INTERVIEW

Awakening The Creative Storm
(Conclussion)

How many editions of the carnival have you done and what’s been the impact?

We’ve had three editions (2004, 2005 and 2007) and tell you what, because it was born out of an innocuous premise of letting people come together and discuss comics, I think in it’s third edition it has succeeded in that. Meaning that, for comics who are even out of the mainstream (in the Nigerian sense), for people to have been meeting annually, three times, I think we have done something. However, last year was a bit pivotal in the sense that we were able to organize this animation workshop (something for the kids they were able to learn and make cartoons, and they were encouraged more to do their arts).

I come from a generation when if you told your parents you wanted to be a cartoonist it’s ridiculous because parents chase you to go read. However, we’ve come of age and seen the country overrun by people who have fake degrees and eventually it means they weren’t getting too much of an education either. We definitely live in a “hypocritical society.” However, one of my dreams is to be able to push these so-called lesser-recognized art forms. I want somebody to be able to live on his comic drawings and just dedicate himself because I think, ultimately, life and nature teaches us that whatever you know how to do very well depending on how good your financial education is you can make a living.

Taking a look at the future of comic business in Nigeria, what do you see?

I see great things. For anything to survive in Nigeria, frankly it must be part of the culture. You must make it such that when people wake up they cannot take it for granted. I mean people must buy that thing, stock it, eat it, and drink it. And how do you do that? You need to make that thing revolve around general things people do.

So, for instance, the carnival is one of our efforts at making sure these “lesser forms of arts” become a culture. And we want to make the carnival a very huge centre-piece event at the end of the year where people are coming from the diaspora. And usually, the light of the carnival is concert-music-party kind of atmosphere; we want it to be the gathering of young people anywhere, and where creativity and entertainment is just it! So when people see comics, they subconsciously associate it with intelligence, creativity and fun.

And when do you see that actually happening?

It has already stated happening. The last carnival for example, was attended by SABC and City Press (a newspaper from South Africa). You know, I got a letter from a lady from South Africa who had really been impressed by what she read in the paper.

I may not be able to tell you the number of years but I think we’ve started and we’ll keep doing what we are doing with more sense, more good counsel, more creativity, more introspection, more great contents and more unpredictability as well. And with a very structured, disciplined and focused drive towards the vision of making the comic carnival a byword for intelligence, creativity and fun, sooner than later, we’d be there.

What’s government role in boosting comic business in Nigeria?

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist but right now, in many things, government is like an irresponsible parent who you cannot wait for to get things started in your life. The best you can do, you do as you can. Look at it: to run a business in Nigeria is obviously as twenty times as hard… you provide your own power, you provide your own water and security (in fact, if you are unfortunate enough to be involved in an accident, you’ll be the one to provide your own burial ground as well!).

So, as regards to doing comic business (and by the very morphology of that kind of business) it would be privately driven… and frankly, life teaches you to fight for what you want. So, you work hard; think hard and look at partnerships you can forge to help you.
It’s really hard. For example, look at the epic comics –we are trying to tell the stories of our heroes past to show that no matter what we are going through as contemporary people, there are people who have lived this life, and that we have a strong heritage of warriors, right thinking people. For example, Chaka Zulu is a worldwide celebrated military genius and his military campaigns are studied in almost all war colleges around the world…. So, any country that neglects its youths will suffer it.

Your advice for upcoming artists?

I think we should encourage the writers more. We have good number of artists and we need more good writers. And if you are a good writer, please try your hands at comics writing. Well, for artists, try and read more because arts is about visualizing and articulating ideas.

However, maybe the whole comic thing is not bringing in enough money, please stick in there; if it gets too bad find a small part-time job and keep pushing it. Life and nature has never disappointed anybody that kept pushing it.