Ifesinachi Okoli-Okpagu – Ugobenna

How does a good man become corrupted? Slowly, one day at a time, and after his hopes have been spoiled by the world around and the world within. It's not always obvious where the exact moment when a man turns from “good” to “bad” occurs but, often, the man himself knows when looking back, ashamed at how he has turned out.

Silvanus is one such man. He is the protagonist of Nigerian writer Ifesinachi Okoli-Okpagu's Ugobenna; he is a hard-working man, proud of his job as a policeman, proud of his son, happy with his wife. He keeps a diary of his workday life with the intention of one day sharing his achievements with Ugobenna, his son, to show him what kind of man has raised him.

But Ugobenna is a product of his country and his time, which is to say that Ugobenna has grown up under the twisted governments of Nigeria, under the corruption, under the poverty and the wealth inequality. He has seen what is available to those who are willing to take, and has decided to become a taker. He is a thief, a brute, a murderer. Silvanus, who began his career as a policeman with shining hopes of cleaning up the trash, has found that his own son has become trash. And, somewhere along the way, so too has Silvanus. We often despise those features in others that we share ourselves; Silvanus hates Ugobenna – Ugobenna hates Silvanus. Father and son are mirrors, dark and twisted, unhappy with how misshapen their reflections have become in the other.

He realised that he was tired of the lethargy in his voice, a flatness that reminded him of his shoes that were scraped raw at the heels and was as good as not wearing any at all; he was tired of the ruefulness in his stories. His [diary entries to his son] were no longer colourful but melancholic, filled with despair and the dreams he had buried.

Okoli-Okpagu's great gift is for dialogue. She writes “regular” English quite well – her characters are believable and their words read as though they could conceivably be spoken by a real person. This is not an easy feat, but in her hands it seems to be. Her use of a kind of Nigerian pidgin (dear reader: if there is a correct term for the below quoted dialect, please tell me!) is fascinating and done very well, as seen below:

”I hear say your wife go hospital to born pikin,” she said. “That her belle be like two blom-blom put together. I swear, na two pikin dey inside that her belle. How she be?”

“Fine, Iya Tunji. I am hurrying there to see her.”

“Okay oh,” she said... “Eh, Oga Silvanus, that your son come here today.”

“Which one?” he snapped.

“Ah-ah, Ugobenna now. How many sons you get before?”

Immediately the difference between the characters is noticeable. Silvanus has airs; he speaks correct English as a way to rise above his station in life. His interlocutor, Iya Tunji, on the other hand, comes across as comfortable in her skin, well-worn by life, polished into who she is the way a stone lying at the bottom of a river-bed has been polished.

That said, there are places where the narrative falls apart. Okoli-Okpagu is very good when she relaxes and allows herself to properly describe a place, feeling or situation. But too often she doesn't let her narrative breathe, leaving us with sloppy descriptors such as dialogue being described with words like “spat”, “hissed and grumbled”, “shouted”. At times, when she uses a single sentence to convey action or a scene shift, the transition or description is clumsy, rushed and awkward. We read sentences like:

Silvanus roared feeling the blood pump into his head

and wince. On the other hand, when she gives herself room, she writes paragraphs such as:

On the centre table a melting candle cast gold sheens on his son’s face, his bright eyes twinkling. Silvanus read the entry to him, and twice he stole furtive glances at his wife who sat in the quiet darkness, a small smile playing on her lips as she looked at him with renewed awe. The twins on her laps gurgled. They were not yet able to understand the words he read aloud in a forced baritone that sounded like the voice of the governor who had just given a speech on the radio amidst sounds of static.

This is much better, it feels fully and more honestly felt. Granted, some tightening would benefit the paragraph (removing the “furtive”, the “his bright eyes twinkling”, etc), but the paragraph has a far more evocative feeling to it. Okoli-Okpagu's writing, at its best, is rich and rewarding.

To return to the plot: as the story progresses Ugobenna's actions spiral the family, and in particular Silvanus, out of control. Silvanus' grasp on the moral life, already shaking, begins to fall away. His reason for living and for being an upstanding man in a corrupt country – his son – have failed him and thus, unfortunately but believable, he decides to fail himself. The last section of the piece, which runs for a good thousand words, is by far the strongest. Okoli-Okpagu really ratches up her writing quality in this piece, pausing sufficiently to explore the moral suffering of her protagonist and the effects his son and his environment is having on his soul. This last section is outstanding, and is well worth fighting through the sometimes sloppy, sagging midsection.

Ifesinachi Okoli-Okpagu is a writer worth keeping an eye on. I encourage you strongly to visit the Sentinel Nigeria website directly to read her story. As noted above there are flaws, but when everything comes together she is a writer who works. Okoli-Okpagu's great strengths are dialogue (though not her descriptors of it), lengthy description, and lengthy introspection. I look forward to what comes next.

Ugobenna by Ifesinachi Okoli-Okpagu is a short story from Sentinel Nigeria - Issue 8.

See Also

Other stories from Sentinel Nigeria - Issue 8 include:
---John, Elnathan - Your Man