Day Mamman Vatsa welcomed Ken Saro-Wiwa to his Abuja village

He reincarnated in the form of a cream-coloured, two-storey building in the bosom of the boulder-braided, writers’ commune, in the rocky delight of Abuja’s Mpape district. His happy host, like him an erstwhile member of the tribe of wordmongers was despatched over a phantom putsch one decade before him. But he rolled out a carpet of dry laterite with the steady onset of northerly harmattan, to receive his new guest and kindred spirit. The air was sedate, the biosphere alluring and serene as his name echoed from the signage hoisted in front of the structure. This, henceforth, will be the haven of scribblers from across the globe desiring genuine solitude to commune with their muses in the very intricate venture of creative expression. Not too many of the young writers who enthusiastically witnessed the recent commissioning of the Ken Saro-Wiwa International Writers Residency in Abuja, however, knew enough about the martyr who was so canonised, nor the nexus between Ken Saro-Wiwa and his figurative “host,” Mamman Jiya Vatsa.

As part of the activities commemorating the 43rd International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (ANA), which was held between Thursday, October 31 and Saturday, November 2, 2024, a newly built edifice christened after Saro-Wiwa was scheduled for inauguration. Ken Saro-Wiwa remains one of Nigeria’s most multitasking and most productive writers of all time. He lived for only 54 years but left behind an authorial legacy which continues to challenge the prolificity of successor writers. Saro-Wiwa was a compelling novelist, an engaging essayist, a consummate poet, an arresting dramatist, and a fearless public scholar.

Regarded as Africa’s very first purpose-built writers village, the expansive hilltop project in Mpape, Abuja, was named after Vatsa, an army general who was a minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the regime of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Less than seven months into the Babangida milieu on March 5, 1986, Vatsa was executed by firing squad for alleged “treason associated with an abortive coup”. He was 45 at the time.

Importantly, Vatsa was a writer who reportedly published about 20 poetry anthologies, including: Verses for Nigerian State Capitals, (1972); Back Again at Wargate, (1982); Reach for the Skies, (1984), and Tori for Geti Bow leg and other Pidgin Poems, (1985). Vatsa as FCT helmsman, it was, who allocated the generous swathes of hitherto pristine land with scenic views upon which the writers village is sited today. The complex is deservedly named after him in eternal gratitude by the writers fraternity.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was the fourth president of ANA. He succeeded the renowned dramatist and emeritus professor of theatre arts, Femi Osofisan, in 1990, and was a very energetic personality, famous for the tobacco pipe which was permanently seated on his lip, drawing parity with that of Ousmane Sembene, the famous Senegalese frontline African novelist and filmmaker. Saro-Wiwa had a multitasking career which saw him as a university lecturer in his earlier years; an administrator and public servant, and an environmental activist, at various times. He was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, (MOSOP) which prosecuted a nonviolent campaign for the protection of Ogoni land and water resources from devastation by oil multinationals.

He backed up this enterprise with regular interventions in the public space as a writer and columnist for a number of authoritative newspapers. He consistently drew attention to the despoliation of the natural resources of his people and wrote regularly for Vanguard and Sunday Times, among other publications. He was a regular, long-staying guest of the gulags of successive military governments, through the administrations of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha.

In 1994, he was arrested and charged with instigating the murders of four Ogoni leaders, on May 4, 1994, on a day he was indeed barred from accessing Ogoniland. Saro-Wiwa and his eight “accomplices” were executed by hanging at the Port Harcourt prison where they were held and convicted, on November 10, 1995, exactly one month after his 54th birthday on October 10, 1995.

By some uncanny calendrical coincidence, the Ken Saro-Wiwa International Writers Residency was inaugurated in early November 2024, the very same month he was despatched 29 years ago in 1995. Global outrage trailed the killing of Saro-Wiwa and his compatriots, with the Commonwealth suspending Nigeria for three years, among other sanctions. The death of Sani Abacha in June 1998, the subsequent acceleration of processes which returned Nigeria to civilian rule by Abacha’s successor, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and the enthronement of the Fourth Republic in 1999, gradually tempered the world’s coldness towards Nigeria.

At least three dozen book titles are credited to Ken Saro-Wiwa’s name. These include novels, novellas, anthologies of poetry, plays for radio and television, memoirs and diaries, and so on. His works have received requisite international attention such that they have been translated into German, Dutch and French. His authorial oeuvre includes: Tambari, (a novel, 1973); Tambari in Dukana, (a sequel to Tambari, 1986); A Bride for Mr B, (a novella, 1983), and Songs in a Time of War, (poetry, 1985). Ken Saro-Wiwa also wrote Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, (1985); A Forest of Flowers, (1986, short stories); Prisoners of Jebs, (a novel, 1988) and Pita Dumbrok’s Prison, (1991), which like the former is very biting political satire.

On a Darkling Plain: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, (memoirs, 1989), a war which he witnessed firsthand, is also one of his very gripping works of prose. Saro-Wiwa’s public engagements are aggregated in several volumes of essays notably Nigeria: The Brink of Disaster, (1991); Similia: Essays on Anomic Nigeria, (1991) and Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy, (1992). Even in his final days, weeks and months of his sojourn on this side of the divide, Saro-Wiwa “remained incredibly productive.”

Posthumously, his family, foreign concerns and nongovernmental organisations continued to call up manuscripts from his personal library to publish new works by him. A personal diary he kept while he was in incarceration before his eventual annihilation was published with the title A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary, in 1995. Over 20 years after his demise, some of his essays were assembled as Silence Would be Treason: Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and published by Daraja Press in Ottawa, Canada, in 2018.

The Ken Saro-Wiwa International Writers Residency is one of the first major physical projects delivered by the leadership of Usman Oladipo Akanbi. Fortuitously, Akanbi’s deputy, Obari Gomba, winner of the 2023 NLNG Prize for Drama, is from Saro-Wiwa’s Ogoni country. He must have felt gratified by the honour done his countryman, whose trajectory he followed as a much younger writer. The eventual breaking of the ice, the decisive commencement of the physical development of the hitherto forlorn and controversial expansive hectarage of ANA property was consummated under the leadership of Denja Abdullahi in 2017. Obi Asika, director-general of the National Council for Arts and Culture, (NCAC), commissioned the Ken Saro-Wiwa International Writers Residency.

The ceremony was witnessed by an impressive array of writers, headlined by Emeritus Professors Osofisan and Olu Obafemi, both former presidents of ANA, as well as Nuhu Yaqub, OFR. Yaqub holds the distinction of being the only Nigerian scholar thus far to have served as vice-chancellor in two federal universities, those of Abuja and Sokoto. Other literary greats at the event and the main convention included: Professors Shamshudeen Amali, OFR, former Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin; Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo; May Ifeoma Nwoye and Sunnie Ododo, all Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, (FNAL) and the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA).

There were also Professors Joe Ushie, a member of the ANA Board of Trustees; Emeka Aniagolu; Udenta Udenta; Maria Ajima; Al Bishak; Mabel Evwierhoma; Razinat Mohammed; Vicky Sylvester Molemodile and Mahfouz Adedimeji. Immediate past ANA President, Camillus Ukah, Emeritus diplomat and writer Ambassador Albert Omotayo, featured at the Convention. Canada-based writer, scholar and Professor, Nduka Otiono who served as general secretary of the association under the leadership of Olu Obafemi, was admitted into the College of Fellows of the body. Chairman of the Abuja Chapter of ANA, Arc Chukwudi Eze, was the resident host with a compelling responsibility to stay through all events.

Olusunle, PhD, fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches creative writing at the University of Abuja