This is a fantastic project and one that - being Nigerian - I’m excited to see the progress of. Hell, I might even invest…

I was right about Sanusi

I got a nice surprise yesterday when I read an article that basically confirmed predictions I made in essay I wrote a few years ago for Monocle magazine. It was just after I’d finished my one month internship there and I was still in my final year of my journalism degree.

I pitched them an idea for an article following Andrew Tuck’s instructions at the end of my spell to keep in touch. So I threw him a story about a man called Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who is the governor of Nigeria’s central bank (I am of Niigerian origin and have a keen intrest in the country’s politics). 

At the time I knew litttle about him, but I was inspired to pitch the story after something I heard on the BBC World Service’s news in briefs one evening. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Andrew liked the idea and asked me to change the angle a little to fit the theme of Monocle’s Christmas issue that year. And so it was, my article was published! My first published work in a global magazine, to be specific.

To say I was chuffed or proud would be something of an understatement. But, to add to my joy, about a year later, a Danish broadcast journalist contacted me. He’d read my article and decided to make a sort of film-cum-documentary about people who were changing Nigeria’s image for the better, which was basically what I’d been harping on about in the article. I put him in contact with my uncle, who’s a journalist also, based in Lagos. I don’t know what came of the film, as I didn’t hear from Bo Taudal (the Danish reporter) again, but the experience was flattering enough in itself.

Then, yesterday, I read this. And it reminded me of this.* And now I’m ready to write stories again and get back to my instinctive journalistic roots. So watch this space.