Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Extinction of Menai
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1963
WEBSITE: http://nwokolo.com/y/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Nigerian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1963, in Jos, Nigeria.
EDUCATION:Received degree from University of Nigeria, 1983.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Publisher, lawyer, and author. C&G Chambers, managing partner; BribeCode, founder; African Writing, publisher. Ashmolean Museum, writer-in-residence.
MEMBER:PEN, Nigerian Bar Association, Association of Nigerian Authors, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Sentinel, London Review of Books, Arzenal, La Internazionale, MTLS, and AGNI. Also author of The Final Testament of a Minor God, African Tales at Jailpoint, How to Spell Naija in 100 Short Stories Volumes I and II, Diaries of a Dead African, The Ghost of Sani Abacha, Memories of Stone, and One More Tale for the Road.
SIDELIGHTS
Chuma Nwokolo works predominantly within the law field. In his home country of Nigeria, Nwokolo works with BribeCode, a campaign he founded for the sake of dismantling corruption within Nigeria’s corporate world. During the 1980s, he was aligned with Nigeria’s Supreme Court as part of the Bar. He has also been involved with C&G Chambers, serving as their managing partner, and with Nigeria’s Legal Aid Council.
In addition to his legal work, Nwokolo is also prominent within the publishing and writing worlds. He has produced an extensive body of work, much of which is informed by his political observations. Nwokolo writes both poetry and creative fiction, the latter of which includes books such as How to Spell Naija in 100 Short Stories, The Extortionist, The Ghost of Sani Abacha, and African Tales at Jailpoint. In an interview featured on the Sahara Reporters website, Nwokolo remarked that he believes socio political transformation and fiction writing are closely intertwined with one another. More specifically, the act of producing literary fiction pieces enables writers to share new and profound ideas in the form of a fictional universe. Readers who come across these works can then become inspired to reshape the world so it becomes less like what is being depicted—or more closely resembles what they’ve read. In addition to his writing work, Nwokolo also delivers lectures on African culture and literature, and publishes African Writing, a periodical that focuses on literature from around the diaspora.
The Extinction of Menai is another one of Nwokolo’s novels. The novel centers around Zanda and Humphrey, two brothers who have spent their entire lives apart from one another. Zanda lives in Abuja, working in the journalism field; Humphrey resides in London, working as a professional writer. However, the two of them are not entirely who they seem. They both belong to the Menai people, an ethnic group that was nearly wiped out by deadly corporate pharmaceutical trials in the last decade of the 20th century. The brothers have also, without their conscious knowledge, become involved in different political movements under different names. This discovery leads the men down a road of adventure and further breakthroughs. One Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: “Nwokolo manages to brilliantly distill his branching plot into a singular portrayal of a threatened culture.” On the Turn the Page website, Joel Benjamin Nevender wrote: “An epic that doesn’t shy away from the cultural, spiritual, financial, political and sociological influences on people, this is my best read this year of our Lord, 2017.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of The Extinction of Menai, p. 60.
World Literature Today, May-June, 2018, review of The Extinction of Menai, p. 79.
ONLINE
Sahara Reporters, http://saharareporters.com/ (May 19, 2015), Adaobi Nkeokelonye, “On BribeCode and Nigeria’s Development: An Interview with Chuma Nwokolo By Adaobi Nkeokelonye,” author interview.
TSS Publishing, https://www.theshortstory.co.uk/ (May 5, 2017), Jennifer Emelife, author profile and interview.
Turn The Page, http://ttpafrica.com/ (January 28, 2018), Joel Benjamin Nevender, review of The Extinction Of Menai.
On BribeCode and Nigeria’s Development: An Interview with Chuma Nwokolo By Adaobi Nkeokelonye
Chuma Nwokolo is known as a writer with notable early novels in the Macmillan Pacesetters and more impressive big-fish books from his small-press pond. A favorite of his work ‘Diaries of A Dead African’ is a narrative in three diaries, the first of which was published in the London Review of Books. It will make you laugh and cry in turns. Having engaged his novels and a plethora of his short stories, I think of him as a master of anthologies within Africa’s literary sphere. Beyond his contribution to the literary world telling truly Nigerian stories, I am thrilled by his devotion to a country that is difficult to love.
by Adaobi Nkeokelonye
May 19, 2015
Chuma Nwokolo
Andrew Oglivy
He is known as a writer with notable early novels in the Macmillan Pacesetters and more impressive big-fish books from his small-press pond. A favorite of his work ‘Diaries of A Dead African’ is a narrative in three diaries, the first of which was published in the London Review of Books. It will make you laugh and cry in turns. Having engaged his novels and a plethora of his short stories, I think of him as a master of anthologies within Africa’s literary sphere. Beyond his contribution to the literary world telling truly Nigerian stories, I am thrilled by his devotion to a country that is difficult to love. I met with this Lawyer and prolific but now retiring writer Chuma Nwokolo to talk about his perspective on the intersections of literary fiction and diverse social development issues. His passion for a corruption-free Nigeria shined through his promotion of the bribecode project.
You have written quite a lot of literature, as an experienced writer, do you think literary fiction produces change?
Definitely. The prime object of literary fiction is beauty, but it can also produce change. It may not be read by vast numbers of people, but society is not changed by 'vast numbers' either. Society is changed by a critical mass. Literary Fiction, like Science Fiction, develops ideas and extrapolates them onto an imaginative world that can inspire the reader into creating that world – or preventing it from coming to pass. So even if only a few people read a particular work of literary fiction, if the ideas in that work are cogent enough, and the few readers are inspired enough with the doggedness to change society, it will produce change.
So if we were to map out your readers for example, what class of readers are they?
Well it depends on which work of mine you refer to. If it is legal writing for instance, then they will probably be lawyers...
OK. If we focused on your fiction works?
Again I hope that not all my work will be 'quarantined' as literary fiction. I think that most of my work can actually be read by a broad section of society. I perceive my readers are wide-ranging considering that I also have a couple of young adult novels in the Macmillan Pacesetters series The Extortionist and Dangerous Inheritance. From feedback, I do not think they are that exclusive. However, a lot of classification is in the domain of the critic of course and they can stamp a work populist or literary. Some writers aspire to the literary; I think writers should aspire to be read.
Most of your works I have engaged or reviewed tell truly African and more of Nigerian stories. Why so?
I see the world through Nigerian and African spectacles. Without them I am blind. I cannot see the world as an Englishman because – despite my use of English – I am not one. I may have lived in the United Kingdom for a decade, but it has not made me see life from the perspective of the British. My perspective of the world is one I was born with. It is also a rich enough world whose stories can illustrate, in my view, every nuance of my human spirit. I feel our tales are so particular and universal.
More of Nigerian as opposed to other African stories? Hmmm… I think that can only be true concerning the first fifty years of my life!
My best from your works that I have read so far is ‘Diaries of A Dead African’ also published in the London Review of Books. The character of Meme Jumai provoked very critical emotions on hunger and poverty. Likewise, his son Calamatus - the sincere Conman - was equally a strong character. How do these two characters reflect the Nigerian reality?
Meme Jumai’s story for me is an extended metaphor on indifference; it is a story on the eclipsing idea of the extended family, which underpinned most of our African societies - even if we grant that African culture is a heterogeneous thing. Diaries of a Dead African as a story turned on the fulcrum of a society that is more nuclear, more unfeeling, and more uncaring of the neighbor. And what society has lost to development - or retrogression, depending on one's perspective - the state has not supplemented, either by welfarist policies or safety nets. So in our society, someone who falls through the cracks is really doomed. If we moved from the fiction of Meme Jumai’s story of a man whose harvest has gone bad to the reality of the Internally Displaced victims of Nigeria's rising insurgency, it is a similar story of people falling through cracks, without adequate safety nets, either from society or state.
I believe that governance in Africa should be purposed towards becoming the Extended Family of their citizens.
So do you think Calamatus is a consequence of a state that lacks social safety nets?
Oh Yes. Options open to people are often responses to the dysfunctions of the society. If like him, you had an elder brother Abel who 'graduates' from university and is unable to gain employment, you may be driven to short cuts, especially in a society that has jumped from hallowing education to hallowing money, howsoever earned.
Social safety nets diffuse the desperation that drives people who are up against a wall into breaking laws and breaching the norms and honor codes that hold societies together. A welfarist state will not eliminate all crime, particularly crimes of greed, but it certainly removes the desperation that leads many to that critical first step into criminality.
In the Issue 12 of African Writing Magazine which you publish, you posed this question to some renowned writers: 'Do you feel any social/political responsibility when you write, and why?' Now it's your turn: Is your writing art for art sake or a provocative dagger arousing critical attitudes in readers?
By asking that question of other writers, I was hoping to have dodged it! Since you have put me on the spot, I will attempt it. Yes I feel social and political responsibility when I write. But... does it emerge in my work? That is another question. Mostly, I write because I cannot not write. The wellspring of that creative impulse is a fundamentally selfish instinct to create something beautiful. Mostly I have no idea what the full picture will look like. Writing can be like bursting into a new song in the shower. Will such a song respect your sense of political responsibility? Do floods respect riverbanks? So writing is sometimes like that: a passionate river. And the ambition of every real writer should be to be borne away from agenda by a story with a mind and a power of its own.
It is different with pamphleteering. When writing factually about a social or political issue, your object is laid bare from the first sentence. Fiction usually springs from an artistic impulse, and the link should be more tenuous. Using Diaries of a Dead African as an example, I have said earlier that it is a story that elaborates on the metaphor of indifference. You may not read this literally from the text, as stories have a way of leading readers in directions their experiences dictate, all of which are valid. My purpose may not arrest every reader, and my interpretation of the book is no more valid than that of any other reader who engages the work. So the connection of my socio-political purpose is definitely more tenuous in my literary writings as opposed to my activist writing.
There is a meeting point: fiction that is directly inspired by a socio-political issue. An example is one of my stories in the collection, How to Spell Naija in 100 Short Stories (Vol. 1), titled The Ram-Selling Truth-Angel of Zambaputu, which was directly inspired by the hypocrisy I saw in our Justice System which metes out crippling punishment or fawning adoration, depending on whether the thief in question is pauper or billionaire.
The use of the Penis in the Greek culture was a constant reminder of male dominance in the society. The penis is a recurring symbol in your work, promoting male sexuality, how does this help the positioning of a less patriarchal society?
(Laughs) There are a few phallic references, yes. I certainly am not prudish and when my storylines discover genitalia, they don't shy away, male or female. Sentencing for Six is a short story where both get fairly equal treatment. In the Diaries of a Dead African the phallic triumphs, yes, but if read in context, it is very logical, so logical indeed that biting down on the ‘P’ word would have worked violence on the text. Calamatus' entire life for instance is dominated by the fate of his penis, which went missing when he was 8 days old, when a careless midwife sneezed in the course of his circumcision and castrated him. It is hard to avoid referring to the penis in telling such a story. Of course these are also diaries written by men whose natural references would be phallic. The Greeks may have considered their phallocentric literature as patriarchal but I'd like to think that there's an alternate reading in this milieu; men whose peer-mediated bluster language is phallic in nature are simply being more protective of the female. Perhaps they are 'hallowing' the female of their species rather than 'dominating' them!
In Nigeria’s Social Development concerns at present, what issues strike you as most pressing?
Governance is the central issue. It is so critical that it threatens the very existence of Nigeria and many other African countries. Beyond a doubt, it is destroying generations, millions and millions of lives, as we speak. Sometimes it would seem as though we had left the reins of governance to our most incompetent, without effective systems to police them or hold them to some level of accountability. Issues of governance are most pressing, and the evidence is everywhere we look. Bad governance creates problems from nowhere and escalates small problems into crises of existential dimensions.
The most significant cause of bad governance is corruption. The presence of corruption in a system does two things: firstly (and obviously), treasuries are plundered of resources. Secondly, high offices are plundered of human capital. I will explain: Corruption makes it almost impossible for the merely honest and competent to get into office. High offices are literally 'bought', and when the office of governor for instance, is occupied by the highest bidder, the citizens lose not just their treasury to a thief whose mission statement is 'milk the cow', but they also lose the opportunity of an efficient, competent manager of their resources and administrator of their needs. In a corrupt system, even marginally competent people abandon real 'public service' in favor of service that profits them personally. This is the second, more egregious consequence of corruption, the near extinction of competence and integrity from public office.
How then are you addressing corruption?
My conviction is that corporate bodies have a critical role both in the perpetuation and the elimination of political corruption. We will appreciate the relationship between the country and the business world by recalling the history of pre-colonial Nigeria. 'Explorers' were in part sponsored by companies of produce buyers to reconnoiter the land. Companies laid claim to the land, her resources, and peoples. In 1899, the Royal Niger Company sold its 'financial interests' in Nigeria to the British government for £865,000, enabling the British to set up a new colonial government in Lagos. So we can track the 'legitimacy' of the current government in Aso Rock to the entrepreneurial project of Royal Niger Company, whose ‘successor’ is still quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Lord Luggard has served both as a mercenary for the Royal Niger Company, pacifying Borgu as a soldier, and as the Governor General of Nigeria. Ernest Shonekan has served both as a staff of the UAC Plc (Successor Company of the RNC) and President of Nigeria. This speaks to the strength of the partnership between the national government and corporate governance.
So our challenge is to restructure the incestuous relationship between government and companies so that the resources of the Nigerian State serve the interests of the Nigerian people, rather than a closed group of the political and corporate elite who appear to have replaced the colonials as the net beneficiary of the Nigeria project. Thabo Mbeki's High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows reports that US$50 billion is lost every year by African countries with Nigeria as the biggest loser by a wide margin. Yet, most of our lost capital is not directly due to political corruption. It is mostly perpetrated by companies engaging in false invoicing of goods, a process which is facilitated by the corrupt collaboration and incompetence of the public sector.
To address corruption, we must realign the interests of the private sector with the interests of Nigeria as a country by making the corruption of public officers intrinsically unprofitable.
How do we achieve this?
Presently, our institutions are too weak to enforce our anti-corruption laws against corporate bodies many of which are older than independent Nigeria. That is where the Bribecode comes in. The details of the bill are available at the website, bribecode.org, and though being piloted in Nigeria, its ideas have currency in other African countries.
How is the Bribecode Bill different from every other Anti-Corruption law we have presently?
In enforcement. Our present anti-corruption laws are not effective against companies and individuals who are rich enough or politically connected. Even without political connection, every link of the enforcement system is vulnerable to the Bribe. Even where convictions are secured, fines are insignificant and derisory relative to the millions and billions at stake, which is why companies involved in transatlantic corruption cases often fight bitterly to be sued in Nigeria rather than Western countries where institutions are stronger and penalties more significant. Fines are often passed on to the customers as part of business expenses; they are therefore not a disincentive for grand corruption.
The Corporate Corruption Act, also known as the Bribecode, is different because it proposes that when a company is convicted of serious corruption, the penalty will be liquidation. For large companies whose operations affect lots of stakeholders, like public companies, the penalty will not be outright liquidation, but instead the entire board of directors and the senior management will have their employment terminated. Then where there are principal shareholders who control the board, those shares will be expropriated to the treasury. Thereafter, the board can be reconstituted and the operation of such public companies can continue.
This is the core provision of the law. There are also other supplementary provisions that guarantee that this law does not suffer the fate of previous anti-corruption laws. One of such provisions is that whistle blowers are not only protected, they are rewarded. Compensating whistle blowers with a percentage of the liquidated company’s property should open the floodgate of information and caution companies that illegal transactions will not remain secret forever. When such a provision is coupled with the ability of any of the 37 attorneys general in the country to prosecute, there will be no hiding place or political immunity for corrupt companies. This is the proposal that, with the help of Nigerians, can begin a process of national transformation.
Do I hear you say that ethical companies are endangered in Nigeria?
In endemically corrupt societies, ethical companies are endangered, particularly if they contract regularly with government. If you do things by the book, you will achieve less, if you don’t go bankrupt entirely. So if we agree that Nigeria is endemically corrupt, then yes an ethical company is endangered if it refuses to play by corrupt rules. Some companies may hire middlemen to cut corners and do the illegal things they consider morally obnoxious. By ‘out-sourcing’ in this way, they can maintain their ‘ethical’ stature. Or they may refuse to pay kickbacks directly to public officers and only act as sub-contractors to companies who have done so. Yet, in both cases, the ‘ethical’ company forms a part of the corruption chain through their principals or their subcontractors and must take some responsibility for the process. World over, companies are being forced to take responsibility for unethical conduct in their value chain. For companies operating in Nigeria today, I challenge them to look at their value chain and ascertain how much of what they do through their principals and sub-contractors they can stand behind. What they find should inspire them to support Bribecode, to bring on the change that gives ethical corporations the level playing field to prosper, and makes companies with corruption in their DNA endangered.
Corruption is Corruption to me, why is it important to have a dichotomy between grand and petty corruption?
It is important to draw these lines; otherwise we will never be able to solve the problem of corruption. The general attitude to corruption makes you feel there is no point in trying to solve it: it seems like it is everywhere, an insurmountable thing. This is true if we do not distinguish between petty corruption and grand corruption. Petty corruption is the policeman who takes a dash to overlook your missing papers. Grand corruption is the Minister who takes a bung to sign a road contract. They are not the same. Spending energy and resources to jail desperate people engaged in petty corruption is both hypocritical and ineffective. But a strategic policy that tackles grand corruption in a sustainable way eventually creates the environment that eliminates petty corruption from the top down. All this can happen within an electoral cycle as high offices become more open to ethical office holders and the influence of godfathers is weakened. Office holders will be able to exercise more discipline in their environment.
If many Nigerians sign up the Bribecode, how does this translate it into a signed law?
Obviously the man on the street does not make laws. We have delegated that power to the National Assembly. The whole process of collecting signatures for the Bribecode is to assure the law-makers who will stand up for this Bill in the National Assembly that it is indeed the desire of the Nigerian people. Also we can organize a Grand Recall of legislators who oppose the bill by taking the side of corruption against the interest of the people. So Nigerians can drive this Bill unto the agenda of the National assembly by their signatures, and see it through, during the lifetime of the eighth National Assembly.
The website, bribecode.org is gaining attention, but I think it is limited to the Elite, literate and upwardly mobile persons in the society. What plans are in place to take this to the grassroots?
Well, there is also the Bribecode Roadshow which will take us to the Nigerian streets. We are linking up with partners, associations and groups to get this message out. Apart from the website, people can also sign up their support by texting their names and addresses to 0817 8200 382. And our challenge to Nigerians is that the only way to support Bribecode, is to Sign up Five Supporters! That is the way to take the movement to the grassroots!
Thank You, Chuma Nwokolo for your time
My pleasure talking to you.
I end this interview by reaffirming that addressing corruption is indeed critical to our national development. I will think that the anti-corruption manifesto of the incoming administration of President Elect Muhammed Buhari will create the enabling ambience to pass a comprehensive anti-corruption bill. While the Bribecode; the Corporate Corruption Act remains a work-in-progress seeking support from concerned Nigerians, its intentions are highly commendable and for this, I once again extend my appreciation to Chuma Nwokolo as he continues to contribute to the building of a better Nigeria and eventually Africa.
To support the Bribecode project, kindly visit www.bribecode.org to sign up and play your part.
This interview was conducted in Asaba, Delta state Nigeria by Ms.Adaobi Nkeokelonye. Ms.Nkeokelonye is a Social-Development Researcher. As an avocation, she currently explores linkages between literary fiction/non-fiction and International Development issues on her site http://fictioningdevelopment.org
Twitter:@adankeokelonye
The Short Story Interview: Chuma Nwokolo
TSS Publishing May 5, 2017 1 Interviews african literature, creative writing, interview, literary interview, literature, publishers, Short Fiction, short stories, short story, The Short Story, TSS, TSS Publishing, writing
Chuma Nwokolo is a Nigerian writer and lawyer. He is publisher of the literary magazine African Writing. Nwokolo’s first novels, The Extortionist (1993) and Dangerous Inheritance (1988), were published by Macmillan in the Pacesetter Novels. His other books include African Tales at Jailpoint, Diaries of a Dead African, One More Tale for the Road, Memories of Stone (poetry), The Ghost of Sani Abacha, How to Spell Naija in 100 Short Stories Volumes I and II and The Final Testament of a Minor God (poetry). His short stories and poetry have been published in the London Review of Books, La Internazionale, AGNI,MTLS, Arzenal, and Sentinel, among places. He is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, the Association of Nigerian Authors, and PEN. He was also writer-in-residence at The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Chuma Nwokolo believes that though writing is a form of activism, action is also required. He is a founder of the BribeCode, a nationwide campaign to eradicate corporate corruption. In this interview, we talk about his style of writing, writing as a tool for social change, changes in times and the influence of social media on writing and publishing.
Interview by Jennifer Emelife
There’s hardly a Chuma Nwokolo story that wouldn’t leave its reader cracking up, even at serious situations. How have you been able to work so well with humour?
Some humour comes to me naturally. But it doesn’t always work well on paper, and it is not always spontaneous. I am the sort of person who arrives home after a visit and suddenly thinks up the killer repartee for a conversation that ended hours earlier. As mere man I can slap my head in frustration. As a writer I can pull out my manuscript and supercharge the hero’s dialogue. I think I should probably starve if I were to eke a living as a stand-up comedian. But the writer can appropriate the suite of the editor, if he wants, and that is where the timing and delivery of humour writing can be finessed. A sense of humour can be a valuable subversive trait in us humans. It is the ultimate rebellion: the refusal to be crushed by the natural weight of despair, to find a reason to laugh instead. I think a sense of humour that can make big, weighty issues more relatable is worth cultivating because it can trigger the positive frame of mind that opens up a reading mind to surprise, and the possibility of breaking dysfunctional cycles. Beyond that, I don’t so much care about humour as anesthetic or analgesic for that matter. Humour writing has its limits. It is a fine line, but you want to be careful when you crack jokes, however black, at a tragic funeral (funerals can be sad without being tragic). Again you read stories about black characters modelled after real people and – as the body count in the genocide ratchets up – no matter the skills of the writer – you ask yourself if you want to be laughing about this.
How to Spell Naija, by Chuma Nwokolo
I never thought of these limits, really. Now even though your stories depict everyday life, they mostly ridicule political systems and challenge religious beliefs. The Ram-selling Truth Angel of Zambaputu and Godforaday in your collection, How to Spell Naija in 100 Short Stories Vol. I and II come to mind. How effective has satire been for you in blending your passions for writing and activism?
My effectiveness as a satirist is probably a question best suited for my readers and critics. As an activist tool, we also may have to commission a research into the number of revolutionary actions triggered by my fiction! Yet, as a tool for the observer of society, satire can certainly be rewarding because it enforces a certain discipline of emotion. You are writing at a second remove from the provocations of your prose, especially any activist convictions lurking around your subconscious. So your prose can pay lip service to the decorum stipulated by polite society while you use the spaces in between the words to fillet the target of your fiction. Satire is of course a spectrum ranging from the savage to the nearly-there brushstrokes that leave victims and readers alike wondering. Your subject matter determines the lightness or heavy-handedness of the satirist. Sometimes the lightness of touch betrays a writerly sympathy for the characters who find themselves splayed by life on the banana skin of circumstances. Sometimes tales turn dark with more malevolent characters, and the savage satire drips blood.
You write in the English language, yet, it is impossible to miss the ‘Nigerianism’ or pidgin that largely constitute the language of your characters. Do you not worry that this might limit your readership to largely Nigerians/Africans?
I would love for my work to be predominantly read by Nigerians and Africans, but more to the point, the writer’s responsibility is more to his characters, than to an imagined constituency of readers. If you are true to your characters, your true readers will eventually find – and appreciate – you from anywhere in the world, even if you write in an ‘alien’ language. It is possible that some shades of meaning will escape an average reader alien to the culture he is reading about, but this is inevitable in all good literature. If what you gain from a first reading is valuable enough to keep you reading, although you are clearly not getting 100% of the referents, it means that the writing has depth, will repay study, and a second, possibly a third reading… None of this is an argument for obtuse writing, for deliberately obfuscatory writing designed to hide lack of real substance in the material. It is the writer’s duty to present his work as accessibly as possible, but not to beige his characters to satisfy the literary tastes of a potential audience.
Diaries of a Dead African, by Chuma Nwokolo
In essence then, a writer’s task is to first of all, write and write well. The readers will always find a way of ‘catching up’. Let’s talk about the length of your short stories which usually varies from one short paragraph to few paragraphs to pages and pages. How do you determine a story’s length? Does it come subconsciously with the story dictating its length as you write or is it often a product of your editing?
Stories sometimes come to me in fragments. When I have laid out that fragment in a paragraph or two, it is usually done, and unless the final sentence tugs at a compelling storyline, I let it be. I think ‘padding’ is a cardinal literary crime that is as repugnant in letters as it is in the budgeting process of the National Assembly. If a fragment is an incompetent literary piece on its own, adding the weight of a novel on its frame will not necessarily cure it – might in fact, bury it. Having said that, sometimes a fragment does germinate and grow organically, so the idea is to let each story find its own identity. For instance, the flash, The Ship that Dropped Anchor, which is story no. 32 in How to Spell Naija (Vol 1) is done in one page, but it is a Kreektown tale inspired by my longest, most sustained fiction, The Extinction of Menai, which is currently in production. But I suspect that most of my stories fall within the 2-3,500 word envelope. I think within that bracket I have managed to tell most of my tales.
The National Assembly… Stepping away from literature for a bit, can we briefly talk about your direct involvement with the politics of Nigeria? What are you trying to achieve with your initiative, The BribeCode?
In unjust societies, it is impossible to be neutral about politics. To carry on business ‘as normal’ in the face of blatant injustice is to support the immoral status quo. Sadly, it is equally easy to burnout: to subscribe to every passing hashtag and to dissipate energies on the scandal-du-jour in an environment with more scandals than oxygen in the room. After years of activism and broken promises by politicians who gain power on populist platforms only to transform into dictators, people will naturally become frustrated, even resigned. The thing then, is to be strategic in our interventions. To tackle the root of our most egregious problems, rather than the cloning incidents that spring from that root. That is the Bribecode strategy. By identifying endemic corruption as the root of our national dysfunction, the Bribecode Act is a proposed legislation which we are promoting for Nigeria which will change the punishment for serious corruption from the current risible levels which recently saw a man convicted for stealing billions of naira sentenced to a few months OR a N200, 000 fine, and who walked out of court a free man. We believe that this reformation will transform the Nigerian society from the root.
The Ghost of Sani Abacha, by Chuma Nwokolo
All the best with the Bribecode, Chuma. And the new book, The Extinction of Menai, totally excited to see it out! Can we have a sneak-peek into what it is about?
The Extinction of Menai is my most sustained work of fiction and it is now in the press. It is themed on culture and language extinction, which is pretty relevant today, considering that half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today may be extinct by the end of the century, with languages going defunct weekly. Language and culture loss is mostly irreversible with the attendant loss of history and ethnic identity associated with the language. I got the inspiration for the novel from my time as writer-in-residence at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. In the galleries of the museum I saw artifacts of the Meroes, an ancient and illustrious African Nubian kingdom that had once colonized Ancient Egypt. What struck me at the time was the fact that the language of the Meroes had gone extinct, with the people, and although they left written artifacts, there were no means of interpreting them, there being no existing communities that claimed direct ancestry to this historic civilization. I also visited the sites of the ancient Meroes, which is located in modern Sudan for research. That was the root of the Menais, in my novel.
That must have been one fantastic experience. I remember in one of our conversations, I’d mentioned how tough it must be for the older generation to cope with this ‘internet-craze’ generation and her frivolities. I remember you saying that as a boy, you had to sit by the telephone and wait for a dialling tone before putting a call across, compared to how easy communication has been made now; which makes me wonder: how have these disparities in time affected your writing? When did it dawn on you that your beloved typewriter was dying a slow death? Have the changes affected the kind of stories you tell now and how you tell them? Do you sometimes feel some sort of loss or disconnection?
I was actually already a practicing lawyer before the analogue telephone exchanges were phased out, and yes, the business and professional environment was completely transformed by the arrival of digital telephone exchanges for which you did not need a secretary to babysit a telephone for hours, waiting for a dialling tone! It will also be disingenuous for me to pretend any nostalgia for the manual typewriter. I still want to acquire a handsome example, and have it sit on a plinth in my study. Even make music on it sometimes. But do I miss creating on it? Certainly not. I got pretty good on it. I probably hit 70-80 wpm at my most proficient, but I never got to typing at the speed of thought. There were always the aggravating mechanicals of corrections, the paper change, the ribbon change, and then – most dauntingly – the herculean editing of a completed 400-page manuscript originally composed on typewriter. So I feel no loss. Unless you are referring to my early electronic keyboards which suffered the punishing consequences of two little fingers trained to power heavy manual keys. Indeed I think that those of my generation: who started their careers in a relatively ‘manual’ environment populated by mimeograph and fax machines and were ‘young’ enough to transit completely to the 21st century are in a better position never to become blasé about our modern tools. I sometimes think back to the process of writing my first novel long-hand, the interminable writing and rewriting process, and then the mailing out to a typist, and realise it had much in common with the writing of Things Fall Apart, except that instead of travelling from Nigeria to the UK, my longhand manuscript travelled from Enugu to Lagos for typing! I don’t believe that moving from longhand to composition on manual, electronic type-writers or computers have in any way affected the type of stories I write. In that sense, it has been substance over style. But in terms of the style, certainly there is no better time in history to be a writer. But then, that can be said for most fields of endeavour.
The Extortionist, by Chuma Nwokolo
With the social media these days, one does not need to have written a book or be traditionally published before earning the writer tag. Users churn out poems and stories daily on their timelines which sometimes gain good recognitions from the ‘online’ public. What are your thoughts concerning this? As you’re quite active on these platforms.
I don’t know.
I like to think that the defining characteristic of the writer is not so much that he writes, but that he thinks. It is the quality, discipline and rigor of that thought that gives his writing stature. Now, what traditional publishing does, with the control of the printing press and the capital to promote ‘knighted’ writers, is to deliver audiences to their canon. Social media and the 21st century have somewhat democratized the process of delivering audiences to potential thinkers of stature. But it has also buried valuable voices in equal measure by the sheer cacophony of the medium.
In all that, it is hard to work up any sympathy for the old status quo. When we look closer at history, we find that the printing press triggered an aristocracy in literature, by requiring a certain capital investment to project the work of anointed writers to a readership of millions. The question is: what came before the printing press.
The answer is, the analogue social media: the wiki story circle in moonlight, where amateur storytellers post stories for the appreciation of the followers on their timelines. Feedbacks and Likes are instantaneous. Right after the performance, the story will be retweeted and shared all over the community.
What would you say to a young Chuma out there hoping to be a better writer?
Visit Thomas Sankara. Write him.
Jennifer Chinenye Emelife was born in Northern Nigeria, Sokoto state. She studied Literature in English in Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. She lives in Lagos where she writes, when she isn’t teaching Literacy to kids. She is also rounding up a Post Graduate studies in Education. She believes that the African literary sphere suffers because no one covers its stories. Lead correspondent at Praxis Magazine for Arts and Literature, she has written reportages and interviewed writers, publishers and other literary experts. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop and in 2016, she was selected as one of the participants for Writivism Creative Nonfiction Workshop held in Accra, Ghana.
Chuma Nwokolo
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Chuma Nwokolo (born 1963) is a Nigerian lawyer, writer[1] and publisher.
Contents [hide]
1
Early life and education
2
Career
3
References
4
External links
Early life and education[edit]
He was born in Jos, Nigeria, in 1963. He graduated from the University of Nigeria in 1983 and was called to the bar of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 1984.
Career[edit]
He worked for the Legal Aid Council and was managing partner of the C&G Chambers and practised mainly in Lagos Nigeria. He .[2] He was also writer-in-residence at The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He is publisher of the literary magazine African Writing.[3]
Nwokolo's first novels, The Extortionist (1983) and Dangerous Inheritance (1988), were published by Macmillan in the Pacesetter Novels. His other books include African Tales at Jailpoint (1999), Diaries of a Dead African (2003)[4][5] One More Tale for the Road (2003), Memories of Stone (poetry, 2006), The Ghost of Sani Abacha (2012),[6][7] How to Spell Naija in 100 Short Stories (2013), The Final Testament of a Minor God (poetry, 2014), His novel The Extinction of Menai is due in 2015. His short stories and poetry have been published in the London Review of Books,[8] La Internazionale, AGNI,[9] MTLS,[10] Arzenal, and Sentinel,[11] among places. Chuma Nwokolo is a highly itinerant writer and travels the extensively across the African Continent to deliver lectures on African writing and culture.
He is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, the Association of Nigerian Authors, and PEN.[12]
Chuma Nwokolo is a founder of the BribeCode, a nationwide campaign to eradicate corporate corruption by adopting the bill the Corporate Corruption Act, which he devised and presented to the National Assembly in 2015.[13]
The Extinction of Menai
Publishers Weekly. 265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Extinction of Menai
Chuma Nwokolo. Ohio Univ., $22.95 trade paper (424p) ISBN 978-0-8214-2298-4
Twins separated at birth discover their true identities and a spiritual leader pursues the ancestral homeland of his "dying nation" in this poignant, thrilling, and funny novel from Nwokolo (Diaries of a Dead African). Brothers Humphrey, a London writer, and Zanda, a journalist in Abuja, Nigeria, are Menai, descendants of a Nigerian tribe whose members were, in 1990, subjected by a pharmaceutical company to drug tests that killed thousands. By 2005, only a few dozen Menai remain, and their elderly shaman Mata sets out on a quest to find and be buried in their ancestral Saharan homeland. Meanwhile, a succession of hallucinations and blackouts reveal to both Humphrey and Zanda that they have been living double lives, unbeknownst even to themselves: Zanda has been operating as the anticorruption extremist Badu, while Humphrey lived as Izak for eight years on the Ivory Coast. Badu's co-conspirators smuggle him to Cameroon; and Humphrey heads to Africa to rediscover his forgotten life. But Izak is wanted by the police, too, forcing Humphrey to flee to Lagos, only to be mistaken for his brother and arrested. Zanda is the only one who can clear his name, but he has to return to Nigeria first. The madcap twists and turns that ensue provide a joyful counterpoint to Mata's somber odyssey, and Nwokolo manages to brilliantly distill his branching plot into a singular portrayal of a threatened culture. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Extinction of Menai." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 60. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839762/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e99bbf5a. Accessed 14 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839762
Chuma Nwokolo: The Extinction of Menai
World Literature Today. 92.3 (May-June 2018): p79.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Chuma Nwokolo
The Extinction of Menai
Ohio University Press
An unethical drug trial has beset the Niger village of Kreektown, causing the downfall of the entire Menai culture. Characters spanning the globe star in this novel alongside a spiritual leader trying to preserve the soul of his people. Nwokolo touches on bioethics and language extinction; his prose is steeped in imagery, surrounding readers in a fictional but representative time and place with shocking relevance to modern history.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Chuma Nwokolo: The Extinction of Menai." World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 3, 2018, p. 79. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536987307/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=905917ce. Accessed 14 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536987307
The Extinction Of Menai – Chuma Nwokolo
The Extinction Of Menai – Chuma Nwokolo
Posted on January 28, 2018 by Turn The Page
Godmenai! Amis andgus. Rubiesu… Aiyegun Yesi Yemanagu…
I find myself mumbling a language I cannot understand as I drift in and out of the pages towards the end of Chuma’s riveting epic – The Extinction of Menai.
I am not sure I can say this is a feat for Chuma especially because of his storytelling history – The Ghost of Sani Abacha, How to Spell Naija, and Diaries of a Dead African; also, because the poetry and stories I follow on his social media as well as blog but more still because of his profession as a lawyer.
Chuma’s dance with language is enviable. And this is not because of the sometimes very sophisticated words but the easier ones, how they arranged and make sense.
And perhaps it is this respect for and knowledge of and experience with -language- that informs this book.
It opens with the “Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (Article 10.1) All language communities have equal rights” then a dedication to the less-equal half of the world’s 6000-odd languages, which will be extinct in another hundred years.
Clearly, Chuma has an almost spiritual relationship with language – and what it means in terms of identity, culture, dignity for those speaking these languages. His is an exposition of the connections that language holds, not to just people but to histories.
However, enough of my fascination with the author’s fascination with language. Let’s talk about the book without trying to give away much.
The Menai are dying. They are running out of time. This is the idea we are brought to deal with as the book starts. How it plays out is the journey that Chuma expertly takes us on, him – an omniscient narrator, giving us magnifying glass views as well birds’ eye views of the process of the extinction.
However, this is not a journalistic narration. The writer was akin to an angel taking one through visions, through pasts and futures, a back and forth giving context and reason and then painting a bigger picture. This was done exemplarily well through an expertly crafted cast of characters who seem thrown over different parts of the world but are connected by events that at first glance seem not at all connected.
A half-naked procession of mourners. Unexplained deaths. Failed coup attempts. A doctor and his wife’s designer drugs. A mock burial. An author’s messianic book deal go wrong and more…
The events are primarily set in Kreektown and Sontik State in Nigeria; however, the journeys take us to Scotland, England, Cote D’Ivoire, Sudan even China if not to prove a certain point about roots and connections.
In as much as the few chapters that detail the thoughts and experiences of Chief (Dr.) Ehi A. Fowaka give an introduction and thought about the Menai people and their perceived absurdity and strange customs but more generally a look down on cultures that are getting extinct- it is the chapters that have the stories of Zanda, Badu, Humphrey Chow, Tobi Rani, David Balsam, Amana, Penaka Lee, and Mata Nimito that give this story its heart and soul and take you on a journey of discovery of what the Extinction of Menai really means – why and how all language communities have equal rights.
There are love stories, international-level political plots, terrorist attempts, mystic occurrences, scientific explanations that all connect together in what seems the dying of the Menai.
It was masterful how Chuma took on top-level happenings while at the same time giving eye to individual, interpersonal happenings and exposing many of society’s inconsistencies, conflicts, sins while at it.
It is in questioning strong topics like sexism, corruption, greed, capitalism, with great use of language.
“Women and children, always women and children! As if men that died there are donkeys!”
““Bastard! Were. Aje! You take one million US dollars and give me a hundred thousand naira!” I was angry myself, “What did you bring? Was it not ordinary photocopy form? Hundred thousand for a fifty naira paper, was that not enough?”
“‘Goodbye, Humphrey,’ and her voice was as cold as the kiss had been warm.”
“‘We’re burying a nation, David…Not just a man…’”
“After all, eyeswater is not for drinking.”
It is hard to tell after a while when reading the book whether this is fiction or a true story. You want to look up places and see whether they exist, companies like Trevi Biotics, IMX; names of famous people – Malcom Frisbee, Phil Begg, because for a while inside Chuma’s tale, everything is alive, as big as it is small, as compelling as it is hard to believe. And moreso because he has overlapped worlds. More than overlap, it seems like a perfect amalgamation.
And when you do get to the end, you realise why Chuma goes to the lengths and depths. He is making a plea for language but not just language, cultures on the brink of extinction and he is also asking us how well we know who we are. He asks for introspection, asks for an inquiry into our religion, our sociology, our financial systems.
His main characters seem to be living on different sides of the world but are connected. We are as some would put it, living in a world of six degrees of separation.
It is written very much like an Ousmane Sembene God’s Bits of Wood book but with a wider plane of influence. It is a modern day epic that is intriguing as it is teaching. It’s epic scale is in no way confusing for those with the patience to follow through to the end, to the extinction of the Menai to wonder whether the race, the language, the customs, the wisdom, the songs, have come to an end or maybe could be saved.
On reaching the end of the book, and reconciling his first words, you realise you have just read one of Africa’s best writers. His ability to create the world that is “The Extinction of Menai” was ambitious because of the seeming scale but Godmenai it was enjoyable and unforgettable.
Perhaps because of what language means to him, he went to the lengths of an epic to relay a message that a story can better tell than a declaration, and while declarations have their space, the story should awaken us to a deeper appreciation of our roots and identity as African regardless what shade we are. And that we are human no matter what language we speak.
An epic that doesn’t shy away from the cultural, spiritual, financial, political and sociological influences on people, this is my best read this year of our Lord, 2017.
P.s As a writer, there was a lot to take from the chapters that had Lynn Christie, Grace, Humphrey Chow, and Malcom Frisbee in terms of writing. Especially the Malcom Frisbee and Chow lunch. So much. Every writer, every emerging writer should read it.
…
This review, of Chuma Nwokolo’s The Extinction Of Menai, a 2017 publication, was written, for Turn The Page Africa, by Joel Benjamin Nevender.
You can order for a copy of the book by contacting us. We will be delighted to deliver to you wherever in the world that you are.