A Dance of the Forests which you submitted for performance to mark Nigeria’s 1960 independence was rejected because part of the play is critical of a celebration without reflection. Yet, you performed the play all the same to popular acclaim. Where did you get the money to produce it? And what does that say of the necessity for artistic intransigence in a state of anomie?

That’s very simple. The prize money . Some money came with the prize and that’s what I used. I’m not aware that any other funds came from anywhere else – I threw in the whole lot and ended up flat broke. But remember we weren’t paying actors – at most it was some pittance here and there. These were committed artistes – they volunteered their skills. I remember now – it wasn’t just the prize money – the prize also carried a certain amount towards production. For me, insistence on producing that play against official rejection was also my rejection of the reasons for its rejection. It became almost more important than having written the play. It was meant for independence, it had to be produced at independence, even if I was going to produce it in my backyard or my staff quarters. It had to be presented and appropriately it had to be presented preferably in Lagos, the seat of that rejection.

I was also outraged, I won’t mention his name, but it was another writer at the time, a civil servant on the Independence committee, who alerted them to the ‘message’ in the play, told them it was a negative message. I insist of course that it was not a negative message, it was a cautionary message. It warned: don’t think that everything is over because it is independence. Let’s look into our own past and see whether we do not have a history of corruption, a history of self-inflicted wounds. Were we not part and parcel of those who nourished the slave trade? Because if African slave traders and raiders had not joined in the slave trade, it would never have begun or attained the dimensions it did. As a contemporary side note, this was all the reason I accepted about two years ago, to go to Akwa Ibom to launch a book on one of the ancestors of Governor Akpabio.

That book was the biography of that leader, a chief, who sturdily refused to sell his own people, to indulge in the trade in humanity which was very lucrative at that time. He would not touch that commerce. It is necessary to let us understand that we always have choices. We can betray our own kind, or we can act in solidarity with them. There were African individuals who were so high-minded, who were so ethical in their interaction with other humanity that they said, ‘I will not indulge in this demeaning trade.’ The play A Dance of the Forests was meant to say ‘Look, there were some of our own people who participated, not only in the enslavement of, but in the hunt, capture and sale of their fellow beings into the unknown. That streak of humanity did not end with independence. So, let’s take precaution. There wasn’t anything negative about that.

That is the history of the play. It is the same as this ongoing attempt at censorship of the adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun – this actually saves me the trouble of writing what I was going to write on that issue. People must learn to confront their history. They must be truthful about their own history, however negative, however unsavoury. If you don’t accept the past, be honest about it, you will never transcend it and you will repeat it. This is the lesson which we are failing to learn. I had a long telephone discussion with an official on the censorship board and I passed him that message. I said – understand this, I am basically against censorship. Next, you must learn to leave individuals alone to present their own interpretation of history. Others are free to contest that vision with their own.

I am reminding them that Chinua Achebe used to say, ‘tell your own story’ and so the censors’ board had better revise whatever position. In any case, I have met the producers and advised them what to do if the Censorship Board remains intransigent. We must all prepare to partake in what may prove to be a test case for the freedom of creativity.

You were charged with armed robbery for breaking into the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation studio in Ibadan during the heady days of the Western Region’s political crisis in 1965. Fully armed, you asked the man in the studio to use your own recording, asking the premier to get out. Can you share with us what happened?

I thought the charge sheet was very unkind. It was no robbery.

Where is the tape now?

I don’t know. How do I know?

But you removed the tape. Didn’t you?

Look, the person you are talking about substituted his own tape. He said, ‘Take this one instead, there is also material in it, play it so there is no gap in transmission.’ Tell me, how does that amount to armed robbery? The man came, exchanged his tape, is that something for which to charge someone for armed robbery? I think that was most inconsiderate. Didn’t those prosecutors belong to this country where we say ‘exchange is no robbery’?

But you went there fully armed

Who was fully armed? I went where?

How did you get into the studio?

Look, I was acquitted and you are talking as if I was the culprit. I was acquitted. I stood trial and I was acquitted. Why do you keep saying you, you, you? What’s your problem?

In fact I found Justice Kayode Eso’s The Mystery Gunman very interesting in the sense that part of that memoir says the Premier actually came to him at a point…

The Premier?

Was it the Deputy Premier?

Yes. The Premier’s own voice was on the phone but physically it was Remi Fani-Kayode, the Deputy Premier, who went to him. Told him – ‘You must get this young man out of the way. He must go to jail.’

It was a very interesting period. When you recollect public mood and attitude and your self-involvement within your individual capacity, that was one period this was a demonstration of human solidarity you don’t easily forget. Remember, the telephone system was the antiquated switch board model. Public mood was anti-government virtually everywhere – even within the police because they saw the physical atrocities that were being committed on top of the fundamental atrocity that was the deprivation of a people’s will, the robbery of their choice. And so they were sympathetic. I would be sitting in my quarters for instance, the phone would ring and the voice of a total stranger would come over, saying ‘This might be of interest to you’ – and switch you into a conversation. I can tell you I distinctly heard the Premier himself haranguing Justice Kayode Eso – as that judge himself narrated in his book – that I must be convicted. I think that was after the Deputy Premier had visited Kayode Eso, then reported to his boss the failure of his mission.

You had great lawyers on your side. Great lawyers many of whom turned out to be great judges.

Onalaja, Somolu, Olatawura, among others. We sort of became an informal circle – a cult, if you like – with a special greeting: Gunmon, Gunmon! – mimicking the Studio Continuity announcer’s evidence in court. He said he clamped his hand over his mouth in fright when the gunman entered and made his demands with the gun pointed at him. Well, ‘gunmon’ or no ‘gunmon’, the people were on the move and I felt I had matured into a period of a people on the rise, on the move – people of dignity who refused that their voices should be stolen, arrogantly and contemptuously. There have been quite a few moments of my existence among people like that.

So, it was for those people you intervened?

Yes, of course. I was one of them, my voice was being stolen. I could not sit down and accept that somebody should steal my voice. I felt at one with the majority of the people.

Why did you decide to visit Biafra when the Igbo were already set to go to war? And how did the civil war affect the Mbari group of artists and writers?

We were more or less a family of artistes at Independence. There was a creative family and that family was being scattered. I was in Stockholm in 1967 for the Scandinavian-African Writers conference. And one of the saddest moments for me was that so many faces were missing from Nigeria – expected but not there: Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Okara – the Biafrans were missing even in safe Stockholm. The drums of war were no longer muted. It was the last chance for us to meet and talk about what was now inevitable but could still, just maybe, be averted at the last moment. I returned to Nigeria very sad and I was feeling as if I lost a limb – several limbs in fact. It was like – was this going to be it? We would become enemies confronting each other across the line of fire? There were people who were ready to take up arms – like Christopher Okigbo. At the time I had already run into Christopher Okigbo – it took place in Brussels – I even recall the name of the hotel – Hotel Koenisburg – purely by accident, and I knew he had come to purchase arms for Biafra. I challenged him and he admitted it. All these fortuitous encounters impressed on me a sense of urgency. Later I had a meeting earlier in London – I mention that in my IBADAN – where we talked about the possibility of going to Biafra on a last-minute mission of intervention.

Again, as I disclosed in my memoirs, Aminu Abdullahi who is now dead, actually volunteered to go – this was at the meeting in London. We hooked up around a place called the Transcription Centre. We didn’t even know which way some of us would go. Would JP consider himself an easterner or westerner? It was the breakup of a robust circle of creativity. We decided that Aminu should not go because he looked so clearly a northerner. We said, “Look, you won’t even get past the first road block.” Because at that time, there was such bitterness, murderous paranoia, and it was understandable.