THISDAYonline

In the 1980s it was fashionable for young Nigerian writers who felt marginalised by the established writers to call on the latter to retire, to clear the stage for the young ones. The budding writers saw that as the only chance they had to shine. As long as the old, celebrated writers remained in the glare of national and international publicity, the young writers would never receive attention and, consequently, stood no chance of becoming famous themselves, nationally and internationally.

One can appreciate the consternation of the young Nigerian writer, pitted against the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, and Chinua Achebe. My quarrel is with their diagnosis of the cause of their dilemma. They see a creative writer's career through the jaundiced eyes of a society allergic to age and experience, a society which celebrates massive public service "purges" as the key to an efficient civil service, a society which dumps as unproductive any person above 60, or any person who has served his country for up to thirty-five years Chike Momah's two brilliant novels in two years, with more in the pipeline, demonstrate eloquently that there is no retirement age in creative writing. Dr.T.M. Aluko, now in his 80s and battling with a stroke, has demonstrated that literary creativity has no age limitations. I am outdooring my next novel, Conspiracy of Silence to be published by Longman Nigeria Plc, on the occasion of my 70th birthday next month. My short stories will appear in a collection titled The Accra Riviera published by Oyster St. Iyke (Ltd.). Only death can silence the creative writer.

I said a little earlier that my disagreement with our young writers is over their diagnosis of the cause of their dilemma, a diagnosis which reminds me of the Igbo proverb about the chicken in a soup pot blaming its tragic circumstances on the soup pot rather than on the person who slit its throat. The present day Nigerian writer is unable to receive appropriate attention not because the established writers stand in his way but because the environment which pitchforked Nigeria's celebrated writers into international prominence does not exist in Nigeria of the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Nigerian writers who made their debut in the 1950s and 1960s were invariably published in Europe, by foreign publishers who used their multinational networks to promote their books. You received international attention with your first book, more or less The multinational publishers also took extra pains to promote promising authors. Alan Hill brought Achebe to the literary world. Rex Collings did the same for Wole Soyinka.

The major literary awards which serve as parameters for evaluating the greatness of a Nigerian creative writer are also foreign based and controlled. It was the British Booker Award which automatically conferred greatness on Ben Okri. As for the Nobel Prize in Literature, that is considered the highest crown of glory on earth (by the Western World) for any writer. It is a well known fact that no Nigerian writer, however brilliant, can hope to win the prize unless he has a powerful lobby in Europe or the USA. The world acclaimed scholars of African literature whose verdicts determine which Nigerian writer is worthy of international attention are also foreigners who have been joined in their foreign countries by many Nigerian literary scholars. We rejoiced that a new era had dawned when the Obasanjo Administration conferred a N1 million literary award on visiting Prof. Chinua Achebe. It soon became obvious that the Administration was more concerned with making a fitting cash presentation to Prof. Achebe than with instituting a major literary award to promote Nigerian Literature.

Where does all this leave the Nigerian writer? And Nigerian literature? The once famous Heineman African Writers Series which brought Achebe, Aluko, Cyprian Ekwensi, Elechi Amadi, Floral Nwapa, John Munonye and many others to prominence ran aground decades ago. Fontana Books which brought Ike, Soyinka, Obi Egbuna, Adaora Ulasi and others into the limelight died in the early 1980s. The economic downturn which began in the 1980s and has since continued, dealt the knockout blow on foreign publishing. The abysmal value of the naira meant that a foreign publisher could not market the published books in Nigeria, which has constituted a major deterrent.

The Nigerian publisher is too apathetic and preoccupied with competing for textbook adoptions to fill the vacuum. The Nigerian Government has remained indifferent. Its shocking lack of appreciation of the centrality of culture to national development is clearly written in the fortunes of our Ministry of Culture. Within two years of its creation as a separate Ministry, in the euphoria of a still born 1988 National Policy on Culture, it had four ministers. Within the less than two years of the Obasanjo Administration, Culture has had two bedfellows - firstly, Information, currently Tourism; worse still, the Ministry has had three different Ministers in less than the two years, and President Obasanjo appears more concerned with zoning headship of the ministry to a section of the country than the relevance of the credentials of the Minister of Culture.

God has blessed Nigeria with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, brilliant writers any country can justifiably be proud of. But the Igbo say that a pair of feet alone cannot keep a homestead clean. The works of two writers cannot make a national literature. Unfortunately Nigerian literature is fast becoming an endangered species, and urgent remedial action is imperative if 21st century Nigeria is to produce its own crop of brilliant writers. One crucial step in this direction is for the appropriate organ of the Federal Ministry of Culture and Tourism to organise a national conference on Nigerian Literature in the 21st century to diagnose the major problems and chart the way forward.

Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike is President Nigerian Book Foundation.