Sylva Nze Ifedigbo - Death on Gimbiya Street

The deaths – murders – of the Apo Six in Nigeria has become something of a touchstone for politically-minded Nigerians in the just over half a decade since five men and a woman were brutally murdered by police, and their deaths framed as accidents. Nigerian newspaper, the Daily Independent, had this to say:

It was about the worst episode of needless and criminal bloodletting in the country. So bestial was the act that a country with a soul long deadened by all manner of atrocities, was for once scandalized. Nigerians that are never shocked by any crime no matter how atrocious, hideous and awful were roused from their lethargic slumber because of the bestiality of the police officers.

The murders have been attributed to racial tensions, and to the corrupt and arrogant actions of a police force who perceive themselves as above the law. The government has apologised, and some small amount of money has been paid to the victim's families.

The true understanding of the feeling that Nigerians have for the Apo Six murders could, perhaps, be discovered the literature, through the culture of the day. Sylva Nze Ifedigbo, a young Nigerian writer, has taken the Apo Six murders as his starting point, using this focus as method of examining both the tragedy of that night, and the ongoing catastrophe of Nigeria. His short story, Death on Gimbiya Street, was published in the December 2009 online edition of Saraba, an Africa-focused journal which seeks to “create unending voices”.

Death on Gimbiya Street is told from the perspective of Augustina Arebu, the woman who was murdered, and is set around the time of the fourth anniversary of the killings. Augustina is in a kind of Heaven, though it is not immediately recognisable as such. She tells us that,

In this place death days are special days. We throw a party and dance.

There are, quite naturally, a lot of parties in a place like this. All the dead are here, the murdered and those who were fortunate enough to experience a gentle passing. Some people have parties where just they are invited, such as a suicide victim, or an old man who dies while sleeping. The Apo Six, of course, have six people at their party, but there are other and larger groups.

There were also those that came together in one night of madness. We had a lot of them. There were Tutsi’s from Rwanda. Jews from Hitler’s gas chamber. Japanese from Hiroshima. Lovers from the Titanic. Technocrats from the World Trade Center. Croats and Bosnian muslims. The Katrina group from New Orleans. Child soldiers from Darfur. American soldiers from Vietnam and a host of others. On their days, they gather in the Big Dome and celebrated together. It was the celebration of freedom. The celebration of life.

'The Master' allows the dead to watch anything at all they like of the present and the past, and one of the past-times they favour is to observe their families and friends. There is no sadness in this place, only happiness, and laughter – always laughter.

Arebu relates the time of her death. It is an experience that, now, she can look on fondly, in a way – for it is hers, even if it is bad – but she can still recognise the injustice of it. Sylva Nze Ifedigbo allows the rancour of the killings to come through, but it is his, the narrator's, anger, and not Arebu. She is portrayed as beyond that, and at times the neutrality of tone in the way she describes her own murder is quite chilling. Consider this passage:

They buried us. DCP Ahmed was that mad. After the first volley of lead, Nonso, Kene, Nicholas and Damien boarded their flights for here. But the flights didn't take off until me and Emeka boarded some three hours later. Emeka had some injury but I was not scratched. They took us all – me, Emeka and the corpses to the Garki police station. There seemed to be a little disagreement among them. Perhaps it was a confusion of what next to do. They finally reached an agreement. They took me and Emeka to a nearby bush. They didn't want to waste their lead on me. They strangled me.

The tone is matter-of-fact, and, were it not for the first-person singular, one could be forgiven for thinking that the murder being described is a faraway one, and not related. And consider now, of course, what would have actually entailed during such an event. Ifedigbo distances the bloody and emotional impact of the murders and instead examines the corruption within the police force that is so endemic that, years later, all the families can legitimately hope for is that someone – a friend, a relative, a lover – will take matters into their own hand and force justice on their own terms.

Ifedigbo's writing is bleak and spare, and unfortunately the quality of his prose does not always rise to meet the weight of his themes. His writing works best when he relates the otherworldly aspects of his strange Heaven, and when he describes Arebu's murder in those plain, clear sentences. Death on Gimbiya Street, however, rises to a damning crescendo that misses its mark, though his heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, the build-up of Arebu's character and her murder isn't quite enough to deserve the sweeping criticism of Nigeria and its government with which Sylva Nze Ifedigbo concludes his piece.

Even considering the flaws, Death on Gimbiya Street is an effective story, and provides an excellent entry point into the complex situation of contemporary Nigerian politics and society. Arebu notes, calmly, that, though the government might try to sweep them under the rug, they are “now a part of history”, and history isn't so easily forgotten. Not by the Nigerian people, and not, it seems, by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo.

Death on Gimbiya Street by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo is a short story published in Saraba Magazine, an online magazine whose "goal is to create unending voices by encouraging young, previously unheard writers to publish their works, assist emerging writers in establishing their voices by creating a platform for their writing to be showcased."

See Also

Other works by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo under review:
---The Hundredth Friend
---The Lunch on Good Friday
---Ninety Minutes

Links

Nzesylva's Weblog - Author website