Earlier this year, when Hassan Minhaj was invited to perform at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, an annual event in which the sitting president was always a notable feature, there was some suggestion that he boycott it. After all, as a Muslim comedian, this was a president who had shown nothing but contempt for not just his religion and his race, but for the press itself. Why was the White House Correspondents Association inviting a bully and a racist president to grace an ostensibly ceremonial occasion set up for those entrusted with the responsibility of holding leaders' feet to fire? Hassan's response, which ultimately prevailed, was that there was no better chance of speaking truth (and satire) to power than a pulpit a few feet away from the most powerful man on earth, and at an event watched by millions of people worldwide.
In the end, it was the president who flinched, choosing instead to appear at a public rally hastily organised in a different state but at the same time as the dinner that held so much embarrassing potential for his fragile ego. And in his absence, the comedian delivered as much of a fiery performance as was expected, not just of the absent president, but of the ideology that produced him and the media that failed to hold his feet to the fire.
I'm not Hassan Minhaj, a disclaimer that is quite useless at this point, but I've had course, over the last couple of days, to consider that event and its significance, in the face of a certain bad-faith response to the first edition of the Kaduna Book and Arts Festival, a privately organized event. The argument, similar to that against the American comedian, was that the partial support of the Kaduna State Government for the literary festival taints it enough to result in writer boycotts. Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the governor of the state, it is argued, is a problematic political figure who had looked the other way when innocent civilians were killed under his watch, among other inadequacies. Therefore, he is not worth associating with in any way by writers who care about justice and accountability.
On the surface, the argument is sensible. After all, who wants to sit and dine with a politician who seemed unfazed by the violence meted out to a religious minority group under his watch.
Except that, first of all, the festival is not a "wine and dine".
It is a gathering of people with diverse thoughts and opinions sharing ideas and their love for reading against the background of books and other artistic productions. I have been invited to conduct a book chat with author Laila Aboulela who was the first winner of the Caine Prize. Her book, The Kindness of Enemies (2016) examined the emotional and human origins of modern extremism through the story of Imam Shamil, a warrior from Dagestan during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II in old Russian Empire. The writer, a muslim Sudanese writer, will also be organizing a two-day workshop for 22 women selected from over 40 applicants.
Those who have attended the annual Aké Festival will testify to its setup as one facilitating conversation as much as disagreement. At the 2015 event, I remember clearly the moment when President Olusegun Obasanjo's demeanour changed from a feted guest to one of a cornered politician when a young girl took up the microphone and challenged him on the failure of his role so far in the Nigerian experiment. In a follow-up session later in the evening, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka piled on by describing the former president as an unrepentant liar. In 2016, during a book chat between Helon Habila and Teju Cole, moderated by journalist Kadaria Ahmed, most audience reports of the conversation focused on the way the anchor challenged the writers to justify the usefulness of their work on the Chibok Girls if it did nothing to better inform the reader or improve the situation on the ground. In short, like most book and art festivals, it ends up as a space for a cross-fertilization of ideas, in as many necessary directions as necessary.
I have been privileged to have attended these events yearly and I've been impressed by the renewed focus they have put on books and literature as important entry points into social and political discourse. But Aké Festival, especially, also does something more. By taking invited writers into town to interact with young school students, and endowing book grants and scholarship opportunities for students to attend, they sow a seed towards a more robust culture of reading. As a high school teacher from 2012 to 2015, I often travelled to Aké with dozens of my students, to listen, learn, and interact with writers many of whom they had only read about or seen on television. The power of that kind of on-the-ground interaction can not be overemphasized. From what I see on the KABAFEST website, I have no reason to doubt that this maiden edition, made even more special for holding in Northern Nigeria where the literacy rate leaves too much to desired, will have the same influence on students and writers privileged enough to attend, or to have writers visit their schools.
But it is this dimension of engagement that seems most befuddling in what the critics suggest should be the response of writers in all cases to issues with which they disagree. Is it to be believed that packing up and leaving is the right way to address anything considered objectionable or staying and speaking? It can't be that only one way is right. It would be in anyone's right to choose either, as long as it is based on principle rather than force or in service of a political agenda of a different kind. But to say, as Ikhide Ikheloa did last week on twitter that those who choose to stay and speak "do not care" about political oppression is both a weak and sanctimonious intervention, not in the least helped by the fact that the writer himself had not been shy to take sides with more despicable political leaders when it fit within his ideological bent. To take it a step further by publicizing the headliner's agent details on his facebook page in order to embarrass her from attending the festival is nothing short of despicable. What if someone did that abouthis own place of work?
And so, if the question is in whether or not by associating, even by the mere fact of attendance, with a festival in which a government has input, one is condoning everything that that government or its governor stands for, the answer is easy. Government funds do not belong to one man. It is possible that Mallam Nasir El-Rufai is a despicable human being, a weak leader, and one with animus against a group of people over whom he has power. If so, then what better way to let him know than to attend a festival in which one will get a chance to challenge him face to face. We are writers, conscience of society. Our role is to hold the feet of powerful people to the fire, many times to their face, and even at the risk of personal or professional loss. Many of the Northern-Nigeria-based writers that will attend this book fair have strong opinions about El-Rufai's tenure as Kaduna State governor and will be expected to express it in as forceful a way as possible. I haven't read enough about the man to have an opinion, but I intend to do so. But to insinuate that all attendees are "indifferent to oppression" is in a bad taste, and in bad faith.
Like the journalists, artists, and comedians who have attended the White House Correspondents Dinner to challenge the president of the United States to his face, the presence of writers in the presence of power is often actually the protest. It is the politicians who should be afraid.
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Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, one of the writers attending the maiden edition of the Kaduna Arts and Book Festival, writes from Lagos.
-In the absence of greatness, mediocrity thrives.
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