HRH Chukwuemeka Ike was, and still is, one of the household
names in Nigerian literature. With books like ‘The Search’, ‘Our Children are
Coming’, ‘Expo 77′ and ‘The Bottled Leopard’, amongst many others, he has
established himself as a leading light, in the mould of Wole Soyinka, T.M.
Aluko, and Chinua Achebe.
He is currently the King of Ikedi-Nowu, in Anambra State, South
East, Nigeria. He spoke to NEXT on a number of issues.
Writing and Ruling
I have been a royal father for only one year. One very difficult
year, I must say. That is, grappling with my new role as a royal father in a
rural area. I am still running the Nigerian Book Foundation. I am still
writing. There is a project I have at hand now; the only problem is that it is
going to take me a longer time to accomplish, on the ground of these other
engagements. For as long as I am alive, I will never give up writing.
I don’t think there is a retirement age for writers. In this
country, government wakes up and retires people, but in creative writing,
nobody can retire anyone. Writing is one thing from which nobody can retire me.
At the age of 78, I still wake up by 5am in the morning, and go straight to my
study to write. So long as you are willing, you continue to write. Nobody can
stop you.
I have been gaining new experiences every year. Now that I am a
traditional ruler, it is opening up new doors for me. So, how can anyone now
say because I am 78 years, I can no longer put these ideas into writing, and
tell people what I have to tell the audience through them? I am happy that T.M.
Aluko recently demonstrated that you can still write, even at the ripe age of
ninety one (91years) and in fact, with his health condition. I have not seen
him for a long time, but I am aware that he had stroke sometimes ago. I retired
30 years ago at the age of 48, and I am still writing. My latest book came out
two years ago.
Nigerian Literature, then
and now
I am not surprised that situations change every now and then.
All this will of course rub off on Nigerian literature over some centuries. One
may notice changes in one area or ages and another. There was a time I was
worried about young people not being interested in prose fiction. Many of them
were becoming poets more than anything else. Not that poetry is easy to write,
but the demands are different from writing prose which expects you to create
human beings, create situations, and so on. However, I am happy those in recent
years, a lot of them, are now getting involved in prose.
I am not talking about the famous ones like Helon Habila,
Chimamanda Adichie, and a few others. There are a couple of them now, fresh
from [university] and some of them still undergraduates. One of them gave me
his book, which was self-published, to go through recently. One may want to
quarrel with certain things about the quality but then, the good thing is that
that are developing the interest, and it can only get better. I was given one
of such recently but I was disappointed at the number of errors, so I asked him
to give it to someone critical to help him look at it. That is where self-publishing
has its problem.
This probably takes us to the present state of our education. I
have these Youth Corp members who worked for me; the kind of errors you find in
what they write is a reflection of the sad situation of education in the
country. So, publishers must see that they take a good editorial look at books
that come out on their label. And for those who self-publish, I can’t condemn
them but would only pray that they ensure that they give their works to people
who can help them take a good editorial look at it before going on to get it
published.
Literary Prizes and the
independence of writers
There are various types of prizes. There are prizes which I
certainly will support. I received one in December. It is the National Order of
Merit. It gave me joy, not one that gives me worry. I have never met the
President before, neither have I sought any favours from him. This is something
given as Nigeria’s highest national [honour] for intellectual and academic
attainment. And this is something that is done by experts in the field.
If you are nominated, you submit 50 copies of everything you
have written to the Order of Merit secretariat. Mine was in the humanities. If
they think that you merit this award, they give it to you. And of course, there
is the Board of Trustees who must approve it. If you are nominated and you
don’t get it, that is it! You are never going to get a second chance, unless
you have done something really outstanding. That kind of award is honourable
and is something that should be encouraged.
Now, let’s take a look at the NLNG Prize, which is the most
expensive literature prize available for Nigerians. I commend what they are
doing, and I suggest that in addition, they should consider giving a lifetime
achievement award; or to institute something like the equivalent of a Nobel
Prize for Nigeria that writers of all ages could enter for.
However, I know that there are other prizes that are not worth
their hype, in fact they corrupt the society. Those that are based on merit
should be encouraged because what they do is encourage [and] recognise the
effort and excellence of their recipients and fire them [up] to do more. But if
there is any writer that allows his or herself to be conditioned or compromised
by some kind of literary prize or awards, such writer is not worthy [of being]
called a writer because, a writer should be an independent, conscientious and
upright person.
Literature, the writer
and nation building
A writer is a social critic who all his/her life has been trying
to rebrand his/her country. Though you don’t call it that big name or go about
telling people that is what you are doing, but when you are talking about
corruption and other social ills, condemning and proffering solution for a
better society, what you are doing invariably is contributing to nation
building. Then, the rebranding thing. It really beats me the way they do these
things. I was drafted to be chairman of a conference on corruption,
transparency and accountability in Abuja.
It turned out that the chairman of the occasion did not turn up
and I was drafted to be the stand-in chairman. In my remarks, I told them that
the rebranding project is not beaming its searchlight where is is meant to. How
do you say you are fighting corruption, when the same government is protecting
corrupt people? The National Assembly, the political powers, and the public
officer holders, how many of them were really elected into office, if not by
corrupt means? It is clearly known that the political parties are rooted in corruption,
and so that deserves some attention. It is not enough to just put the
photographs of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and the rest on buses. No! Though it
shows that they recognise them, but it does not necessarily change anything.
Nigerian writers deserve much more than that because we are the real image
makers for this nation.
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