AWF closes 2016 in high spirit

By Ibrahim Ramalan

Last Saturday at the Nanet Suit, Abuja, the Guest Writer Session of the Abuja Writers Forum held its last reading for the year and the event closed for the year in high spirit.
Instead of the traditional trio of guest for the session, it was the duo of Deji Ige and Juliana Halima Ebikwo that skillfully took the audience into a literary sojourn and then laced the event with their literary musings.
Deji Ige, a performance poet and writer, was the first at the podium. Ige performed wonderfully and mesmerized the audience with one of his masterpieces that got the audience asking whether he is a Christian or a Muslim, probably because of his linguistic playfulness with words borrowed from both religions – Christianity and Islam.
To this question he said: “I keep religion at the surface level, I go deeply into humanity. I am a Christian but I know a lot about Islam.”
Talking about his inspiration, the performance poet said his environment is the major influence to his inspiration.

He added: “However, something always pushes me, possibly because I listen to music a lot.
“You must basically have the gift, because inspiration is just the garnish. You must also develop yourself to do the job.”
Ige pride himself as a Nigerian rather than a native of a State, though he has his ancestral home in Ekiti State.
Over the years, he has carved a niche for himself in the turf of performance poetry, with a unique ability and style of crafting captivating poetry pieces in quintessential English with a fusion of sublime Yoruba.
On her part, Juliana Halima Ebikwo who hails from Anyigba, Kogi state, is a professional teacher and guidance counselor.
She read from her debut novel, “My Diary” which is a 253-page fictional dairy entry by the character, Omolara.
The narrative focuses on the sudden change in Omalara’s life when she is stricken by HIV/AIDS, and how she tries to come to terms with death knocking on her door.
Fielding questions from the curious audience on her inspiration, the author said she started conceiving of the idea in 2008 when she began to ponder on the lots of the people living with HIV/AIDS and wanted to give them a sense of belonging. According to her, that is why in the book she offers alternative to ways of contacting the virus, not necessarily through sex.
This is evident in the character’s case, who was supposedly suspected to have contacted the virus through sex with her first boyfriend who she had sex with once. The contrary proved to be the case on the course of the book.

“I used to think about people living with HIV/AIDS, I pitied them. I then thought of putting something down for people to read,” she added.
She however confessed that writing a diary is very difficult, “because if you are not careful what you write in day one might be duplicated in another day. You have to keep going back and forth to make sure that everything is in order.”
Speaking to newsmen at the end of the reading, the Chairman of the forum, Dr. Emman Shehu pointed out that 2016 has been a very good and productive year.
Shehu recapped thus: “The Guest Writer Session has been very consistent. We have had authors, musicians, spoken-word artists, film-makers. The only people we could not have this year was the fashion designers because they kept disappointing us anytime we call them.
“However, looking at it holistically, the journey has been good. Most importantly, there is certain consistency that we have not had over the years that we had this year. In terms of publicity also, we did very well. We produced procures for our events.
“So I think that what we have seen this year is that there is a lot of potential that we can build on for 2017,” he concluded.