Sefi Atta Quotes

The people who gave Ikoyi a bad name were the ones who rarely allowed other Nigerians into their social circles, except to serve and look up to them. Occasionally they were open to outsiders who had as much money and were equally materialistic. They were self-conscious but not particularly self-examining, and they were afraid to admit their vulnerability. As my protagonist Remi Lawal notes at the Dadas’ cocktail party in the novel, their lives are full of frivolous contradictions and, ultimately, they are replaced from one generation to the next. She is right about that. Ikoyi of 1976 is not the same as it is today. That society is gone now. The band and the song have changed.

If anyone says they fit in nicely with the Nigerian upper class, I would have to come to the conclusion that they are thoughtless. No one is responsible for their upbringing and no one deserves to be defined by any social class. My late father was the son and great-grandson of traditional rulers and he attended Oxford University. I often joke that the women in my mother’s family carry themselves as if they are royalty. They are proud of their parents, who worked hard to educate them.

We call that development, but at every traffic light along the way are beggars, most of whom are children and disabled adults. Some are amputees and presumably they are often victims of sharia law punishments. We look away only to see billboards advertising business conferences at mega churches.

I break that down in the novel, and in that sense it’s no different from novels I’ve read about suburban life in the United States, England and elsewhere, except it has moments of political intrigue and turmoil. I juxtapose these extraordinary national moments and ordinary domestic moments to give a realistic portrayal of how we lived. Perhaps my real motive is to depict Nigeria as one big dysfunctional family.

I suppose the reason I write about the Lagos elite at all is that they don’t become writers. Ikoyi people in particular are underrepresented in Nigerian literature. Ikoyi itself is often described as a place where rich, powerful people live. But when I was growing up there, the people I knew were not unlike those who lived on Victoria Island, and districts on the mainland such as Apapa and Ikeja, and estates such as Alaka and Palmgrove.

I enjoy writing plays most. I haven't written a radio play in a while and I don't write short stories anymore because the process of submitting them depressed me. I really enjoy revising novels, but drafting them can be a pain.

When I was a child, I was called oniranu a lot at home because I poked fun at people I ought to respect. I was about six years old when I made up a song about a certain Lagos society woman. One line, I remember, said she had rashes, even though she didn’t. I’m still an oniranu at heart. I never grew out of it. In my play Lengths to Which We Go, which you’ve read, I have an aspiring character called Mrs. Babalola who calls herself upper “clarse”.

The quotation is for those whom it may concern. Our country doesn’t work. We know that. We also know why. What we may not be ready to accept is that progress will continue to elude us so long as we follow trajectories that are alien to us, the most damaging of which are driven by unbridled capitalism. This is not to suggest that a return to our traditional systems is the way forward; I don’t idealise them in the novel.

Yet it benefits only a minority of us and fails the rest of the country. In fact, it is the underlying cause of our moral failings, and whether or not you care about the welfare of your fellow citizens, being a member of the elite can no longer save you. There is nowhere to hide from the dysfunction, which is why Nigerians who can afford to, escape abroad as often as they can.

Lastly, as you know, we have a few critics in the Nigerian literary community who are caught up in the old Igbo-Yoruba rivalry, which doesn’t interest me, but their reviews reflect that. I’m used to having different responses to my work. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate what I write and I’m thankful to readers who do.

Most of the children were shoeless and you were confronted with the dilemma that, no matter how much money you had and no matter where you could escape to overseas, you could not save yourself from your own country.

I’m never afraid when I write. I’m sometimes nervous after my books are published, by which time it’s too late to censor myself. When you write boldly, you get mixed reactions and I assume it will be the same with this novel. Not just because of its content, but because of the way I’ve written it. Much of what we’ve talked about may be overlooked by readers who want more to happen in an African novel, but I don’t write to accommodate their needs. Also, whenever you write about privileged Africans, someone somewhere will be upset with you.

It doesn’t matter whether Frances Cooke – the bead collector – was spying or not. It was enough to show there were allegations in those days, which may have been partly due to xenophobia. Ikoyi, however, was where business and political leaders lived, and the United States did have an interest in spreading neo-liberal ideas to developing countries like Nigeria.

Nigeria isn’t exactly a newly industrialised country either, but we have engaged in trading activities for centuries, and have a history of selling people for mere beads. Fast forward to what we have witnessed of late, with our governments selling us down the river by privatising public utilities, and contracting out public services, such as waste management, to foreign companies. Yet we still don’t have regular electricity supply or a clean environment.

I don't have much of an imagination, but I have a mind bank of details, which I play with. It's how I daydream, so writing like that is natural for me.