More Stories Than I Can Tell

Lagos is my home city, but that has never stopped me or my mind from wandering. I was born here and attended school here for the first fourteen years of my life. 

After I was sent to school in England, I came back on vacation and continued to do so while I worked as an accountant there. Now that I spend most of my time writing in the United States, I still return.

Lagos gives me more stories than I can tell. Every city is a gift to storytellers, in the sense that they all have extremes, divisions and contradictions. What makes each of them different is how these elements present.

Lagos has a unique combination to begin with and it is highly unpredictable. In my twenty plus years of chronicling the city, my biggest challenge has been keeping up with it in the different forms I write in – novels, short stories, plays and screenplays.

My experience here is limited to certain social circles and geographical locations, but my imagination isn’t. Also, I don’t just recreate people and places; I ground them in history. You can’t rely solely on what you observe and read here.

You’ve got to know what happened before and what is likely to happen next. I learn this by researching the history of Lagos and listening to the older and younger generations. 

My mother was born and raised here and I pass on stories she shares. My daughter was born and raised in the United States, but she visits Lagos and I pass on her stories as well.

So lastly, I guess I can say that writing about Lagos is a multigenerational endeavor for me.