EDITOR'S WISHES

A yawning problem has for  long, for  too long
we have every right to say, defined Nigeria's art
and literary landscape. And this is the problem
of space. A problem of medium. Today, hardly
any reputable journal exists in the country  that
services the vocation of artists, writers, musicians
and  film  makers.  A  few  which  made  initial
valiant efforts  were snuffed  out of existence by
acombination of debilitating forces, chief among
which is Nigeria's prevailing economic gloom.

Some publishing efforts which became the voice
of  artists  promptly  relocated  abroad  when  it
became  inevitable  that  their  founders/editors
should  migrate,  presumably  prompted  by  the
general decline of the climes of existence in a
nation which only too recently was the luxuriant
hub of assorted art and literary  activities.

Have the artists and writers consequently ceased
to exist? If no, would  they continue  to remain
voiceless?  True,  in  the  last  decade  we  have
witnessed an upsurge of interest in the arts and
in  literature  by  the  managements  of  leading
Nigerian national newspapers. The leaders here
being 
the  banned  Guardian  and  the  Daily
Times,  the  reviews  pages  of  the  latter  I  have
both reported for and edited in the past six years.
But these only helped to expose more problems:
the allocations of space could never satiate the
growing activities of cultural workers,especially
when it is borne in mind that we had to face an
almost  limitless  landscape  of  genres  and  art
forms. Visual artists had to besiege my desk in
Daily  Times  on many  occasions  with  charges
that I resorted to granting more audience to film
makers,  literary  artists, sometimes  musicians.
And when we made conscious efforts to level up
somewhat, we had angry expletives from some
of  their counterparts  specializing  in  the  other
genres to cope with. And then the worst began
to happen: the famous art feature columns began

to  vanish  weeks  on  end  whenever  extra  advert
placements  were recorded;  they  very  conveniently
usurped the traditional spaces on which the arts and
books columns normally appeared. The very worst to
follow  was  the  widespread  ban  of  influential  and
vibrant newspapers, leaving us with only a few.

We must pay tribute to former attempts similar - and
whenever they do resurrect, we shall be happy to say,
complimentary  - to this. Aside from  serving as the
official  voice  and  news  bulletin  of  the  group,  the
Association  of Nigerian Authors  (ANA)  Reviewhad
a  far  more  noble  objective  of  being  a  reputable
annual review. There also was Okike  founded by the
novelist Chinua Achebe; Black  Orpheus  (published
in the early  1960s in Ibadan  by the German  scholar
Ulli Beier, long since out of print);  Positive  Review
(formerly  produced  in  Ue-Ife,Nigeria);  Opon  Ifa
(edited by Femi  Osofisan);  Transition  (which only
recently resuscitated in the United States) and a host
of others. Many of those are now extinct. GR does not
pretend to attempt to fill any of their shoes - beyond,
perhaps to keep up irregular fevered  heartbeats.

GR  is first and foremost  a Nigerian review but with
a broad international perspective. It is an effort on the
whole to amplify  the voices of those creative people
of Nigeria and of Africa  wanting to speak to the rest
of the world. If we do it well - and there is no reason
why we would not - doubtless, the world would not
only listen but would speak back through us to Africa
and to Nigeria.

The choices of materials are in our own self-evaluation
defective  in that they have not been able to inclose
sufficient  represeatative  voices. But this is only an
initial attempt, the very first step. With your help, we
are sure the ground under us will not give way.

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