THE Famished Road', title of Ben Okri's Man Booker Prize winning novel aptly describes how Mai Nasara struggled until the evening of last Monday when he was declared the winner of the whopping $100, 000 Nigeria Prize for Literature! That's over N16 million, and one of the biggest cash prizes for literary works in the world. The man of the moment in the pantheon of the Muses, whose children's book 'The Missing Clock', has made him the latest millionaire writer in Nigeria has come a long way indeed. But millions of people in Nigeria and the rest of the world know little or nothing about the genius behind Mai Nasara as much as I can tell.The humble young man, born and bred in the northern state of Kaduna to Yoruba parents from Ekiti State ' whom only few family and close friends still call by his real name, Adeleke Olufemi Adeyemi 'is no overnight success.It has taken him decades of dogged determination to succeed as a writer against all odds in the same melodramatic country that has given the world great prize winning writers like Chinua Achebe the father of modern African prose, the lionised Wole Soyinka, the first black winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and Ben Okri, the youngest winner so far of the coveted Man Booker Prize. But ironically in this same most populous country in Africa, the majority seems to have lost the passion for reading since they have become captives of philistinism in their hot pursuit of the perishable trophies of catching up with the Joneses in the rat race of their neo-colonial capitalist society.Majority of Nigerians are too talkative to read and prefer chatting and reading text messages on their mobile phones to reading books, except compulsory text books required to pass the examinations for the paper qualifications they need to compete for their dream jobs and titular status symbols.It is over 12 years ago when Adeleke Adeyemi, aka Mai Nasara and I met in the flat of Tolu Oladipo, our friend living in a lower middle class neighbourhood behind the Agege Motor Road in Mushin, Lagos. Then Adeleke just graduated with a degree in geology from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, whilst I was working as the production manager of Money Wise ' an independently produced business magazine on DBN TV. We became fellow travellers, because of our mutual interest in literature. He had tempting opportunities to work for banks, oil companies or telecoms, but he chose to follow the hard road of a writer's life in one of the poorest countries on earth, where artists and writers are treated like prodigal children and where parents preferred their sons and daughters to pursue careers offering better salaries and conveniences of a comfortable life. Yet Adeleke did not look back in spite of the trials of being in dire straits most of the time as he struggled to make ends meet.We lived together and shared many things in comfort and discomfort as we had our regular brain storming sessions on the semantics of poetry, drama and prose and how the intellectual dialectics of poetics could be applied to resolve conflicts in contemporary Nigerian politics in the nation building of a New Nigeria in the leadership of Africa in the 21st century. Our life was like something out of Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. And thank God, our host Tolu provided the hospitality of a very conducive accommodation supported by his brothers and cousins in our Christian fraternity.I left my TV job in 2000 to start my Christian publishing company and determined to make a living from the Arts. In July 2002, Adeleke joined me to co-produce my historical drama Sleepless Night on the martyrdom of Chief M.K.O Abiola, the hero of the 1993 June 12 political revolution. Dele Momodu, publisher of the popular Ovation International magazine sponsored the fees of my cast which included one of Nigeria's best actors, the late Funso Alabi as the narrator, while Segun Adefila , leader of the Crown Troupe of Africa, directed the choreography for the world premiere at the old location of the French Cultural Centre on the former Kingsway Road (now Alfred Rewane Road) in Ikoyi, Lagos.It was a critical success, but a financial fiasco, because I was left broke after making sure everybody who played a role in the play got paid.Then Adeleke returned to his family home in Kaduna, but he often came back to Lagos for our usual cerebral sessions. Tolu got married and I left Lagos for Bonny Island in the Niger Delta on a daring mission to produce a documentary film on the Niger Delta crisis. But on Bonny Island I discovered the immense power of the internet as the virtual hub of the world of ideas and a veritable media to spread my word as a writer and social change activist. I suspended my documentary feature to start my online news and entertainment blogs to publish my writings gratis.In 2006, I published my second collection of poems Scarlet Tears of London in memory of the innocent victims of the 2005 July terrorist bomb attacks in London. I gave the first copy to Adeleke to review it for me. The book contained most of the poems I composed during our cerebral sessions in Tolu's flat.Then the following year Adeleke sent me a copy of his own historical drama on Chief M.K.O Abiola's life, The Mandate of MKO Abiola, written as a radio play and I published it through the same American company I found online. I thought the book would attract the millions of Nigerians who voted and elected M.KO Abiola before the annulment of the June 12 presidential election by the military dictator Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, but most of them seemed to have become discouraged since Abiola's death in 1998 dashed our utopian hopes of a New Nigeria.Adeleke turned his attention to his passion for the intellectual development of Nigerian children and told me of the compilations of his poems and stories. And from these compilations came forth his children's book The Missing Clock that has turned his life around from that of a struggling writer to the genius who has just won the biggest literary prize in Africa, the highly coveted $100, 000 Nigeria Prize for Literature sponsored by Nigeria LNG. And as the saying goes, the rest is history.I hope this time; the prize winning book will do more than making the author an overnight millionaire, but will become a bestseller by attracting millions of Nigerians to read it for Christ's sake! That is really the greatest wish of every Nigerian writer.' Michael Chima, aka 'Orikinla Osinachi' is the author of 'Children of Heaven', 'Scarlet Tears of London', 'Bye, Bye Mugabe' and 'In the House of Dogs' and Founder/Festival Director of Eko International Film Festival in Lagos.
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