By Mudasiru Techi Dari 
For Saeed Fadlulahi Froko, storytelling did not begin with a published novel. It began much earlier; in the classrooms of Jejeireyiri Primary School in Wa, in stories told in the local language, in the traditions of his community and in a childhood shaped by Islam, family, culture and the oral traditions of Northern Ghana.
Today, Froko is a lawyer and novelist whose writing draws heavily on society as he sees it: its injustices, politics, treatment of women, discrimination, relationships and the everyday experiences of ordinary people.
Beneath the lawyer’s profession and the published books, however, is a storyteller whose earliest training came not from a writing workshop or university lecture room, but from home, school and community.
A childhood shaped by Wa
“I first realised that I could tell stories when I was in the primary school,” Froko recalls.
At Jejeireyiri Primary School, storytelling was part of the learning experience. Pupils were sometimes required to tell stories in their local language and at other times in English.
Froko remembers those moments with particular fondness.
“At that time, because I was young, I didn’t know I would grow up to become a storyteller on a bigger scale; one who will maybe sit down and then scribble something on paper.”
What mattered then was the excitement of standing before classmates and friends and telling a story. “We used to do it with so much joy,” he says.
That early exposure would eventually become the foundation of a literary journey that has produced three published novels, with a fourth currently in progress.
Froko describes himself as a son of Northern Ghana, born into the Froko family of Wa in the Upper West Region.
His father, Saeed Yahaya, was a carpenter, while his mother, Memuna Issah, was a petty trader. Through his mother, he traces his maternal roots to Limanyiri, where his maternal grandfather, Mallam Issa, was remembered as a wealthy and generous man.
Mallam Issa, Froko says, was deeply interested in the development of not only his own children and grandchildren but also the children of other people.
He was remembered as a pleasant character but also as a disciplinarian who believed strongly in raising children with discipline and responsibility.
Wa provided another important influence. The town, Froko recalls, was predominantly Muslim, although its people maintained strong connections with their culture and traditions.
His childhood was therefore shaped by Islamic principles, cultural practices, language and storytelling.
He remembers being taught stories about saints and holy figures in Islam, experiences that helped sharpen his ability to narrate and communicate.
From Wa to Tamale
Froko also spent part of his life in Tamale, where he encountered another Northern Ghanaian environment.
He describes the people of Tamale as loving, friendly, welcoming and jovial, experiences that further enriched his understanding of the people and cultures of the North.
Across these experiences, one thread remained constant: culture.
Froko believes language, oral tradition and history are inseparable from storytelling. “Language itself is part of culture,” he says. “Having a good grasp of language is one of the ways through which a person can become a good storyteller.”
Froko considers oral traditions and history not merely remnants of the past but living influences that continue to shape people every day. They help individuals understand their communities, polish their language and develop the ability to communicate experiences in ways that others can understand.
For a storyteller, he argues, these are invaluable resources, and his own literary development has benefited greatly from the cultural and historical environment in which he was raised.
The writer emerges
Although the storyteller in Froko appeared early, the writer emerged much later.
The turning point came in 2012, while he was undertaking his national service at Commenda Senior Technical School in the Central Region.
By then, he had already immersed himself in African literature, reading extensively from the African Writers Series and the works of Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Bessie Head, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ama Ata Aidoo, Festus Iyayi and other African literary figures.
The experience gave him the confidence to attempt his own work.
He bought two foolscap notebooks, stitched them together and began writing his first novel, The Agony of Barrenness.
He completed the manuscript in 2012, but completing the handwritten work was only the beginning.
Because the entire manuscript was written in longhand and filled nearly 60 foolscap sheets, he needed someone to type it, a task that proved difficult. Still, he did not abandon the project.
Six years after writing the manuscript, he finally published The Agony of Barrenness in 2018, transforming what began as an experiment in handwritten storytelling into his first published novel.
Where law meets literature
Froko’s literary journey has developed alongside another profession: law.
Law, he explains, was something he had wanted to pursue for years.
Even before university, he had recognised what he considered some of the qualities necessary for a good lawyer: confidence, the ability to speak clearly and the capacity to construct arguments based on facts and evidence.
His experience in debating also played an important role.
At T.I. Ahmadiyya Senior High School, where he studied before proceeding to the University for Development Studies, he participated in debates against schools including Yaa Asantewaa and Prempeh College in the Ashanti Region.
Those experiences helped him develop the confidence to speak, argue and persuade.
After completing university in 2011, Froko remained determined to pursue law, eventually becoming a lawyer.
He now sees an unexpected but productive connection between the courtroom and the novel.
Lawyers read judgments constantly, and those judgments are filled with human stories involving theft, murder, robbery, conflict, relationships and the consequences of people’s choices.
Froko says he sometimes reads these cases almost as a storyteller would, looking beyond the legal principles to the human experiences contained in them.
“Anytime that I read cases, I try to see how I can even make or create stories out of these cases,” he explains.
In that sense, the lawyer feeds the novelist, while the novelist benefits from the lawyer’s close observation of human behaviour, conflict and society.
Writing as a voice for the vulnerable
Froko’s novels are not written simply for entertainment. At the heart of his work is a concern for real social problems.
His debut novel, The Agony of Barrenness, explores the treatment of women who are unable to have children.
He was particularly concerned about the stigma and social cruelty directed at women who experience barrenness, especially when their inability to have children may not be their fault.
Froko believes that the treatment of such women can be deeply unfair and that literature provides an avenue through which society can confront such injustice. His work, therefore, carries a strong interest in women’s empowerment and dignity.
His second novel, Twisted by President, moved into the political arena, examining despotism and the abuse of power.
The book focuses on leaders who claim to serve their people but ultimately oppress them, exploit public resources and leave communities suffering.
Foroko believes writers have a responsibility to speak when society goes wrong.
“One of the ways through which we can speak up is through storytelling,” he says.
Through fiction, he believes writers can expose social and political problems, encourage people to question injustice and remind citizens that they have a role to play in demanding better leadership.
His third novel, A Headier Flower to Sniff, takes another direction, dealing with love while also exploring injustice, discrimination and the feeling of being undeserving of blessings that life or God may have bestowed upon an individual.
The book is particularly close to Foroko’s heart because parts of the story are connected to experiences he himself went through.
He says reading the novel brings both joy and sadness, making it one of the works that carries a particularly personal meaning for him.
Four books and a growing literary journey
Froko’s published works currently include The Agony of Barrenness (2018), Twisted by President (2020) and A Headier Flower to Sniff (2021).
He is now working on his fourth novel, The Government Pranksters, which he hopes to publish before the end of the year.
Although he has already produced several printouts of the manuscript, he says there are still corrections and changes to be made before publication.
The new work continues his interest in society and politics, areas that have become important features of his literary imagination.
Froko’s writing is deliberately rooted in ordinary life. His characters are sometimes drawn from people around him, including people from his own community and region. This is not accidental.
He deliberately uses names associated with his people because he wants those names to become familiar to a wider readership.
“I do this intentionally; one, to popularize the names of my people,” he says. His storylines, too, are informed by what he observes in society.
He takes real experiences, people and situations and transforms them through fiction, with the objective of making his stories believable enough for readers to recognise aspects of their own world in them.
The Northern Ghana literary gap
Foroko believes Northern Ghana still faces a significant representation gap in Ghanaian and African literature.
He is careful not to claim that Northern Ghana has no writers. Rather, his concern is that Northern writers and their works have not achieved the same visibility and prominence as some of the major names whose books generations of Ghanaians grew up reading.
He points to writers such as Ayi Kwei Armah, Ama Ata Aidoo, Festus Iyayi and Asare Konadu as examples of authors whose names became widely recognised.
By comparison, he says, it can be difficult to identify Northern Ghanaian novels that have attained similar national prominence.
“I think one of the ways we can help to make it sufficient is to empower the youth,” he says.
Creating an environment in which young Northerners can write, publish and find audiences, he argues, is essential.
The technological barriers that confronted earlier generations of writers have also diminished. A young person today can access information, acquire a laptop and begin writing far more easily than writers of previous generations. But technology alone is not enough.
The imagination, creativity and discipline required to turn experiences into compelling literature must still be developed, and young people need encouragement to see writing as a legitimate and valuable avenue for expressing their experiences and shaping national conversations.
Writing Northern Ghana into the national story
Froko’s own journey demonstrates the possibilities. His stories emerge from a Northern Ghanaian background but address questions that extend far beyond the region: women’s dignity, political abuse, discrimination, love, injustice, identity and the complexities of everyday life. That is where his work finds a wider significance.
Northern Ghana does not need to be represented only through stories of poverty, development deficits or political marginalisation.
Its people also have complex emotional lives, intellectual traditions, histories, cultures, ambitions and contradictions that deserve space in Ghanaian literature.
Froko’s insistence on using names from his community and drawing from the realities he knows is therefore more than a literary choice. It is also an act of cultural visibility.
His work reminds readers that the North is not simply a setting in Ghana’s national story; it is a source of stories, characters, experiences and ideas capable of enriching Ghanaian and African literature.
A storyteller still learning
Foroko’s journey from a child narrating stories at Jejeideyiri Primary School to a lawyer and novelist with three published books has been gradual.
There was the child who discovered the joy of storytelling, the young man who immersed himself in African literature, the national service teacher who bought two foolscap notebooks and began writing, and the aspiring lawyer who believed his ability to speak and argue could be put to professional use.
Today, these different experiences converge in the work of a novelist who continues to observe society and transform its contradictions into stories.
Froko may have entered the world of literature through handwritten pages, but his ambitions extend far beyond those first notebooks.
He wants to tell stories that are real enough to provoke recognition, courageous enough to confront injustice and rooted enough in culture to ensure that people and names from Northern Ghana occupy their rightful place in the literary imagination. In his hands, storytelling is both art and advocacy. And for a son of Wa who discovered the power of stories in a primary-school classroom, the journey appears far from over.
Ishmael Junourgh