On December 10, 2021, Bukar Usman, D.Litt, M.IoD, OON, marked his birthday, characteristically without pomp. A self-effacing man, not many Nigerians have a richer resume than the retired Biu born bureaucrat and current President of Nigerian Folklore Society, who rose from a modest beginning as a clerical officer in the federal civil service after his university education in 1969 to retire as a permanent secretary in the Presidency in 1999. But rather than luxuriate, he has turned his retirement into a creative adventure, producing dozens of literature and sponsoring research in folklore, as well as adorning the toga of a public intellectual.
In 1999 when he retired from the civil service, Usman, who was born on December 10, 1942, was in his mid 50s. By that time, he wasn’t known in the literary world. Two decades later, he has become one of Nigeria’s most prolific writers.
Recalling how it all started in his memoir, My Literary Journey, Usman admits that he wasn’t among those anointed to be a writer from birth, for he was a late bloomer who discovered writing fortuitously.
“Frankly, I never thought this air of inevitability would apply to me as I took to creative writing only at the end of my civil service career. I had started work on my autobiography, published seven years later, before my retirement in 1999. But I veered into the imaginative world of fiction-writing, that realm where the writer attempts to ‘put head and tail back to the severed trunk of our tale,’ only after my retirement.”
Usman’s literary odyssey approximates to yielding to the impulse of yawning rather than choosing to have a walk. Interestingly, the initial yawn became a walk and eventually a journey, “one that has produced some modest publications that have aroused the interest of my readers.”
In his works of fiction and non-fiction, the author has dwelt on issues of common concern, which might have led to interesting responses from his numerous readers each time he has a new offering.
Usman believes art should be at the service of society. Perhaps his background as a public servant and one who supervised the conduct of other civil servants had helped in nurturing this point of view. The author had no formal training to be a creative writer. He belongs, to some extent, to the group of writers who acquired their skills through being committed readers, writing and revising their works.
Unlike today, African students, in his school days, were not exposed to African writers —they were few, by the way. He writes: “It was through my supplementary reading that I got acquainted with them. I think a greater exposure to creative writing by Nigerian writers would have helped my generation of students a great deal in understanding the nation’s literary heritage.
“A lesson or two on some aspects of the nation’s oral literature would have been out of place as most students might never have the opportunity of understanding that aspect of our culture the moment they veer into their specific areas in tertiary institutions.”
What Usman lacked in formal training as a creative writer, he made up for by reading widely: “I did not have the benefit of such formal training, but I read profusely. Even if you have not been formally trained, you can learn a lot by reading widely.” Next to reading widely, he says, is having experienced hands to take a second look at your manuscripts. You can’t do it alone.
“Indeed, I have seen from my experience that settling on being a writer can present unique challenges of creativity, skill, research and publishing. It often means lonely hours of work and sometimes more hours of reworking one’s manuscript,” he admits.
But, no matter the challenges, Usman has found a way out. His first book to emerge from the press was Hatching Hope, his autobiography, which he started writing in 1992 but completed years later. He writes both in English and Hausa language —his 652-page compendium of Hausa language folktales, Taskar Tatsuniyoyi, is a pointer.
Usman is good at sourcing stories from oral tradition and retelling them for today’s audience. In his books, The Bride without Scars and other Stories, The Stick of Fortune, and Girls in Search of Husbands (26 stories in all), he ensured the stories were detailed than the original versions in terms of plot, characterisation and dialogue, though he didn’t change the traditional qualities or tendencies of any of the characters, as well as the setting.
Thanks to his publisher, Duve Nakolisa, who, in 2005, following the publication of Voices in a Choir, advised him to turn his attention to folktales, Usman has produced dozens of books in that area. Above all, he has sponsored similar research and publications in other Nigeria languages.
Bukar Usman has shown that age is never a barrier to start penning enchanting lines and sending our imagination on a pilgrimage. You, too, can tell a tale.