By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

 The Carnivorous City by Toni Kan; Cassava Republic Press, Abuja – London; 2016; 241pp

The statement, “See Paris and die,” has lasted for far too long and thus needs to be replaced by “See Lagos and die!” The mystique of Lagos goes on forever, gathering decibels for years on end. Nigeria’s leading metropolis has found an author who has a carriage that matches Lagos for all its panache, largeness and surprise. Toni Kan, otherwise hailed as “The Mayor of Lagos” in his latest novel, The Carnivorous City, lends enthralling animation to the attractions and pitfalls of Lagos, the city by the lagoon.

In an opening as arresting as any, a larger-than-life-and-death character goes missing on the very first page of The Carnivorous City. Three words capture the charged message: Soni is missing. Sunderland Onyema Dike, aka Soni, is the archetypal Lagos Boy who made good. He is a happy-go-lucky charmer who in his university days in Jos adopted the alias of “9 Inches”, in celebration of the hyped-up length of his member that always left its mark on the ladies. When Soni hits Lagos to “chase his fortune”, he earns further aliases such as Alhaji Tanko, Sabato Jnr and Sabato Rabato. It’s Sabato Rabato that sticks with Soni until he gets missing in very mysterious circumstances. Soni’s fate is not unlike that of any other Lagos Big Boy who “made it” and perforce ends thusly: “Missing. Shot. Found dead. On the run. Declared wanted. Arrested. Detained.” In the particular case of Soni, he gets missing, leaving his car in the ditch blaring music, and he is never found at the novel’s end.

The linchpin of the story is the brotherly love between Soni and his studious, if sickly, elder brother Abel who forfeits his job as a lecturer in Asaba to undertake the perilous search of his missing brother in Lagos. It’s Abel’s forte to stand by Soni’s wife Ada and their three-year-old son Zeal. Incidentally, Abel happens not to be in the good books of Ada because he had given this advice to Soni when he wanted to marry the lady: “9 inches, do not marry a woman you met in the nightclub.”

Toni Kan lays bare the Lagos scene thus: “Lagos is a beast with bared fangs and a voracious appetite for human flesh. Walk through its neighbourhoods, from the gated communities in Ikoyi and Victoria Island to Lekki and beyond, to the riotous warrens of streets and alleyways on the Mainland, and you can tell that this is a carnivorous city. Life is not just brutish – it is short.” The state of nature of Thomas Hobbes is Lagos writ large.

It is indeed remarkable that Soni denoted Abel as his next-of-kin in his business documents instead of his wife Ada. It thus falls on Abel, with the help of their streetwise cousin Santos who had been serving Soni, to entangle the web of knots surrounding the wealth of the missing one. Abel’s treacherous visit to the dingy suburb of Mushin with Santos accounts for a near-death experience for Abel: “Losing the Toyota Camry, his Echolac briefcase, the documents inside, the cash – all six hundred thousand of it – and escaping death by the whiskers left him petrified.”

Abel settles into the comfy world of the Lagos upper crust with all the contradictions such as visiting “a lovely mansion in Parkview Estate, Ikoyi where, Santos told Abel, a plot of land sold for about US$2million, even though the roads were potholed and filled with water”. The lady of the Parkview House was one of Soni’s many love interests, a widow with this interesting history: “In 1992, a military C-130H aircraft conveying an elite class of military officers had gone down in the swamps of Ejigbo. Many suspected that the plane had been rigged by the then military president, who was afraid of being overthrown. The crash decimated an entire corps of future military leaders.”

In The Carnivorous City, Toni Kan brings to bear on the plot subtle significant hints like Auntie Ekwi who does not forget to call Abel by his Igbo name – Chiedu – while surrendering like the rest of the world to calling Soni by his nom de guerre Sabato Rabato. Auntie Ekwi leads the search for Soni to a prophet’s prayer-house in the Yaba surbubia. She hires prayer warriors and leads the charge in midnight-to-dawn prayer sessions.

There is no going back from Lagos for Abel, armed with the knowledge: “If he decided to quit his job, there was no fear of going broke, at least not in the foreseeable future. His brother had over ₦800million cash in six different banks. He had five houses in Lagos aside from the one he lived in and Ada told him there was an apartment in Essex and two in Florida.” There is forever the hint that Abel and Ada will hit it off romantically, as can be gleaned from Ada’s barely hidden jealousy at Abel’s tryst with the old flame Calista.

Abel sees enough of callous Lagos as in the greedy medical doctor working as banker, Doctor Nicole, insisting on Abel buying the car Soni promised her for her birthday. Dr Nicole does get busted. Santos brews his own broth too. Some policemen who handcuff Abel whilst in the company of Calista end up being arrested. An outraged housewife slaps a lady banker in the banking hall and pours shit on her for “for fucking my husband, you prostitute”. The killing and tying of the double-dealing Mayowa, editor of Excel Magazine, makes the skin crawl.

The Carnivorous City by Toni Kan is a fast-paced and funny tour de force. It stands on solid ground to lead the charge of new age thrillers in Nigeria and Africa.

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.