Favourite Five: Betty Abah

Betty Abah is a Nigerian poet, journalist and environmentalist. She worked previously with TELL and Newswatch Magazine and had a stint with the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado, USA as an Alfred Friendly Fellow in 2006. Currently, she works with the Environmental Rights Action, an environmental justice NGO.

She obtained a Bachelors degree in English and Literary Studies from the University of Calabar and a Masters in English Literature from the University of Lagos. She is a recipient of several national and international writing awards and fellowships. They include NYSC State Honours Award (Ogun State, 2001), the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship (a six-month reporting media fellowship in the USA), John Knight Health Reporting Fellowship, Kaiser Foundation HIV/AIDS Fellowship, the Nigeria Media Merit Awards (NMMA), the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME). She is also a fellow of the Global Tobacco Control Leadership Program, John Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA among other.

Abah is the author of two books of poetry, Sound of Broken Chains and the award-winning Go Tell Our King; she has published widely both in local and international publications. She is married to John Abah.

She had this to say about her list: "Narrowing down my list of favourite books to five is almost like narrowing down my educational history to five years. I have been reading for as long as I can remember and my reading train is lengthy and unaccountable, at the risk of ditching humility! But I will try to do five, relatively recent that have greatly delighted me."

Nine Lives by El-Nukoya
Why is it number one on my list? Well, this was one book that put me under a 24-hour spell and at the end made me cry. The word ‘incredible’ was crafted for this book. A story of love, racy crime and the equally racy quest for revenge; it simply blows you away page by page. I read on, gasp and wonder; ‘And this, by a Nigerian?! My God!’ It is a book everyone should read—the lyricism, the power of description, and even more, the suspense! Even if the author’s storyline--of how the protagonist became a mega millionaire, from a mere poor boy from the back waters of a Southern Nigerian locale, to how he hit it big by flirting then blackmailing an American billionaire’s wife--doesn’t sit well on your moral anchor, you feel helpless with the sheer appeal of this book, the spell-binding storyline. I feel that El-Nukoya, the reclusive author of this great book has yet to receive the deserved praise for this classic. I hope to go back and read it all over again! 

Slumdog Millionaire by  Vikas Swarup
This is one book I have kept as a treasure and from time to time, go check my shelf to be sure it is still there, for I must read it again. Dark humour, sheer creativity, sheer brilliance! This is the story of a young, urban poor boy who hit it big assisted by fate’s crafty hands.  Formerly known as Q & A (2005), it tells the story of Jamal Malik, a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The book has been criticised for its romanticisation of poverty particularly in India where it is set. Perhaps the author’s greatest strength lies in his creative insight--and portrayal of--acrid poverty so vividly, evoking strong emotions, in fact, humour and pathos almost simultaneously  his own elitist background. It is the book that the world could never have ignored. It is a masterpiece and I sincerely envy the writer. I hope to be able to write this ‘sweetly’ someday.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin
This book is one whose humour, especially the sardonic humour, will follow you long after you have read it. I have had to ask the author, during our two meetings about the bold ‘sex appeal’ of the novel. Yet, ours is an ‘explicit’ world and so she may be on point. The issue of male infertility, in fact all infertility, is a delicate one but Shoneyin decides to take this literary bull by its pretentious horns. Her dexterous probe into the characters’ lives albeit, mostly, tongue-in-cheek, deserves commendation. Though the author has said she loves Baba Segi, the reader is free to make his/her pick of the  characters woven together by fate and whose native wisdom fetches them relief, even if temporary, amidst a helpless situation. In the end, my heart is with the ‘unknown’ men who father children they know they fathered but would never be father to. An agracha of a book. Lovely! Any wonder it made the Finalist of the Orange Prize?

The Whispering Trees by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
I love Adam’s book! Why? Its sweetness is much more than that of an apple! This collection of short stories is one book I read and quickly, breathlessly, leaved through the next few pages to be sure the story wouldn’t end too soon. Many of the stories did and I nearly wept! Why wouldn’t you, if a book reduces you to a mere panting baby and its stories are like the spicy Northern suya or kilinshi? You are eating it, one spicy bite after the other and it finishes abruptly, you would likewise cry, or at least feel tormented. Earthy characters, unearthly circumstances. Wit, wit, sheer wit. Local colours, and the flavour, oh, the flavour!  Abubakar mischievously toys with the tender threads of his readers’ hearts, which isn’t fair, though nothing is even fair in the fairy world of enchanted butterflies, witches, ghosts and wicked fate he weaves around our imagination. Beautiful book from a well-cooked mind. And, I must’t forget, a great service to the Hausa language, just as Achebe and Chimamanda have done for the Ibo language. I envy them. I hope I can do that with my Idoma language when the muse lets loose prose butterflies over me. I love Adam’s book; the pages drip with honey, sweeter than apples. Surely, Abubakar is one budding Nigerian writer roaring to take the literary world by its jugulars! Sweet, sweet book. 

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
I shall break protocol to write about Three Cups of Tea. I shall remain tormented by literary conscience if I omit it. Though this large book is non-fiction, its style, the ambience and particularly the power of description, is simply unbelievable. Several times I gasped at a sentence, went over it five times like someone memorizing a Bible verse. In one rare moment of self-defeatism, I admitted I may never be able to write this well, after all, I am not even a native writer! What do you call a book that astounds your mind so much you feel like leaking the pages, or  you had to rush out to call the attention of family members to sentences--like when he described a Pakistani boy as an ‘apparition’? The book is about the exploits of  Greg Mortenson, an American mountaineer who lost his way in Pakistan on a tragic expedition to K-2, the world’s second highest mountain, stumbled on a remote village, an occurrence which triggered an educational humanitarian venture  via the Central Asia Institute in Pakistan and Afghanistan that would  later win him world acclaim. Sly humour. Details. Language, terrific use of language. One of my 2013 revolution perhaps would be to read the book again ten more times. I believe that would up my literary skills! The sad aspect is that the ‘real’ writer, journalist David Oliver Relin committed suicide about a year ago, robbing our world of more literary and journalistic offerings. That’s the saddest part!