HCAF STAR SERIES, MARCH 2025: INTERVIEW – MUJAHEED AMEEN LILO

QUESTION: The Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation is known for her central role of nurturing creativity in youths across the country. How has being its member contributed to your growth as an artist, and what opportunities, or experiences have been most impactful for you?

ANSWER: I’d say I’m most fortunate to have discovered HCAF earlier on in my career because it spurred my growth. With its philosophy of believing in the Nigerian child, it has and continues to successfully invest in young creatives, nurturing them, platforming them, publishing them and telling them their voices matter. The community it creates of passionate youths ensure that everyone is on their toes, a kind of healthy creative competition. I’ve had wonderful experiences at the annual Hadiza Ibrahim Aliyu Schools Festival and the most impactful is watching and absorbing the infectious energy of the great minds behind the foundation who selflessly work in service to young talents. As the esteemed founder would always say, ‘idea is greater than man.’

QUESTION: What themes and experiences push the creativity behind your work, and what part of the creative process poses a challenge to you?

ANSWER: I read somewhere that upcoming writers freak about great themes in their works, often forgetting that there are no greater themes than man and woman. I’ve forgotten who said it and how exactly it was put but the idea is that characters or humans, whose experience we writers explore, are the most consequential. For me as a writer, that’s true. People fascinate me, human behaviour is a phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me. I’m interested and love to explore the place of humans in the world, how some are in the centre and decide to push some to the margins. I love that storytelling can inform our understanding of these dynamics and have the power to humanize, liberate, and to centre otherwise marginalized people. This is what push the creativity behind my artistic vision. The part of the creative process that is hardest to navigate is the execution of those near-perfect ideas in one’s head, struggling with self doubts as you go ahead and believing in the work and where it leads you.

QUESTION: As a renowned creative, what advice would you give to emerging artists who are looking to balance the pursuit of artistic excellence with the desire for recognition and validation?

ANSWER: Recognition and validation can mean a lot to an artist, but the irony is that these can elude you if you don’t get that artistic excellence first. For a true artist, however, I believe that it isn’t a question of balance because they know that their art and the pursuit of its excellence supersedes any other thing.

QUESTION: What purpose fuels your creativity ?

ANSWER: The urgent need to tell the stories that keep me awake at night, tugging at my heart.

QUESTION: Fifty years away from now, what do you want the literary world to perceive of your art?

ANSWER: This is hard one. I would say, I want its perception to be one of art that does something. The something could be as simple as a beautiful turn of phrase that moves a reader or as significant as changing a person’s perception.

QUESTION: Is representation a priority for you, and do you see a need for your writing to reflect your background, or ancestral links?

ANSWER: It’s a priority to me. I’m deliberate about how I reflect my socio-cultural background in all its nuances and imperfections in my writings.