Sources of Creative Imagination: An Interview with Chukwuma Ibezute.

Solomon Awuzie

 

Chukwuma Ibezute is a talented Nigerian writer who has published fifteen full length novels, two collections of short stories, two collections of poems and a textbook on Nigeria between 1994 and 2013. The novels are: Hamarian People’s Revolution (1994), King of Alandu (1995), Victims of Betrayal (1998), The Temporary Gods (1998), The Triumph of the Just (2002), Goddess in the Cathedral (2003), Stain on a White Robe (2004), Dance of Horror (2004) Rake Rambling Lovers (2005), Prison Memoirs of Gerald Williams (2007) The Wisdom of the Chameleon (2007) and Tempters and Traitors (2013). The two collections of poems include: Songs and Laments of Man (2011); and Cries of the Downtrodden (2012).  For the author, Ibezute, to have written these volumes of work within a short space of time, there must be a very important message he is trying to convey to his society. In order to ascertain this, this interview was conducted in his office at Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.

 

Solomon Awuzie: Goodday, Chief Chukwuma Ibezute.

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: You are welcome.

 

Solomon Awuzie: Tell us how you started writing.

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: It was not actually a special case. You know as a primary school pupil, I was a very brilliant boy. The first position in my class was as if it was reserved for me: I always took first positions. Then the civil war came. It came at the time I had taken entrance examination for about three colleges but could not start before the war broke out. After the war, my father was disorganised. He was a businessman. Things were so difficult that I could not go back to school. I now began to engage in different businesses and trades. All I was doing was not actually going the way I thought they would go. Some were so difficult and some were rough. Then later in the 80s, after I got married, a mind told me I should start writing my experience so that my children would learn from it. I made up my mind and walked into the market and bought a long notebook and some ballpoint pens. By the time I began to write, I could not write more than four sentences about myself, and could not continue.

Out of nowhere, what came into my mind was to write a story of my growing-up at Abakaliki. It then occurred to me to write the story of Eze Nwiboko Obodo, who was a paramount ruler at Abakaliki. The story of Nwiboko was frightening. There were so many stories surrounding him. This was because he did a lot of things: took people’s wives, got many people arrested and killed. So we were always afraid of him and his people. It now dawned on me that I should do a story on him. I wondered what was happening to me. I now used the notebook I wanted to use to write about myself to write the story I heard about Nwiboko Obodo when I was growing up in Abakaliki. Before I could know what I was into, about three or four months later, I was able to complete the manuscript. I then entitled it “The City of Horror”. I then called my younger brother whom I trained in secondary school to take a look at what I had been writing: that I don’t know what was really happening to me. I wanted to be sure I was not raving mad. He looked at the manuscript and said: “What you are writing is a novel.” He told me to improve on it and that what I had written so far was a very good story. I said that’s okay.

  Later, I read through it again and rewrote it. It was after I had rewritten it for the second time that I gave it to somebody to go through. The person went through the script and made some corrections and suggestions. He said I should pick up published novels and look at how characters were developed. He said I should learn to develop my characters very well and not haphzardly and then abandon them. I agreed. I went into the market, bought novels such as Zambia Shall Be Free, Things Fall Apart and so many others. After reading them, I saw how the authors developed their characters, and then, I returned to my story. I wrote the story again and finally entitled it The King of Alandu.

I sent it out for people to read. Those who read it, this time around, said it was a very good novel. Though, they did minor independent editing and gave some suggestions. Then the manuscript came back to me; there were so many corrections. I effected them and rewrote it for the third time. I now gave it to a computer typist who finally typed it. It was edited again and finally published. That was how I started writing. And, as at the time I was writing that story, all the stories my father used to tell me when I was a boy began to occur to me: how he traded on wrappers and his journey to Abakaliki town, when he wanted to change his location from the village to city. I began to fictionalise the whole story- that was how I wrote my subsequent stories.

 

Solomon Awuzie: Please tell us the sources of each of your novels.

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: Like I have told you. The King of Alandu was taken from the story of Nwiboko Obodo of Abakiliki. That was the origin of that novel. Victim of Betrayal originated from the happenings in my village those days. My father told me about his encounter with the masquerade and things like that. That was the source of Victim of Betrayal. For Rake Rambling Lovers, it was when I got down to Owerri and established a publishing outfit that it got to me. I was now involved in trekking to different offices both to typeset my work and to do one thing or the other. I began to observe the happening in different offices. There was one particular girl who was claiming she was a born-again Christian. I started to observe how people made advances at her. How she usually turned them down.  Then when I started asking questions about her, I was surprised when one of her colleagues told me that that very girl that we thought was a virgin was not. That, as a matter of fact, somebody usually came around at about seven o’clock in the evening to pick her and that that person was her real lover. I waited one day till it was around seven o’clock and I saw a boy who actually came to pick her and take her away. When I confronted her the next day, she swore that the boy was not her lover and things like that. Then I tried to create what I observed in offices in my fictions. Things that happen when some staff are too close to their bosses in offices were also reflected in the novel. I showed that some are actually involved in hide and seek love affair with the owners of the companies they work in. That was how I created Rake Rambling Lovers.

 

Solomon Awuzie: What about Prison Memoirs of Gerald Williams?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: Prison Memoirs of Gerald Williams was created from the story a friend told me. At the time I lived at Akabo in Ikeduru Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria, which was very close to Owerri. There was a man I lived with. At evening times, he would come out to tell me some stories. He was a very good story-teller. In fact, he told me stories that helped me to create about four books. Though the stories did not last for about ten minutes when he told them, I would be able to create something out of them. 

He told me the story of a man who was trading in Aba when he lived in Aba. There was a man who married and had the problem of infertility. His wife couldn’t get pregnant and the man was worried. The man went to the hospital and realized that the fault was from him. He then agreed with his wife to allow her get impregnated. His wife thought of who to meet and decided that she would go to her customer who sold garri in the market. She succeeded in bringing the boy home and introduced him to her husband without letting the boy know about she and her husband’s arrangement. The man and his wife agreed that the boy was good for the job. The boy eventually did the job; got her pregnant and got many children for her. And in turn, they made the boy rich.

As a creative person, I said to myself, I cannot narrate this story the way it is because it will encourage people to start indulging in it. I then created a situation where the arrangement boomeranged. Since it is God that gives children, I created a story where, if you donate what does not belong to you; if young men donate their seed of children to another person, when they get married, it may be difficult to get their own real children. That was how I created a story out of what the man told me.

 

Solomon Awuzie: What now influenced your creation of the sequel to Prison Memoirs of Gerald Williams? 

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: What influenced that story is just the happenings in the world, the happenings around us. You know a youngman who just got to town, you see many young women hovering around him. It is a pure hundred percent fiction. I wanted to tell a story that will depict that certain way of life is not good. When you are following that way of life, the result may not be too good.

 

Solomon Awuzie: You said your friend in Akabo told you lots of stories that made you to produce some of your fictions. Please can you tell us some of the stories?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: As I told you before, the story does not last for more than ten minutes. Like one day when I was with him, he told me about a man who lived in the same yard where I lived in Akabo as at then. He said the man’s half brother who lived at the village troubled him a lot and that the half brother was into the occult. He said he would send demons to come and trouble this neighbour of his in the night. The man was a civil servant, and because the demons were troubling him, he could not save anything. It was from this little story I created The Dance of Horror.            

 

Solomon Awuzie: What about Goddess in the Cathedral?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: Goddess in the Cathedral is my own personal creation. A lady told me a story of how she went to fetch water from the stream on a certain day in the village and she was initiated into the mermaid world. At the time she told me this story, I was not into creative writing but when I began to write, the story came to me. I was approaching Akabo River one day; then out of nowhere, I remembered the lady’s story and fear gripped me. I felt I could encounter a mermaid because of the quietness of the place. I had this experience on two occasions when I went to the river to wash my clothes. After the third time, I decided to build a story about the mermaid world. As I was writing the story, I heard of some churches which were built under spiritual fantasies and fake prophets and things like that, and I quickly incorporated them in the story. That was how I created Goddess in the Cathedral.

 

Solomon Awuzie: In your works, especially in Victim of Betrayal, women are seriously criticised. What do you have to say about this?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: There was a man I lived with in Benin City. He would always tell me: “Do you know the meaning of woman? It is Woe man.” He would say that the word woman was got from the words “woe” and “man”. He said that the failure and disappointment of everyman depend on the kind of woman he married. That was the man’s view. The man’s name was Mr Paul Omo-okpeide. He said for a man to succeed or fail depends on the kind of wife he married. So when I started writing, I reflected on the man’s sayings and all the stories I have heard from both my father and some elders. I then considered the cases of some women I knew, who brought trouble into their families when they got newly married and how some newly married women tear some families that related together apart, and make brothers to be against brothers. That was how I created Victims of Betrayal 

 

Solomon Awuzie: Can you say Victims of Betrayal is anti-feminism?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: No. It is just saying African women should learn not to create division in her husbands’ homes. The real African woman who is newly married into a family should work hard to make sure she brings peace to the family. She should make brothers remain brothers, and sisters remain sisters, and not cause division between her husband and his brothers or sisters.

 

Solomon Awuzie: Some of your works such as The Consequences of Evil and Time Will Tell are focused on the youth. What are your reasons for that?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: A growing child needs advice and suggestions and guidance. That is my own little way of trying to guide the little children. The novels are merely saying these are the things you have to do to build up your future. These are the essence of The Consequences of Evil and Time Will Tell.

 

Solomon Awuzie: How about the novel The Wisdown of the Chameleon?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: The Wisdom of the Chameleon is one of my novels I love most. I wrote it as at the time I was provoked. I wrote it when the Association of Nigerian Authors failed in 1994 or 1995 in Benin City. When I left Benin City and came down to Owerri, I joined the Association of Nigerian Authors again in 2003. Then, even though it was in existence, it was not strong or progressive. Among some of us who were the new members, we agreed to move the Association forward and to change certain things. On my own I was frank and committed to our oral agreement. When we now began I discovered that some of us were only interested in grabbing positions and in what will come out of it. I also discovered that some of us are chameleonic in  nature. They would tell you A and tell the other person B. They were not straightforward in their dealings. The events of the Association of Nigerian Authors between 2004 and 2006 was the source of the novel, The Wisdom of the Chameleon

 

Solomon Awuzie: Sir, what will you tell the upcoming writers?

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: I will tell the upcoming writers that, first and foremost, writing is a serious business and it is very challenging. They don’t have to hurry into it. They don’t have to hurry to press. For instance, my first published work. What I actually took to the computer for eventual typesetting was a script I rewrote for the fourth time. They should not be so much in a hurry. They should not be tired of rewriting the work. You do your first writing, go through it, do your personal editing. If the errors are too many, rewrite it before you give it to another person to go through for you. After the person would have gone through, look at the corrections, follow the corrections to the letter; make sure the errors are corrected thoroughly. While correcting, if other ideas come into you, still find a way of including them before you now talk of going to press.

 

Solomon Awuzie: Thank you, sir.

 

Chukwuma Ibezute: Thank you.