By:Douglas Ogbankwa, Esq.
@douglasogbankwa@gmail.com
As a young boy growing up in Benin City, Edo State, I attended Arinze Primary School at Isenmwenro Street, off Sokponba Road. Iden Primary School was also there. We were lucky to have a certain headmistress who told us, “Everyone is the architect of his fortune or misfortune.”
I may have forgotten her name, but I will never forget her influence on my life. She also told us, “If you read, you will lead.”
So, I developed a deep love for prose fiction because my elder sisters, both of whom loved to read novels as young girls attending St. Maria Gorretti Girls Grammar School, Gorretti Junction, Benin City. It was in their hands I first saw Mills and Boon and Doctor-Nurse Romance, with titles like: ‘Revelation of the Night , A Ring to Secure His Heir, But; Destitute, Yet Defiant, Tempestuous Reunion, The Greeks Christmas Baby, etc.
I also saw the book A Woman of Substance by Danielle Steele and some books by Agatha Christie, who was a cousin to the late Queen Elizabeth of England.
However, I found romance novels too soft and benign. I needed something more interesting and challenging. I have always been intrigued by intrigues. So, while I was in Junior Secondary School, I went book hunting. I went to Mission Road, Benin City, Aideyan Bookshop to be precise. There, I bought my first James Hardly Chase novel, titled Ice Cold. I read over 30 novels of James Hardly Chase, including Mission to Nowhere, An Ace off My Sleeve, and Whiff of Money. But the most profound was the one titled No Orchid for Miss Blandish. It was a riveting piece of prose, spiced with supersonic suspense and flawless diction.See More James Hardly Chase Titles : james hadley chase books: https://g.co/kgs/u3Rxq5t.
James Hardly Chase was a pseudonym. The writer was a serving policeman in the United States.
I also read some James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, the creator of the James Bond brand, who was an officer in Her Majesty’s Naval Intelligence Service. Novels like Casino Royal, Dr No, Live and Let’s Live, Goldfinger, Golden Gun, etc.
This made me love the James Bond brand and I have seen all the James Bond movies ever made, by all the respective actors that have depicted the Bond character. From Sean Connery to Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton to Pierce Brosnan and now to Daniel Craig. My favourite Bond movie is the one titled, Die Another Day.
I also read some Nick Carter novels until I saw fiction in another dimension in the BBC World Service reporter turned writer of prose fiction that goes by the pseudonym Frederick Forsyth. From Dogs of War, the Odyssey File, The Devil’s Advocate, etc. It was one entertaining piece of prose fiction to another. His fiction also had some tinge of history. Who says history is not practical? As John Jesen said: “History is past politics and politics is present history.”
Tired of the Forsythe stories, I then started reading thrillers in another dimension .It was Sydney Sheldon’s gift to the world. From Whirl Wind of the Gods, to the Master of the Game, to Tomorrow Never Dies, it was one piece of extraordinary prose fiction to another.
James Bond has a title of a movie called Tomorrow Never Comes.
I read my first political thriller in my SSCE days at Standard Lectures, Benin City.
It was a privilege to attend standard lectures in Benin City and also teach there. There I met two great literary minds: Pastor Mike Omoregbee, the owner of the Lecture House and Standard Schools in Benin City, and Professor Geoffrey Ariavbe, now a Professor of Engineering at the prestigious University of Benin, as well as two others – Dr Taiye Izegaegbe and Barr Shirley Omo Aguebor (Nee Aghariaiha). They came to meet me there.
Pastor Omoregbee was the one who gave me the fillip to be a writer as before I met him, I was just a Reader and a scribbler. He is perhaps the best English and Literature teacher in Benin City. It was George Walker Bush II, former President of the United States, that said: “Teachers rule the world, not politicians. The teachers’ reward is now on earth.
After meeting Pastor Mike and Professor Geoffrey, I got to know of Jeffrey Archer and his life changing political thrillers starting with the presidential trilogy Kane and Abel, the Prodigal Daughter, Shall We tell the President? This is a book that invited me into the inner recesses of America’s complex Presidency.
Jeffrey Archer wrote amazing stories like Best Kept Secret, As the Crow Flies, Fourth Estate, etc.
Then the writer that rekindled my interest in law. The American Trial Lawyer, who found fame and fortune in writing — John Greesham.
He wrote great prose like The Firm, The Client, The Partner, The Last Jury, A Time to Kill, Rain Maker The Chambers, The Brief, etc. It was a profound dose of law related prose that leaves you dazed at his mastery of language and the stranding of legal intrigues together.
Now it is going to get scary. Stephen King ‘s esoteric reels of one vampire story to another will give you sleepless nights, but if you had to bear to read, it invites you into Another Life, the dimension of life that exists, but that is often swept under the carpet. The titles of his books are chilling and the stories are sordid. The books include Bags of Bones, Dark House, The Regulators, Insomnia, Sleeping Beauties, etc.
It was Francis Bacon that said: “Reading makes a man, writing makes a prepared man, but speaking makes a complete man.” I started my journey to literary prowess by reading SMO Aka’s books. Books like My Father’s Car, Mid Day Darkness, etc. Then we read Cyprian Ekwensi’s books before we read the first female Nigerian writer, Flora Nwapa, who wrote Efuru.
We then read the Ghanaian Ayi Akwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born.
The height and depth of local novels are those of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Soyinka’s books include Death and the King’s Horse Men, Kongi’s Harvest, etc. Achebe ‘s books include Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, Girls at War, etc.
I also read the first published Nigerian novel, written by the acclaimed novelist Amos Tutuola. The book is called The Palmwine Drinkard (sic).
The world would have had a void if not for these novels. So, when you see that writer writing well, as 9ice the Nigerian musician would say, “No be mistake.” Such excellence comes from an appreciable level of industry in reading and learning. The English poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said: “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night”.
