How to write a Nigerian story

Following these guidelines.

Once there was a war. Dark-skinned Nigerians versus yellow ones. There are more light-skinned Nigerians now; I wonder what that means about who won. Then there was Babangida, the benevolent dictator, and now the present leadership is siphoning government funds.

This is the state of my country. I close my eyes, hurting for the road we have travelled, the sacrifices we have all made, and sigh deeply to myself as the memories come flooding in.

“There is no light,” I cry to Mother.

“Oh, when will this suffering end?” she moans, adjusting her wrapper in defeat, “all my life I have lived like this. Is this the destiny we have created for our children?”

She turns to me and says, “We must manage, until you’re old enough to change the world.”

I remember this as I toss and turn in the bedroom of my sprawling city mansion. Those days, when all we had was one kerosene stove and a face-me I-face-you, with Mr. Okoro, the evil landlord, asking us for our rent when it was due. They feel so distant now.

I left home. I became a doctor. I met a woman, but she was an ogbanje and my mother’s people warned me about her juju.

The warning came unexpectedly when I went back to visit, from the city. The village felt so strange. At night, the people gathered in the town square to watch a flickering light bulb as it hung from the iroko tree. Papa Orile, the oldest man in the village, told stories there every night. But that night, his words were sent to me from the gods.

“The cat has nine lives, and yet it sticks greedily to its first,” he said, as his blind eyes widened and landed on mine. I knew he could not possibly see me… or could he?

“Beautiful women are like the glimmering light of the white people that hangs here,” he continued, as my mouth dropped open in awe, “but be careful, lest that solitary light flicker out.” And, just like that, I knew. 

After her I met Sylvia, but her rich parents turned up their nose at me.

“What? A mere village boy?” they couldn’t believe their darling would even look at me, a straight A student with only two shirts to his name. But she believed in me. She told me so, as we walked holding hands towards the scent of the frangipani tree. And when her parents died we inherited their house. That is where I am now.

The other day I saw a young man walking on the street. Someone had jumped off a bus and dropped a wad of cash on the floor. My heart raced as I saw him walk toward it. “Don’t do it!” I said out loud, frightening my driver and nanny. But he did. He couldn’t see me through the tinted windows of my Range.

It reminded me of a time, a few years after my youth service.

I was a hard worker, and so I quickly rose up to the top of the medical ladder. One day, the chief of surgery announced his retirement. He called me into his office personally to inform me.

He said his dream was to replace himself with a young person, someone who was bold, smart, innovative. Somebody with integrity and heart, who loved to heal the sick and wounded as he had for so many years. I was that person, or so I thought, as he smiled at me. But then he asked me what I was willing to do for him in exchange, and I was positively stunned.

“What could I, so humble, possibly give to you?” I implored, and was shocked at his brazen response.

“When you become chief, you just keep me on the staff payroll as a ghost worker. That way I get both my current salary – which, as you know, is very high – and my retirement package. But you, my dear boy, you will be the youngest chief resident in the history of this hospital.”

I was not even tempted. He made my stomach turn. I thought about my poor mother in the village, and how she stayed up at night praying for me to one day become a beacon of hope in this lawless land; those days I sat in our one-bedroom apartment without a television, doing my homework and listening to the news on the radio instead of watching Voltron, and I looked at him with disappointment in my eyes.

“No sir, I will not do that. It is wrong!”

He looked taken aback.

“How dare you!” he yelled, “I am handing you this opportunity on a silver platter, and you say no?”

“Yes, sir.”

He told me to get out of his office.

It was hard, going home to Sylvia and telling her I no longer had a job. What was worse, she told her really influential parents. What could they do, have him fired? I did not want their pity.

Luckily for me, the news leaked a few days later and I was offered the job without their help. My hands are clean, and they always will be.

I looked up at the young man walking toward the cash on the floor and shook my head as he picked it up. My heart broke.