Editor at The Republic and author of ‘John Mugufuli’s Baby Fever’, Christopher Olaoluwa Ogunmodede, believes great writing emerges from practice. ‘Just like leaders are made, not born, great writers develop themselves. Or at least, great writing is a skill that can be taught.’
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I got hooked on reading early in life, thanks largely to being raised by earnest, disciplinarian parents in a house full of books. Everything I read ran the gamut from fairy tales and comic books to theology, political memoirs, and poetry anthologies.
I read a lot of the Peter Marlow series by Joseph Hone—the very first book of the series, The Private Sector, was my favourite, I loved The Sixth Directorate as well. I read a lot of Hemingway, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, and Leo Tolstoy as well. I recall reading Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions when I was six years old and decided right there that he would be one of my patron saints—I eventually chose Augustine as my Confirmation name (Catholic boy here). And I’ll never forget the feeling of being enthralled by a book when I read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
It goes without saying that I read a lot of the classic twentieth-century Afrodiasporic writers and thinkers like Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Mariama Bâ, Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Jacques Roumain, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R James, Edward Kamau Braithwaite, Derek Walcott, Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy to mention a few.
Can’t leave out all the Black Latino writers I read either, even though I read most of them much later in my youth—Piri Thomas, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Carlos Guillermo Wilson, Jesús Colón, and Gaspar Octavio Hernández all come to mind, and many more. Yep, I’m a nerd. I like to think the broad, decolonial reading experience I was fortunate to be exposed to has made a lasting impact.
If you could rewrite a classic book/text, which would it be and why?
Definitely Oliver Twist and not just because it’s one of my childhood favourites. To put it mildly, Charles Dickens was fairly inept at writing female characters and Oliver Twist is no exception.
The female characters were either bland do-gooders (think Rose Maylie) or tragic antiheroes without much of an identity of their own besides being appendages to male characters (Nancy). Dickens’s contrasting of these two women (Rose Maylie and Nancy) is as unspoken as it is constant. I have wondered what a female protagonist’s story would have read like. You could even call her ‘Olivia Twist’.
Are there any rewrites or remakes you particularly enjoy? What do you think makes a good rewrite?
I tend to be something of a purist, or at least an originalist when it comes to art. I generally believe great art need not be redone unless there is compelling reason to do so. That said, there are a number of rewrites and remakes I have enjoyed; indeed, I enjoy a great deal of ‘fan fiction’.
One obvious rewrite I particularly like would be The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Another would be The Stand: Complete and Uncut by Stephen King, which couldn’t be any more fitting with the times (it’s about an influenza pandemic that kills nearly the entire world population).
If you want to author a good rewrite, follow one basic but effective rule—draw a thread from your rewrite to the original by engaging with, and even deconstructing the issues raised in the original.
If you want to author a good rewrite, follow one basic but effective rule—draw a thread from your rewrite to the original by engaging with, and even deconstructing the issues raised in the original.
What is the last book that you disagreed with, and why?
I just recently read a book given to me by a friend titled Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by an author called Rod Dreher who identifies himself on Twitter as a ‘Conservative, Orthodox Christian, Southerner, Europhile, Ignatian (Reilly), eclecticist’.
The core of Dreher’s argument in the book is that Christians in the United States and Europe live under the heel of the ‘soft totalitarianism’ of the ‘pink police state’. This theme of purported anti-Christian oppression is a familiar one with Dreher, who wrote a 2014 book called The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, wherein he calls for American Christians who want to preserve ‘traditional values’ to segregate from society.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that my views could not be more diametrically opposed to Dreher’s. I consider myself a progressive social democrat (with borderline socialist leanings) whose worldview is informed by Catholic Social Teaching, African postcolonial thought, and twentieth-century European social democracy.
While I do believe there are places where the lives of Christians are in grave danger, the United States and Europe do not count in my view. There are arguments in the book I am broadly sympathetic to, such as in recognizing the threats to personal freedoms posed by governments and large corporations, but the notion of a totalitarian future on the horizon where the persecution of Christians will become the norm is not something I subscribe to.
And what’s a recent book that changed your mind about something?
Well, this one is not so recent, but Deep Work by Cal Newport totally changed my perspective on productivity in the social media age. I came away with a more robust understanding of what ‘productivity’ means.
Previously, I was happy with ticking off several items on a long to-do list. Now I realize I could be stretching the boundaries of my own capabilities, a much-needed skill in the world of remote working we live in.
You are interested in international affairs and the political economy. What’s a common misconception these fields/policy circles have about Nigeria?
That bigger necessarily equals better, and Nigeria’s sheer size, large population, oil reserves, and international visibility is proof Nigeria ‘matters’ and will be a force to be reckoned with over time, or at the very least should be reckoned with.
This is particularly commonplace among Americans, who are socialized to value ‘bigness’, including among foreign countries. A lot of this is quite circular in its reasoning. It’s like ‘Nigeria has 200 million people and is Africa’s largest economy, has all this oil, a large diaspora, and an increasingly visible popular culture, therefore it matters’. And then the same people would point to those attributes as ‘reasons’ why Nigeria ‘matters’.
No doubt much of this is a leftover from the ‘Africa Rising’ era when Nigeria ‘looked like’ it was thriving economically and was ‘destined’ to become a ‘Next Eleven’ economy (remember MINT?). Nigeria sold lots of oil, the rich got richer while the fragile middle class had easy access to foreign exchange for regular holidays to London and Dubai.
With that seeming nouveau riche status came plenty of what some Nigerians might refer to as ‘international exposure’. Nigeria piqued a lot of foreign interest but for markedly different reasons from ‘419 scams’ and ‘Nigerian princes’. Even then-President Goodluck Jonathan cited growing private jet ownership as evidence that poverty levels in Nigeria were overstated.
Newsweek published an article last year titled ‘Black China: Africa’s First Superpower Is Coming Sooner Than You Think’—this piece perfectly captures the phenomenon I’m describing. To be kind, it was not a good piece. When this piece was published, I said on Twitter that it wouldn’t pass muster even for an undergraduate International Political Economy major.
But the themes the piece hit on—the demographic dividend, pentecostalism, largest population in Africa, a large, highly educated diaspora —are themes I hear all the time from many foreign diplomats, scholars, investors, and other lay observers of Nigerian affairs about ‘why Nigeria matters’. In a way, the assumption possesses a whiff of path dependence about it.
There’s this sense of inevitability and linear progress in the minds of many, where Nigeria would inevitably ‘rise’ simply with the passage of time. There are many reasons why this reasoning is flawed, but the most obvious ones are the rising and deepening levels of poverty in Nigeria that are both structural and multidimensional in nature, as well as the country’s political paralysis, unraveling security architecture, and continued decline as a continental power.
For what it’s worth, similar projections were made about Nigeria as far back as 45—50 years ago, when Nigeria’s path to prosperity was much less treacherous than it looks today. This should be a hint that Nigeria’s size, abundance of natural resources, favourable geography, or any other attributes are not assurances of prosperity. Indeed, progress and development are not guaranteed, and some countries can remain stuck in a rut.
The ‘Argentina paradox’ is a case in point. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Argentina outgrew Canada and Australia in population, total income, and per capita income. Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries per capita during the 1910s and looked on its way to becoming an industrialized, high-income country.
But from the 1930s onwards, its economy deteriorated amid so much political turmoil and instability. Its story of coups, dictatorships, defaults, and currency devaluations since the 1930s is a familiar one. Essentially, every country in the world ‘matters’, but rising to become a ‘superpower’ requires more than rhetoric, and development is not predestined.
What three books on Nigeria should everyone be reading at this moment?
I am generally not fond of this question—or variants of it—whenever I’m asked. It’s somewhat reductionist and patronizing in nature; how could a complex entity like Nigeria be reduced to all of three books? Ten books aren’t enough to tell a comprehensive enough story of Nigerian literature, let alone three ‘on Nigeria’ broadly. Nonetheless, let me give this question an answer.
The Trouble with Nigeria by Chinua Achebe would be my first choice. It is the quintessential critique of Nigeria’s political leadership and the customs that underpin Nigerian social relations, and it has aged VERY well, regrettably so. Next up is This House has Fallen by Karl Maier. It is as good an overview of Nigerian society by a western journalist as it gets. And finally, you have got to read Love Does Not Win Elections by Ayisha Osori to get a first-person understanding of how entrenched and consequential ‘structures’ in Nigerian politics can be.
Progress and development are not guaranteed, and some countries can remain stuck in a rut.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
I suppose I do a little bit of both! I tend to write out all my thoughts as they come to me, which is as chaotic as it sounds. But it works for me, because it allows me to improve, build on or even discard ideas (or at least iterations of) I may have had.
That way, the editing is a constant as I write. At the same time, I sometimes write out an entire piece or large chunks of a piece, only to rewrite it significantly after much deliberation. I guess that counts as ‘editing’ in some way.
What was your process for writing ‘Trade Not Aid: Revisiting President Obama’s Legacy in Africa’?
I had given a brown-bag presentation three days before (now former) President Obama left office in January 2017, discussing what his Africa legacy (if any existed) would be and it was a fairly detailed presentation.
Essentially, I flipped the presentation into a written essay, which made the writing process easy as I could almost recite the core arguments, statistics, and broad observations I had made during the presentation. For the most part, I was editing as I was writing—I would say that my best-written pieces (or at least the ones I regard as such) have usually worked out like that.
Did you have the same experience writing, ‘John Magufuli’s Baby Fever’?
Very much so. As it happens, I had given a presentation about a month before writing the piece about why talk of ‘demographic dividends’ without creating the enabling environment for large populations to thrive don’t amount to much of a dividend.
Then I came across some remarks by John Magufuli encouraging Tanzanians to have more babies to spur economic growth. And that’s how that piece was born.
What is the most meaningful piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Try to write 200 words every single day.
I’ve said on several occasions that the best course I ever took in higher education was a course titled ‘Writing in the Media’. The instructor was a veteran journalist who spent more than 25 years with the FT, Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine. It goes without saying that she was thorough, as she should have been.
We were required to submit daily 200-word entries on the course intranet on a topic of our choosing, essentially like reporters, and the professor would ‘edit’ these pieces. She was unsparing and blunt in her comments and critiques, but the course made me a much better writer, thinker, and communicator. I have continued the practice of 200 words daily to this day.
What were today’s ‘200 words’ about?
Today’s 200 words were about my experience of remote working nearly a year since I’ve been doing it with frequency thanks to COVID-19 (spoiler alert: I detest remote working ).
Is writing a skill (something that can be taught) or a talent (something innate)?
Just like leaders are made, not born, great writers develop themselves. Or at least, great writing is a skill that can be taught. Practice makes perfect. A good way to become a great writer is by reading the work of authors you admire and trying to write like them, while putting yourself in the position of someone reading your work.
Lord knows I am a better writer today than I was two years ago, let alone five or even ten years ago. I continue to improve by constantly learning and unlearning, good writing is iterative. Piece of advice: use Twitter a lot. It’s an underrated writing tool. You’ll master brevity and the word economy due to the 280–character limit.
Just like leaders are made, not born, great writers develop themselves.
Who is an author you wish you had discovered earlier?
Lina Magaia. Her biography is nothing short of inspirational and it bugs me that I did not learn of her until this year when I made a more conscious effort to read more writers from Lusophone Africa.
I read the English version of her most famous work called Dumba Nengue (the English version is titled Run for Your Life). I would recommend her published works to anyone reading this.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days?
Writing and reading about African politics beyond the nation-state is my passion these days. There are so many endless possibilities, especially considering many contemporary events across the continent.
I’ve long believed that universal principles of rights and citizenship, rather than the hierarchically structured global order of territoriality and the Westphalian state system, are better suited to resolving many of the continent’s longstanding headaches of governance and social cohesion.
This is not at all a new concept and continues to be popular as more states struggle with issues of social legitimacy and conflict. For reading material on postcolonial nationalisms, I’d recommend Achille Mbembe’s essay ‘The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Post-colony’ and Partha Chatterjee’s The Nation and Its Fragments.
What can we expect you to write on next?
I recently published an article in World Politics Review about the possibilities for improved US-Nigeria ties under the Biden presidency. I’ve also got three different pieces I’m currently working on from now till the end of the quarter, and the one I’m most excited to publish is a book review about how the music and the culture of the American South in the post-civil rights era intersects, focusing specifically on Outkast and the rise of Southern rap in forging modern identities for black southerners.
I wouldn’t want to give away any more than that, so I’ll seal my lips for now, but I look forward to sharing this piece with The Republic and our readers when it’s out hopefully soon. I also aim to publish something on the state of elections in Africa, and how young people could translate their voices online and offline into favourable electoral outcomes. Stay tuned!
Question from Molara Wood: What writing or publication opportunity do you regret having missed?
I responded to a Call-For-Papers from Post45 about critique in the era of Trump. My proposal was accepted, and I even submitted a first draft. Regrettably, life events took over and I couldn’t make out the time to see the project through to the end which was a shame because the essays that eventually got published were terrific and some of the best writings I’ve read about the Trump era.
Bonus: Please suggest a question for a future author’s First Draft
If you could work with one author, living or dead, on a book project, who would it be and why?⎈
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