Around the time I decided to take writing seriously, my family moved to a new town. I remember filching a worn copy of People of the City from a bookshelf, beginning to read it: maybe it could teach me a thing or two about how to write a novel. And since I was only fifteen, I saw no error in lifting entire paragraphs of Cyprian Ekwensi’s story and, after changing the characters’ names, putting them into mine. Any Nigerian writer who has tried to write about Lagos as a city with feeling descends from Ekwensi.
Source : Cyprian Ekwensi’s Lagos Noir
