IN THE SPOTLIGHT... Fame trails Abubakar Gimba like a shadow. He stole the show at a recent reading session of the Abuja Writers’ Forum (AWF), writes Tunji Ajibade What was meant to be a reading session but even before the event got halfway through, it transformed into an evening of acclamation. The flurry of activities that began at 10:30am on July 25 with the Abuja Writers’ Forum’s (AWF) creative writing workshop ended at 6:30 pm with the Guest Writer Session, as one of Nigeria’s less publicized literary heavyweights  - Alhaji Abubakar Gimba, OFR, basked in the spotlight of eulogies.   The workshop in the morning soon after the monthly environmental exercise in Abuja had witnessed a full house at the banquet hall of Top Rank Hotel, and the Guest Writer Session that began at 4pm was no less so.

Enthusiasm was all too visible on the faces of the earliest set of people to arrive the Pen and Pages venue of the event.  Humble and self-effacing as usual, the guest writer arrived  without the usual pomp often taken to be the right of an important personality such as Gimba. He had also had an entourage of one - himself. His friends and well-wishers walked in later but for the moment, he made do with the company of those in the audience that arrived early and instantly recognized him.
 
The July edition of the Guest Writer Session began with the emerging singing sensation, Bem Sar, doing a couple of his titles to the appreciative audience. There was also on hand exciting performance poet, Dek Mankind, head of the group known as Elixir of Mankind, who added more ambience. And as is the tradition, the mini visual art exhibition had its regular slot with Tola Iyaraa showcasing some of his dazzling pieces.
 
The Special Guest of Honour for the day, a former military Governor of Niger State as well as the current Chairman of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Colonel Lawan Gwadabe, rtd, turned the spotlight of adulation on Gimba halfway through the revent. His speech raised salient issues including Gimba’s seeming neglect in the public domain despite the latter’s prodigious and relevant output. Such was the impact of the speech that others who spoke after Gwadabe continually made reference to it. In his speech, Gwadabe did not only eulogise Gimba but also repeatedly praised the Abuja Writers’ Forum, for its dynamic interventions within such a short period of existence, stating that he believed they would impact positively on Nigeria’s literary scene.
 
The respect and administration of the audience for Abubakar Gimba was obvious as he stepped up to the hot seat. A man most comfortable in literary settings and who had a distinct reputation as a writer and an avid reader at Government College, Keffi, Nasarawa State, where President Umar Musa Yar’adua was his classmate, Gimba went straight into the business of the day. He read a selection of poems including “The Honourable one”, “A Peaceful One”, “Sounds of Distant Drums”, “The Slaughter House”, “This Land of Ours” and “Where Are Your From?” An alumnus of the Iowa University creative writing programme, he also  read a poem in honour of the visiting Dr Barbara Jones, a resident of Iowa, USA, who was a resource person at the AWF creative writing workshop but was also in the audience at the Guest Writer Session.
 
Right from the beginning of the session, Gimba held his audience enthralled. Three factors made his work enjoyable: quality of his reading, content of his work as well as the artistry in the form adopted. There was complete silence in the hall as he read, interrupted only at the end of each work with loud round of clapping and exclamations of fulfillment. Quite a remarkable feat for a man who had declared that he did not like reading his works in public because by the time they are published he has become too familiar with them, There is no doubt that each of the poems of this literary heavyweight who had published fourteen books in various genres in the space of twenty four years was beautiful in form and in content; many of them having dealing with the malaise that afflict the nation.
 
The poem, Where are you from? especially dealt with the inhuman treatment Nigerian travellers meet with at foreign entry ports. The witticism in this work drew laughter but it was acknowledged that the writer hit the nail on the head. Gimba also read a pithy short story. The comments from the audience, including Alhaji Maieka Bello Mohammed, another classmate of the writer at Keffi, showed the guest writer off as a social crusader who used a more acceptable and moderate means of expressing his displeasure with the condition of the nation in general.
 
The Question and Answer session was no less illuminating of the bend of the mind of the writer on social and political issues. Essentially, the audience asked questions that elicited responses which showed Gimba’s wealth of experience but also as a writer very much concerned about the state of the nation. The day’s event ended with presentation of souvenirs to the guest writer, the Special Guest of Honour as well as Alhaji Maieka Mohammed, after which AWF president expressed hope of seeing the audience at the August 29 edition of the event that is billed to showcase another major literary icon – the Port Harcourt based Gabriel Okara.                                                 

Published in THISDAY, The Sunday Newspaper, August 9, 2009, p94