The Middleclass Problem of Nigerian Writing

1.

Not too long ago, I easily gave away copies of my Nigerian titles whenever a reading friend visited me, in a tacit pact of promoting our literature. I’d tell myself: you’ll replace the copy on your next visit to a bookshop. Not anymore. Buying Nigerian novels today is madly expensive. The copies you already have, you must hold on to. 

I say this now in the first quarter of 2026, but even by the time I first drafted this essay, in April 2023, and then abandoned it, it’d have remained true. A decent Nigerian novel—likely printed in India and imported to the country, to reduce the enormous cost and low-quality job at home—was N5,500 then. That was 16 per cent of the minimum wage of N30,000. A fatter novel was between N6,500 and N7,000. Nonfiction books on economics, politics or history, started between N9,000 and N12,000, or more. 

This is not the only problem. These books are not accessible in a bookshop nearby. Not even on university campuses or their environs. Today—as at the time of publishing this essay—the prices have doubled. And even though the minimum wage is now N70,000, it hasn’t changed much, as only a few Nigerians benefit from it, and as inflation has only gone up. 

2.

In June 2023, I travelled from the sleepy city of Makurdi, where I live, to the country’s capital, Abuja, a 280 km road trip, roughly four hours, for a short holiday. One of the benefits of my vacation was to visit popular bookshops—found mostly in major cities across the country—to update my shelf with Nigerian novels. Not only are the bookshops in major cities, but within these cities, they are located mostly in upper-class areas or business districts, which are expensive to move around in without a private means of transportation, because cheaper, public transportation services do not operate in such areas. 

The day I chose to check a bookshop, I entered a Bolt service for N1,500 (N4,000 today) from a friend’s house in Wuse 2. The branch I arrived at didn’t have the novel I was looking for. I paid another N1,500 Bolt service to its other branch, where I bought the book I sought, for N7,000 (N15 to 18,000 today); then added a Morrison, a Petina Gappah title, plus a slim poetry collection of N2,500. Going home, I used Bolt service again for N1,500 (N4,000 today). If I hadn’t been in Abuja and bought the books online to be delivered to me in Makurdi, courier services alone would be almost half the cost of the books.

So, to buy a book of N7,000, I spent N4,500 extra. If I’d ordered online, I would have spent a total cost of at least N15,000, half of the minimum wage then. Do the math for today, doubling the numbers. It still comes to half of the current minimum wage. The question quickly arises: who is the consumer of this product, if not the individual who has the ultimate luxury? I daresay, that to even celebrate writing and to be involved in an active book or literary life today is almost a middleclass decision. 

3.

As a magazine editor, it means if publishers do not send me review copies of their books, I have to spend hugely to get books, and then pay reviewers. Little wonder the country suffers a gap in mainstream book reviews, which partly accounts for the gist about the death of Nigerian literature in some quarters, as no one is writing about the books. 

The economic factors of writing, or book business, are not new a problem. Steger Strong’s short essay in the Guardian, “A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it”—declares, “I’m not sure how or if I’d still be a writer without the help of other people’s money”—is a worthy reminder of choosing the writing life and risking financial stability over a decent life with a more lucrative career. And haven’t we heard Harper Lee’s story, of her friends giving her a full-year salary so she could focus on writing? It sounds like legend, because where can a writer find such friends today, friends who are probably writers like him or her, coming up for economic air?

A writer like me ultimately requires quiet and air-tight, zero distraction to write (although I have adapted to a little chaos lately). Such reality is hard to come by in today’s world, given scarce resources everyone has to fight for, and since it’s a wish that is also a risk that you may never write anything. And while a little level of comfort, all writers know, is important to arrange one’s thoughts clearly and to write them down articulately, backing this infrastructure is also the question of good education. And that is, firstly, good formal education; and secondly, a good education of reading and the right amount of exposure to literary life.

4.

In today’s Nigeria, this kind of education means our to-be writer comes from a family that can afford a lifestyle that supports his aspirations, given the current poverty rate. But then, one realises, only going back to the years of what can be tagged “the early days of Nigerian literature,” that our writers then came from exactly such homes, acquiring decent education at elite secondary schools (the Kings’ and Queens’ Colleges) and universities which were in their prime at the time, administered by great teachers. And many of them, favourably, were exposed to literature throughout their growing-up process. (Adichie grew up on a university campus, and her parents were lecturers.) When I lament the poor quality of writing of a number of emergent Nigerian poets, in metaphorisation or language abilities, and their imagination of a singular trope, it evaded me that it was perhaps because of this lack in education. You cannot grow on little and produce much. Bestman Michael Osemudiamen would later help me address this better in his fourth-generation Nigerian poetry essay, that “language itself in its mastery and profundity is a dictate of social accessibility, a reflection of our societal rot, which most contemporary Nigerian writers or budding writers have inherited or are condemned into . . . while poetry strives for a place beyond the ordinary, figurative language is a reflection of privilege.” 

If you can write a good sentence by 12, it means you probably had very good English teachers. You have no worry for syntax and concordance, which you internalised from being in the right environment, enforced by exposure to a rich reading experience. Argument is allowed, that you necessarily do not need this kind of background to prepare you to become good with sentences. But it also means that without it, you may still be struggling to write a good sentence because of a dented literacy and literary repertoire, to be as productive as you should at an age when Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage.

For the young Nigerian coming into writing, without the luck of such privileged beginnings, he is crudely welcomed by the epiphany of his disadvantage, often too late, and has to make conscious effort to acquire that lost education. But when already in a phase in his life caught between writing and trying to earn a living, he’s not going to make it very far. He is the writer who hardly becomes good, or is average. He self-publishes his horrible books. If he tries to get better, he’s going to have to fully engage himself in literary exercise or activity; a lifestyle that demands funding. This is where the writer who has had a better background meets him, and where the fork of who gains mobility and who stays in stasis begins to split. The stakes often favour the former. His writing with stronger polish might get him better opportunities and elevate his status; he attends literary events and book festivals where he makes the right connections; he travels, gets exposure, and enriches his experience and imagination for storytelling; and he has access to books, which translates to conversation power, and conversation power is currency. It is not surprising then that every Nigerian writer today aims for an existence that is middleclass, even for their own writing to survive economically and otherwise. Hello, MFA. 

It is easy to tag my argument as a Marxist rant. But I have been to book events, and literary clubs on campuses where I have witnessed, that as a result of the absence of such advantages above, even very promising literary minds suffer impoverishment. Some lucky enough—God bless the Internet—to leverage on online magazines (which are not pay-walled) and bootlegged e-copies of novels and books, do not have upward mobility because of the lack in wherewithal to enrich their experience. Many do not pursue the literary life further or stoke their writing aspirations as they would probably have if they were proximate to the right class. Lack of exposure to books. Lack of exposure to the right writing community or circles. And most of all, the sin of belonging to an unfortunate class in society. As a result, their literary aspirations are cut-off or stunted. 

5.

The Nigerian literary industry at home has dwindled—though ceremonial announcements of book publications appear like a band aid to the underlying unattended malaise—as the cost of promoting literature in an increasingly economic hardship, or funding its lifestyle, isn’t commensurate with the gain. What is happening is that the production of literature and its diffusion into society are not as organic as they should be, or that it revolves within a microcosm. Simply put: it is thriving within a thin, restricted, privileged system. 

If Nigerian literature is currently thriving anyhow, it is within an elite circle. And those outside this circle—accessible by being middleclass or proximate to—are distanced from partaking in it or enjoying its benefits. It is a projectile that has been in motion for a while, only becoming visibly disturbing now; the culture of reading and literary engagement keep moving away from society, instead of being a member of it in performing the function of freedom. 

This disappearing function pronounces an underlying problem. Surely, a growing philistinism within the country contributes to the populace’s apathy towards literature. But it worsens when this literature itself can no longer be found in spaces where it is needed. Exposure to Nigerian literature today, for Nigerians within the country, is highly dependent on privilege. And while there’s the privilege of class, there’s also the privilege of position, to be exposed to it in the first place, as it moves away from ordinary society. This is where the elitism creeps in. The Nigerian novel today, every day, keeps climbing to a pedestal of becoming a rare object, or an endangered one, accessible to a few; perhaps even, almost as a collectible. This greatly affects the number of novels one wishes to read in a year; thus, the seemingly harmless inability to afford books translates to disinterest, to resignation, to apparent absence. 

6.

Novels have the power to disturb our minds, change the way we think, teach us to be empaths and understand life at a deeper level, inspire us to challenge our beliefs and protest against oppressions. The Nigerian secondary school system is the last channel where the ordinary youth comes in contact with a culture of novels (mostly art students); Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, which was in the curriculum between 2011-2015, a decade ago now, was very influential to the generation that read it, many of whom were inspired by it to become more critical and ask questions of their country’s history of silence.

Sadly, one cannot say this is the scenario at the moment. Many secondary school and university students do not know contemporary Nigerian writers or their works. If they do, an invisible few, it is mostly still by an advantage of privilege or the right exposure. After school, what exposes the ordinary Nigerian young adult to novels, to continue the immersion of the mind in the freedom literature gives? This captures the malaise of those of us who may be enthusiasts of books, novels, and reading, but without access to such a lifestyle, as long as Nigerian writing thrives within an elite space. Middleclass, ó. Elite, ó. It is a problem. Nigerian writing now almost exists for itself, as an indulgence or luxury, a product for a kind of haute couture for the literary community. And it keeps getting so, our writers becoming mere apparatuses in the mechanism of the middleclass problem. 

7.

The world is quietly succumbing to the coup of digital media overtaking print. It is cliché to weep over technological transitions; as we already know, every age decries the lessening of authenticity with each leap, yet somehow, we always turn out fine. But it’d be foolhardy to dismiss the clear evidence that there’s been no time we have had it worse than today, especially with brain rot and reduced levels of critical mindedness—what Herbert Marcuse feared would result in the one-dimensional man. Literature, in my view, seems to be the last refuge for any hope at all. But with its middleclass situation in Nigeria, it is far from affecting the lives of those outside its reach; firstly, is the economic distance, and secondly, as all things middleclass or bourgeois, it distances itself from the common man. 

What I fear sometimes is that this problem has created a culture of our literature being comfortable, as may be seen in the choice of fiction our publishers choose to publish. Will there be revolution, or the lack of re-imagination, or celebrating the formulaic and simplistic fictional narratives the industry likes to have with itself? It is too much to ask for a tradition beyond the normal, fruitless even; we are not in an epoch where serious writing is a thing. But it is no surprise that readers are complaining of going into a reading slump when reading popularly celebrated Nigerian fiction today. No story is too worn or too familiar to re-tell, but what may be lacking in our literature is an aesthetic and thematic rupture in the ways of literary imagination, which is too demanding of comfort. 

As with all problems Nigerian, where do we start to tackle this? Njoku Nonso, whom I casually gisted with about this, suggests a re-imagination of the publishing scene. Can there be alternatives? Can books be published to not cater only to luxury and aesthetics, but utility? This was something the Onitsha Market literature answered, as with Pacesetters. Perhaps, today’s publishers can have standard print runs going for normal price, and a “regular” print run that could be sold at hawkable prices. While this sounds like a solution, the problem eats deeper. For example, is that market available, because, wouldn’t there be a swarm of pirated Nigerian titles out there? Maybe, maybe not. Or perhaps, as it stands, a direct involvement or coup in the country’s Ministry of Education and arts and culture departments would be a more practical intervention. 

This means planning and an implementation of long-term literacy, literature, and arts policies. Because it is about dismantling the structure that has created the state of things. Maybe re-introducing yearly drama in schools, literature as a compulsory subject at all levels, literature in movies and book-to-film adaptations, community book and reading festivals, empowering indie publishing of local authors. Anything to restore literature’s lost place in the Nigerian public. There is so much individuals can do; at some point, we have to admit that the government must be involved to cause any effective change with certain problems. Needless to say, that one major thing these policies should tackle, not just for literature, but in affecting the general standard of education, would be the establishment of paper mills—an industry currently in an abysmal state—to reduce the cost of book production. Books and literature need to become popular again; not some inner circle thing. It is sad we are experiencing this in a time when the world itself is in conspiracy against books, meaning if there’s any coup that needs to happen to upset the middleclass problem of our writing, it should be now or soon.♦

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Critic, poet, and editor, Carl Terver is the founding editor of Afapinen. He was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2024, and he is the author of the photobook Glory to the Sky.