It was another gathering of celebrities, poets and book lovers as a new novel, “Baron of Broad Street” weaved around two adventurous youths with an opposing conqueror doctrine but solidly united in optimism was unveiled to the public last week in Lagos.
The Lounge Bar, Victoria Island, Lagos venue of the event witnessed a convergence of personalities, among whom are the foremost playwright Odia Ofeimun, Toni Kan, ace comedian Teju ‘Babyface’ Oyelakin, Nabila Lester, an American film producer,Dapo Paul Akintunde, Designer and Tolu Ogunlesi the anchorman and many others.
‘Baron of Broad Street’, written by El Nukoya, a contemporary Nigerian writer whose debut ‘Nine Lives’ won the ANA-Jacaranda Prize for Prose, made an impressive entrant into the book lovers’ sphere with this fascinating thriller as he explains the wits and intrigues of life associated with such a creative work to the audience.
Award winning author Toni Kan who read a piece from the book, said it is a morality tale because it riffs on the binary of good versus evil while showing how every evil deed meets its comeuppance. Kan who described it as a Lagos novel, a tourist’s wet dream, said El Nukoya in writing about Broad Street outlines that business precinct with very broad strokes with easily indentifiable landmarks rearing up in your vision as you read; from the Cathedral to the NPA building from Idumota to Sangrouse, he maps the city with words in place of the cartographers lines.
But the major attraction of the book reading session was when Teju Baby face, who engaged the author in an incisive session of narratives with a direct insight towards the idea and making of such a thriller. He pried to know from the author if he ever experienced what his idea represents or a mere imaginative fiction. But El- Nukoya while responding allayed the curiosity, saying-having the sameness species around the corner as neigbhours, makes it easy to decipher one or two life experiences from them and built on it.
The author said it is a pure creative fiction drawn and enhanced from life around the Lagos city and also his upbringing in Ibadan. According to him, “Best ideas never warn you, never announce or say when they come. The best is to capture it when it comes”
Published by CG & S Books, Lagos, 2015, with 354 pages, the book has a glossary page of meticulously used Yoruba language and uniquely designed hard cover, that lends to somewhat, alluring yet engaging masterpiece that painted not only the Lagos story but, perhaps, the fascinating side of every successful person in Lagos who – one way or the other encountered similar inspiring challenges, in a more thrilling way, full of suspense.
From the book, the author narrated how, Disun Falodun and his friend Ige Olukayode, two boys that grew up within the squeeze and squalor of Makoko, weaved with other challenging issues related to chances of survival in life.
“Disun is the optimistic of the duo, resolute in his faith in a fair chance of success, his ordinary background notwithstanding. Ige his friend, on the hand – held by radical, vibrant mind, reasons that the expectation of a fair chance was utopian, as he entrenches himself in the belief that the only reliable choices open to them were illicit.
Both set out on a life journey, after making a silent bet regarding which of their opposed doctrines is superior. However, the real challenge for success lies on the relentless pressures that it exerts on the purity of a soul.”
The entrant of the story possessed the sameness of the famous rested NTA’s “Cockcrow at Dawn” drama. With early rise pleasantries, a new dawn unfolds into new beginning, new experience, uncertainties that evolves into certainty built on focused aspiration and expectations. The more unique click is the story of Ige’s birth – complex and evil spirited in nature who, privy of his birth circumstance basked in this perverse glory “My karma is strong, you treat me unjustly – you attract great calamity upon yourself”. Perhaps, seen as more reason his resolute and resilience is obvious.
El-Nukoya vividly paints the intriguing picture of the complexities of life; ambition, conscience, friendship, pranks and necessity – romance inclusive, as seen both in traditional and modern society .
The author said he has always been fascinated with digging into the life of successful people and knowing how and what made them rich. He said, “Creativity or genius can come from either of the divide, what propels them is the quest for success”.
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