted to
unburden myself. I felt very strongly about certain issues. A very
fresh graduate, I was beginning to enter the real society from the
insulated campus life,” he begins. “When I was in the university and
secondary school, I read History. I also read Ngugi’s ‘Weep not Child’.
It’s an historical novel, kind of, of the Kenyans; about the Mau-Mau
revolt. We didn’t have that kind of colonial experience but all the
same, we were in a particular situation that I thought was harmful and
we could fictionalise. That’s why I thought I could just unburden
myself a little,” he said.

He proceeded to
write a second, ‘Witnesses to Tears’ in 1986 because, “At that time,
one, I wanted to do more. Secondly, I was testing my commitment to
writing. I could fictionalise values, society and things not going the
way they should in the society. It was also to prove that I didn’t
intend to be a one book author.”

Message of change

The member of the
Literature Committee of the Nigeria Prize for Literature explains why
he prefers committed writing to writing for entertainment.

“In a society like
ours, we believe a writer is trying to create an audience, but do you
create audience just to entertain them? Have we reached that stage of
writing just to entertain when we know ideas rule the society? It is a
privilege we Nigerian writers have and when you have a privilege, you
must use it properly. For me, entertaining people is not the top
priority for a writer.

A writer should be
committed to something and, therefore, should have a message. Even if
he is writing about dancing, he should write with a view of what does
dancing do to the psyche of the people in a situation of high
depression or debilitating economic environment? Can it give them
relief; is it better for them to dance than to go and take drugs so
that they can be happy?

Every writer, in
our kind of situation, it is important you try to; I wouldn’t say you
must, no. But you should try to have a message of change; something
that will improve the lives of the people. When people talk about
rebranding, I think Nigerian writers have been in the forefront of
trying to change this country long before anybody brought the word,
‘rebranding’.”

Beyond expectations

The former executive director at Union Bank and United Bank for Africa has no more mountains to climb in his writing career.

“I set out to make
myself happy and God has helped me beyond what I anticipated. Secondly,
along the way, you begin to pick certain ideas. If I’m doing this,
others can as well do it and we tried to encourage the young ones.

In any case, from
the word go, my audience was really the young people. And in terms of
language, right from when I started writing, I made special effort to
ensure that the language is accessible to people in secondary school.
If you want to change people, you have to begin at the age when people
begin to form ideas. So, I thought if they read some of my books, they
should be able to understand and get the message. They don’t have to
agree with me, but they should get the message and I think I’ve
achieved that.”

Restricted audience

The author of some
13 works written in English and guest at a workshop on writing in
indigenous languages, why hasn’t he written in his native Nupe?

“It’s a personal
belief, but as you are doing it, you must have a vision of what you
want to achieve. I haven’t thought about it because I felt if I write
in Nupe that means I want only my Nupe people to understand. I could
write in my indigenous language if I feel it is going extinct and I
want to revive it. That way, it’s a goal.

“Even if it’s 10 people that understand it, I could be fighting that
it should be taught in schools and I will write books for it. It
depends on the goals, but for me, there are certain messages to get
across that I assume are transnational in nature. If I write in Nupe,
the audience will be restricted.”