In this ninth edition of A Long Talk, Nigerian poets Abu Bakr Sadiq and Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto have a deeply profound conversation that touches on life in Nigeria, the present (and future) implications of studying and living abroad. Here two of Africa’s finest contemporary poets engage with one another on a human level about transitions, with each defining in their own words how they come to understand and deal with change.
Sihle Ntuli: Sanibonani!
What an exciting prospect to have you both joining us on this ninth edition of Long Talk.
I’d like to begin by congratulating you on your debuts. The recently released collection ‘Leaked Footages’ for you Abu Bakr and the forthcoming collection ‘The Naming’ for you Chinua. Insofar as your literary progress and trajectories, the year that was and the year that is, I’m sure you two will certainly have quite a bit to talk about. So without further ado, let me leave you to it.
Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto: Thanks Sihle, I am happy about what you are doing with and at A Long House. I am grateful for having me here.
Hello Abu Bakr, How are you doing today? I have been thinking lately about how silence works in everything, how it isn’t just the absence of sound, but a language of its own. Sometimes, it feels like silence is the only thing speaking clearly. Before we dive into the heart of things, I just wanted to begin with that quiet. I am genuinely looking forward to this conversation. So let me begin simply, what has been holding your attention these days?
Abu Bakr Sadiq: Hi Chinua. There was a heavy downpour here in Minna last night. A part of me feels it would be sacrilegious to not say I’m doing great because for some reasons, I always feel great when it rains. But as I’m sure you know very well, there’s always more to how anyone is doing in this day and age, beyond whatever their response may be.
It is hard to pin where my attention has been lately on a single thing but I guess I can say it has been mostly around the daily numerous activities that come with being human. I spent chunks of the past two years away from my family, so I am filling my days with everything I missed out on during that period. On most days, you will find me getting lost in the silly cat-curious-rated questions and shenanigans of my niblings, devouring every bit of my sisters’ meals (goodness gracious!!), hanging out with close friends, attending nikkahs, janazahs, and naming ceremonies. I’ve lost count of how many of such events I’ve attended since the start of the year. I feel so much like me again. I feel at home. At the same time, there’s a part of me that feels trapped—much like every sane person in the world—in the inescapable thoughts about the state of things. I’m constantly fighting the urge to surrender to thoughts that remind me about the futility of life.
That felt like too much for a response but perhaps, it gives you a picture of where my mind is at the moment. I cannot help but wonder where your mind is at, especially now that you spend most of your time away from Nigeria. What are your ideas about home and how are they evolving now?
Chinụa: Thank you for asking such a tender, honest question. Where my mind is now, when I think of home, is somewhere between longing and disappointment. The Igbo people would say one does not look at a Masquerade from one spot. In that line, I think the world is too beautiful to look at from one country, yet I miss Nigeria. The smell of dust when keke speed past me, the gatherings, and even the people. I miss akpu and oha soup, my favorite. I miss speaking Igbo with people. I miss thinking in Igbo — the ease, the humor, the ways it lets me be fully myself. I miss my family so much — my mum, my siblings, and my wife. I miss the football pitch, my friends, kiosks, catfish joints, suya stands, and so on.
And yet, even as I ache for home, I feel the heartbreak that shadows it. I am unsettled by the recent Benue killings, more than 200 lives gone, and still, no names. No justice. Just numbers that I know in the coming weeks will fade too quickly from public and government concern, due to exhaustion from the former and negligence from the latter. This sad event shouldn’t have happened at all. You know, come the next election, many Nigerians will still vote along ethnic lines instead of choosing based on competence. But I am relieved, a bit, that there is a peaceful protest going on. We need to be accountable. We deserve good things, good life, because we really deserve them. It is discomforting how we have normalized depravity. We should be building people, good people and lasting institutions. Of home, generally, I write about it to keep it close because it is part of my reality, to remind myself that it exists beyond the headlines. I know that distance from home sometimes reshapes what I remember, either honestly or romantically. I think about how we are often forced to grieve silently, or speak into silence. That too is part of why I write. On the other hand, there is the issue of immigration, particularly when, because I am Nigerian, I am made to prove again and again that I am who I say I am. Even something as intimate, and even sacred, as being married must be defended, dissected, and doubted. It exhausts and diminishes. So, my idea of home is constantly evolving.
Recently, I came across a conversation between writers on X. I would like to bring to you one of their issues: Why do people write, either about home or not, to be liked? Maybe the better question is, when does writing become a performance, and how do we resist that (that is if actually there is something such as performance writing)?
Abu Bakr: Each time I have come across videos of the Benue massacre, I can’t help but wonder how anyone would go on living knowing well they had a hand in such a horrible act. As much as it hurts to admit this, the Benue massacre is yet another reminder of the perpetual insecurity that envelopes us all as citizens of Nigeria. It has barely been three months since hunters on their way to Kano were brutally lynched in Edo state and now there’s this. Only God knows what it will be tomorrow. Do we mention the countless horrendous killings that have happened in different parts of the country that we never saw in the headlines? These inhumane acts are totally unacceptable and need to be brought to an end.
To be honest, I cannot say or see any reason why anyone would write to simply be liked, especially about home. It is absurdly baffling that performance writing may even be a thing. It isn’t something I have thought of before but thinking of it now, it is insulting to the craft of writing to engage with it on the motive of getting the admiration of readers as a reward. Writing may become a performance when honesty is taken away from the craft. Perhaps, it may become performative when vulnerability, one of the essential fuels of genuine writing, is shied away from because then, facing your own truths both as a writer and a person becomes intimidating. Sidestepping vulnerability means denying the craft of writing a chance to fulfill its purpose of truth-telling. That is outrightly dishonoring, to say the least. Writing is a spiritual practice for me. It is the eyes with which I see through the world and its entities. It mediates my engagement with the world. Putting these words down on the page is how I contend with and process the events unfolding within and around me. I’m fascinated by the capacity and failure of language in trying to make meaning of our existence. Staying true and committed to one’s self, identity, morals, beliefs, and principles might be a good place to begin the process of resisting writing that is performative.
I enjoyed how your chapbook, The Teenager Who Became My Mother, engaged with themes of becoming, family dynamics, longing, and place. I found it fascinating how you were able to mould multiple worlds in a single poem. In “A Page from My Diary”, the lines “A boy gave me a microphone one afternoon. He wanted me to be heard. / I screamed Love into it and everyone ran away. / It didn’t come out well, he said. Try another word. / So I said Live― / No one ran away but the food that went round was served with bullets.” stayed with me for so long they became engraved in my memory. There were times I would randomly remember the lines but not the poem they come from or the poet who wrote them. That, to me, exemplifies your poetry’s authority with language and I’m always in awe of what you do with it. Now, your debut collection, The Naming, will be in the world soon. Congratulations! What would say have changed about the poet who wrote your chapbook and the one who wrote your debut? Are there any mirroring or recurring themes readers may want to anticipate? What has changed between the two books in regards to approach and from a general craft perspective?
Chinụa: Thank you. I appreciate how attentively you have engaged with my work, especially “A Page from My Diary.” That line you quoted—“A boy gave me a microphone one afternoon…”—came from a place of fractured innocence and disability. I think a lot about language’s impulse to witness and name even what cannot be easily understood, and that is perhaps where The Naming and The Teenager Who Became My Mother meet. But something has shifted. With The Naming, I am returning to history, homestead, childhood and ancestry not as something buried or forgotten but as something living in today and in continuity. There is more spiritual inquiry, a more conscious conversation with ancestral presences. The poems in the collection are, maybe, more alert and expositional. I allowed the poems more space, more of what they might not say. In doing so, I have to also gather all these shards of reality—my experiences, that of our country, my ancestors —and hold them up to the light for what they mean to me. And that leads me to you, Abu Bakr. I read Leaked Footages, wonderful book and the winner of Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, and I was stirred by its refusal to look away from Nigeria’s history of insecurity, kidnapping, genocide, and decades-long femicidal brutality and so on. And what interests me the most is the “Cyborg”, the witness. What is it about witnessing? I know that witnessing is also the ability of not avoiding vulnerability. As such, these lines in opening poem of the book, “Introducing Bhabi to the Cyborg” haunt me:
just so we’re clear, you’re not allowed to ask
how these scars came to be.
i don’t usually respond to questions
concerning lineage...
I am thinking of the body in your poems. How it witnesses, how it runs, how it breaks. How it sometimes endures. In that line, I ask you, what was the cost of such exploration in Leaked Footages? When you opened yourself up to write some of those poems, did any part of you resist? Did you feel afraid that in naming and witnessing, you might be undoing something? Or was it necessary for survival? Why the Cyborg?
Abu Bakr: Prior to writing my collection, I had gone through a long period of living in resistance against the pull of the poems that later became Leaked Footages. Obviously, it wasn’t the wisest decision, especially because my resistance was built on the premise that I was incapacitated to embark on a project of that magnitude. I knew what the voice was asking of me and yet, I remained hesitant to listen, to say ‘okay, here’s my body, let it be your vessel’ or to say to it ‘my mouth is now your mouth, I shall speak only with words you give to me’. A part of me feared what it could mean to see the realities of my people documented on the page. That fear could easily translate into shame. Perhaps, it was the shame of identifying with the life of a people who had been forced to accommodate the presence of violence in their society. When I eventually decided it was time I put a collection together (or perhaps, when I had exhausted the strength to resist), I began by surrendering myself, wholly, to the demands of the voice. It was relieving, amongst many other things.
The opening poem was one of the earliest poems I wrote for the collection. Having the Cyborg in that poem established the grounds for it to be an eyewitness to everything that was to unfold throughout the collection. In writing, I do not feel the need to hide anything; the page is my polygraph. I was convinced that getting those poems out of my head was the only way to feel any sense of normalcy there may be left for me in this insane world. There were poems I wrote in the collection which I knew I couldn’t have brought myself to write years ago. I guess I had to become who the poems needed me to be as a person first before I was to be deemed worthy of being ushered into their worlds, and when you are truly yourself, nakedness doesn’t come with a price tag.
Witnessing in Leaked Footages wasn’t just an act of looking, especially for the Cyborg. The Cyborg’s witnessing was a way of acknowledging and archiving our lives from its perspective; its witnessing was a resistance against forgetting—a reminder that someone remembers everything that has and is happening. On another level, the Cyborg’s witnessing was a way of looking at myself. However, the Cyborg’s function isn’t limited to witnessing, it embodies all it means to be a person and more. Besides being a conveyor and seeker of knowledge related to human nature, it was a channel to explore a sort of otherness, an identity I fantasized about as a teenager. The Cyborg’s presence also offered me an opportunity to look at some of these events from a different perspective. Maybe I hoped to find something, through the Cyborg’s mind, that I may not have access to if I were to write from the perspective of Abu Bakr. In doing so, I found myself thinking like I thought a Cyborg would think—sometimes, it cannot simply fathom why humans do some of the things we do to each other; the complex incomplexity of human nature makes its mind go wild with confusion and sometimes, it is just a child that needs an explanation for everything. I think The BBC Explains the Country’s Challenges to the Cyborg in Sixty Seconds perfectly illustrates this.
I’m curious to know what your thoughts are on fatherhood, especially now that you are married. How has being married influenced your writing life? I was moved by the searing honesty in your essay The Last Time I Saw My Father in The Republic. What did it take to write such an elegantly moving essay? Does the essay, in any way, point to what readers may encounter in The Naming?
Chinụa: I will start with Fatherhood. I am aware that the universal definition of fatherhood is to be a father and as well to be present. Marriage deepens that awareness and expectation. On the other hand, I began to understand that to write honestly about my father, or to write as a father-to-be, is to write with a sense of urgency, being present. I love my father so much that I know he is always with me. My father’s father is with me. And my Chi is always with me, too. I honour them. I ask them for things and guidance. I ask them to represent me in places beyond me. Even my name speaks for me. Chinụalụmọgụ, May my Chi always fight for me. You see, I am even taught about presence through my name. So, I understand this responsibility, and I want to abide by it in my writings, marriage and relationship with people who deserve it. To be present. To love. To ask for forgiveness when I err and to forgive as I can.
About my father, in terms that are beyond superficiality, I understand that there is no clear boundary between the past and present or maybe the living and the dead. Therefore, the dead do not stay gone, at least to the Igbo people. They appear in dreams, at least to me, in ways that do not demand interpretation all the time. So writing The Last Time I Saw My Father demanded more than memory; it required a willingness to transcend my experiences and observations when my father battled colon cancer and my relationship with him. All my life, since my father died, I have been hearing of his good deeds, his works and work ethics from his friends and people. So I decided to share my relationship with him in the bid to show and tell how he was a father and did fatherly things. How he was not a professor at home, but one who read stories to me and my siblings, and carried me on his shoulder during one of the 1993 or so WWF tours in Germany. How he was a good husband to my mother. How his poetry collections, The Chants of a Minstrel and The Voice of The Night Masquerade gave me the inclination to write. Importantly, I wrote that essay, because I can never stop grieving him. I want him to live forever. It is also my way of showing respect and, perhaps, being at peace with the grief. So, no, The Last Time I Saw My Father isn’t a preview of The Naming. But it is kin to it.
My good friend, in your own culture or tradition, how is the relationship between the living and the dead understood? Do you believe, as some of us do, that the dead still walk with us? I want to know what cosmology you inherit or imagine when it comes to those who have passed on, and how that shapes the way you live, love, or even write.
Abu Bakr: My belief system, which is deeply rooted in Islam, is a large palette of smaller beliefs. I believe the dead do not live in the physical world. I believe death is an intermediary state, referred to as Barzakh in Arabic, where the dead await Yawm al-Qiyamah (The Day of Resurrection and Judgement). My Gbagyi identity also exposed me to numerous beliefs on where the dead go after their demise and in one of those beliefs, the dead are said to exist, unseen, in the living world. In Gbagyi knunu (Gbagyi culture and traditions), those who have passed on become spirits whose responsibility it is to guide their descendants. Dead parents lead the way for their children through the journey of life. Some of these beliefs and traditions are things we talk about in my family all the time. The Gbagyi religious cosmology is complex, with three major categories of deities from whom many smaller deities emerge.
In an article by Alex Byanyiko which I read some months ago while doing some research for a work in progress, the zokuda traditional practice which is very much alive in some Gbagyi communities today is perfectly articulated: “When the people were faced with mysterious challenges in society, they would consult zokuda, who would then consult with the spirit realm and give the people feedback. He would reveal the cause or causes of the problem or challenges and also reveal what the gods or ancestors demanded from the people to find solutions to their problems.” Like other African cultures, the Gbagyi knunu has its festivities as well. One of the most common ones I knew while growing up is the azhiba-je which is celebrated annually. Our maternal uncles and aunts in the village always call us to inform us whenever the festival is set to take place. The tradition of naming is one of things I find fascinating about Gbagyi knunu because of the things that come with it. For instance, my parents named me after my maternal grandfather. Because of this, my mother never called me by my actual name. It was always one alias of my grandfather or the other. He lives through me, in her eyes and the eyes of everyone in my family. I exhibit some behaviors sometimes and the first thing I usually hear is “that’s how Kada used to behave”. That naming alone is deeply engraved in my identity. It is something I am proud of. Through it, I will always feel a sense of belonging to my ancestry even if I did not live at the same time as them or believed in all that they believed in. When I write, however, all my dead are with me in thoughts. It is the kind of presence that I do not need to summon or make any conscious effort to imagine.
There’s so much going on in the world today. Some would say, too much for the body to bear. But like you’ve mentioned earlier, the body has and continues to endure the challenges it is subjected to. As a writer, how are you processing these events that could potentially change the course of the future? When you think of the future, where does your mind go? How is your body responding to the current state of the world? Do you feel its perception of the world and its people shifting?
Chinụa: Absolutely, what you described resonates strongly with the Igbo cosmological worldview. Like the Gbagyi knunu and aspects of Barzakh in Arabic, the Igbo believe that death is not an end. The dead who were good in their lifetime become part of the ancestral world (ndi ichie). Also, in Igbo thought, the world is dual: the uwa (physical world) and the ala mmụọ (spirit world), knowing that their is difference between ala mmụọ and ndi ichie, constantly interact. Some of them even return as reincarnated children (a belief known as ịlọ ụwa). Then the Igbo structure of the divine: there is Chukwu (the supreme deity), followed by a complex system of alusi (smaller deities), each overseeing specific aspects of life, which includes fertility, justice, rivers, market days, much like the Gbagyi triadic and branching spiritual system.
Now, to your question. There is so much going on in this world. Yes, the body is bearing a lot. And what is remarkable is not just that it endures, but that it remembers. Grief, hope, anxiety, dread, joy, they each have a location in the body. Writing, for me, is not just a mental or imaginative act but a physical one: I worry a lot. It affects my head and sleep. I write through my worries. Thinking again of our country, I write about it sometimes through disappointment and sorrow, my breath slows when something devastating about it is on the news. In spite of the incidents, I still hold onto hope because it keeps me sane. On a larger scale, when the world groans through wars, collapsing systems, displacements, climate grief, my body does not stay neutral or unconcerned. I feel it. We should be empathic and not lean on “it doesn’t concern me.” Truly, someday, it will eventually be everyone’s business. Sometimes I don’t know the language to express myself about these things. But even in that exhaustion, I have come to believe the body is a kind of archive. As a writer, I lean onto that because I have my own share of hard and bad experiences, both as a Nigerian and living in the United States. I process these events not by trying to solve them, but by letting language become a kind of ritual, and even forgiving myself and those who did wrong to me. By this, I do not mean I don’t react when the need arises. And when I think of the future, I do not reach toward timelines or perfect resolutions. Because I do not know in what way to think of what is ahead or unknown, so I often go backward: to ancestors, to indigenous knowledge, to lost names and songs because I believe there is healing in returning. My hope for the future is shaped by how well we remember, and how well we use what we remember.
As for perception of the world: yes, it is shifting. In repetiting myself, I no longer see the world as a collection of separate struggles. When one community or country cries out, that pain is everywhere even when we pretend, bound by boundaries, diplomacy or are hard to hear. Right now, I am suffering from a serious Degenerative Disc Disease. When it started, I lost certain control of my lower body. The pain was, and is still, hell, radiating down my legs. I wish there was a word to describe the pain. I couldn’t stand or bathe myself. Now, I can’t even walk up to five minutes. I have been subjected to MRI scans and X-rays, to drugs and painkillers, and to a series of painful physiotherapies. Do I feel better after a month now? I don’t know. Do I sometimes hate my body because of the disease, yes. I am thinking about surgery which I don’t know if I have the resources for. The body has become more porous now, more alert, more fragile, and more sacred in its awareness. And maybe or not that is what is needed: to stop pretending we are untouched. To let our bodies and our writing be witnesses.
So I ask: in a world that wounds us constantly through history, politics, family, borders, even ourselves, what does forgiveness look like for you? Is it something you offer easily, or something you have to wrestle your way toward? And do you think true forgiveness can exist without forgetting or is memory part of what gives forgiveness its weight?
Abu Bakr: I am so sorry about your health. May God grant you healing. Forgiveness is a journey for me. It’s a journey that begins with the constant reminder to not easily get offended, especially over things I am sure I’m capable of doing to others. It is easier said than done, though. But the effort in thought helps a great deal. I try to remind myself to forgive as much as I would love to be on the receiving end of forgiveness. To not forgive is to expect perfection from those who err against us, including ourselves—how many times have we done things to our bodies against their will? Did our bodies hang us out to dry?The expectation of human perfection is in itself offensive. As a teenager, I had the tendency to snap at people for the tiniest things. I didn’t like it because I saw what it could lead to, especially because it had no regard for even the people who meant nothing but good for me. In retrospect, that phase was pivotal in my growth and development as a young person. It would have been impossible without my mother who always preached sabr (patience) to me. At that time, I didn’t understand how much her words would mould my capacity for emotional control and as an aftereffect, an acute awareness and acceptance of my emotions. Thanks to her, Allah bless her soul, I’m definitely better at managing my emotions now. I will not say I’m perfect at it because everyday, I wake up to a world hellbent on filling my tiny heart with rage.
In a way, I think living in that state of where you are not easily offended by the actions or inactions of others lightens the weight of forgiveness. But there are things that are simply unforgivable—things I cannot forgive. I am enraged by the blatant disregard for human life and rights in our country. I cannot forgive the unjust killings going on in several communities in Nigeria—Shiroro, Sarkin Pawa (I just came across the news of a police inspector, Bassey Asuqou, who committed suicide while on special duty in Sarkin Pawa on June 25. The second suicide involving a police officer in Niger State within four months. Nobody is talking about why this is happening.), Zamfara, etcetera. I cannot forgive the murder of students in Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, that has happened this week. I have long moved beyond the capacity to forgive the obliteration going on in Congo, Sudan, Syria, and Palestine. I am limited in knowledge to know if forgiveness can exist without forgetting. It will depend on what’s being forgiven, won’t it? I cannot forgive or forget these inhumane acts.
I am thinking a lot these days about freedom on many fronts. I want freedom from all the harm the world force-feeds us. I want freedom for all the oppressed people in the world. I want freedom in my creative practice. Freedom from surveillance. Do you feel free, Chi? What does freedom mean to you? In your writing practice, do you feel a sense of freedom or the lack of it in exploring certain subject matter, themes, or forms? I would love to know what your idea for artistic freedom is.
Chinụa: I don’t know if I feel free in any absolute way. Some days, yes, when the writing, through my worries, arrives unannounced, unafraid, uncensored. When it doesn’t care who is present or not, when it feels like language is not something I am building but something I am remembering. And yes, I feel free when I play football with my friends or even play fifa on Playstation 5. Yes, I feel free when I listen to music, when I am with a great community, when I am with my family. I feel free talking with my mother. With my wife, Mmesoma. With my siblings: Nnedimma, Onyedikachukwu and Uchechukwu. I feel free when I speak with Kwame Dawes, Chika, Olisa, Kelechi, Abuchi, Rasaq, Segun… I don’t feel free in any absolute way. And to interest you, I love competition. And I am thinking hard now if it makes me feel free or it is just a bad habit.
A lot is happening in our country, just like you said. I wonder if anyone feels free living in it. Perhaps freedom is for some and not to others. And it is not supposed to be this way. To deviate a little, there are subjects that still feel too tender, too dangerous, especially when writing or speaking from within a society where leaders (power) guards itself with violence or dismissal. Like you, I also connect freedom with healing with the right to speak, to remember, to not be defined by harm. Sometimes I think freedom begins the moment we, individually, become empathetic, and give ourselves permission to imagine and reimagine, to shape reality differently by being kind. Importantly, I hold onto hope. I hope that someday everything will at least be fine.
And at this point my friend, I think we have covered such rich and layered ground, and I truly appreciate this conversation. To conclude, is there anything still sitting with you that you would like us to talk about as we end?
Abu Bakr: Indeed, we have covered lots of ground, Chi. To say I’m leaving this conversation with the feeling of enrichment is a great understatement. You have said so many things that I am certain I will ponder upon and return to for a long time. Daalu, nwanne. While we are still here, it feels perfect to share with you that by August, a week after my birthday, I will be an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, in sha Allah. As you might guess, I am incredibly excited and looking forward to where this new path will take me. Who knows, if you ever come around Ann Arbor, we could have another conversation, sitting by a lake or a river? I’m excited by the prospect of that. Thank you for this conversation. Take care, my friend.
Chinụa: This warms me deeply. Congratulations, my good friend, on becoming an MFA candidate at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. You absolutely deserve it. I will be holding you in my thoughts as that birthday and new beginning approach. And I would love that lake or river conversation in Ann Arbor someday. Go well, go bravely. May we all succeed. In sha Allah. Ji sie ike!
