allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Ist Northern Writers Summit - a Re-Definition of Status (Page 1 of 2)

"MOST of us writing from the North are rarely accorded recognition as our counterparts in the other parts of the country." said a female Hausa-Fulani writer."

It is probably because some of us prefer to write in our indigenous language and rarely communicate in English to gain larger audience," another female writer from the region added with almost a sense of resentment.

Indeed, it was like a renaissance of sort last week when writers from across the nineteen states of the northern region converged on Minna, Niger State capital, to redefine what they described as the "valuable place of creative writing" as it affects the northern part of the country.

Overtime, however, creative writing, as far as the northern region is concerned, has not only been less-celebrated, but also lacks such vibrance and creative authenticity to make it take its place in the world literary discourse.

But, last week's convening of a three-day literary retreat, under the theme: "Sustaining Creative Writing in Northern Nigeria" was also for the purpose of charting a new direction for creative writing in the region. The summit provided a platform for the discussion of the peculiar problems of writing and education in the Northern of the country.

All through the three-day gathering, held between Sunday, May 4 through Wednesday, May 7, 2008, it was a discourse session of Northern literature at its peak.

Minna, a city encamped by jutted hills and valleys, assumed, albeit temporarily, the status of the literary capital of the northern region as members of the writing tribe, academics led by the famous writer, Abubakar Gimba, and the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor of Niger State on Research and Documentation, Alhaji Yahaya Dangana, who coordinated the hosting of the event held in the state.

The truth remains that since 1991 national convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), when Minna played host to such an impressive galaxy of creative writers, scholars, critics, literary journalists and academics, nothing of the like of this well celebrated summit has ever taken place in that state or anywhere else in the Northern region.

The unconfirmed claim that northern Nigerian writing has laid comatose will now demand a second look. If anything at all, the influx of both old and young writers of northern extraction to the summit demonstrated, in no small measure, the extent to which they have longed for a new literary beginning in the area.

While the conference lasted, it was a 3-day of brainstorming on the future of creative writing in the north. All the delegates in attendance expressed, both in words and action, their unalloyed commitment to the cause of redefining the place of literature in the region. For many unknown Hausa-Fulani female writers, it was a new dawn for them.

Alhaji Yahaya Dangana, a writer of note and Senior Special Assistant to the Governor of Niger State on Research and Documentation, who oversaw the organizing of the event, began by narrating the genesis of the conference which, according to him, was conceived by the Niger State chapter of ANA which went to the 2000 annual convention of the body held in Jos, with the sole aim of convening a meeting that would put into action the convocation of the 1st Northern Nigerian Writers Summit.

"The objective was to begin a deliberate strategy of organizing the writers community for greater action in the production and effective distribution of books, enhance the literary craft of writers and accelerate reading culture in the country."

Dangana further narrated, noting, however, that the summit was concretized at the Owerri convention and that was after all the northern states branches of ANA had adopted the draft blueprint of the summit presented to them by ANA Niger, with Governor Muazu Babanigda Aliyu of Niger State giving his approval of the historic forum.

Another writer from the north and former President of ANA, Abubakar Gimba, who spoke after Alhaji Danagana, set the tone for the deliberation when he attempted in his address to classify who a writer from the north should be.

According to him, a writer from the north should be that writer who shares the dreams, visions and aspirations of the North and its peoples with a passion, while he feels with agonizing pains, the afflictions and failures of the region; one who becomes a proud bearer of the torch of glory of the northern achievements.

Gimba, sounding quite nostalgic and sentimental, alluded that, while other writers whose works draw their strength from the north are sympathizers, that a northern Nigerian writer is first a northerner, no matter his ethnic, religious, ideological or political loyalty before he is a writer. "This is, no doubt, a historic gathering, modest in its goals but with profound implications for those of us who have developed some interest in creative writing from these parts of our nation.

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