Denja Abdullahi is a distinguished Nigerian poet, playwright, and literary critic renowned for his extensive contributions to Nigerian literature and the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). With over three decades of experience, Abdullahi has been a leading figure in the literary community, celebrated for his significant role in literary administration.
In this interview with Blessing Obiahu, he talks about his journey, inspirations, and thoughts on literature and culture.
Q1: Can you share a bit about your early years and how your upbringing in Idah, Kogi State, influenced your interest in literature and the arts?
I had a regular childhood in a well-adjusted family of a father working in a government security outfit and a mother who was an entrepreneur and a homemaker. I also had siblings – male and female – and we lived in harmony. My father was constantly posted from one part of the country to another and we were moving with him. Living in police barracks for the better part of my childhood made me have a pan-Nigerian outlook on life early enough.
That fired my imagination because a lot of dramatic things happened in that environment. My father used to buy books, newspapers, and encyclopedias, which provided enough reading materials; it made me love words and sparked the urge to write in me. I was only born in Idah; we relocated while I was still a child, so I do not have any memory of that place. Interestingly, I have never been to that town since I was born there. It is an important outpost in Nigeria’s pre-colonial and colonial history which I would like to see with my adult eyes.
Q2: As the best-graduating student in the 1990 set at the University of Jos, how did your academic journey shape your identity as a writer, poet, and literary figure?
I studied the rudiments of literature as a critic and a writer in school and that clearly put me ahead as someone who came into writing with more than a basic knowledge. What I studied shaped the way I use language ordinarily in communicative environments and in my writings. You can call someone like me a trained writer and poet. As a literary figure, when I talk about literature, its arts, and its administration, I talk from a position of knowledge as I studied it and have also taught it. Right from school and till this moment, I have not left the domain of literature whether as a theoretician or a practitioner. I have enmeshed myself sustainably in the theory and praxis of literature.
Q3: With over three decades of experience in writing poetry, can you reflect on the evolution of your writing style and the themes that have consistently resonated in your works?
My style right from the beginning of my writing till now has maintained a consistency of commitment to the functionality of the literary arts. I have an accessible approach to language use in writing. I have a largely narrative style of writing poetry steeped in local idioms and in voices that are unmistakably folkloric and often with touches of humour and satire. My themes are wide-ranging but I have found myself developing a predilection for topo-poetry, poetry of place and situations.
Q4: Your first published poetic volume, “Mairogo: a Buffoon’s Poetic Journey around Northern Nigeria”, received an honourable mention for the prestigious ANA/CADBURY 2001 Poetry Prize. How did this recognition impact your literary career?
That work has in a way defined my literary career. It is my magnum opus still; maybe I will write another kind of such an inspired work later in the future. The voice I used in that piece at the time it came out was unmistakably original. I soaked myself in a culture over time and assumed a peculiar receding cultural trope to write that work. The work itself, not the recognition it received prize-wise, has greatly impacted my literary career. The work has attracted countless studies at all levels of higher education and it has continued to amaze its readers.
Q5: You’ve published various works, from poetry volumes to plays and critical essays. Can you highlight specific works that hold significant personal importance, and what inspired its creation?
Every work of a writer is significant or else it will not be written or published.
I have explained the significance of Mairogo. The other significant work of mine and which is very popular with students, scholars, and the ordinary public is my play “Death and the King’s Grey Hair”, which the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature shortlisted in 2018 after winning the SONTA Master Playwright Prize in 2015.
Denja Abdullahi’s Death and The King’s Grey Hair.
People have performed the play on more than thirty stages and theatres in the last five years. It has elicited several theses and academic papers. The intriguing thing about it is that I incubated it after sitting in a sociology class as an undergraduate. I penned the initial draft well after I left school and kept it in the closet for about two decades before publishing it. The play, in its history from conception to this moment, foregrounds the fact that a good piece of art with a universal hue will endure and continue to make meaning differently from age to age.
Q6: Interesting. Co-editing books like “Themes Fall Apart But The Centre Holds” and “Arrows or Gods?” reflects your engagement with critical literary discussions. How do you see your role in contributing to literary discourse and analysis?
What many people may not know about me is that beyond being a writer, literary activist, and public servant, I have also worked in the media and academia. I started work as a lecturer and did that for about five years before switching to public service and got engrossed in arts and literary administration. I have quite a good number of essays and articles in books and journals intervening in literary discourse and analysis.
I have also waded into many literary controversies and have highlighted my positions supported with theories and objective analyses. I can conveniently say that I have contributed my modest quota to literary discourse and development in Nigeria. You can read what others have said about me on this in the Festschrift book on me “Of Foot-Soldiers and Hybrid Visions” released in 2021.
Denja Abdullahi speaking at an event.
Q7: Definitely checking that out. Your unparalleled record of 26 years of service to ANA is impressive. What motivated you to commit such a substantial part of your life to the association, and what do you consider your most fulfilling accomplishment within ANA?
I studied literature, I taught it and I am still teaching it, and I have been practising as a writer of literature. My involvement in ANA at such a deep level was not planned but accidental. Right from my secondary school days, I have always been someone not afraid to put myself forward to serve or lead others with all the sacrifices that come with that. I have always believed in genuine public causes. The jobs I started early in life—teaching, journalism, and governmental public service in the creative sector—aligned with the activism I got involved in within ANA.
The period I became neck-deep in ANA coincided with my years of service at the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) where literary arts promotion is one of the three cardinal focuses of the organization. People may not know, but NCAC, where I served for 25 years before I recently retired, was instrumental to the establishment of ANA in 1981. Anyone can verify this by reading Chinua Achebe’s inaugural address at the first convention of ANA in 1981 in Nsukka.
For me, what I did in ANA was part of my public service to my country, Nigeria. My most fulfilling accomplishment in ANA is building the Mamman Vatsa Writers’ Village in Mpape, Abuja, which started during my tenure as president in 2017 and was nearly completed before I left office. This plot of land had been lying fallow without any development since 1985 when Vatsa awarded it to ANA.
That is just one of the remarkable legacies I left for ANA as President from 2015 to 2019. Regardless of any current politics or future attempts to undermine my contributions, ANA members and the public are fully aware of all I accomplished as an official of ANA during those years of service. I also feel accomplished that my service to ANA and Nigeria did not go unnoticed. The Federal Government of Nigeria recognized my service to ANA and the country by awarding me the National Productivity Order of Merit award in 2023.
Q8: Remarkable. Serving in various leadership positions within ANA, including as President, signifies your commitment to the literary community. How do you envision the future of ANA under new leadership?
We, I mean all those of us who served as leaders from Achebe to the president before the present one, have laid a solid foundation for the Association. The present leadership must continue to serve the members and the literary public selflessly. The present crop of leaders must avoid unnecessary politicization and crass disregard for previous sacrifices, comradeship, and fraternal well-being that have emerged due to the struggle for positions and filthy lucre within the Association. ANA, due to the efforts of past leaders, has gone beyond the basic struggle for survival.
What ANA needs now is creative and innovative programs and projects, dynamism, and aggressive partnerships with government and other bodies in the creative sector at home and abroad. The present executive must also correct the clear structural and administrative anomalies that the previous executive introduced into the organization. ANA must be strictly accountable to its members, and it must lay all its cards on the table. All the executives I served with before I became President, as well as my own executive, managed ANA in that manner. It must remain that way if we want the association to continue to make progress.
Q9: Balancing your roles as a culture technocrat, Director of Performing Arts, and your creative pursuits can be challenging. How do you manage these diverse responsibilities, and do they influence each other?
Well, I left public service in October 2023 due to the re-introduction of the 8-year tenure policy for federal directors by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, following the new public service rules enacted in July 2023. I had 5 more years to serve, having been a director since 2014, and I would have completed my full 35 years of service in 2028.
The tenure policy was arbitrary, unjust, and counter-productive in my case. It aimed to target those who falsified their ages or were unduly promoted outside normal procedures. That was never the case with me; I became a victim of my own successes, having received my promotions as scheduled without any setbacks or delays.
Without notice, the government woke up one day and threw us out of service; no one bothered about the contract we signed on joining service, and nobody bothered about the implications to our salaries for the years we would be losing and our pensions. No one cared about the decades we have put in as dedicated public servants and how we will be surviving with our families. And yet the same highly placed government officials who enacted such a harebrained and once-size-fits-all policy will go on television and public occasions to preach patriotism and service to the country.
Anyway, to go back to your question, balancing those diverse responsibilities was not easy for me but I gave the required time and expertise to each role. My creative outlook informed my public service as I imbued each of my posts in the public service with innovation and creativity which made me achieve uncommon feats and productivity as a public servant amid bare resources and lackluster motivation. Also, my experience as a public servant assisted the dimensions of my creative output and the administrative acumen I brought into managing an organization like ANA.
Q10: Thank you for sharing your experience. Indeed, the situation has been challenging and frustrating. Sir Denja Abdullahi, as a UNESCO-certified expert on the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, how do you see the intersection of poetry, drama, and cultural preservation?
All literary genres are elements of a people’s intangible cultural heritage and should be safeguarded to preserve the cultural heritage of the people. They are intangible and they need human agency to pass them from generation to generation through the vehicles of languages, rituals, and performances. The importance of this led UNESCO to establish the 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. So, where we promote poetry, drama, and other literary arts, we are safeguarding our cultural heritages from extinction.
Q11: Do you have any work(s) upcoming? Can you give us a sneak peek into the themes and inspirations behind them?
Well, I have a poetry chapbook on the COVID-19 pandemic entitled “Lovesongs in a Pandemic”, where I tried to look at the happenings during the pandemic from the sexual and marital perspectives alongside the general disbelief and public hypocrisy that attended that pandemic in Africa.
Ezekiel Fajenyo is writing a critical work on my writings, which will come out later this year. This work, titled “Denja Abdullahi: New Perspectives”, has been in progress since 2021. I am also working on another collection of poems entitled “Songs in a Season of Anomie”. I have a play I am thinking of doing on one of Nigerian past leaders and a provocative memoir that I hope to write soon.
Q12: Interesting. Best wishes, sir Denja Abdullahi. If you look at the past five decades, the literary scene has changed (or maybe not) significantly. Which authors have stood out for you, especially in the African literary scene?
The authors that have stood out in Africa across generations are many; let me not attempt to make a list. Africa has been very vibrant about literature. Our writers have effectively covered all our lived experiences and have even gone beyond that to project into the future. We all know these names and the books they have written, and there is no point in naming anybody.
Q13: Understandable. You’ve attended international literary festivals, conferences, and residencies in various countries. How have these experiences shaped your worldview and influenced your creative work?
Those experiences have made me become a global writer, and I have also come to know through those experiences that what we do here and underrate is what other people who truly value the arts cherish a lot. It reinforces the popular saying that “to be global, you have to be truly local.”
Q14: Any last words for new writers hoping to get to your level someday?
It is a long lonely road but consistency, originality, and the hard work in discovering your unique voice can get you there quicker than you think.
Thank you for answering these questions and for your time, sir Denja Abdullahi.
Alex Byanyiko