Introduction

Adewuyi Ayodeji: Let me start off by congratulating you on your award as the 2021 ANA Poet of the Year. I believe that portends a remarkable development in your writing career. What do you have to say about that?

Kehinde Akano: Thank you. Ordinarily… in this season when creativity is not that valued, when there is a poor reading culture, when hundreds of thousands of creative works – whether standard or substandard – are being churned out on a daily basis, one should relish being celebrated. The fact remains that it becomes difficult to know which author to or not to celebrate in our time. So, for emerging authors like me, literary prizes from reputable organizations such as the Association of Nigerian Authors, which was founded by the great Chinua Achebe, which has played host to several authors in Nigeria and recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, can only encourage us to continue writing. And apart from the LNG Literary Prize, which is usually called African Nobel Prize and considered one of the 10 richest and most prestigious awards in the world, ANA literary award is one of the best on the continent, not just in Nigeria. So, finding me worthy of the award gives me the joy that I’m being celebrated by a reputable organization like ANA. These days when we write, we can hardly distinguish the standard from the substandard, but when your work goes out there for competition in ANA and it is found worthy of the first position, that gives you leverage and confidence that you have come of age. Because if your work could undergo such a review or screening by a panel of literary scholars and professors, that is a kind of authoritative stamping of your work. That’s a positive censorship… that your style of writing, your aesthetics, your grammar are in line with the set literary standard. On a lighter note, even among your colleagues in the department, who hitherto couldn’t show any overt interest in your work whether by giving it critical review or analysis, such an authoritative judgement takes care of any doubt or bickering anybody might have against your work. In a nutshell, I am happy I won the prize.

AA: Talking about the acceptance of your work after winning the award, is there any significant upsurge in the level of acceptance of your work?

KA: One thing which has become a new yardstick for measuring the success or popularity of literary works and writers nowadays is the internet. The award has exposed my work to the internet in some ways. One of such is the wide coverage of the event by major (online) newspapers in the country. Another is the acknowledgement of the award by the University of Ilorin in her monthly bulletin, with the caption: ‘An Alumnus of Unilorin Wins ANA Award’. The award was also well celebrated in my school’s annual magazine. More so, early this year, I think, the Kwara State chapter of ANA dedicated a reading session for the celebration of the award. As a matter of fact, not until I won the award did I discover that no writer from the Kwara State chapter had won it before. Even among my colleagues, the narrative has changed – the comments are now more of applause of my work. We now have people recommending my works to their students in schools other than mine, KWASU. The acceptance, although gradual, is significant and greatly appreciated.

AA: It is good to hear that, because nothing makes a writer happier than a wide readership of his/her work. Now to business proper. You have written four literary works – all collections of poems except for the last, Pajepolobi, which is a drama text. So, let’s start with the one that won the ANA prize, Emirate Blues. I have read it and I find it artistically and thematically rich. Compared to your previous collections, there is this theme of emirate system peculiar to your poetry. For instance, you have one titled Invoking the Emirate Spirit while this one is Emirate Blues. Any connection, or what is it with this emirate theme you have sustained in your poetry?

KA: Every writer has a muse or an inspiring environment. Nigeria is our fatherland and remains the constituency of most Nigerian writers. But, then, there are other sub-constituencies which demonstrate the kind of political rigmarole which Nigeria is known for. Quite a number of authors have picked Nigeria as a whole from the macro to the micro. For example, Niyi Osundare, in his The Eye of the Earth, Songs of the Marketplace and Village Voices, captures more of the macro Nigeria, yet his local sentiments about his hometown and Yoruba culture clearly manifest. So also does Tanure Ojaide address the general Nigerian situation in his poetry collections such as The Fate of Vultures, Waiting for the Hatching of a Cockerel and I Want to Dance, but not without first locating the micro Niger Delta in the discussion. In my case, I am inspired by the system of government called emirate practised in my environment. I am inspired by it because it is a system alien to my culture and it is anti-human as far as my people are concerned. We have always rejected it, but having been long entrenched, we are still battling with it. So, I try to operate from the micro level of the Nigerian nation. I try to dwell on what affects my people and, consequently, Nigeria as a whole – that is emirate, feudal system. My second collection was Invoking the Emirate Spirit and the third was Emirate Blues. The recurrence of the emirate subject in my poetry is a way of emphasizing the practice I so much hate, and to enable me drive home my position in reaction to emirate system as it pervades my local environment.

AA: And your reaction, even as revealed in Emirate Blues, indicates you are not alone in this struggle. In other words, you are only trying to chronicle or, somehow, rehash a community’s struggle for freedom in your writing.

KA: Yes.

AA: Across your collections of poetry, you present emirate system as a collective trauma for your people. That is, the system renders them traumatized. Could you expatiate on this?

KA: Thanks for your use of this apt expression – collective trauma. Emirate system is truly a collective trauma for my people. And not just for my people, the bane of Nigerian development is feudalism, but it is unfortunate that we experience the crudest form of it in my part of the country. Talk to anybody in Moro or Kwara, they will tell you how pervasive, oppressive, anti-human, retrogressive and slavish the system is. And it is the majority that bears the brunt. What I do in my work as the mouthpiece of the majority is to synchronize this collective trauma with the ensuing underdevelopment in my area specifically and in my country generally. I try to chronicle and expose the evils of the common virus called emirate system in my books so that the age-long contention could go beyond oral complaints from my people. What I have done is not new to anybody; it is just the medium of echoing and re-echoing it that gives my work some relevance. I am just chorusing what others are saying using the literary platform to globalize it. And the ANA prize has begun to aid this globalization of our collective trauma.

AA: In your poem, ‘Their Magaji’s Cali-Fate’, featured in Emirate Blues, you make a comparison of Sokoto Emirate and Ilorin Emirate. You write: ‘This is their Magaji’s Cali-Fate/The emirate for the Beyeribe/Not a prototype of Sokoto/Where Father Kuka and the Sultan exchange pleasantries’. You try to portray Sokoto Emirate as far less oppressive than Ilorin Emirate. Of course religion, Islam, comes to play in your comparison. The big question is: are you not already ‘Islamizing’ the whole issue of emirate system? Or, let me put it this way: how do you aim to make a balance in your work between emirate system as a feature of Islam and emirate as a political system vis-à-vis the trauma it has caused your people?

KA: As far as Nigeria is concerned, emirate system originated from the Sokoto Caliphate. The question is: how come it is better practised in Sokoto? First, in Sokoto, emirate system is based largely on religious activities… ethnic-bound, and practised in a relatively homogeneous cultural environment. That is not the case in Ilorin Emirate where the impostors are culturally and ethnically different from the people on whom the system is imposed. Second, this pertains to the issue of conquest. The Fulani of Sokoto today may have culturally transformed from the Fulani who conquered Sokoto because, for instance, they now speak more Hausa than the Fulfulde language in the State. Meaning that there is some kind of cultural integration. Do we have that in Kwara? No! Here, we have an alien socio-political practice in an environment with diverse cultural norms and religions. In Sokoto, the system might not have been challenged because of the seemingly ethnic-cum-religious homogeneity of the people. In Kwara, the environment is not conducive for the practice – it is being forced on the people. In Sokoto, there is a kind of democratized system of emirate – a hybrid of sort, partly feudal, partly democratic. Under the Sultan, the local chiefs are fairly well treated, which is incomparable with the way community chiefs and Obas are lowly treated in Ilorin Emirate. So, the two emirate systems are two poles apart. Now to the second part of your question. It appears that emirate system grew out of a religious practice, but that is not actually the case. It is for the purpose of easy administration of the practice that it is tied to Islam. With that religious affinity or affiliation, the impostors of the system could indulge in oppression in the name of Islam whereas Islam does not teach oppression. Therefore, there is a clear distinction between emirate system and Islam. The two are lumped together in order for the impostors to perfect oppression of others using religion as a shield. Again, the emirate system here differs from Sokoto’s because, here, the impostors profane the name of the Prophet by doing the opposite of what they openly preach. In Sokoto, we know them for what they do and that is why, as I point out in one of the poems in Emirate Blues, Matthew Kuka could stay there and practise his Christianity freely. Do the emirate lords in my area want to claim to be holier than the Sultan? How come emirate system becomes more brutal in a place that copied it from Sokoto?

AA: With the way you talk, blunt and daring, which is hardly different from the way you write, can one just label you a revolutionary? Then you could also let us know who your literary influences are.

KA: Being a revolutionary… I think writing is a calling and more or less a crusade. You must have a reason for writing. Just like pastors and Imams want to win souls, so also does a writer want to ensure equity, justice and positive change. But how you achieve your aim as a writer depends on your approach – whether peaceful or violent. This marks you out as a Marxist or revolutionary. While I cannot claim to be a Marxist or revolutionary, my own purpose of writing is to effect attitudinal change in human society. Let justice reign! Sincerely, I can’t pin down my literary influence to a single writer; I have a roll call of influences. Any visionary writer who speaks to the conscience of oppressors is my role model. In this category are Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide and Olu Obafemi. These writers address socio-political rots in our society of which feudalism is crucial. In that wise, I can say I am following in their footsteps.

AA: Let me take it up from there. One common feature of all the four African writers you just mentioned is the use of traditional elements in their works. Likewise, you employ a lot of traditional elements in your work. Chief among them is allusion. You always allude to legends and mythical figures. In your Song of Awongaga, you particularly draw on a goddess called Awon. Could you talk about that?

KA: Yes, you are right. Every African writer is covertly or overtly indebted to oral tradition. We borrow from our oral traditions either by omission or commission, transposition, revalidation or authentication. We all go back to our traditions at the level of myths, proverbs, narratives or satires. This is not peculiar to African writers alone… even the great Shakespeare borrowed extensively from the English tradition to… adopt in his numerous classical plays. Having said that, you can see local aesthetics in my works. One of such mythical or mystic influences is Awongaga – a river goddess whose name is synonymous with my town, Shao. Awon is a composite character with a multiplicity of meanings in my town. Awon is a river goddess and there is a river called Awon in Shao. My community is also famous for Awon festival which is a festival of mass wedding. So, the influence of Awon on my people is so massive that you cannot separate Awon from Shao and vice versa. As a native of that culturally endowed ancient town, one is unwaveringly identified with Awon; one cannot but refer to Awon either as a river or a goddess. I think that is why Awon has tremendous influence on my work too. Comparatively speaking, Awon is to my work what Olosunta is to Niyi Osundare’s, or what water is to Tanure Ojaide’s.

AA: What an interesting comparison there! As we are drawing close, we need to talk about Pajepolobi too – your only play. Interestingly, it was the second runner-up in the 2021 ANA Prize for Drama. As regards your use of local aesthetics, the play is about a legend, Pajepolobi, whose traditional mode of activism is modernly emulated by his son, Ologunde. In all, you scheme a blend of the old and the modern. What’s the inspiration for that play?

KA: You will note that Pajepolobi is a clear departure from my usual feudal theme. It is a clear departure in capturing a more national or global issue of governance, yet the material or the creative impulse is sourced locally. In fact, all the material for all my works is sourced from my community. Just like you said, the play is about a legend, Taiwo Omobimpe Pajepolobi, who also had a masquerade by the same name. The man and his masquerade remain inseparable because of the feats he was able to achieve through the masquerade in his life time. The creative ingenuity I have brought into the material is to create a parallel between past and modernity. Even before the introduction of modern democracy or nationhood, it was not as if African communities were devoid of oppression, injustice and social vices. But the oppressors and these inimical traditional systems of government were confronted by certain people, who, in modern parlance, are called activists. Taiwo Omobimpe was one of such people who used traditional means or mystic powers to tackle wicked people and promote harmony, peace and freedom. In modern times, activists protest openly, talk to the press and carry placards. I have created a parallel between Pajepolobi’s traditional activism and Ologunde Labala’s modern mode of activism. You now have in your hands two eras… making a comparison between how it was done then and how it is being done now. In the end, it is left for the reader to decide whether there are correlations between traditional and modern modes of activism.

AA: Trying to draw a curtain on this interview, I think we should do it on a lighter note. When writing a new work, say a poem, does your first line or sentence often remain in that position when you are done?

KA: You are asking whether the line I start with in a new poem ends up being the first line.

AA: Exactly my question.

KA: I would say yes and no. You know why?

AA: No.

KA: For me, creativity is more of perspiration than inspiration, but both work hand in hand. For instance, I have a play in the press and I’m working on two collections of poems. The first line in a collection may not be the first in that collection. However, I equate the first line or sentence with the first drop of the muse and it’s that inspiring sentence that keeps you going. Usually, that first line or sentence inspires me to write more poems and contrive the title. For that reason, the line or sentence is better retained until the work is completed. You become possessed by it and that drives you to write further. You want to hold on to it as it serves as an ignition key that helps.

AA: Thank you very much for your time. I have had a good time talking with you. I hope we can have a time like this in the future to discuss your forthcoming works and more. Thanks again.

KA: It is my pleasure.