LAGOS, NIGERIA – Danladi Ahmed, the Nigerian writer whose prose touched millions around the world, has died at the age of 63, leaving behind a brilliant body of fiction, a wife, four children, and 800 million dollars stashed in a secret hiding spot known only to Dr. Galadima Hassan.
Having spawned thousands of imitators and believed to have mentored most of Nigerian’s new generation of writers, Ahmed is a folk hero in his native land, the most famous writer since Chinua Achebe, who wrote Things Fall Apart.
Rising to fame in the late 1990s, Ahmed penned hundreds of seminal letters pioneering the Nigerian epistolary genre that has since defined a new generation of African writers. Among Ahmed’s greatest works include the famous Widow of General Sanni Abacha Letters #1-27 and the now classic Ibrahim Mustapha letter, which is considered a reinvention of the form and his finest work.
The Lagos native launched his career with a simple Dickensian sentence in 1996: “DEAR SIR, IT IS MY HUMBLE PLEASURE TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER IRRESPECTIVE OF THE FACT THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME…”
From there, Ahmed never turned back, expanding his readership to the entire English-speaking world. Typically featuring a clash between the persecuted rich and the “New Civilian Government” of Nigeria, Ahmed’s fiction captured the shadowy world of corruption, big business and millions in frozen assets that define the African condition.
His concise works featured an array of characters, from civil servants suddenly in the hands of vast sums of money to down-and-out widows of former generals also in the hands of vast sums of money. Considered Africa’s finest post-modernist, he interspersed his narratives with details of obscure financial transactions and sudden, unexpected capitalization.
His prose was intentionally convoluted and he almost always relied on what is known in literary criticism as an “unreliable narrator”. But Ahmed’s most famous device was to directly bring his readers into the story, entreating them to divulge their bank details.
“I have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to look for an Overseas partner INTO whose ACCOUNT the sum of US$31,000,000.00 (Thirty one Million United States Dollars) WILL BE PAID BY TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER. Hence I am writing you this letter,” he wrote in “Private Business Proposal”, one of his most widely distributed works.
“The brilliance of Danladi was that by including an email in his texts he completely tore down the barrier between writer and reader,” commented Salman Rushdie, a long-time friend and admirer. “He entered directly into the lives of readers, in some cases, leading them into life-changing circumstances and revelations. No other author has had that sort of impact.”
Ahmed is believed to have amassed over 800 million dollars through his fiction although the exact whereabouts of the funds is murky. In his will he left 70% of his inheritance to his wife and children, and the remaining 30% to anyone offering a “suitable name and overseas bank account number into which the funds can be paid.”
In a moving tribute to the pioneering writer, Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan declared this morning: “Dear Ahmed! Our Dear Ahmed! You gave us so much. We owe you a debt, our deepest debt of gratitude for a generosity that knew no bounds!”
