Unmasking Victor Ukaogo’s novel
*Strong in Madness : A Gripping Tale of Woes, Wits and Wisdom
By Amos Odhe
“The creator gave us two eyes for a reason” – Victor M. Ukaogo
Introduction : “Where the rain began to beat us…” – Chinua Achebe
It was in Chinua Ache beds masterpiece, Morning Yet on Creation Day,that he identified the need for Nigerians to jettison untoward nepotic tendencies and embrace patriotism by first unmasking the plaguing issues and taking appropriate steps to make amends. A similar call the late literary sage also made in his book, The Trouble with Nigeria . If Achebe ever had a staunch youthful protege, in the likes of Chinmamanda Ngozi Adichie, who has taken after him in craft and literary creativity, Victor Ukaogo, is one promising lad whose creative guts lay bare his impetus at tapping into literature as a means of escapism from the myriad plagues of disillusionment in a country bedeviled by multi-ethnic subterfuge.
Ukaogo is in line with Achebe’s thoughts and as reiterated in the words of the educationist, Professor Babs Fafunwa,”A people with no knowledge of their past, would suffer from a collective amnesia, groping blindly into the future with no guide post of precedence to shape their course”,
Ukaogo’s novel, Strong in Madness,(SIM), embodies the new phase of hope for a nation in a democratic transition undulating under the powerful influence of the military and politicians riddled with unsteady steps of leadership over its citizens. It is a story of woes and the wars citizens fight within their every day enclaves. Spewed in daily vetuperations among families struggling to make ends meet as the surging woes of political and economic crunch bite harder and deeper into their pockets against all odds. Ukaogo tells us a riveting take of intrigues spiced with an uncommon knack for details. SIM is a gripping narrative of the every day wranglings families go through in a nation filled with a cloud of madness in every facet of its existence.
Not minding the depth of the cankerworm, Ukaogo’s style of writing is warm and inviting as he leads his readers into the minds of his characters – their fears and hopes. He constantly keeps hope alive in the discourse not minding the fairy tale reality. His effervescent taste is glaring whenever the characters begin a dialogue on the problems of a country in disarray. The didactic twist is unmistakeably told with such candescence that the reader gets carried away and eventually ends with loud sigh of relief.
SIM shakes the foundation of a country, grates it by separating the chaff from the wheat with a view to isolating those nuances that separate us rather than cement us with bonds of fondness for our common good. It is a narrative that sets the tone for a bright – and not bleak – future – for a people brought together by fate and not by faith. The author’s faith of unity leaves much to be desired. It is the singlular candle light, whose flame clears the lead way for a path of patriotism and freedom.
A Synopsis of SIM
Strong in Madness
is a fictional story set in Nigeria, in the early 1990s. A country that has been torn apart by a dictatorship, tribalism, nepotism and also beset by economic despair.
The central character whose eyes the story is narrated, is Chinedu, a young boy in his teens. Chinedu is a victim of escapism and also a cynic who questions everything he is told. He however hides his questions from a society that has told him what should be and what should not be.
An orphan, at the young age of seven, life compels him to wear a mask of courage and bravery. Life, however changes for him, his younger brother and somehow austere but loving mother when they start living with his uncle, Emeka, in Lagos.
SIM , as reflected in the books blurb, “is a story of despair, a story of love, life and longing…. Fast-paced thrilling plot with twists and turns that keep the reader glued to the pages. It’s a page turner. A master piece from the bowels of a writer who knows how to spin his yarn to the delight of his audiences.”
Characterisation and Diction in SIM
The novel is emboldened with simple flat characters embodied with complexities beyond their comprehension. Life’s toll of plagues and problems battling them on daily basis. Yet the people must struggle to survive.
The characters are symbolic. They represent the archetypal multi ethnic divisions in Nigeria. Situated across the nation with Lagos being the conglomerate of the microcosmic characters. Ukaogo develops his characters along that straight line of ethnic divide where ethnicity is played down at the expense of a nation whose diversity is more of a blessing than of doom.
When the characters interact, Ukaogo, uses such instances to buttress the power of dialogue as a means of assuaging the nation’s woes. Though from diverse ethnic background, the characters can relate and converse in ways that are suggestive of charting a common front in spite of their ethnic and ideological differences and affiliations.
Characters like Chinedu Chojioke, Dee Chima, Obinna, are suggestive of symbolic representations from Nigeria’s South East region, Amina Usman, Hassan, Musa (Northern region) and Kehinde Folarin, Taiwo ( South West, Nigeria). Fielding these symbolic characters is a way portraying Nigeria’s multi-ethnic nationalities and their dialogues are calls to jaw-jaw on mutual fronts and not war-war.
One remarkable feature of the novel, is not just Ukaogo’s simplicity of plot, but its ability to engage readers through the discourse of the characters. They speak in real life dialogues representative of their class status. Pidgin is dominantly used when there is a dialogue exchange among characters. This gives the narrative a realistic setting as the author attempts to bring the characters to life. A feature that comes handy in not just the works of Achebe, but brilliantly exhibited in Onyeka Nwelue’s award winnings prose piece, The Strangers of Braamfountein , where the multi-ethnic nationalities of the characters across national borders, are laid bare in their diction and characterisation. They speak in their local parlance – from patois to pidgin, down to a fusion of African languages as the case may be.
In this regard, the Kirkus Review writes of Nwelue’s fictional work, as simulated in Ukaogo’s SIM , ” The dialogue, which consists primarily of pidgin English, may confuse readers unfamiliar with the dialect, but the well-established characters all have clear motivations in an easy-to-follow plot.”
Numerous instances abound in Ukaogo’s SIM that it might be so superfluous to quote some here. Hardly a page is flipped through without some dose of the repleted use of vernacular, pidgin English and some times too, intermittently spiced with code mixing and switching of Igbo and English.
This brilliant experimentation of words, language and conversations, gives Ukaogo as one with a strong taste for fictional realism. The characters come alive and speak in every day language as the average Nigerian does. One thing that cannot be taken away from the author is his firm grasp of this narrative style that gives depth and realism to the fictional work. His dexterity with words at his age is of utmost interest.
Achebe wrote his classic – Things Fall Apart while he was in his 20s, andan undergraduate student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. It became an instant success considering the age of the young author at a time when African literature was at its teething stage in the 1950s. In similar vein, this young author, Victor Munachisom Ukaogo, is blazing that same trail of his progenitor and literary mentor – Chinua Achebe. Ukaogo is only twenty one years old and a final year student at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, in Abia State, South -East, Nigeria. Being a able to script a very strong narrative that has the potential of cementing the faulty foundations of the Nigerian nation is worth commending.
Like Achebe’s classics, Ukaogo’s SIM is hinged on conflicts and crises arising from the multi faceted interests of its characters and their surrounding debacles. Whether such are warranted or can be resolved amicably is for the reader to answer. The story has been told and narrated in a manner that is compelling. It is a symbolic tale that needs no translation. The entertaining strain of literary works makes this one a reader’s companion any day. Filled with the dramatic intrigues of its characters, SIM as a work of fiction represents that old time tales by moon light story we all know but are never too bored to recount again and again whenever such tales are being recited.
*Thematic Preoccupation of SIM
The novel is wrapped in several themes ranging from rape, corruption, nepotism, bigotry, insecurity, unpatriotism, love, to lust; as well as virtues of honesty, integrity, patriotism are idolised. Embracing the positives and jettisoning the divisive sentiments gives the readers the lee way to make choices best for their own intuitions. SIM once again, opens up the need for a national discourse on patriotism or a call for divisive shambles? Which ever it is, the reader holds the aces. In its tone and its thematic preoccupation, Strong in Madness, is a fictional work that paves the way for healing a people under the spell of Damacles. It is a soothing balm for the ache of a nation under the precipice. Highly recommend to all families and households. In it lies the panecea for social decadence that has permeated all vestiges of a green nation in distress.
