Title: Leaving Nigeria (a novel)
Author: Ikechukwu Orakwe
Publishers: Clacom, Lagos
Reviewer: Edozie Udeze
LEAVING Nigeria is a deliberate story, told to reawaken the populace on the exigencies of the moment. The times we are in are lugubrious, dangerous. All over Africa, nay Nigeria, people, especially the youths, move out of mother Africa in droves. It is all in search of better places to dwell. Africa as a whole is peopled by bad leaders, mostly people who have no conscience, who do not give priority to the concerns of the masses. So the youths droop.
This narrative is created by Ikechukwu Orakwe, a priest of the Catholic Church based on research, interactions with different peoples; varied cultures, creeds, colours, all over the universe. It is deep, well-crafted to show how far individuals can go to travel out of their places of birth due to economic hardship, bleak future, all. Told in different locations and different brands of the English language, it has Ejiro and Efe as the central figures in the story.
The story takes off from Warri, otherwise known as Waffi in Delta State, Nigeria. The story embodies all the nooks and hooks of squalor in a typical Nigerian ghetto setting. From there it moves to Ajegunle, Lagos. If you really want to see the real Nigeria, the real opposite or apposite of life, go to these ghettos to see how poverty breeds doom and agony. The author enters inside the foyers of these settlements; he unearths how the terrible situations help to breed crime, dejection, frustration, poverty. Indeed the book is a complete assemblage of the core reasons poverty and crimes are intertwine; interwoven.
Where there is poverty, there is bound to be crime; the bigger the level of deprivation, the higher the tendency to resort to different uncouth means to survive. All these often come to the fore due to inept leadership, insensitive ruling class who are misled in words and deeds. And who also feel that no one can bring them to account. But Ejiro and Efe, two siblings dare the odds, indulging in all sorts to overcome. With the level of squalor in Warri, to the depth of cheating in Lagos, they move out of Nigeria. It is an inglorious moment for these two, borne and bound together by the same zeal to overcome, to conquer.
But how does the story go? From Nigeria to the Caribbean Island, with an ample anchor in Jamaica, Orakwe draws attention to the Rastafarian cult; its beliefs, norms, reasons for its festering in the whole of the New World, with Jamaica as its foremost base. The author took his time to tell the story of the pros and cons of the Rastafarian beliefs, what constitutes its genesis. For people who wish to know the origin of the Creole pidgin spoken mainly in Liberia by the returnees, the story is an eye-opener, detailing why Jamaicans respect weeds or Igbo in local Nigerian slang.
Yet, this does not stop the story from progressing to other parts of the world. With its values in terms of history and knowledge base, Orakwe brings his travel experiences to explore Leaving Nigeria. Even as the book has a lot to offer, on a daily basis, more Nigerians leave its shores. It is a pity that some even die on the seas, in the deserts in the process of escape. All these do not bother the leadership or those entrusted with the commonwealth.
In all these, the stages of sufferings by the two siblings serve as a lesson to others. You can glimpse a bit of the realities, of idiocy and the stupidity of daring sometimes. The lessons are in legion. Nigeria has plenty of money, has different sources of generating revenues, yet its population is among the poorest in the world.
The author gives statistics of the oil revenue in due time and season. The lesson in it is to let the world see how buoyant the country is, still it breeds poverty on a daily routine. This to the author, is incongruous, quite annoying and most deplorable and condemnable. “Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of oil”, the author states on page 235. “Nigeria has generated upwards of $400 billion in oil revenues since its independence in 1960. Historically marginalized ethnic communities in the Delta, primarily the Ijaw people are largely left out of this wealth”. This is a reminder about how the wealth of the nation has been garnered and wasted over the years.
This level of squandering of riches keeps pissing people off. The youths who are more affected and who feel more about the future are now on the verge, resorting to all means to survive. Yes, Efe weeps. He laments when he is told of the injustice that condemned and executed one of the Niger Delta’s most prominent activist, Ken Saro Wiwa by the military regime (page 236). Of course, Efe was in Haiti in 1995 when this sordid action happened, carried out by the forces to dampen the enthusiasm of the Niger Deltans to wrestle for what is theirs by right.