It was a year yesterday since my debut novel In the Name of Our Father was published. This ‘novelist’ journey is largely tied like a Siamese twin to my journalism career, which kicked off some twenty years ago with The Source magazine published by Comfort Obi and Maik Nwosu, the author of Invisible Chapter, Alpha Song and A Gecko’s Farewell.
While working with The Source, the magazine had a section called Night Diary. It was meant for reporters to share their night experiences. Occasionally, outsiders were allowed to contribute. One of such outside contributions was about a pastor who joined the occult to acquire powers to perform miracles and attract people to his church. When I read the piece, I felt I could do a novel out of it. This was in 2002. Nwosu, my editor then, had published Invisible Chapter and Alpha Song, which made a large impression on me.
At a point, I also felt that if the story was based alone on the pastor, it would be too ordinary. I decided to do a story-within-a-story. I was clear about what I wanted to do. So, I decided to do a prologue to introduce the narrator of the story-within-the-story before going into the main story.
It occurred to me early that people could get confused by the shift from the prologue to the main story, but I took care of it by making it clear in the last line of the prologue that what would follow was reading from a book. Any reader who glosses over the prologue or misses this last line may be confused. But I am glad most people have been able to understand what I set out to do. I also made sure the link between the story-within-the-story and the narrator’s challenges were well established at the end of the book and this, according to readers, was a rude shock they did not see coming.
As an apostle of art for relevance, almost every single work of art I have done, be it poetry or prose, has had a critical message for the society. This has been with me right from my days at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, where some of my poems were featured in a collection called ‘Activist Poets’. This principle was on my mind when the principal script of In the name of Our Father was written while I was 24.
One question that has kept cropping up since the book was released is whether or not I was conscious of the backlog it could have. The truth is: I never bothered about whether or not anyone would feel bad about what I was writing. I felt only the guilty should be afraid.
I have also been asked what research went into conceptualising my major characters. For Prophet T.C. Jeremiah, I had to extra-study the Bible so as to get the necessary scriptures to use. I also read interviews and stories on cases of false prophets. I also read tons of reports and interviews about victims of incarceration during the last military dictatorship. The prison break in the book was so real that Hon. Wale Oshun, who had witnessed one while in prison, sent me a mail asking if I experienced it. Of course, I did not. It was pure research. Almost all the characters who were jailed in the book have real-life personalities they are modelled after. This was deliberate because I want the book, in a way, to be a blend of fact and fiction, which is known in some quarters as ‘faction’.
For Justus Omoeko, who I modelled after Mr Kunle Ajibade, one of the founders of The News magazine, I also read about his travails and played on them. Of course, the bulk of the things that happened to the character in the book have nothing to do with Mr Ajibade’s life. They were just purely imagination. My book editor, Toni Kan, later helped to properly shape some of the characters and situate the period the book was set, which led to rewriting parts and taking out some four thousand words.
I also drew inspiration from an interview I did with a man who claimed to have co-founded a church with a popular man of the cloth. He told me all kinds of stories about how wealthy men were coming to consult the prophet, day and night, for one favour or the other, including how to have more money. Politicians, according to him, paid nocturnal visits.
This book was never intended to be innocent. So, when a critic said part of it was not tastefully done, I had no apology because that aspect was one of the reasons for the book in the first place. It was meant to draw attention to major socio-political issues, which in this case are religious deceit and the evil of military dictatorship. I resorted to the story-within-the-story format so that I can treat both issues together. I created a journalist, who wrote a book about a false prophet with links to the dictator in power. The journalist eventually got into trouble as a result of the novella he wrote on the false prophet titled ‘Angels Live in Heaven’. He was jailed after being implicated in a coup and this allowed me to reveal the ills of military incursion into our polity.
What have been the reactions of readers? Largely good. But I have seen two people who feel it was not properly thought through. One feels it is “structurally defective” and the other feels it was “prematurely published”. So, I am enjoying the thrills of the army of admirers and enduring the knocks of the minority.
In this second year of the book, my publishers and I are exploring new heights. Maybe the movie talks will also be solidified. Fingers crossed!
My final take: We all know there are many false prophets out there misleading the people in the name of the Father in heaven. We should stop subletting our lives to ‘men of God’. God gave us brains to use, but many are not using theirs. Every important decision in their lives is taken by men of God, real and fake.
…This piece is an adaptation of my interview with Daily Trust.