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Elevating thriller tradition in Nigeria

By HENRY AKUBUIRO , THE SUN
Saturday, December 24, 2011

Bisi Daniels is familiar with the classroom, the newsroom and the corporate world. Besides, he is a prolific novelist. A graduate of University of Ghana, he started life as a teacher and switched later to journalism. At various times, he was the business editor of The Guardian and This Day. He joined Elf Petroleum in 1996 as Media Relations Manager and moved, a year later, to Shell Petroleum. After 12 years in the oil industry, he returned to journalism chairing the Editorial Board of This Day Newspapers, as well being the Executive Editor, Business, of the paper, until 2010. He has written over 20 books, including seven novels, a textbook; inspirational books, plays and children's books.
His latest novel, The False Truth, A thriller, has just been released by Austen and Macaulay in the UK. Peter Abel, the recurring character in his novels, re-appears, this time, as a press secretary to an African president with cabals around him with sit-tight ambitions. It is a high-tempo narrative full of intrigues, just as it asks damning questions on despotism on the continent.

"It took me like a year plus to write the novel," says Daniels in a chat under a raffia bar at Ikoyi, Lagos. He is soft-spoken and full of laughter, so much removed from the gritty characterization in his thrillers.

Though the manuscript was finished in 2007, he didn't rush into publishing immediately, because he was looking for a reputable publisher to publish the work, unlike in the past when he would immediately go into self-publishing.

"There is a right time for everything," says Daniels. This underlines the four-year wait for the publication of the work, which fortuitously corresponded with the Arab Spring, because an aspect of the work has foretold the revolution, making it somewhat a topical work.
The novel addresses a wide range of issues. For Daniels, each work presents a myriad of issues to tackle. "I hate to see a particular set of leaders who see themselves as indispensable. If you have done your bit, you have to leave for others," he says with a frown about African leaders he criticizes in the novel. "The longer you stay, the more moribund your ideas," he adds.

He started writing the novel at the time the infamous "Third Term Agenda" was rife in Nigeria, and he was miffed by the bloated ambition of an ex-president. But in the novel itself, the persona is rather veiled. "That's why the plot is set in East Africa," says Daniels, who quickly acknowledges that "it is an African thing."
The False Truth is a kind of faction. "If you read the novel, you will know that this work is talking about a particular person," he hints, "but names and locations have not corresponded with what you have in real life. We have more fictional license to do what we want to do in literature than we could have done in journalism," he remarks.

Daniels is in love with Peter Abel, the recurring character in his novels (in The Girl from Nigeria, he was an investigative journalist). But in the latest novel, the author is presented with some challenges with his characterization, because he is a Nigerian working as press secretary to an African president from another geographical divide. "But , in real life, it has happened before. A former presidential aide in Ghana was a Nigerian," he explains.

The novelist was careful in writing the book, because everybody was conversant with the tenure elongation issue, and he didn't want the book to be too predictable. Thus, in this novel, the president of the country did well and wanted to live after serving his tenure, but a powerful cabal in the country wanted him to continue. Inevitable, it led to a conflict of interests.

Like in the previous novel, Daniels' setting glissades across many borders. His depiction of East South African setting looks so real that you begin to imagine whether he is writing from first-hand experience. "Omo, everything dey for internet," he says in pidgin English with a laugh. "James Hadley Chase was only in America once, but most of his novels were set in America. If you search well on the web, you can set your work in any country you have not even lived before," he says.

Why has he fallen in love with the thriller tradition? Daniels responds swiftly: "One, it is something people want to read and, for me, it is fun writing it. People want to see actions, and not just writing prose."

Professor Tanure Ojaide recently decried the obsession of African writers with negative portrayal of Africa in their fiction, because they write for the foreign audience in mind. So, who does he write for? "I don't fall into that category, because, if you read my novel, you will some positive things in it; for instance, the African president I portrayed did well and wanted to leave power against the will of the cabal. "I made him a unique African leader to send a message that Africans are doing well and leaving when they are due," he admits.

Yet he says a writer in our clime can't shy away from calling a spade a spade. "Portraying poverty, deaths and other bad things are realities one cannot run away from in Africa," he says. Since the world is now a global village, Daniels doesn't see anything wrong in writing to get readership from across the world. At more than 400 pages, The False Truth is the most voluminous he has written so far and, expectedly, it provided some challenges. "I had some problems with my editor in some of the things I wrote about the Blackman, and he asked me to remove them," he admits. Again, he spends so much time trying to get his outline right before he started writing.

Daniels has finished a faction that will give the reader a perspective on the Niger Delta crisis, but he won't disclose when it will be published. "I spend so much time writing, but I don't feel the pains," he says, relapsing to another bout of mirth.

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