Abuja: The City of Poets

Denja Abdullahi

The dream of the City called Abuja started with the foresighted decision of the short-lived General Murtala Mohammed’s regime in 1976 to move the capital of Nigeria from the congested port-city of Lagos to a place in the geographical centre of Nigeria, amenable and conducive for the development of a brand-new capital city.

That dream was borrowed from other nations in Africa and around the world who did the same: Malawi shifted her capital from Zomba to Lilongwe, Tanzania from Dar-es-Salam to Dodoma, Australia from Melbourne to Canberra, Brazil from Rio –de-Janeiro to Brasilia and Pakistan from Karachi to Islamabad.

Experts had hitherto been sent into the hinterland of the country to find a good location for the new Federal Capital Territory. A space was found in the near-centre of Nigeria, with a congenial weather condition, bewitching undulating topography of hills, rocks and valleys and sparsely populated with very accommodating aboriginal ethnic groups. The space, a virgin-land of sort was proclaimed as the new capital of Nigeria and named Abuja by borrowing the moniker of a nearby flourishing kingdom that has tenuously held on to the space and its surroundings. The former overlords were asked to give themselves another name for Abuja’s sake, which they gladly did. Shortly after this proclamation, the regime of General Murtala Mohammed was cut short in a bloody military coup but that did not end the dream of Abuja, it lived on to become one of the indelible legacies of that regime.

Such is the romance behind the history of Abuja, a romance so strong that it has bred poets and other creative personages. Pre-capital city Abuja was a land of farmers and potters. The farmers have stuck to their trade till today in spite of the serious dislocations they have suffered with the advent of the new capital city. One of the indigenous potters, Dr.Ladi Kwali, though unlettered, achieved glory locally and internationally with her dexterity in the art of pottery. She taught and showed her skills to the world as a mark of the creativity of the people of Abuja. Today, pottery is still a famous art in Abuja but it appears the world has moved along without it!

Femi Osofisan, a famous Nigerian playwright, poet and dramatist said, while talking about another famous city of Nigeria called Ibadan that,

“Mention a city and it mentions a poet .And if it is in any way significant, if the city is remembered at all, it is almost always because its name openly or silently summons the memory of a poet”.

I have found this statement to be very true of Abuja because the very mention of the city Abuja today conjures the name of the poet-soldier, Mamman Jiya Vatsa, who was a soldier and rose to the rank of a Major General in the Nigerian Army. Vatsa was a soldier that saw action during the Nigerian –Biafran Civil War, and was given to writing poetry and fraternizing with writers and artistes of his time, many who later became icons of Nigerian literature (Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark etc).

Mamman Vatsa’s romance with the City of Abuja started when he was made the Minister of the new Federal Capital Territory (a kind of Mayor) in the early 1980s by the Military Regime which overthrew the civilian government of Alh.Shehu Shagari in 1983.At the time of Vatsa’s appointment as Abuja’s mayor, the place was still largely virginal, development was just starting with earth moving machines clearing the paths for roads and other infrastructures.

Lagos still housed the seat of government and Abuja was at best a kind of Camp David that the Nigerian rulers escaped to, occasionally, from the confusion of Lagos. Shehu Shagari was toppled during one of such presidential retreats to Abuja.

Vatsa the poet saw the beauty and later glories of Abuja with the eyes of a poet and wrote poems upon poems calling everyone to come enjoy and help realize the dream of Abuja. He published two volumes of poetry The Poetry of Abuja and Reach for the Skies, both extolling Abuja’s flora and fauna as a place to invest one’s dream and hope for a future bounty. Hear him sing about Abuja in one of his poems:

I am your new song
That has come to grow with you
To free your life and limb
From the festered feathers of yesteryears.

So come, come feast with me
And together we shall dance
In the wind like leaves
And make our great nation
Sweet rhythms of our noble music.

Vatsa did more than write effusive poetry about Abuja, he courted other writers and poets to make Abuja home. He hosted a national convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (a body established by Chinua Achebe in 1981in the University town of Nsukka) in 1985 and donated a large parcel of land in an idyllic setting to the Association with a charge that it should be developed into a writers’ resort where they would continue to commune with the gods of creativity.

Sadly, just a few days after that historic gathering of poets in Abuja, Vatsa was arrested for being part of an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime of his bosom friend, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who years earlier had overthrown the regime of another common friend, General Muhammad Buhari— the regime that initially appointed Vatsa as the mayor/minister of Abuja. The poet was yanked from the hills of Abuja, summarily tried, sentenced to death but not after saying poetically to the Military Tribunal

“This is not going to my last moments; I have God’s promise on that”.

The Nigerian titerary troika, mentioned earlier, went out of their way to appeal to General Babangida, to spare Vatsa, if not for anything, but for the patriotic pathos of his poetry. The evil genius, as he later called himself, gave the writers whimsical assurances; but they had hardly left his doors when they heard that Vatsa and others implicated in the coup plot had been executed an hour earlier.

Thus the poets fled Abuja with Vatsa’s execution, abandoning the given parcel of land that has remained undeveloped till today. After Vatsa, creativity took a long holiday away from Abuja in the long years of Military Rule that lasted for about fifteen years. General Babangida did not help the Abuja dream when he hurriedly moved the seat of government from Lagos to Abuja in the early 1990s after dramatically surviving a bloody military coup targeting his venal regime. Lagos after that coup became unsafe for any sitting head of state and Babangida ran away with his government to Abuja—a place not ready for this sudden arrival.

Abuja as a place of steady development became a rushed city, mirroring the inadequacies earlier found in Lagos. A more venal ruler, General Sani Abacha succeeded Babangida and the poets were effectively shut out, with outspoken ones among them harried into exile. Abuja was a no go area for the dissenting voice of a whining poet, but more like Plato’s famous Republic.

If the new overlords of Abuja thought they had silenced poetry after silencing Vatsa, then they were ignorant of the fact that some stowaway poets berthed in Abuja with the ship of government when it moved from Lagos with Babangida’s hurried departure. These poets mainly work with government bureaucracy and when they got to Abuja, they saw what Vatsa saw and decided to establish a closet chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors. They bandied together under the bureaucratic watch of one Haruna Penni, who administered the affairs of the group in such a conventional manner belying the supposed reputation of a writers’ group being a coterie of eccentrics and irredentists.

The group operated by drawing from the patriotic fervor of Vatsa, very watchful of open confrontation with the authorities for which poets are famous and succeeded in nurturing a new kind of love for the city, a love embalmed in a poetic anthology entitled Abuja Acolytes, later published by the group. With this new found confidence that a poet must not necessarily be anti-establishment or be an outlaw, poetry returned to the city and in 1997, another convention of Nigerian writers, like the last one held by Vatsa in 1985, took place.

But that second convention in Abuja held under the shadow of the extra-judicial execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, famous Nigerian writer- environmental activist in 1995 by the same regime holding sway then in Abuja.

At that 1997 convention, rumors were rife that the military regime was showing more than a passing interest in what the poets were up to and they in turn took surreptitious glances over their shoulders as they went about moaning of a City they could have easily captured if Vatsa had been alive!

Hence, literary resurgence became the lot of the City of Abuja with the return to democracy in 1999 after years of military rule, referred to by many as the years of the locust. The association of writers became more vibrant and new literary groups branched out from the association.

The first group to declare independence was the Abuja Literary Society (ALS) led by Victor Anoliefo and Ken Ike Okere. They saw the original Association as too dull and too conventional and traditional to spice up the literary scene in Abuja. Abuja Literary Society showed that poetry and other forms of creativity can be the indulgence of the well heeled upscale society people. They read poetry and did drama skits in highbrow nightclubs, bars and five stars hotels attended by diplomats, big businessmen and top government officials.

Today the Abuja Literary Society has bequeathed to the city of Abuja a regular poetry slam contest that showcases the sweetness of the art of the spoken word. From Abuja Literary Society came another breakaway group, an avant garde group dedicated to combining poetry with all other forms of entertainment, music concert and even beauty pageants! .They are a group which the young, the adventurous and the follow. They called themselves The Guild of Artists and Poets (GAP), established by the young upwardly mobile duo of Paul Ikeogu and Audu Maikori.

Today, it is GAP that is plotting the course of poetry towards hip-hop with the potential of making it a pop-cultural mainstay. From the old order of the Association of Authors (ANA) came a very recent breakaway, Abuja Writers Forum (AWF) and they too are not doing badly in bringing another fresh dimension to the thriving literary creativity of the City of Abuja.

There seems to be a kind of literary renaissance in Abuja, with the various literary groups toeing the path of the popular African adage that says ‘the sky is wide enough to accommodate the different acrobatics of diverse species of birds at the same time without one disturbing the other.’

More recently, the groups in various combinations have worked together on various projects such as the recent celebration of the 75th birthday of Africa’s first Nobel Laureate for Literature, Wole Soyinka, under the banner of Abuja Artist (e) Collectives. In Abuja, you would not be surprised to see the same faces peopling the various activities of the various groups.

The City of Lagos lost the seat of power to Abuja and I dare say it is on the way of losing the fountain of creativity to Abuja. Come to think of it, Abuja (in spite of past structural distortions, and thanks to its restoration by another maverick mayor, the quantity surveyor called El-Rufai,)is a more likely place for a poet to fall in love with. Mamman Vatsa was the first poet laureate of Abuja and many more poets have come to love Abuja like Vatsa did in his poems.

Yours truly has extended this love by chronicling the many faces of modern Abuja in lines after lines. And so the Abuja dream lives on in the lines of its many poets!

To the first Poet Laureate
(In memory of Mamman Jiya Vatsa)

Keep for me the rear darling
For I am going
To Abuja to report………
Come along
To Abuja city
To sing a song
Of beauty.
Mamman J. Vatsa

You were the first convert
To this faith of the capital city
You came in your jackboots
Your fiery Eyes blazed the glory of the jungle
Yet you dangled the quill of the poet.
With a Soldier’s passionate grip
You held on to the dream of a city
That should be home to all.
With the cadences of an inspired griot
You sang songs atop rocks and hills
Of a city that should grow in beauty.
Your heart swelled with pride
You lifted high your goblet
You called on poets, philosophers and pioneers
To come drink the giddy wine of patriotism
As they lived their dreams of a new city.
In the thick of your revelry
Drums of betrayal sounded
And a soldier – poet died a warrior’s death
Leaving rocks and crevices to mourn a lover
Whose voice ceased to resound
But whose songs echo right to this day!

Denja Abdullahi is a poet, literary and culture administrator, and author of Abuja Nunyi(This is Abuja).

Comments

[cynthia C .I felix]

i will love to be a member,i am a poet & winner of sparrow ventures poetry competition 2009

[Ada]

Weldone Denja Abdullahi. Your write up is so informative, your poem is amazing.

I am a writer too and i have so much love for this magnificient city. I am packing up and leaving the white man's land to this city. A city so beautiful; it brings hope to broken hearts and spirits.

[Mohammed Mamman Vatsa]

Good day Denja Abdullahi.Thanks for the beautiful write-up. we (the children) are honoured.Sir,God bless you.My brothers and Sisters (Haruna,Jibrin,Fati and My lovely Aisha)send their love.

[cynthia c.i. felix]

hi denja ur work is great,thanks for honouring mama jiya vasta

[Ford Manuel]

Uncle Denja, you will never be forgotten. Your passion (which includes fine works of literary ingenuity) will live on.