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Security analyst and author of ‘Terrorists or Criminal Gangs: New Lords of Nigeria’s North West’, Tosin Osasona, believes justice is a contextual and local concept: ‘The primary misconception about justice in Nigeria is that justice can only be done in, and by “formal” institutions or agencies inherited from the colonial era.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I grew up in a university community, where everyone seemed to be reading or pretending to read something. I was force-fed a diet of newspapers (The Guardian, Daily Times and The Tribune), the African Writers Series—Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Cyprian Ekwensi’s Burning Grass, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru, Mongo Beti’s Remember Ruben, and also some bits of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens when anyone wanted you to be miserable.
What did you find miserable about Shakespeare’s plays and Charles Dickens’ books?
Knotty language and unrelatable allusions made Shakespeare’s plays serious misery. For Dickens, it was the volume of those novels.
You work in public policy. What book from your childhood would you give to a policymaker? Which policymaker would this be and why?
Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God would be a good read for President Buhari and governors across Nigeria who are excessively fixated on portraying a stern ‘I am in charge and know what is good for you’ outlook. How do you as the chief executive keep a balance between your self-defined sense of duty (problem definition) as typified by Winterbottom and Ezeulu and the overall good of the society (policy outcomes)? Balance, flexibility, and emotional intelligence are essential democratic values.
I grew up in a university community, where everyone seemed to be reading or pretending to read something.
If you could rewrite a classic book/text, which would it be and why?
It would be Things Fall Apart. Rather than the protagonist—Okonkwo—committing suicide, I would love to see him actually stand trial in the Colonial Court. I kind of want to see what his thoughts would be in defence or justification of his actions, and the reactions of the colonial court. There’s a seeming clash of cultural ideologies and expectations as to what essentially is justice, fairness, and sense of responsibility and I’d want to see how these contradictions define the criminal justice system in Nigeria.
What’s one way the pandemic has changed your reading tastes/habits?
I have less public policy- and research-related work to do, so I am back at reading fiction (some of the old African Writers Series novels that I grew up reading—Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Woods and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North for example.) rather than political-economy texts, history texts, and biographies.
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About the Author
is a senior research associate at the Center for Public Policy Alternatives, Lagos. He is interested in policy-centered interventions focusing on effective, efficient and accountable service delivery by Nigeria’s security and justice agencies.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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