‘Why false prophets feature in my debut novel’

Olukorede S. Yishau is author of ‘In the Name of the Father’. An Associate Editor with the Nation, here he talks about the trigger for his debut novel, his writing journey, critics he has received and more. Excerpts:

Bookshelf: Your debut novel, ‘In the Name of Our Father’ tells the story of Alani, a cleaner turned prophet. What inspired the work?

Olukorede S. Yishau: I started my journalism career with The Source magazine published by Comfort Obi and Maik Nwosu, the author of ‘Invisible Chapter’, ‘Alpha Song’ and ‘A Gecko’s Farewell’. A section in the magazine was 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 participated in occultism in order to have powers to perform miracles and also attract people to his church. When I read the piece, I felt I could do a novel out of it. This was in 2002. At a point I also felt that the story would be too ordinary if it was just about the prophet. 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 this story. I knew people could get confused by the shift from the prologue to Alani’s story, but I took care of it by making it clear in the last line of the prologue that what would follow was a 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.

Bookshelf: Men who parade themselves as ‘pastors’ and ‘prophets’ abound in our society today. This makes it easy for a Nigerian reader to relate with your work. Did you have any concerns that the book may rub some people the wrong way?

Yishau: As an apostle of art for relevance, almost every single work of art I have done, be it poetry or prose, must have 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 in 2002. I was just 24. 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 am a Christian and I will be the first to admit that there are many false prophets out there misleading the people in the name of the Father in heaven. I have absolutely no problem shaking the table and letting people know that 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. If this book helps to re-order the way we think, I will be the happiest person on earth.

Bookshelf: What did it take to develop your major characters?

Yishau: To develop my major characters, I had to do a lot of research. For Prophet T.C. Jeremiah, I had to extra-study the Bible so as to get necessary scriptures to use. I also read interviews and stories on cases of false prophets, which I now recreated. 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 from my imagination. My book editor, Toni Kan, later helped to properly shape some of the characters and to also properly situate the period the book was set, which led to rewriting parts and taking out some four thousand words.

Bookshelf: Men holding high government offices patronised Pastor David, a fake pastor who introduced Alani into their ritual business. There have always been talks about how the wealth of some elite Nigerians may be tied to secret societies. Was there any sought of insider information that helped you build your story?

Yishau: I drew from an interview I did with a man who claimed to have 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 for one favour or the other, including how to have more money. Politicians, according to him, paid nocturnal visits to this particular person.

Aside what he told me, we have also seen instances where a governorship candidate went with a prophetess for some bath in a stream and he was murdered on his way back. Stuff like this, which I read, must also have come as raw material in painting a picture, which has even become clearer than it was when I wrote the book.

Bookshelf: People tell a story for different reasons. Why did you write ‘In the Name of Our Father’?

Yishau: Without mincing words, ‘In the name of our father’ 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 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 reveal the ills of military incursion into our polity.

Bookshelf: You are an Associate Editor with The Nation Newspaper. How were you able to make out time from your busy schedule to write this book and how challenging was it?

Yishau: I was not an Associate Editor at the time I wrote the first draft. I think I was on leave when I started and I found time even after I resumed to complete work on it, especially on weekends. I wrote it long hand and still have the raw script, which I typed out years later. I was busy then too, but one thing about creative writing, for me, is that it is like a spirit and when I need to get a story out, I am always restless, and creating time to free myself from the spirit troubling me is a task that must be done.

Bookshelf: Since you were published in the ‘Activists Poets’ anthology in the late 1990s you seem to have shelved poetry. Why?

Yishau: Prose has always been my first love. The poems featured in the anthology edited by Tunde Oladunjoye and published with the support of the French Cultural Centre were written about my frustration with the military junta of the late General Sani Abacha. I still write poetry once in a while, but I am certainly more at home with prose or what you can call poetic-prose. I will not be surprised if I push out a collection of poetry in the future. For now, I am enjoying the thrills and enduring the knocks of my debut prose work.

Bookshelf: What are you working on at the moment?

Yishau: I have completed work on a sequel to ‘In the Name of Our Father’. For now, it is called ‘Like Someone Skating on Thin Ice’. It is the story of the post-jail life of Justus Omoeko and the woman who will become his wife. It is being edited at the moment.