an essay I almost titled “this ghost will haunt us all”
There is no good way to start this one. There are no good ways to announce death.
In 2019 I did not know shit about anything. I’d written some things that looked like fiction but my god, they were poor. That same year, I met Princely at the Unilorin Writers’ Workshop, he said I had a good essay but my referencing was poor. It was also the first time I saw Ope, he was on a panel as one of the authors in the anthology, Zango.
Days later I saw Princely in another event and got his contact, then I saw a workshop by Kunle Ologunro on his status. He asked me to apply, I wrote one of my shitty fiction (which was the shittiest of the submissions) and applied. I got in. Kunle had just come back from Chimamanda’s Farafina (now Purple Hibiscus) workshop and had so much to say about art and worldbuilding. It was the session of my life. It was my first time meeting Ope properly, Salako, Ahmad, and so many others who became my first liasson with how much creativity can change worlds. Listen, it literally changed my life. And if you’re familiar with the Nigerian creative community, I think you’d understand why
It’s 2024, Princely has left, and so have Kunle, Ope, Salako, and Ahmad. Everyone from that generation and it seems like this is the end of the road. And this is more than the end of an era, it is the death of something. I’ve held this knowledge in my heart like a prophecy of doom and frantically fought against its fruition since early 2023. Everything seems to be landing on stone.
Community is so fucking important because I am a beneficiary of one myself. I was never an exceptional talent. I just met the right people who inspired me to the point of delusion. I would not be here if not for the numerous communities I have stumbled across on this campus.
Tonight, I sat with Abdulrahman (who was introduced to me by Princely and has become one of the closest people in my life) this afternoon and we were talking about how much of the creative industry’s talent problem is born from situations like I just described in the past three paragraphs.
There is an ongoing death of campus creative sorcery and it will take more than this (*points to all the strong efforts campus collectives are making) to fix it. There is not nearly enough support, no consolidation, or consideration by people who actually have the power to fix this shit.
I benefitted from the PTCIJ (now CJID) campus journalism workshop in 2021 or thereabout, my colleagues did the Cable workshop in Abuja, but none of those things happen often enough anymore. Or they happen at a level where the youngest, most skillless, most vulnerable have already been left behind. What are the localized, targeted opportunities that someone as skilless as 2019 me can apply for and get into?
Part of this is just that Nigeria is a shitty place where you have to pay the price of genius to survive everyday. People who want to grow have to literally enter the pits with grown, overskilled people. People who have never published in a journal and the ones with 10+ works are fighting for the same opportunities for beginners.
Before now, however, i like to think that beginners grew by their communities and mainstream support. Communal inclusivity is borderline the work of force-feeding opportunites to certain demographies because they otherwise would not have access to those things. I think that is why Kunle’s workshop was so important, and all the acts Princely pulled before he left here. They sold more than a dream, they gave the tools to work towards those dreams.
For the first time since I have known, the role of the editor-in-chief, the only role that requires technical knowledge of journalistic practices, has no clear successor in line simply because no one knows enough to take up the position. The NUCJ no longer exists (no thanks to nobody). The campus digest awards (which was the only one of its kind) no longer happens.
I know it doesn’t look like it because there seem to be so many outliers doing great on their own accord, but campus journalism and literary creativity as a whole are at an existential crisis point. That pandemic slump never ticked back up and now all that’s left is scanty survivors. There has been a death of the community.
I am in the work of reviving that community, but I’ll confess it’s not even working. I like to think that it is no one’s fault. After the pandemic slump happened, the shift to tech took out whatever was left of creative drive on campus, And now the effort to support has a bar that is so high the people that need it can not reach it.
I’m leaving this school thing this year, so this is a last effort to recreate the magic I met. The community needs support. It has never needed it like now. Yes if this one dies another wave will start again at some point, but I think this doesn’tt have to die. I also think that it could fix the talent problem that the creative and journalism ecosystem is suffering from more broadly, even if it wouldn’t admit it.
There is no one way to do it, so here’s a couple of things I have thought and/or discussed about with friends:
- NUCJ needs to be revived and it can’t be left to the Campus Unions to do so themselves. They need institutional parent figures.
- The bar of entry for opportunities meant for “the growing” has to be reduced, or else we’ll continue to have few bright-burning (ironically burnt-out) outliers without collective communal growth.
- The ecosystem has to value the contributions of young people, else it’ll continue to bleed good talents and find itself clinging to the older ones. Especially as again, there are now fewer outliers who also feel like they do not owe the system anything because it has not offered them any support (arguable POV, I know).
- The middle children need to think about community too.
- Campus Journalism needs a rebirth to 1, stop being tactlessly directed by campus journalism and 2, serve as a community for young people in media, not just the journalists.
- Maybe this is a losing game. Maybe this one needs to die and another generation that understands the stake better will be born from its ashes.
PS: This is not as comprehensive as it should be. I just gathered my thoughts on a Saturday night after having a thought-provoking conversation with a friend and to postpone writing this now is to kill it as it is in my head.
This article is my opinion. Maybe it’s always been like this and I just think there used to be a community because I was lucky to have found one. But if you think I’m right and see a sort of reason with this, do something about it. Rage. Rage against the dying of this light. And do it your own way too, there is no one-size-fits-all-all in this thing.
If you’d like to discuss this or just ramble about your perspective of things, reach out, please. I’m at olatunjiolaigbe(at)gmail(dot)com
PPS: I have removed a few curses and typos from the first draft of this, which you can actually read here if you want.
