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After surviving the monstrous gale of Hurricane Katrina which embowelled and decapitated many residents of New Orleans in August 2005, Nigeria’s poet laureate and social critic, Niyi Osundare, decided that in spite of his huge loss the disaster would not have the last word. The outcome of that rugged determination is his newly published book of poem entitled City Without People: The Katrina Poems. Written over the last five years in the characteristic style of the tireless songbird, the poems in their short forms severally weave a narrative of pains resulting from heavy loss that is general yet personal, of man’s resilience in the face of virulent hardships, and of a poet’s heart full of appreciation to those who did not leave it in the lurch. ADEMOLA ADESOLA asks him some questions about the book which he reveals is the most difficult to write of all his works

Reason for the delay in the writing and the publication of the book

Katrina was a huge catastrophe. And it left us all with a big trauma. For three whole months after Katrina I couldn’t sleep well. I was having nightmares. Up till now I’m still having those nightmares, particularly whenever I remember the scenes or whenever I dream about the manuscripts and the books I lost and of course the danger that my wife and I faced when we thought all was lost. So, it took so long to get these poems out because each time I sat to write them the pain came back. The original pain we felt on the 29th and 30th of August, 2005, and our journey through evacuation centre. We had to stay for many days without brushing our teeth without having a bath and without any shoes. We left our home with nothing, absolutely. So, it was the nature of the experience and the nature of the trauma that made this work so difficult to compose because there is no way you can write about an experience without remembering the details. And each time I remembered the details I had a terrible bout of depression and all the angst and all the terror of Katrina would come back to me. All the poems in the book of course are new and they were written between the time I started recovering from the Katrina trauma and the time they were finally gone. That was 2010. So, they took so long in coming because of the kind of experience that gave rise to them.

Actually, it’s ironic that while the Katrina poems were on my mind but I couldn’t write them, I stepped aside and produced another book. That was Tender Moment – love poems. I think that was some kind of psychological compensation, or psychological avoidance. It’s amazing the way the mind works. It was the Katrina poems that were on my mind but I couldn’t write them. So, I took out time composing love poems, remembering some of the poems I lost to Katrina. Well, I couldn’t remember any of them really. I had to compose new poems and they were love poems. It was after Tender Moment that I decided to face the Katrina monster head-on! I kept telling myself that I would not be defeated by Katrina. That was when I started writing the poem. And once I wrote the first three the other ones started coming a little at a time. But this has been the most difficult of all my works because of the experience that produced the poems.

Wouldn’t other mode have been suitable for recording the Katrina narrative?

Not for somebody like me! I’m sure you know I’m basically a poet. Ideas come to me in poetic term. Images that express those ideas come to me in poetic term. And the whole articulation of the experience came to me in poetic term. That’s at the personal level. I’m sure you also know that of all the literary genres poetry is the most condensed. Poetry is the one that is closer to the human heart and the interface between the human heart and the human mind. When you want to reach your depth as a writer, when you want to express something that is beyond yourself, when you want to express an experience and make that expression greater than the experience itself, when you want to give music to the mystery and the misery of life, you reach for poetry. I think this was really what happened to me. I also toyed with the Katrina experience in prose form, but I think I did the first 42 pages. And they are still there. I haven’t revisited them for a very long, long time. Maybe I will some day. But it was the poetry of the experience that first captured my fancy. That is why the book has come in poetic form. You know poetry also offers a certain liberty, certain latitude when it comes to the expression of experiences. It makes it possible for us to play around with imageries. It makes it possible for us to harness the depth and density of feeling in the music of expression. This is really the advantage that poetry offered me. And I took it with both hands.

I allowed the nature of the subject of the poem to influence, and in fact, dictate the kind of register that I used, that is the kind of language. The language of the work is such that readers will find accessible because I saw myself as a spokesperson for an entire city. The complex transparency of the language is there. The communicative imperative to reach as many readers as possible decided in me on the kind of register employed in the poems. Also, at the psychological or psycho-linguistic level, or if you like, psycho-stylistic level, there are certain levels of pain that dictate the kind of language in which they should be expressed. This is what I called density of feeling and density of expression. The density of feeling has a way of influencing the density of expression, or as it happens most of time, density of feeling may result in a clarity of expression. I’m happy that reactions to the poems have very, very encouraging, in fact flattering at times. And I’m happy that at the reading we had about two weeks ago in Lagos the audience more or less showed the same level of empathy with the experience and the language in which it is communicated to them. I never wanted to keep any reader out of the experience.
Experience with the publisher of the book

The name of the publisher is Blackwidow Press. They are based in Boston, United States, but they have big connections in New Orleans. I met the publisher earlier on, about a year or so ago and he expressed interest in publishing my poetry. He specializes in poetry and he does a wonderful job. One of his preoccupations is bringing poetry from other land to the attention of readers in the United States. He has so many books of poems translated from different languages in the world. So, he is a truly international poetry publisher. That is Blackwidow.

When I finished the Katrina manuscript, I considered him. I made up my mind to get this book published in the US because that is where the experience took place. I have always published my books in Nigeria. But I say this one is for the US and I’m happy I took that decision. Blackwidow took the book and within a week or two he got back to me to say that the poems are very touchy and that he was delighted in publishing them. Then I advised him to let us make the publication of this book coincide with the sixth anniversary of Katrina, which was August 29, 2011. It was a tall order but he managed to beat the deadline. So, I enjoyed working with him. He has a designer who is very proficient. He designed the book, especially the cover.

For the first time in many years I had a publisher who would notice an error or a set of errors in the book and contact the author. In Nigeria here it’s different. In fact, even when you write the correct thing many of our publishers would publish the wrong thing. I didn’t have any problems at all working with Blackwidow because they have proficient editors. These are proficient and highly educated editors. In Nigeria, because of our terrible educational system, our editors don’t have the necessary kind of education that they need for the publishing job – the thoroughness, the literacy that you must have before you can call yourself a publisher. We had this in the 1960s, 70s and up to the 80s in Nigeria. But things started going down, down. I don’t know whether there is any book that I have produced in this country in the past 10, 15 years that have not had one kind of error or another. My experience this time around is really different. That is like my experience with some other books that I published abroad. This shows that in Nigeria we still have a very long way to go.

The Nigerian edition of the book

I am hoping to get a Nigerian edition published. I don’t know which publisher is going to handle it yet. But you know this is going to be some kind of professional agreement between my publisher in the United States and whosoever Nigerian publisher is going to handle it. But certainly I would like to have a Nigerian edition. The way the book is at the moment is that it is $19.95 – $20. Multiply $20 by 160 and you have nearly N4,000. Who will buy a book of poem for N4,000? This again shows you some of the problems we’ve been shouting about this past couple of years, that the economy, particularly the state of the Naira, affects the literary culture. Books are becoming more and more expensive in Nigeria because the Naira is sinking. Our government is silently and mischievously and dangerously devaluing the national currency. They are doing that and they are also devaluing our national life with it. So, I’m looking forward to a Nigerian edition that will be affordable to readers in this country.

Not given to deathless or pedestrian imaginative works, Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan remains one of the highly productive playwrights, poets and essayists thriving colourfully in the increasingly widening gyre of the Nigerian literature. While his plays artistically reflect the foibles and the follies of the high, and the frailties and miseries of the low in the actual human societies, his numerous essays do no less in providing the necessary stimuli for the enrichment and development of Nigerian literature.

That Osofisan’s plays, over 40 and of varied types, enjoy the patronage of theatre enthusiasts and scholars is an established fact. Being the most regularly performed, the dramaturge’s plays are not in short supply on the stages situated within the artery of the various departments of Dramatic Arts across higher institutions of learning within and outside the country. These works are often the choice of those whose responsibility it is to choose convocation plays, and students deciding what to feature in their project plays. His inspiring level of productivity and disciplined commitment to the production of enduring play texts have resulted in the continuous availability of materials for the use of both students and scholars of drama every other year.

In the year 2011 Osofisan provided the Nigerian literary community with some more works. Most notable among these is the book entitled, JP Clark: A Voyage. Published at the most important time in the country’s history, the book engagingly chronicles the life, career and works of Clark. The author’s effort provides students and scholars of Nigerian literature with requisite information about the sometimes controversial persona of Clark and about some other personages who contributed in shaping the Nigerian literary history. According to him, “JP Clark was an enigma to most of my generation. He had a terrible and terrifying reputation. He was reclusive and arrogant and hostile to critics. He is the poetic incarnation of the name pepper”. The other important thing about Osofisan’s experimental narrative is that it helps to properly reverse the disinformation that Adewale Meja-Pearce’s A Peculiar Tragedy: JP Clark-Bekederemo and Beginning of Modern Nigerian Literature in English contains. Love’s Unlike Marvin is another play that he published last year to the acclaim of the literati.

A patriotic Nigerian and didactic writer, Osofisan is incurably convinced that literature has the potency to address the varied personal problems and national challenges of the country. Thus, like Agemo, one of the characters in his play, Many Colours Make the Thunder King, says, what he does every other year through his works is this: “I embellish people and any living thing: I make them the colours of their dreams”.
Osofisan was born on June 16, 1946 at Erunwon, Ogun State. He became a professor of Drama in 1985 at the University of Ibadan where he has spent most of his adult career. He had served as the General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre, Lagos. And as the leader of a private theatre company, he is known for his roles as director, actor, and composer. He is also reputed for his commitment as a theorist of literature, critic and translator. He authors his books of poems under the pseudonym, Okinba Launko.

While the clangour of rejection still sounds deafeningly against the removal of subsidy by the Federal Government, the creation of a Subsidy Reinvestment Board, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Petroleum Trust Fund created by the regime of the late General Sani Abacha, has equally been confronted with equal sturdy stance of disapproval, reports Ademola Adesola

Not a few Nigerians had a sense of de javu when President Goodluck Jonathan last Monday announced the establishment of a Subsidy Reinvestment Board which is to ensure effective and timely implementation of projects to be funded with the savings accruing to the Federal Government from subsidy removal. They recalled that a military regime in Nigeria had about 18 years ago done something like this.

It will be remembered that shortly after the late maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha unexpectedly increased the per liter prices of petroleum, kerosene and diesel in October 1994, Nigerians across the federation strongly deplored and stoutly rejected the new prices. Specifically, the price of petrol was hiked by Abacha from N3.25k to N11.00k. The opposition against the increase then was informed by the outrageous nature of the increase and the strong belief of many Nigerians that the premium from the increase would be diverted into the private coffers of an insignificant number of high-heeled Nigerians.

However, in order to allay the fears of Nigerians and convince them of the sincerity of his government about what to do with the windfall from the increase in the prices of petroleum products, the Abacha government then by Decree 25 of 1994 established the Petroleum Trust Fund, which was saddled with the responsibility of using the money generated from the increase effected in the prices of the products to address some important concerns in the major sectors of the economy in a way that it would impact Nigerians at whatever level of the social ladder. Headed by General Muhammadu Buhari who was reputed and respected for his no-none-sense posturing, the PTF was expected to focus on developmental projects around the country.

Before the PTF was scrapped by former President Olusegun Obasanjo after assuming office in 1999, the body executed some road projects and succored some federal universities through the provision of buses and building of lecture theatres. The body was also smeared with many allegations of corruption and controversies revolving round selective execution of projects, which some claimed were in favour of the North where Buhari hailed from. Though in 1998 a report by New African lauded the PTF under Buhari for its transparency, saying it was a rare "success story", the same report also noted that critics had questioned the PTF's allocation of 20% of its resources to the military.

Though the new Subsidy Reinvestment Board now headed by Dr Christopher Kolade reminds Nigerians of the PTF under General Buhari, what is not in doubt is that President Jonathan’s creation is heavily affronted by credibility problem. Many Nigerians think there is no basis comparing the PTF with the subsidy Board.

Former member of the Federal House of Representatives, Dr Wale Okediran, said the Board was put in place in order to deepen the deceptive antics of the government. “I don’t think there is a point of comparison between the two because the PTF under Buhari was established to take care of accumulated petroleum fund, which received the blessing of majority of Nigerians. Whereas in this case, we are talking of a situation where people see the Board as one established to manage what government extorts from them, for the removal of the oil subsidy is extortion. So, one can say that this new creation by President Jonathan is something that does not have the blessing of majority of Nigerians. One cannot say that it is at the same level with Buhari’s PTF. I don’t see the Board performing because it is just a contrived body meant to deceive Nigerians,” he said.

In his own view, Mr. Odia Ofeimun argued that the subsidy Board was a complete distraction that should not be entertained. Embittered by the development, the poet and social critic reasoned that rather than establishing an extra-governmental body, government should get serious with the job of repairing existing refineries and building new ones that would meet the local demand optimally. His words: “The Kolade Board is a distraction from the real argument. This thing is not even about the price of fuel. It is about refineries. It is possible for Nigeria to have built refineries since we have started this debate. It is possible between now and that April that the President talked about to have repaired enough of the refineries or built enough to make the argument completely unnecessary. Nigeria is refusing to behave like a serious country. Suppose we were at war and a foreign country locked off all our refineries, won’t we build one with immediate effect? The question of what Kolade is going to do is a big distraction because that is not how to manage a country. A country is managed according to proper budgeting principles. If you are collecting taxes, the way to spend taxes is well laid down in the budgets of most governments in the world. You don’t need any special extra-governmental system such as the Kolade or the Buhari one. Only unserious governments do it”.

Similarly, a university lecturer, Dr Chijioke Uwasomba, maintained that the Board would be another avenue to fritter away public money. According to him, “the PTF headed by Buhari was created by the government then because it said it wanted to keep the money realised from the withdrawal of subsidy with the body. The body was given some specific functions. But as you know, at a point the body was said to be by another government and so the Obsanjo government did away with it. The thing is that the ruling class is playing games with the lives of Nigerians because the issue is not about setting up another body called Subsidy Reinvestment Board. You will also realise that the hike in the pump price of petroleum product will affect all aspects of our lives. I don’t think that both the removal of subsidy and the Board established to manage the fund will work. Nigerians will not accept this Board. There is nothing reasonable, there is nothing patriotic, and there is nothing useful that will come from this Board. As I said, every government in power in Nigeria is playing games with the lives and security of the Nigerian people. So, nothing good will come out of it because this is just an opportunity to give money to ‘the boys’. Government has already said it would bring in 1,600 buses and all that. Who are the people that will buy these buses? Where are they going to buy these buses from? I don’t think that the critical sector of the Nigerian society will accept what Jonathan’s presidency is doing. So, I see a long battle with this government”.

Additionally, an Ibadan-based lawyer, Mr. Olabode Ajayi, noted that comparing the PTF with the subsidy Board was a needless exercise, more so that it was an action taken by a government that is “insensitively indifferent to the dangerously pulsating pulse of the Nigerian people”. Speaking with The Nation, Ajayi held that “it is highly irresponsible of anybody to do the same thing in the same way and expect different outcome. Unfortunately, that is what our government has elected to do without sparing some minutes to re-examine the decisions it has taken. Although the PTF which Buhari provided leadership for tried only in a little way, the fact that we are still neck-deep in the rivers of backwardness in the area of development in the critical areas of our economy is enough to convince anyone that the establishment of committees or boards to manage government’s incompetence is outright unnecessary.

“It is in the light of this that I see the Christopher Kolade-led Board. It will only scratch the surface and fizzle out without affecting Nigerians positively. If the presidency finds it difficult to manfully address the asphyxiating corruption in the oil industry, how can the Board it set up be above board? Even if this Board survives the coming decisive battle against the removal of subsidy, I honestly don’t see it achieving anything remarkable – not even close to the very little the controversial Buhari PTF recorded”.

Contrariwise, a highly placed officer in one of the Local Government Areas of Borno State, who would not want his name in print, said he was confident that the subsidy Board would deliver. He based his conviction on what he described as the impeccable track record of Kolade, who he said he had known for many years. In spite of the strong note of disapproval from Nigerians, he called on them to give the Chairman of the Board a chance. He said: “I have not taken time to go through the profiles of other members of the Subsidy Reinvestment Board, but what I know is that Dr Christopher Kolade is a very good industrialist. He is a transparent man. Times are changing. During the time of Muhammadu Buhari the rate of problems was not as it is now. The Abacha period had all kinds of problems. But I know that the Chairman of this subsidy Board will perform. I have confidence in his ability to deliver. If he has the right people, those who are transparent, to work with I am confident that he will deliver much more than Buhari did. With him there I don’t think we have to worry; he is going to do something very good”.

From the foregoing, it is doubtful whether the Board will survive the hardcore resistance against it, a development that was alien to the PTF under Buhari.

Men to decide Nigeria security situation in 2012
Some men will shape Nigeria security situation in the New Year. Ademola Adesola examines them

With the relentless ruthlessness of the dangerous Islamic sect, Boko Haram, increasingly making a mess of security in Nigeria, 2012, needless to say, will seriously task the service chiefs. They will be expected to initiate useful security plans that will ensure that the problem of insecurity currently threatening the peace of the country is fully addressed. Indication that the service chiefs will have to play more pivotal roles in the New Year emerged after their meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan last Thursday at the Villa. According to reports, the Federal Government has concluded plans to overhaul the security operations in the country so as to be able to effectively address the various security threats assailing the country. And because these men will be highly depended on to implement the plans, they immediately become key people expected to decide the nation’s security concerns in the New Year.

These key individuals who were also in attendance at the security meeting include the Inspector-General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petinrin, Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika, Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ola Ibrahim, Chief of Air Staff, Vice-Air Marshal Mohammed Umar, the National Security Adviser, General Owoye Azazi, Director General State Security Service, Ita Ekpenyong, and Director-General, Nigeria Intelligence Agency, Olaniyi Oladeji.

On his part, Hafiz Ringim is expected to rally his men and ensure that they adequately confront the worrisome increase in crime rate and of course do more in preventing crime rather than just appearing at the scene after the dastardly act has been effectively executed. He is expected to task the various state Commissioners of Police on how to make their commands achieve enduring result against the more daring men of the Boko Haram sect. The IGP has already assured Nigerians that the Force is “prepared more than ever before … l assure you members of the public that the Nigerian Police Force and indeed all other security agencies are now ready more than ever before to face these challenges".

Similarly, Azubuike Ihejirika will be expected to come up with a more viable tactic of engaging the men of the dreaded Islamic cell whose guerrilla method is clearly undermining the efforts of the Nigerian army which is more at home with conventional war. Doubtless, the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDS) and increasing confrontation with security forces will further stand him on his toes and inform more decisive decisions and improvement on current methods of engagement in the fight against terrorism and other forms of threat to security. Whether Boko Haram and other allied security challenges that the nation faces will abate or get worse in the year has more to do with the path the army chief and his troops choose to travel.

Another man to watch in the security arena this year is the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petinrin. He will be expected to spearhead the operational restructuring that the country’s state of insecurity has necessitated. Already he has dropped the hint that the operational restructuring will possibly come in form of movement of personnel and total overhaul of security network systems to make them more proactive and responsive. As the CDS, Petinrin’s oversight functions in the security network may receive more boosts. The overarching urge to achieve result and stem the raging tide of terrorism in the land will again bring him more into action.

More than ever before, the SSS under Ita Ekpenyong has the inevitable duty of unmasking the bigwigs who are the life-wire of Boko Haram. It is expected that serious intelligence works have to be done by his organisation if the battle against the group is to be won. As Ekpenyong will be busy with his men in intelligence gathering on the home front, the Director-General, Nigeria Intelligence Agency, Olaniyi Oladeji, will be expected to be working very hard to oversee foreign intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Since it has been revealed that the Islamic sect receives assistance in terms of training of its men and provision of weapons from some terrorist groups abroad, the man has more to do in the area of exposing the said links in order to enhance the efforts being made by other security agencies to subvert and despoil the terrorist gangs the continuous existence of the country.

What is not in doubt is that whatever these service men do or fail to do in the New Year will go a long way in determining whether the security situation in the country will improve or worsen.

Bearing the burdens of people in courts and feeding their minds through creatively humorous books are two essential activities that Chuma Nwokolo, Jr., luxuriates in. The suave, well-travelled author of African Tales at Jailpoint, Diary of a Dead African, One More Tale for the Road, Memories of Stone, etc., also invests his time in editing a literary magazine called African Writing. In a chance encounter at a book reading recently in Lagos, the attorney and author spoke with Ademola Adesola on issues bordering on writing and similar matters

A practising lawyer with fertile creative imagination

My background is law in the sense that I went to the university to read law, but I have always had a passion for writing. As a matter of fact, before I finished my law degree I had already written my first two novels, one of which was published while I was still in school. The novels were The Extortionist and Dangerous Inheritance – both of them in Pacesetter Macmillan Series. Although I am a lawyer by training and passionate about this, I am also by attitude, disposition and passion a writer.

Inspiration and influences for writing

My inspiration for writing is the life I live and the life I see around me. I think it goes out of observation. A good writer is a good observer. You see things and you articulate what you see, and you add something else which is where the perspiration comes in. You actually don’t just report what you see, you actually add something. It could be the colour; you could see in black and white and add colour. It could be soul. You see some hard facts and you put soul into it. When someone reads that, you activate something in the person that leads that person to new things they never knew before. So, all that comes from the act of writing. That is what inspires me – observation as well as the vision I have.

Talking about influences now may be difficult for me. I have read and enjoyed many writers. What I do know is that in the process of writing I also come many writers. I also publish and edit a magazine called African Writing. So, I am exposed to contemporary writing. And I know that my inspiration comes not just from what I read while I was growing up, it also comes from what I read everyday. I think that at this stage I would say that my writing style is reasonably settled. So, I am not as influenced by what I read as I would have done at an early stage of my career. But certainly for inspiration, I am inspired daily by what I read, what I see, what happens around me, the kind of conversation I have with people. All these inspire me to write. But it is difficult for me to talk in terms of actual literary people who influenced my writing.

Reflection on his creative work

The thrust of my work, Diary of a Dead African in this case, is that we have a more heartless society than we used to have. Previously our society was more communal, but now it is quite individualistic. And now it is possible for a man to live and die like a lizard. This is what haunted Meme, one of the protagonists in the novel. He fears the death of a lizard, the death that he will die alone, nobody will see him, or know him. He is afraid of that. And he almost died that way. I think that the centre of my writing that novel is that idea that we do have a society that is really uncaring and people there can perish for want of an encouraging word. It advocates that it is important for us to get back to that communalism, that idea that you have an extended family that is supportive, that you have friendship that will carry you through difficult times, that you don’t have to suffer in silence when you have a problem that somebody can help you with.

I also wrote it from a point of view of talking some conflicts that simply being able to talk with someone else will be able to resolve a lot of things.

Assessing the reception of his works

Absolutely! The reception is encouraging. But of course you have to make a difference between “have you published a million books?” and “have your readers enjoyed the books you have published?” I think my books have been well received. I think my books have been books that when they have found their readers they have been very well received. I am grateful for that.

On the challenges of book circulation network and the problem of self-publishing

I think it is part of the problems we have with infrastructure. This is simply not available, including the one for reading. The readership culture is in decline. There is also infrastructure in terms of bookshops. Where we are now is not encouraging. We have problems when it comes to distribution. So, between the publishers and the bookshops there is a problem. We can’t get bookshops in Kara Namoda, you cannot get books from Lagos. And you also have problems with the bookshops themselves. Most of the bookshops you go to are more interested in textbooks that are recommended and guaranteed in sales. There are all those infrastructural problems in the industry. But having said that, we have to make a start from where we are, which is why everybody who is involved in book trade in Nigeria should recognise that they are involved in developmental project. They are there to help to develop it. So, you don’t only make decisions on the basis of what is good business, you are also making a commitment to an industry that will around in the next 20 years not necessarily for your pocket today. If you don’t do that, then you are not going to build capacity. Every writer has to be a readership promoter. You are not just writing your book in one corner, you to try to make people read books generally. Every bookshop too has to be a readership promoter, a distributor. The same thing applies to every publisher. You have to try and get your books out there. You can’t seat in your corner and say, “this is how it is done in advanced world, so I am going to it that way”. You can’t say because the writer in advanced world just has to write a book and go home, therefore you have to do it that way. They don’t do it that way out there either. For more of the same reason we cannot afford to do it like that.

Assessing efforts aimed at stemming the tide of decline in reading culture

It is a good project anytime anybody talks about bringing back the book. I think that if the President wants to really get involved in the “Bring Back the Book” campaign, he should not do it in the way any other celebrity would do it. That is because he is the President and he actually has the power to do a lot more than talk about it, run a publicity campaign. There is a lot he can do. This includes the policies he can put down, libraries for instance. The President can make it possible for every single local government in Nigeria to have a library. All the 774 local governments have children. It means they have audience. And because children are young they can be encouraged to read. That is why the focus of the reading campaign should be children. All the local governments should run and stock their libraries. That policy alone will do a lot. It will not cost a lot of money to put a bungalow together. It is the cheapest project any local government can undertake. It will not cost much money to get one or two librarians. This can be the most significant thing he can do rather than running a book campaign that helps only a few people. If he does that and encourages the doing of that, then we can talk in terms of stocking the books. Automatically you find out that all the books that are published already have a solid market based on the library market. And then you are already creating a readership, you are already creating a distributorship.

On book reading events

The good thing about this is that it is starting. But you also find out that it is a very selective process. The people who would come to book readings are people who are already caught by the reading bug. But what we need to do when we are doing reading promotion is actually to go to the unchurched. You preach to people who are not converted. You go to places where traditionally they do not read, and you can get them to be interested in reading. Again, reading should be driven by the demand; everywhere there is a demand for it there should be a reading. And people should promote their books through activities like reading programmes.