Literature

By Salisu Yusuf

Reading is the interpretation of some signs, symbols and codes into meaning for intellectual consumption. Reading is the third skill in the order of the four language skills behind writing, for one can only write when he knows how to read. The significance of reading can be viewed in the context of the world being a global village; reading has today made our world a unipolar entity where communities understand each other and realise their diversity.

In Islam, reading is the most crucial skill in seeking knowledge and understanding God. The first verse of revelation is “Iqra’a”, or read, for it’s through the pen(writing) that the Lord teaches man some knowledge.

Reading has been the highest source of joy for man. It emancipates and frees man from the shackles of servitude. People have read to escape from the deception of the perverts, the so-called clerics who misinterpret divine injunctions according to their caprices. Reading can wrench you from the grips and chicanery of postmodern politicians. Read and be free from the bog of tradition, the tyranny of the oppressor, the darkness of illiteracy and the glibness of the scammers. 

In fact, reading can make you a gentleman/lady; men/women have become milder, sober and more empathetic through years of excessive reading. When you read, you will understand yourself, your immediate environment, and your world. When you don’t read, you suffer from a lack of effective education. That’s called illiteracy.

 Reading can take you to places you’ve never been. I was once with the notorious Adolf Hitler in a ditch shortly before his infamous suicide. I was once in a Bagdad prison, witnessing the despicable hanging of dictator Saddam Hussein. I have been to Elysse Palace with the powerful Charles de Gaulle during his assassination attempt. Asare Konadu has given me an imaginative ride to cultural Ghana. James Hardly Chase has numerously chauffeured me to an underworld, taught me criminology, spying and espionage. Achebe has taught me some aspects of Igbo culture; in fact, he was the one who told me that “breaking cola” wasn’t only a Hausa culture.

I once read a fable with a combination of animal, bird and spirit characters. I melted into the sky, and became a spirit. I perched on branches of trees as a brood, hatching and nestling. I had become a spirit and mutated into a bird the next moment, flying on a vast, blue and cold sky, feeling acrophobic. I still remember with nostalgia those imaginative, daring escapades. A reader can go directly to a character’s mind and discover his inner thought. He can scale a river and be on war fronts. 

Reading can be your route to escape, add to your knowledge experience, and can polish your language, open you to new vistas and give you aesthetic joy.

 As an advanced reader, you shouldn’t read excessively at night (learn to rest for your mental well-being), or in sunny spots (you should go under a shade). Preferably, don’t read from a white paper; the best paper to read from is either a light yellow or light blue.

 The best thing in your reading is to protect and harness your eyes from being strained. Your eyes aren’t only your sighting treasure. They’re your intellectual and economic assets. By using the best and appropriate paper, you take a long-term measure that’s best for your eyes in later life.

The uncomfortable truth is that, you’ll reach a stage in your life when you lose that flexibility in and around your eyes. So, you must compensate them with reading glasses. But using the right paper will sustain the tempo and rhythm of your sight. You should harness your eyes at this crucial stage of your life. To quote from the famous English poet, Oliver Goldsmith, “husband out life tapers at the close. And keep the flames from wasting by repose.”

At an advanced level of our reading, we read when we’re in the mood, when we’re in the best mental state. This is why it’s crucial to coordinate your eyes and mind together during your reading; otherwise, you’ll only say the alphabet, not the semantic words. There’s a difference between saying and reading. In saying, you don’t understand; in reading, you get the gist.

During our personal/independent reading, we should avoid vocalisation and sub-vocalization because they’re diversionary; we employ the use of silent reading, where the eyes and mind do the bidding. We move the eyes but not the head.

 As an advanced reader, you should devise a contextual reading. A context reading is when a reader utilises all those syntactic, semantic, and discourse markers as well as the surrounding information, use an appropriate analytical approach to the vocabulary, and use the historical and cultural backgrounds in his quest for meaning. 

A reader should digest both the content and form. Reading is twofold; he digests the content for the message and the form or language where he learns some contextual expressions. 

Reading should be a lifetime endeavour. However, reading cannot be an obstacle to my midday siesta, my routine physical exercise, or my light walk. It cannot hinder my other religious obligations.

Reading is my morning tea, my late morning cake and drink, my heavy lunch, my afternoon dessert, and my evening supper. Reading is my light dinner. I will read until I can read no more until I feel numb and dark.

 Salisu Yusuf wrote from Katsina via salisuyusuf111@gmail.com.

By Salisu Yusuf

Writing is the act of inscribing some signs, symbols and codes which a reader absorbs, encodes and interprets to act on, connect to, or change an attitude towards something. Writing is the fourth of the four basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. This, however, does not make writing the least important; in fact, writing is the most critical language skill in the current global context due to its perceived wider, heterogeneous and scattered audience and its permanence.

Speaking is also instant and irretrievable (at least before the invention of modern communication and broadcasting systems). You can only apologise after saying something. Writing can be edited and is retrievable. In other words, writing has some measure of revisability or verifiability. Every other form of communication is ephemeral. Only writing survives time because of its encryption. Moreover, the purpose of reading is defeated if there’s no writing. Writing has preserved divine scriptures.

Writing can make you happy because when you write, you instantly release a pent-up feeling. When you unburden, you feel you’ve got rid of something. Writing makes your day. It makes you great, famous and successful. Writers are known to have defied time and become immortals. Writers are immortals because their names defy times: Chinua Achebe, Khaled Hossein, Nuruddeen Farah, Newal Elsadawy, etc., are timeless names. The power of the pen has bound people and made the world better.

Good writing skills, the ability to convince, and the ability to communicate with a good command of language will likely attract a mass audience. These make public relations and propaganda tools for controlling narratives and persuasion.

One secret to writing is that writing widens your horizon and increases your critical thinking and sense of reasoning. It broadens your analytical skills. Writing makes you more sensible. It opens new vistas and can lead you to explore lands and thoughts that men have never explored. So, write, write, rewrite until you write the right.

Writing is, however, a slippery slope. Lest you forget, writing reveals you- it lets your audience know your personality, character traits, likes and dislikes, troubles, etc. This is because, when you write, you leave out gaps, aporias which the reader fills.

Though writing is a joyful venture, it can be a self-destructive escapade. So, know your subject matter well and write on what’s verifiable. Avoid defamatory, slanderous materials. You should know that laws of defamation cover writing, so don’t bring an issue that will likely injure the reputation of an innocent one. Men are dignified creatures. Don’t dare denigrate them.

Moreover, while writing, do not infringe on others’ copyright. Make your copy the right one. Copyright laws strictly bind writing; when you quote, acknowledge your source correctly.

As a writer, you should know that writing is fluid; it has no fixed shape. Therefore, it yields explications, expositions and interpretations. So, when you write, as Roland Barthes said, you’re a dead author. People rightly interpret your write-ups and derive multiple meanings. Therefore, when you write, you’re no longer in control of your text. You’re a dead author. Only the readers are alive and in control of the meaning.

As a writer, the sensibility of your audience is respected. Writing always goes with its moral appeal. I have not seen a fool as one who writes to level old scores, which hurts feelings. That’s the definition of a fool. 

For some, writing is a profession. For others, writing is a skill, while some look at writing as an escapement. Whatever it’s to you, write and rewrite until you write the right.

Salisu Yusuf wrote from Katsina via salisuyusuf111@gmail.com.

By Sulaiman Maijama’a

A barrage of questions troop into my inbox daily from people outside the writing circle, declaring their interest to come in. Some questions are worthy enough, while some are funny and crazy. For example, a young lady asked me to teach her “Article Writing” via WhatsApp. Another once asked, “can I become a writer in one week?”  Somebody told me “kai kam rubutu bayi maka wahala“. What a wrongful assumption!

Let me, in order not to give a wrong impression of myself, humbly submit that I’m just a fledgling writer aspiring to be a pen wizard one day. My decision to write on “writing” this time was prompted by the fact that those who excelled are too busy to avail themselves and become beast of burden for aspiring writers. Be that as it may, a dot in the circle (like me?) may have something to offer. And as the saying goes, “there is love in sharing”. Thus, I will share the following tips for aspiring writers:

1. BE PASSIONATE AND AMBITIOUS. This, in my view, is the first step to becoming a writer. Writing is daunting, time-consuming, attention-demanding and a continuous learning process.  Whoever tells you the contrary is leading you astray. But your passion and ambition are the driving force that will keep propelling you to defy all odds and cross the blocks on your way to the promised land. I believe that one (1) inspiration can overcome ninety-nine (99) perspiration.

Haven’t you ever asked yourself why some people who read English or Mass Communication write poorly or don’t write? But others who are trained scientists are writing professionally standard _Medical Doctors, Zoologists, Agriculturalists among others write well. This is to tell you that writing is a product of passion and ambition. Regardless of what you read, you can be a writer per excellence.

2. MASTER YOUR LANGUAGE. Reasonable proficiency in a language is a prerequisite for any writer who wants to be taken seriously by his readers. Not necessarily English Language, but any language you write in. Master the language to the level that the native speaker will appreciate you. Nobody can afford to devote his time to reading trash in the name of writing. Nobody will take you seriously when your essay contains grammatical errors, sentence fragments, dangling modifiers, and incoherent and incohesive sentences and paragraphs.

3. READ. I do not know a better way a writer can improve than by taking an avid interest in reading. Reading good writings is what makes good writers. And the volume of the text you read must supersede the magnitude of your writing. For instance, you need to read and analyse at least ten articles when writing a single piece. Before you write a single book, read and review one hundred books. Do you know that when a writer stops reading, it reflects in their writings?

4. HAVE MODEL(S) AND MENTOR(S). In any profession one wants to excel in, they must have people they look up to. Different writers have different styles of writing. As a young aspiring writer, identify your hero(s), look up to them and read them more. While having a model(s) will help you raise the bar of your success by dreaming bigger, having a mentor(s) will, on the other hand, help you be on the rightful terrain to the promised land. Mentors are a blessing; they show you the way, and when you feel like giving up, they reinvigorate your confidence.

5. WRITE FREQUENTLY. It is impossible to learn writing by theory; it is learnt by the practical application of theoretical ideas. But, like a muscle getting stronger by exertion, writing improves through frequent practice. If you write frequently, you will discover that today’s writing is better than yesterday’s. Your writings this week are better than those of previous weeks. That’s one magic about it. So, never get tired of writing if you want to become a good writer.

6. HAVE AN AREA OF INTEREST.  A writer should specialise in a given area, preferably the area they are more interested in. For instance, some people are sport-loving, some follow every trend in politics, some on entertainment, some on terrorism etc. The wisdom behind identifying an area of interest is that whatever you are interested in, you will not find it too daunting but rather fun that will push you to break the glass ceiling. But this does not mean limiting yourself to a single area; a good writer should be able to write on every topic under the sun.

7. DON’T BE DECEIVED BY ENCOMIUMS: Writers carried away by flattering are likely to feel complacent. Most of the encomiums coming from people are not genuine. Regrettably, this has led to the downfall of many writers. Some people will overrate you; some will send you positive responses even without reading you. However, positive responses are motivating, but be relaxed, know your level and keep improving.

8. ACCEPT CORRECTIONS AND KEEP LEARNING. Nobody has a monopoly in this business. There is no level of professionalism a writer can attain where they are above mistakes. Even globally recognised writers make mistakes. Always keep your doors open for corrections, learn from them, and keep learning every day.

Maijama’a is a student at the Faculty of Communication, Bayero University, Kano and wrote via sulaimanmaija@gmail.com.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The former Lagos State governor and the Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Ahmad Tinubu, has written a love poem for his wife Senator Oluremi Tinubu to celebrate her birthday.

The politician took to his verified Facebook account to eulogize his wife in a poem on Wednesday.

Some parts of the poem reads, “Not even the demands of politics can suppress the rush of emotions I feel everytime it’s your birthday.

“Dearest Oluremi, my Senator! I love and appreciate you each passing day. Recalling how we started fills me with gratitude: how you have stood by me, unconditionally, like the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Senator Oluremi Tinubu, a senator and wife of the APC flagbearer clocks 62 on Wednesday.

By Abba Musa Ibrahim

When Europeans came to Africa and said, You have no culture, no religion, no civilization, no history; Africa was bound sooner or later to reply by displaying her own accomplishments. To do this, her writers and intellectuals- stepped back into what you may call the purity before the coming of Europe. What they uncovered there they put into their books and poems, and this became known as their culture, their answer to Europe’s arrogance.   – Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart (1958) is a text on colonialism by Achebe. As Ngugi asserts, “There is no writing in a vacuum”. Equally, Stanley Fish, Raymond William, Edward Said, and Homi K. Bhaba, among others, strongly believe that writing consciously or unconsciously reflects political, historical or social issues at the time of its birth.

In response to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Joyce Carry’s Mister Johnson, Achebe came up with Things Fall Apart to rectify the distorted image of Africa popularised by the Europeans. As he was quoted, “My role as a writer is to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexities of years of denigration and self-abasement”.

Things Fall Apart is recognized as one of the 100 novels ever written in history. It has also been translated into more than 50 different languages. Achebe gets the title of the text from W.B Yeats, an Irish poet, in his poem, “The Second Coming.”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The Falcon cannot hear the falconer

Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

The text has 165 pages, twenty-five chapters, and three phases, each discussing a distinct matter. The first part talks about the culture, tradition, norms and values and political system of Igbo society. Meanwhile, the second part talks about the major character, Okonkwo’s exile to his mother’s kinsmen in Mbanta when he kills a boy during a funeral festival. Then, lastly, is the happenings that lead him to hang himself.

The first part of the text opens with Okonkwo, who gets renown by wiping the floor with Amalinze; his celebrity circulates far and wide. He’s also a man of action, industrious and works tirelessly to go contrary to his bone idle and workshy father. Ikemefuna is brought to Okonkwo’s household before his future is decided. Pronto, the boy, owns the love of Okonkwo.

We also glance at Okonkwo, who has four wives and children and run them with heavy hands because he wants them to shun being inactive. His strictness makes him break a week of peace by beating his wife in black and blue. He also cuts Ikemefuna down, which Ezeadu forewarns him, “That boy calls you father, do not bear a hand in his death” (P.45). He does this and takes the life of sixteen years inadvertently, which in their custom is exile for seven years.

Secondly, the second part opens in Mbaino, Okonkwo’s mother’s town, where he serves for seven years. He receives a helping hand from his boon companion, Obiereka, by looking after his remnants of farm and letting him know about the arrival of white men who wiped out Abame altogether, and oracles apprise them that;

“The strange man would break their

Clan spread destruction among them” (p.111)

He also accepts the worsened situation:

“… Now he has won our brothers and our clan

Can no longer act like one; he has put a knife

On the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (p.141)

Thirdly, the last part of the text is on Okonkwo’s return from Mbaino, where he loses his celebrity and social prestige. He finds out that white missionaries take everything up. They erect churches, courts, government and schools. He stands up against missionaries, fighting back his fame, social prestige and customs. But, drearily, he fails by not getting any co-operation from his clan, and this frustrates him to the core, and he takes his own life.

Abba Musa Ibrahim can be reached via abbamusa6888@gmail.com.

• Title: Nearly All The Men in Lagos Are Mad

• Author: Damilare Kuku

• Genre: Fiction

• Date of Publication: 2021

• Page: 198
• Publisher: Masobe Books

• Reviewer: Aliyu Idris

It is the author’s debut. It entails twelve short stories narrated in cooperative narration; almost every story revolves around a subject regarding the woman or feminine gender.

From the book title, you may sense that it’s questionable, derogatory and disrespectful to men. However, the book exposes the sufferings of women and how the men of Lagos behave, especially towards women. It involves the story of sacrifice, endurance, rape, patriarchy and phallocentric, deceit and betrayal. Women are presented as saints. But, as it happens in reality, some characters found in some stories are the reason for their suffering.

Another crucial issue highlighted and promoted in the book is the concept of feminism. Just like contemporary feminists, I am not flabbergasted to find out that one of the author’s inspirations to produce the book is a feminist (Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie).

Almost every female writer who writes in any genre of literature promotes feminism right from the 19th and 20th-century feminists such as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and Kate Millet down to the present-day feminists.

Because contemporary feminist writers do not stick to one feminist ideology but many subcategories. For instance, every story in the book has a different class of feminist ideology. For example, the first story titled “Cuck-Up” uses Amazon feminism to potray how defiant women are despite appearing weak and passive.

The last story in the book, “Independence Day,”  uses cultural feminism, showing women’s kindness and gentility.

Eco-feminism in the story “Anointed Wife” emphasises that patriarchial societies are detrimental to women.

Charles E Brazzler, in his book Literary Criticism An Introduction to Theory and Practice Fifth Edition, asserts that it’s the view of contemporary feminists that subjugation of women still exists worldwide. Issues such as rape, prostitution, social injustice, early marriages, polygamy etc., the feminist writers continue to add their voices to protest through their pens and papers.

It should be noted that feminism has been broadly international in scope, and many local and general factors dictate its disposition. For example, writers from Arab traditions such as Fatima Mernissi and Leila Ahmed have attempted to articulate a feminist vision distinctly marked by their specific cultural concerns. The same is true of African-American feminists such as Alice Walker and feminists of Asian heritage such as Gayatri Spivak (Habib 2005:669).

At a time when ignorance reigns 

When human’s soul lost its sense

Amidst Banu Hashim emerged a light

Which illuminations light the earth 

He led the Beduins on the right path

To save them from God’s wrath 

He was sent to the whole of humanity

To be the doctor of the heart and mind

I envy the cloud above his head 

Which followed and gave him shade

I envy the disciples that learnt from him

They learnt the Qur’an directly from him

I envy the soldiers that went on Jihad

For if I were there, I would work hard

I envy the eye that stared at his face 

It’s the most handsome of the Human race

I envy the she-camel that led his Mi’irage

For it was very great a voyage

I envy the spider that sprong its web

Which appeared to the foes as a cobweb

I envy the cup that gave him drink

For it fed his tongue, the truthful ink

I envy those that smelled his scent 

For his body emanated smell; fragrant

I envy the pot that cooked him food

Not excluding the recipes and firewood

He is Muhammad, the chosen one

He is Ahmad; the praised one

Those are the few I can mention

For his blessings have no dimension

Written by

Hussain Abdullahi,

©Avicenna

By Shehu Mubarak Sulaiman

“I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is to look at the works of others” – Wole Soyinka

About a month ago, I woke up to a message on my Facebook Messenger. I was perplexed as to why a message would come in that early. It was dawn, and the skies had not brightened significantly enough for the layman’s morning to be declared.

The sender was someone who had once informed me of his interest in poetry. He had slid into my inbox a couple of months ago, and had registered his love for my writings, after which he requested that I mentored him.

Without wasting much time, I had introduced him to Poetic Wednesdays Initiative and urged him to follow-up on their activities. I had also introduced him to similar platforms, like the Poets in Nigeria Initiative Facebook Group.

 A week later, I sent him a flyer for a forthcoming workshop and asked him to register. The workshop was organized by Poetic Wednesdays Initiative, and was to be facilitated by top-notch poets: Umar Abubakar Sidi and Dr. Ismail Bala. To cut the long story short and hit the nail on the head, Abdul-Rahman Jafaru Wali, a medical student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria was the person in my inbox.

He had messaged me that early to inform me of his emergence as one of the ten winners of the recently-concluded “The Nigeria I See” poetry competition organized by MOP (Movement of the People). His feat had come just about a month after he had registered for a workshop organized by Poetic Wednesdays Initiative.

That is a practical portrayal of how much of a platform Poetic Wednesdays Initiative is, one does not come and leave empty-handed.

For three years now, I have been approached consistently by people slightly younger or even older than I am. Their solicitation has over the years lost every element of surprise. Whenever I receive a message from a stranger on Facebook, half of the time, it’s about poetry writing or writing pertaining to other genres of literature.

The question had always been the same from all of these people. They keep asking: “How can I learn poetry?” This is such a difficult question to answer, as there is a never-ending debate about whether poetry writing is an innate or a learnt skill.

Regardless, I refer back to Wole Soyinka’s quote about learning the craft of writing; how it relies heavily on imitation, and Poetic Wednesdays Initiative had always been my first recommendation for them.

First, if the advances are offline, I will ask them if they have a Facebook account. And if they answer in the affirmative, I’d urge them to like the page, and submit poems of any quality every Wednesday of the week. Over the years, I have lost count of people I had introduced to this platform.  Some of them have now grown to become a significant fraction of the finest writers that we have around.

The journey of these wonderful poets and wannabe poets reminds me of my own journey. I had started just like them, a newbie, and a sprouting seed.  In the concluding months of the year 2016, I had grown tired of talking about my dream of becoming a writer. The more I talked about it, the more I felt like a fraud, my impostor syndrome was becoming more and more intense that I had contemplated giving up writing altogether.

I was at the crossroads, one road led to an Eldorado of a life I had always made up in my head; the fantasies of what a celebrated writer’s life seems, and the other led to a path of giving up, a one-way route to despair.

Being a science student was more than enough deterrent already. I talked to a friend who had graduated from the university a year before me and who I believe had more life experience than I. He spoke of his friend called Salim Yunusa, who has founded this small literary platform that aims at nurturing young talents in literary-inclined endeavors.

I talked to Salim Yunusa and he introduced me to a platform called Poetic Wednesdays, that was before it became Poetic Wednesdays Initiative. It was the newly-founded platform of his. I had written a couple of poems before then, but I had posted none, they were all in my phone’s notepad, longing to be seen.

So, all I did was waited for that fateful Wednesday before making my entry. My poem was handpicked and afterwards posted on the page. I followed the poem up, and relished some of the praise-coated comments. That was my first official encounter with poem writing.

As time went by, submissions from me became more and more regular. I enjoyed every bit of it; the praise, the feeling of having written something someone else enjoyed reading. Amidst all that nursing school monotony, consistent memorization, and voracious reading to stay afloat, I found an escape.

I had started to look forward to every Wednesday, it felt refreshing reading through poems on the page, and sometimes using them as a blueprint to craft mine. I started to make friends online, Facebook transfigured from a place where I come to catch up on viral gossip, or post pictures, to a place where I have direct contact with intellectuals and like minds. My time online started to become more of an educative endeavor rather than a fun-seeking one.

Weeks passed by and I had started to play with different themes, I had become a favorite on the platform. People looked forward to every Wednesday, so they could catch a glimpse of my poem and savor all its flavors. I had copied styles of poets like Maryam Gatawa, Salim Yunusa, Sani Ammani, Nasiba Babale, and a host of others, before I had come to find my feet.

In 2018, there was a literary hangout somewhere in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria organized by this selfless platform. We dined, and recited poems for the relish of fellow poets and literature lovers present. We had a swell time. In 2019, I rendered my masterpiece titled “I AM NORTH” at one of Poetic Wednesday Initiative’s get-together at Kongo Campus, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

It is the reception it received that had led me to promoting it on different platforms. The video of the poem was played at the 2020 edition of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize event that held in Lagos. The written form of the poem was published on Daily Trust Newspapers, Yasmin El-Rufai Foundation official website, and other notable platforms in Nigeria.

The creatively titled essay of Sa’id Sa’ad “Poetifying the North” is not a coincidence. I particularly love the witty coinage of the word ‘Poetifying’. Indeed, the North has been ‘Poetified’.   Today, in northern Nigeria, as opposed to the nearest past, there is a resurgence of literary activities and discussions like never before. There has been a fast-rising awareness of what literature stands for, and many have continued to embrace it.

Virtually all the states in northern Nigeria have one festival or the other, celebrating literature and further educating young minds on the importance of both literature in English as well as in other indigenous languages. This is not to say that the region had always been dormant in the realms of literature and arts, that won’t be fair to a region that has produced notable writers like Helon Habila, Abubakar Imam Kagara, Abuabakar Adam Ibrahim, Ahmed Maiwada, Ismail Bala, Aliyu Kamal, Victor Dugga, Maria Ajima, Zainab Alkali, Abubakar Gimba, and many others.

It is to say that the awareness about writing, reading, and other literary-inclined endeavors has been quite unprecedented in the last decade. Many young people have come to find it as interesting as any other thing young people enjoy. There are now more festivals, literary contests, literary magazines, literary organizations, school-based literary clubs and so on.

The younger generation had come to transform reading and writing from a tortuous exercise to something exceptionally pleasurable.

The perception towards literature has taken an entirely different dimension. If I am asked to pinpoint literary organizations in the north that have contributed immensely to this growth and literary resurgence, I will place Poetic Wednesdays Initiative amongst the first five on my list.

For the fact that it deals basically with young people and neophytes who may have or have not written anything before, it lays a solid foundation for those who develop cold feet when literary matters are being brought to the table.

This is quite hypothetical, but if one is to assemble ten young writers in northern Nigeria today, I am rest assured that two to three of them would attribute their literary indoctrination and growth from having to read, follow, or interact with poets and literature lovers like the likes of Salim Yunusa, Nasiba Babale, Aliyu Jalal, Mujahid Ameen Lilo, Abdulbasit Abubakar Adamu, Abdul-Rahman Abu-Yaman, Hajaar Muhammad Bashar,Usman Karofi, Maryam Gatawa, Sani Ammani, Abduljalal Musa Aliyu, Sa’id Sa’ad Ababakar and many more.

These writers that I have all had or still have something to do with Poetic Wednesdays Initiative. Nothing makes one more proudhearted.

Poetic Wednesdays Initiative’s six years anniversary is a celebration of poetry, literature, passion, creativity, community development, man-power development, and social change. As it stands, the initiative has organized offline creative writing workshops for more than three hundred secondary school students in Kano, Katsina, Yobe, and Kaduna. It has organized several literary hangouts for free, while also partnering with literary organizations like PIN (Poets in Nigeria), Ahmadu Bello University Arts Festival (ABUFEST), The Arts-Muse Fair, Open Arts, Creative Writer’s club, ABU, Minna Book and Arts Festival (MinnaBAF), Hausa International Book and Arts Festival (HIBAF) and many others, all to promote literary activities, especially in northern Nigeria.  

If this literary organization is assisted in its selfless strides, the future of literature in northern Nigeria will be as rosy as it could ever get.

By Junaid Sharfadi 

For many a century, poetry has been used as a veritable tool to pass on religious, historical and social ideas in northern Nigeria. In Kano, for instance, scholars during my grandad’s generation – and beyond – were good at deploying Arabic and Hausa poetic means when forming an opinion.

Women and children too never missed an opportunity to ululate and chant poetic verses, laden with moral messages, when conveying a bride or on other occasions. The famous Charmandudu poem or the works of Sultan Bello, Aƙilu Aliyu, Nasir Kabara, Mudi Spikin, Asma’u Bint Fodio and Modibbo Kilo serve as an example.

Thus, Art and Culture enthusiasts and promoters like the late Abubakar Gimba or Professor Abdallah Uba Adamu would be delighted to see a literary fraternity sprouting from the fertile land of northern Nigeria, spreading its maturing branches across the country. 

Poetic Wednesday (PW) Initiatives started six years ago as an online platform for poets to engage, grow, entertain and convey impactful messages every Wednesday. From agriculture to artificial intelligence, climate change, peace, conflict, education, love etc. the group writes on diverse, important issues.

The founders, led by Salim Yunusa, have succeeded in unleashing the full potentials of the weekly participants by critiquing and publishing their beautiful and virgin poems that drown readers into poemgasms. Budding poets have since joined to unbutton their poetic minds on marginless screens. No boundaries or limitations, just pure chutzpah and truth that reveal the primordial yet sacred content of the heart.

It is imperative to state that Poetic Wednesdays’ remarkable online presence has been effectively utilized in organizing webinars, competitions and workshops to fuel the passion for literature among youth. Prof. Hussein Nasr was right when he emphasized the significance of poetry in shaping Persian, Arab and Chinese societies. Therefore, with literary groups like PW, this society is on the right side of history.

By Tijjani Muhammad Musa

Poetic Wednesday Initiatives (PW) was started by a group of poets of Arewa extract, but global in netizenry that have their muses tied confidently and securely to their minds.

Young, talented, prolific and spontaneous males and females write poetry with a passion that can surpass the fieriness of the sun as well as the soft and gentle subtleness of a sprouting flower.

As a poet myself, I have had close contact with the founding pillars of the movement and have interacted poetically with their brilliant works at an individual level on various literary platforms on and offline.

And when they, Salim Yunusa, Nasiba Babale, Abdulbasit Abubakar Adamu and a few others decided to unite as one, pulling their writing prowess and resources together and initiating PW, I knew something big was in the offing.

What I find fascinating about the whole Poetic Wednesday Initiatives thing is the innovation and strategy with which the youthful minds developed the idea into a viable literary concept that has turned out to be a force reckon with.

Soon, it became the in-thing to have a poet’s piece published on their platform or else it’s not worth reading. Everybody eventually started talking about the beautiful works coming from different hitherto unknown bards, all thanks to their featuring on Poetic Wednesday.

Budding poets on this side of the divide and those across the Niger river found it a challenge to up their writings to meet the unofficial standards set by the PW team. And on social media, the “Poetic Wednesday!” echo was all over the place.

To encourage further participation by shy and underdeveloped poets, PW started offering poetic lessons and coaching to young and not so young struggling poets to develop their skills. They even began a state by state tour in which they taught many the basics of writing good poetry.

Many who have benefitted from such an initiative have developed not just their words craftsmanship, but the confidence to share their poetry on various social media poetry sites. So many were the collections had never seen the light of the day earlier.

There is no doubt that the initiative within the first six (6) of its existence has successfully awakened the inert poets residing in many of us. The question now on many people’s minds is; how do PW consolidate on its success and achievements so far?

Well, for a start, PW is no more a mere platform for poetic talents, both budding, seasoned or veterans, to come and showcase their creative stuff and then walk away. The PW guys have turned the set-up into a fully incorporated business entity. Way to go!

Having been upgraded into a registered business outfit, PW is hoped to set out not only to promote creative literary works but, in collaboration with other stakeholders, to make it its affair to promote, sponsor, and publish writings from writers and poets, making them published authors among other things.

As part of their future strives, PW should also look into the potential of organizing literary workshops, seminars, webinars, shows etc. that will give opportunities to talents in the literary circle to be taught how to measure up in meeting requirements for entering and winning competitions and contests at local, national and international levels.

It will also be an outstanding achievement on PW’s part if it can organize sponsored literary competitions and contests for primary, secondary, and even tertiary institutions to discover hidden literary talents in society and connect them with corporate sponsors to publish their books and anthologies.

I would not mind seeing PW start an institution of learning where poetry, poets and writers in other genres of literature from across the world can find a haven to come and exchange ideas and technical knowhow towards furthering the development of writing skills in various languages such as Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Nupe, Kanuri among others via the art of writing.

Congratulations to the PW team for achieving such a monumental milestone. It has been six exciting and value-adding years for society. This is definitely worth going to the moon for. Thus we are pleased to associate with you and your success and believe that if careful planning, focus and dedication to execution would hold sway, more wins are assuredly guaranteed.

Tijjani Muhammad Musa – Poetic Tee is the Chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Kano Chapter.