When you are a daily columnist for a reputable medium like Nigeria News, it doesn’t take you long to realize that finding interesting things to write about is the most difficult part of the assignment.
Some nights, you go to bed with a simple prayer on your lips. ‘God, please, let something interesting happen before morning.’ Because, the truth is, you have no freaking idea what to pen down the next day.
That is why events like the just concluded 2018 World Cup are a gold mine. The truly inventive communists can come up with, literally, dozens of World Cup-related articles.
You could even write on something like ‘Weirdest Tattoos of Footballers at the World Cup’;
Actually, I crafted that topic to write on during the World Cup. But I sort of lost interest after I found out many writers have thrashed that topic to death.
In other words, it is not so easy to come up with a unique column if you are on a deadline.
Personal opinions aside, columnists love characters like Ayo Fayose, Dino Melaye, Bob Risky, Metuh, and so on. When they are on top of their game, people like these give you material that is fresh and can be spun in a thousand different ways.
And since bad news is the bread and butter of daily columnists, waking up to hear that the police have barricaded the residences of the Senate President and Deputy Senate President was like a blessing on a gold-plated platter.
Unlike the World Cup where everything ends after a month and most people lose interest, the Saraki saga is now like a long-running captivating TV series.
All things being equal, the drama between the National Assembly and the presidency still has several columns in there. We columnists are hopefully hoping the season finale would be sometime before the 2019 elections.
Continuing on the subject of people who make the work columnists easy is people like Justice Okon Abang. Somehow, the judge has found himself in the middle of a drama he didn’t see coming.
Judges are normally very reserved people who would love to be left alone to do their jobs quietly. That is why most times they don’t allow cameras in their courtrooms.
But with Olisa Metuh, he had inadvertently become a star. Metuh and his people have strived with considerable success to make his (Metuh’s) fraud trial a Metuh vs Abang case.
Credit to Abang, he has managed to carry out his duties with as dignity much as he could muster given the unceasing antics of Metuh. Judge Abang has simply refused to be deceived by the former PDP publicity secretary.
As a columnist, it wasn’t long before I started sniffing Abang’s background. You never know, there could be many articles there.
One angle or perspective was how he has become the most feared judge in Nigeria.
So what do you know? It turns out that Abang’s got a lot of history with the PDP. Some leaders of the party even give him credit for the ‘destruction’ of the party.
Obviously, PDP is still a strong opposition party and Judge Abang never came close to destroying the party. The problem was, Abang handled many of the litigations involving the leadership tussle that rocked the party a couple of years ago.
Naturally, those who didn’t like his decisions tagged him ‘destroyer of the PDP.’ It didn’t take long before some spin masters said Abang was an APC agent actively working to destroy the PDP.
That Abang article as the nemesis of the PDP is still pending. I’m just waiting for something more dramatic to happen with the Metuh trial to pen it down. This has to be timed right.
Sometimes, the timing could be the most important variable for a columnist.
You could be waiting for some information to put the finishing touches on a piece, then something new breaks. The new info would render everything you have already written obsolete. You’d have to ditch the piece or do a whole lot of revision to incorporate the new info.
At the best of times, that is several hours of extra work as you cobble a new piece. At the worst of times, you simply throw your hands in the air in despair and head to a bar to ponder unfairness of life.
The life of a daily columnist is a regular drudge. Because writing is work, you’d find it difficult to help others when the help involves writing. People assume wrongly that it would be a breeze for you. After all, you do it all the time.
What they don’t understand is that columnists cherish those times when their mental faculties are not focused on writing. That is when they get to rest and recharge for the next column.
The dreaded writers’ burnout is a real thing for columnists. One day, you’d just discover you can’t put a single word down. Your head and your body would be working in sync telling you not to write.
No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to shut down that convincing voice imploring you to just lie down, close your eyes and forget about writing.
Forget about work.
A columnist never ever wishes for that nightmare.