Nigeria, April 4 -- Before The Human Flowwas published, Jonathan, one of Europe's most accomplished foreign affairs columnists and journalists, had talked with excitement about the book. It was his first novel. Like a woman who became pregnant when she thought she was past child-bearing, Jonathan, 82, couldn't wait to make Mary Wesley look like a child prodigy.

Sam Omatseye's book,Beating All the Odds: Diaries and Essays on How Tinubu Became President,on the other hand, is part diary, part essay. The diary would have been difficult to script even if a fiction writer had tried to imagine the outcome of events in the months leading up to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

The thing about diaries is that...