Every Day Is for the Thief

The unnamed narrator is a Nigerian man who left home 15 years before the novel’s events to pursue a life and career in the US. The son of a Black father and a white mother, he’s often mistaken for an oyinbo (a Nigerian word for a white person or European), both because of his light skin and because his time in America has led people to assume that he’s a Westerner. After his father’s death, he left Nigeria without telling his mother, leading to their estrangement, and even though his mother has returned to America too, he hasn’t been in touch with her. His return to Nigeria for the wedding of an undisclosed family member is the first time he has seen his extended family since he left.

His relationship with Lagos is complicated: He sees the vibrancy of the culture and community but is troubled by the amount of corruption and violence that is an everyday occurrence there, and over the course of the novel he’s clearly considering moving back to Nigeria (though whether this is a real consideration or just a thought process he’s working out during his trip home is unclear). He’s seeking something in his wandering through the city: what he calls “a moving spot of sun” (117) that would be found in a place that celebrates culture and the arts. His searching increases his disillusionment with Nigeria, as he finds little, and what he does find is often tempered by lack of access for everyday Nigerians or corruption in the form of piracy.

He’s further jaded by what he sees on his trip: The government is whitewashing the history of slavery and corruption, his own encounter with violence brings out a part of him he doesn’t like, and he thinks that the people of Nigeria aren’t ready for the progress that they’ve imported from other nations. However, his desire for it to improve and his hope for the next generation of Nigerians tempers his criticism. He clings to the scant goodness he finds in the city, and he ends his narrative remembering a moment when he encountered a group of carpenters making coffins, an honest act of work that embodies both the care Nigerians can have for each other as well as the grief they endure.