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Teju Cole’s book, Every Day is for the
Thief is published by Cassava Republic, a Nigerian publishing house. In
this highly engaging book, a Nigerian living in America decides to take
a trip to Nigeria after a long stay away from home. Hurrah for Cassava
Republic. There is hope for Nigeria’s publishing industry. This is a
pretty little book. I absolutely love the cover; earth tones seeping
gently into black and white truths. Indeed, there are many things to
like about this little book. It exudes the quiet confidence of a
brilliant writer properly centered in the beauty and challenges of his
art. It is refreshing that ‘Every Day is for the Thief; does not
pretend to be perfect. If I had to do it over, I would employ an artist
to draw charcoal sketches of scenes from the chapters. The binding
could be stronger. In editing and in general, there is considerable
evidence of a gallant struggle for excellence.

Cole has a reverence for the carefully
documented journey as opposed to sloppy hagiographies. From the middle
passages the voice rises, lumbers to an alert at attention relentlessly
flogging the reader’s conscience. We see firsthand the effect of
capitalism unchecked. Cole describes in sombre but frightening terms,
what “democracy” has brought to Nigeria. We are introduced to a Nigeria
innocent of an abiding set of core values and a coherent spirituality –
a consumer nation at its crassest defined largely by the absence of a
reading culture. Soaked in the effluvium of the new Christianity,
Nigeria is host to a relentless scourge of new “pastors” gouging their
destitute congregation to near-death.

All connoisseurs of history should
simply read Cole’s rendering of the slave trade as it pertained to
Nigeria. The writer has a historian’s keen sense of observation – and
sees little things that portend huge seismic shifts. He observes hard
working professionals like medical doctors who are paid in Naira but
who pay for their subsistence in dollars. And every day they make
furtive plans to flee Nigeria. What this democracy has brought to us is
pregnant and nursing a baby at the same time. Nigeria unravels before
the eyes – a society in slow motion decay wrapped in suffocating
mildew.

In this book, Nigeria is pathetically
a-historic. Nobody seems to remember much. Even Biafra has evaporated
from the conscience of those who should remember. Museums house filth,
indifference, and hagiography. General Murtala Muhammed’s Mercedes Benz
in which he perished in 1976 is there with a hagiographical note
attached. Missing is this man’s misadventures during the civil war.
Gone is his own admission of his thievery and selective remorse. A
murderer and an armed robber adorns Nigeria’s currency and has her
International airport named after him. No one cares. Only in Nigeria.
The courtyard of the National Museum is rented out for funerals and
Owambe parties. I am reminded of Wole Soyinka’s retelling of his
quixotic 1978 adventure to return a stolen artefact from Brazil. The
goal as he tells it in ‘You Must Set Forth at Dawn’ is to return the
mask to Nigeria where it belongs. We have our ancestors to thank for
turning a well-intentioned initiative into a bumbling farce. Where was
Soyinka going to put the ancestral mask, in one of these ‘museums’? How
would he like it if his revered papers were left to the mercy of mildew
and termites in one of those ‘museums’?

It is not all despair. There is balance
to Cole’s story. The protagonist actually goes around documenting hope
wherever it sprouts. He is relentless in his belief in hope and
redemption – it is not all ceaseless despair and irredeemable filth.
Instead the book asks questions that point to structural flaws that are
exploited by men and women of no character. The protagonist wanders the
land seeking that elusive spot of earth called hope. And each time he
finds one, his parched throat erupts in lusty song.

I commend Chapter 27 of this book to the gentle reader. It is quite
simply stunning in its application of poetry to prose. Cole succeeds in
adorning Lagos with a well deserved veil of dignity after the quick
peek into a deeply mysterious place. “And sitting there, a memory of
Lagos returns to me, a moment in my brief journey that stands out of
time.” (p125) The enduring mystery of Lagos triumphs over even the
keenest eyes, over even the prettiest of prose and poetry. Lagos is a
teeming pot of mystery – it trumps even the best story teller, the best
photographer, the best bard. Fela Anikulapo Kuti was close but still no
cigar. Lagos will take her secrets with her to our graves. In the end,
Lagos remains a frustrating enigma. Lagos lifts her skirt. She allows a
peep and shuts it down. And the musky aroma of a sensuous experience
lingers on. Buy this book. Read it and think of the perverse mysteries
unfolding in Nigeria.