HAJIYA BILKISU ABDULMALIK BASHIR IN THE EYES OF HISTORY: A Review of The Woman I Know (A Biography of Hajiya Bilkisu Abdulmalik Bashir) by Patrick Oguejiofor, I O. Igwenyi and Musa Azare

By Isaac Attah Ogezi William Shakespeare, one of the greatest masters of the theatre, often resorted to the stage to draw striking images to express his deeply-felt philosophies about life. In his great play, As You Like it, he penned the immortal words about the world being 'a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' Continuing with this imagery of the theatre in his timeless tragic play, Macbeth, Shakespeare sees life or man as a player upon the stage. It behoves the historian or biographer, as time's chronicler, to record with fidelity to truth the parts played by these players, their entrances and exits. What role has Hajiya Bilkisu Abdulmalik Bashir as a socio-political being and character on the world's stage played - and is still playing - in the course of her earthly journey through life? Did she deliver her lines with proper elocution and precision or merely strutted and fretted her hour upon the amphitheatre called life? This is what Patrick Oguejiofor et al sought to do in their book, The Woman I Know. The question is to what extent have they succeeded or failed? Subdivided into two parts, the book chronicles the journey of Hajiya Bilkisu Abdulmalik Bashir from birth, childhood, education, career right up to her retirement. Part One dwells on the formative years of her life. Born into the family of Alhaji Abubakar Ajanah and Hajiya Zainab, the eldest daughter of the renowned diplomat and statesman, Mallam Abdulmalik, Hajiya Bilkisu's early years were spent with her maternal grandfather. From Okeneba, a suburb of Okene, the place of her birth, she moved to London with her grandfather who was Nigeria's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom where she began her formal education in 1963 at St. Peter's School, a primary school. This was not to last owing to the sudden transfer of her grandfather to France in 1966 as Nigeria's first Ambassador to that country. Needless to say, little Bilkisu followed her grandfather, which necessitated her changing from St. Peter's School in London to a new school in Paris. Unfortunately, the unexpected death of the patriarch, Mallam Abdulmalik, while on a visit to his hometown of Okene in 1969 brought her stay in France to an abrupt end, leaving her with no option but to continue her education in Nigeria with Adeola Model School, a private boarding school in Offa, Kwara State. She described this period in her life as 'the worst year of my life (1970) and the worst punishment anybody could give me' (p. 31). Happily, her stay at that school was brief, and one year later she completed her primary school education, and was admitted into the Queen Elizabeth School, Ilorin, a school that she recalled with fond reminiscences. Five years after sitting for the West African School Certificate Examinations, she proceeded to the School of Basic Studies (SBS) of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and subsequently got admission to study law at the same university. Upon graduation in 1979 after obtaining a law degree, she was admitted into the Nigerian Law School, Lagos, and was called to the Nigerian Bar a year later. Part One closes with her nearly two decades' engagement with the Kano State government under the Kano State Housing Corporation in the wake of her completion of the one-year obligatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). One significant thing apparent in Hajiya Bilkisu's rollercoaster ride through childhood to adulthood with a gainful employment with the Kano State government is the amazing kind of privileges that she and her close friends enjoyed in a generation that could rightly be called lucky. Though born several decades after the Chinua Achebe generation, Hajiya Bilkisu enjoyed the lofty benefits accruable to what Achebe tagged the 'Lucky Generation' in his book, There was a Country. While awaiting her Bar Final Examination result, Hajiya Bilkisu travelled to London to stay with Aunt Winnie's friend for her holiday, but it was not only her as 'several Bilkisu's friends and former course mates at the Law School were also in London then' (p. 60). It was a generation where 'there were more jobs than job seekers' (p. 78) which explained her hesitancy in accepting any of the two jobs from two different companies before finally opting for a government job with Kano State Housing Corporation. According to Shakespeare in his play, Twelfth Night, 'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ Hajiya Bilkisu's life has however shown that it is not enough to achieve greatness by virtue of one's birth into a noble family nor by mere membership of the 'Lucky Generation' of Nigeria's history who had greatness thrust upon them by reason of their acquisition of the golden fleece of a university degree, dint of hard work and grit must be added to it to achieve greatness. She does not belong to the group of people whose 'palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit', to quote Achebe's great novel, Things Fall Apart, her tireless input was vital for the greatness she achieved in life and career. A biography is essentially the history of a person whose life cannot be chronicled to the exclusion of the historical realities of the subject's era. This book is not an exemption, and from it we could see when, as Achebe would say, the rain began to beat us as a nation. Part Two opens with Hajiya Bilkisu's meteoric rise to national prominence from the relative obscurity of a legal adviser-cum-secretary to Kano State Housing Corporation to head two Federal Executive bodies at the same time, namely, the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) created by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) with the Chief Justice of Nigeria serving as their Chairman. As the pioneer secretary of both bodies, her administrative acumen and leadership style came to the fore. She waded intrepidly through the murky waters of public office politics and intrigues, unscathed. The glowing testimonies of seven out of the eight different Chief Justices of Nigeria (CJNs) that she served under attest to this. There is a unanimity by board members and staff of the two bodies who worked under her as well as reverred justices of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court who had had contact with her in the course of her duties that she is a woman of proven integrity, probity, forthrightness, fairness and firmness, a great achiever adept at conflict management with zero-tolerance to compromise. Her handling of staff matters, welfare and the unavoidable wrangling made her a darling among her subordinates. She was aboveboard in the discharge of her duties especially in the award of contracts based on merit without kickbacks or gratification. Her being a stickler for due process was to be tested when the Federal Judicial Service Commission wanted to acquire a suitable plot of land to build a liaison office and an examination hall in Lagos. One of the sale proposals was from her husband but as the topflight astute administrator which she had demonstrated so far, she turned it down, and 'in its place picked the one which, in her own consideration, was better and cheaper, taking into consideration what the Commission needed' (p. 219). Her benchmark for equality in dealing with everyone without fear or favour was perhaps inspired by Lord Alfred Denning's holding that: 'You must not discriminate against a man because of his colour or of his race or of his nationality, or of “his ethnic or national origins."' (See the UK Court of Appeal case of Mandla (Sewa Singh) v Dowell Lee [1983] QB 1). As a result, she was a detribalised administrator par excellence, who placed premium on efficiency and reliability far above primordial sentiments like geo-political, ethno-religious factors as evident in the appointment of Mr Akinwumi Aina 'to replace the outgoing Head of Administration, Mr Lawal Mani' (p. 231). During her administration, laudable projects such as remodelling the building headquarters of Federal Judicial Service Commission, its liaison office and an examination hall in Lagos in addition to the robust staff welfare and self-improvement packages and the provision of accommodation for staff members of the Commission who eventually became by reason of this foresight and dynamism house owners in Abuja pursuant to the monetisation policy under President Olusegun Obasanjo (p. 221). It was in recognition of this sterling records that she was decorated with numerous awards and honours from reputable organisations and agencies including the National Honours Award of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in 2009 by Nigeria's former President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, and the conferment of the title 'Onyi Oniroye Anebro', meaning, Mother of Wisdom, by her kinsmen, the socio-cultural Ebira group called Dynamic Ebira Friends Club of Nigeria in 2016. One interesting feature of this book on the life of this czar of judicial independence in Nigeria is that lawyers and non-lawyers alike could easily visualise how the National Judicial Council and the Federal Judicial Service Commission operate in action in checkmating executive incursion. It has effortlessly taken these two bodies from mere theoretical federal judicial bodies created by the constitution with a view to safeguarding the independence of the judiciary with working knowledge and practicality. On the home-front, Hajiya Bilkisu was a happily married woman to Engineer Mohammed Bashir Karaye whom their paths had earlier crossed during her days with the Kano State Housing Corporation, with the latter then her boss. Their love may have budded in Kano but before it graduated into marriage years later, both of them had left the Kano State service, she for a higher national call with the federal government. Despite the initial opposition by his people on the basis of stereotyping her Ebira ethnic group, the two love birds weathered this incipient storm and got married, a marriage which was fated not to last, and in 2006, he succumbed to an illness. She was to immortalise him years later through the Engineer Mohammed Bashir Karaye Prize for Hausa Literature in collaboration with the Engineer Mohammed Bashir Karaye Foundation and the Abuja Chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) where prizes were given for excellence in indigenous writing with a view to encouraging writers to preserve their mother tongues. The reader is regaled with how she has been supportive of her late husband's family several years after his demise and the beautiful relationship that still flourishes between her and other wives including her late husband's mother. As an embodiment of love, instances of her extravagant generosity to her subordinates and family members and foster children whom she took under her altruistic wings abound in this work. The reader is pleasantly struck by Hajiya Bilkisu's disarming honesty, and invariably the writers' faithfulness to the available facts before them. For example, when her grandmother Hajiya Amina confronted her as a young schoolgirl whether she had a short temper as people told her, she replied in the affirmative, and recalled further that, 'I told her the truth. There was no point in pretending' (p. 36). The fact that she has 'a short fuse' (p. 206) that could 'easily snap under provocation' (p. 47} is well documented with the extenuating quality that 'her temper hardly lasted' (p. 206). It was with the same humility and sincerity that the teething problems she faced in her job as Federal Judicial Service Commission boss such as 'leakages of official secrets' (p. 129) and the high points were outlined in a rather balanced manner. The advantage of divulging no-holds-barred truth is the verisimilitude it invests the work with. The writers did not paint Hajiya Bilkisu as a faultless angel but a flesh-and-blood being with all the frailties that all mortals are heirs to. The snag however is the unavoidable propensity to sometimes carry this honesty to the level of innocence like the subject's admission of influencing her NYSC posting to Kano State when she recounted, 'I won't lie to you! Yes, we lobbied' (p.62). The implication of such unashamed confessions is that the unwary reader unacquainted with her antecedents may conclude that she is not impervious to the backdoor tactics that most Nigerians cannot be acquitted of. In the business of book publishing, no matter how seminal the contents of a book may lay claim to, the quality of the physical product cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It is the first thing that arrests the eyes of a would-be reader enough to motivate him to want to part with his hard-earned money. In consequence, how a book is produced invariably affects the sales. No doubt, there is a truism in the cliché that first impression matters a lot, and the publishers, foolhardy enough to ignore this, do that at their peril. As regards this work, can one say that the final product satisfies this criterion? A cursory look at the book will answer this question. To begin with, the cover design is eye-catching, adorned with the photograph of a benign-faced Hajiya Bilkisu Abdulmalik Bashir sporting a white dress and a white head-tie both in sync with the array of dark, blue and mahogany colours in the background. Also, the blurbs are succinct, aptly couched without the usual pedantic, too revealing obsequiousness. Printed on high-quality paper, with a gallery of glossy photographs sandwiched between major sections of the book, which are capable of taking those familiar with the subject down the memory lane, the early family tree beginning from the nostalgia-inspiring pictures of a young Bilkisu, her grandparents' especially the fabled patriarch Mallam Abdulmalik, including her parents and their siblings and other members of the extended family, her journey through primary schools as shown on group class photographs, before culminating in the galaxy of stars which form the pantheons in the hallowed hall of the Nigerian judiciary, amongst several others, depict pictorially the history of her life and career. One interesting aspect of the work is that at each stage of the subject's life the reader gets to know the political climate of Nigeria as a backdrop to the narrative. The palpably tense and awkward situation that her grandfather Abdulmalik and the rest of the family found themselves in France when the Civil War broke out in Nigeria with the host nation supporting the breakaway Republic of Biafra was vicariously felt by the reader at pages 24 -25. And while Nigeria was transiting from military dictatorship to civil rule in 1979, she was a Nigerian Law School student in Lagos at pages 53-54. Perhaps the event that was the scariest to her because it affected her personally happened during her one-year mandatory national service in Kano in 1982 when the violent Maitatsine religious uprising broke out. She found herself enmeshed in the unpalatable incident where she was ordered by a police officer at one of the numerous checkpoints scattered all over the city to come down from a taxi she boarded on the most preposterous suspicion of being a member of the sect. This wild and unfounded allegation was enough to make her cry copiously. Her NYSC identity card and the one from the Kano State Ministry of Justice where she was posted as her primary place of assignment had to come to her aid and bailed her out of that embarrassing situation. The novelistic approach adopted in the work, laced with apt description of places and historical locales, garnished with recollected exchanges of the dramatis personae which were rendered in realistic dialogues as well as testimonies of those who had had contact with the subject either officially or unofficially all add to the compelling readability of the work. Written in a simple and lucid language, the largely omniscient narrative style used, interspersed with occasional first person narrator 'we' to reflect the plurality of the authorship, somewhat morphed incongruously into the first person singular 'I' in the last three but one chapter, and carried the same intensity and tone of voice as the one used in the Introduction. This perhaps raises the issue of a misnomer in the title as the story is told by a troika and not a single writer. Despite the frequent complaint of 'space constraints' owing probably to the enormity of what to write about so great a woman, efforts to circumvent this seemed not to be spiritedly made and in consequence the work sags a little with needless overweight. With a Preface presumably by the authors and a Foreword by Honourable Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onoghen, GCON, former Chief Justice of Nigeria and Chairman, Federal Judicial Service Commission at the opening pages, the inclusion of a rather prolix and impassioned Introduction is a superfluity which the biography would have fared beautifully well without. Sometimes the unrelenting harping on the subject's virtues in superlative terms could be jarring on the reader's nerves. The expression of emotion in art that is sensationalised has the same wilting effect as a biography allowed to strain loose from its leash, and drift into near deification. The opposite aim, alas, is achieved as its veracity is tempered. Again, as seemingly exhaustive as the portrayal of the life and career of the subject is in the work, there seems a lacuna that the three-page epilogue at chapter twenty-seven titled, 'Afterwords' dated March 26, 2022 does not mitigate. Apart from the silence on her personal love life on whether she had found a heartthrob since the demise of her beloved husband in 2006, there is an inexplicable hiatus about her life five years after her retirement from public service as though her life came to a standstill upon her drawing curtains on active government service. Without a shadow of doubt, The Woman I Know is a well-researched, riveting read distilled from in-depth, first-hand intimacy which only insiders like the writers who had known the subject over the years could undertake with a resounding success. From the inspiring life and career of Hajiya Bilkisu, young lawyers at the dawn of their career are exposed to the limitless opportunities that the legal profession offers, and the need to take a stand as early as possible as to what area of law practice they are 'cut out for' (p. 78). It was this early vision that guided the career path in the legal profession for Hajiya Bilkisu and ultimately paved the way for her meritorious service and fulfilment in life.

When Dreams are Deferred in Patrick Oguejiofor's Displaced

By Isaac Attah Ogezi In his famous poem, 'Harlem', the renowned American poet, Langston Hughes, poses the question of what happens to a dream deferred. 'Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a a sore—/And then run?' This forms the central theme in Mr Oguejiofor's latest children's novel, Displaced. Set in the fictional town, Sabon Birni, a metaphor for present-day Nigeria, the work explores the effect of wars and terrorism on children and women who are usually the most vulnerable victims. This coming-of-age story follows the trajectories of the major character Naomi's dreams in the midst of unfavourable circumstances. Born into a poor family, ten-year-old Naomi lives with her parents and five other siblings in a house 'made of mud and bricks' (page 6). Not daunted by this humble background, she dreams of attending a Federal Government College instead of the Day College where her older siblings all attend. Her ultimate dream is to become either a pilot or, to use her words, 'an aeroplane mechanic' (page 8). It is not a wishful ambition for Noami as she works assiduously towards the actualisation of her dream through unwavering dedication to her studies at school. She rushes home gleefully in the opening pages of the novel to tell her father that she came first in her class. Unfortunately for her, Sabon Birni is like the Harlem in Langston Hughes' poem, a land where dreams are not allowed to grow to fruition but 'fester like a sore' in their deferment. The tension that grips her world is antithetical to her dreams. A world where the inhabitants daily live 'on borrowed time' with the knowledge that 'it was only a matter of time and Sabon Birni would join the list of communities that had been wiped out by the reign of terrorists' (page 12). Sadly, the free descent of the land into a harrowing killing field could not be arrested by the impotent government which shirks in its constitutional responsibility to protect lives and property of the citizenry. The people are helpless in the face of hoodlums and insurgents who terrorise the land, kidnapping people at 'farms, worship centres, and on the roads while travelling' (page 14), and have had surrounding towns like Hankuri 'reduced to relics' (page 13), oftentimes wiping out more than eighty per cent of the inhabitants, killing livestock and razing down markets, schools, worship centres and residential houses. It is in this climate of fear, where living in Sabon Birni for the residents is akin to living in Harlem with a black skin in the 1950s, that Noami dares to dream. She has reckoned without the philistinic society which she hails from, a society that revels in truncating the dreams of its inhabitants. Little wonder that the long road to this dream is fraught with dangers which nearly cost her her life. During one of the night attacks, she is kidnapped by some armed terrorists, along with other children and women only to be left in the middle of nowhere in the forest when pursued by some brave soldiers who want to rescue them. Instead of pursuing her dream of going to a Federal Government College, Naomi finds herself in an IDP camp in a deplorable condition. Like the biblical character Joseph, Noami learns that in such a society like hers, she has to go through the crucible of being mistreated in the house of her adopted parents, escape by running away from there before officers of the Welfare Department come to her aid and eventually hand her over to the caring arms of Mr Yahaya and his wife who are desirous in ensuring that she fulfils her life's dreams. Written in a lucid language that befits the linguistic level of children in upper primary and post-primary schools interspersed with the occasional unfamiliar words that will send them to the dictionary, Mr Oguejiofor's anti-war novel is a timely work aimed at raising public awareness to the plight of children in a dysfunctional society, as well as the negative lifelong effect of bringing them up in IDP camps as a result of displacement from their parents and homelands. While it is a tale of resilience, the triumph of hope despite obstacles, with the happy ending on all fours with the guiding rules of writing for children, the question is how many Noamis in real life go through such harrowing experiences and emerge, unscathed, to fulfil their dreams? Perhaps no passage in the work brings out so poignantly the theme of the futility of wars like the authorial intrusion at page 14 when he bemoans the defenceless state of Sabon Birni residents and how their neighbouring towns had been horrendously decimated by a senseless war, a war 'they knew nothing about, a war that was thrust on them', a war 'where nothing is sacred, a meaningless war' where 'both the victims and the combatants do not know why they were fighting in the first instance.' The consequence of this war is the total dislocation and disconnect it forces on formerly closely-knit families like the Nuhus which end up being scattered all over different refugee camps without any hope of reunion except by rare happenstance as in Naomi's case when her father is able to reunite with her and other members of his household at the end of the novel. One of the misconceptions about writing for children is that since it thrives on simplicity of language and plot, it is often viewed as a less demanding genre. It is not enough for the language to be simple and the story arresting for easy comprehension by children within the age range in focus, does the work conform to the psychology that they will relate with? With over nineteen novels to his credit, including such classics as Cobwebs in the Sky, The Secret Place and The Haunted House, Mr Oguejiofor's Displaced further solidifies his well-earned place in children's literature in Nigeria and a worthy successor to the undisputed maestro, Cyprian Ekwensi.

WOLE SOYINKA AT 90

This is to celebrate the Iroko in the Forest of Words for clocking 90 on 13th July, 2024. I was privileged to receive a literary prize organised by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) in 2006 to commemorate 20th Anniversary of Wole Soyinka's Nobel Prize at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. The attached picture shows Dr Wale Okediran and Prof Wole Soyinka with yours sincerely in the middle at the dinner during the ANA International Colloquium to mark 20th Anniversary of Soyinka's Nobel Prize.

A DANCE INTHE NIGHT - by Isaac Attah Ogezi

Accused of afflicting her younger brothers with witchcraft, 13-year-old Oyenche is sent to a deliverance home where she finds the place is a torture-chamber. In a bid to escape from the home, Oyenche and the other accused children in the home fall into the hands of Biggy, the kingpin of a dreaded kidnap ring. Will she come out of these travails victorious? These and many more questions are answered in Mr. Ogezi’s new play for children. A Dance in the Night mirrors the contemporary issues of child abuse in society under the guise of witchcraft exorcism and child kidnapping. It seeks to create more public awareness about these vices and bring to the fore the new dimension the oppression of children has assumed in the cruel and bewildered world of adults. Isaac Attah Ogezi is a legal practitioner, poet, playwright, short story writer and literary essayist.  He is published in several national and international anthologies, online journals and dailies.  His plays and short stories have won him numerous literary awards including ANA/Esiaba Irobi Prize for Drama for three record times, AWF/Zulu Sofola Award for Drama 2009, CHD/Ford Foundation Award for Creative Writing 2010, SONTA/Olu Obafemi Prize for Playwriting 2016, amongst others. In 2014, he was nominated for both the Soyinka Prize for African Literature and NLNG Prize for Literature for his Under a Darkling Sky. In the same year, his short story collection¸ The Threshing Floor, was published by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) under its imprint, Nigerian Writers Series (NWS). A fellow of UNPFA/Nollywood Scriptwriting and British Council Radiophonics programmes, he currently practises law in New Karu, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. His published plays include: Waiting for Savon (2009), Casket of Her Dreams (2010),Under a Darkling Sky (2012), Embrace of a Leper (2013) and This Side of the Dead (2018).

B. M. DZUKOGI@60: A CALL FOR PAPERS

Imran Qurashi's Silent Embers: A Review

A must-read book written by writer Imran Qurashi, who is currently pursuing a degree in English at FATA University, studying in the 8th semester. "Silent Embers" describes the psychology of suffering, which the author derived from Victor Frankl’s "Man's Search for Meaning". He adapted Frankl’s psychology of the jail to the psychology of suffering and then developed his own approach. The most beautiful and worthy-to-read aspect of the book is the references provided from various schools of psychology. The story revolves around a young psychology student whose mother committed suicide while he was away. He refuses to accept her suicide as a mere act, terming suicide as psychological murder, and decides to delve into the matter to uncover what drove his mother to such an unthinkable act. He believes that the closest thing to oneself is "self," and one would not harm oneself unless faced with something worse than death in life. Throughout his investigation, he encounters Buddhist philosophy of life, "Dukkha Sukkha," which claims that life is all about suffering and that we must learn to live with it. Additionally, he encounters the psychology behind human suicide, the philosophy of "MAN IS NOTHINGBUTNESS," which posits that man is merely a product of societal, biological, and cultural factors, devoid of personal freedom. Succumbing to this philosophy leads individuals to commit suicide. For example, when his mother was committing suicide, she said, "I am left with only one personal freedom, and no one can take this away from me—the inner freedom of my soul. I will not let anyone take this freedom away from me." These lines indicate that when a person is affected by this "MAN IS NOTHINGBUTNESS" poison, they may resort to suicide. In the story, Iftenan strives to reduce the suicide rate to zero and begins researching ways to help individuals cope with their problems. He meets many patients who have attempted suicide and were undergoing psychotherapy, applying psychodrama to understand their reasons for suicide and whether they would consider suicide again. Through this, he discovers that death is worse than anything else. Quotes from the book include, "once you encounter death, you will never want to see it again. Those who have had a close encounter with death find that death is worse than suffering." The novel is rich with references to concentration camps, emphasizing how even after enduring immense suffering, the prisoners remained alive because they found meaning in their lives. "They had meaning in their lives, which kept them alive," the author emphasizes. He narrates a story from the concentration camps where a prisoner dreamt of being released on a specific date, and upon not being released, he was found dead the next morning, emphasizing that without meaning in life, death prevails. In conclusion, the story emphasizes the importance of finding meaning in life. If there is meaning in life, no one will resort to suicide. As long as we have a reason to live, we will continue living. The moment we lose hope, we lose life. Regardless of our strength, for example, Iftenan's helplessness in the face of his mother's suicide led him to attempt suicide, highlighting that kind words alone remain hollow when the speaker themselves experiences or faces suffering.

KEEP DECEIVING YOURSELVES THAT YOU ARE ONE (A REVIEW OF ISAAC ATTAH OGEZI'S WAITING FOR SAVON)

*BOOK REVIEW* *KEEP DECEIVING YOURSELVES THAT YOU ARE ONE* *Book title:* Waiting for Savon *Author:* Isaac Attah Ogezi *Publisher* Hybun Publications International, Lagos *Year published:* 2009 *Pages:* 74 *Reviewer:* Adjekpagbon Blessed Mudiaga "Waiting for Savon," is a hilarious but very insightful drama book written by lsaac Attah Ogezi, a professional lawyer. It is the fourth book l have reviewed so far, among five books l selected from the shelf of Ebedi International Writers Residency's library, to read and review, while also doing my ongoing creative writing project at the residency's First Edition of 2024. I have one more book left to read and review, to complete the five selected. However, "Waiting for Savon" is a satirical playlet that dwells on the challenges Nigeria has been facing from the beginning of time, even though Nigeria is not mentioned in the text. The play is not structured in the usual traditional way of arranging dialogue and actions with 'Acts' and 'Scenes.' Instead, the dialogue and actions are segmented into prose titles such as; "First Movement: Wilderness," "Second Movement: Interregnum," and "Third Movement: Total Darkness," respectively. Besides, any discerning reader will know that it is Nigeria's issues that the characters are discussing in the plot. Cannibaldom is the name metaphorically used by the dramaturgist to represent Nigeria. The setting is an imaginary throne with a stool and some chairs within a space, where the three major characters; Mbati, Sarki and Ego start discussing about their expectations of an imaginary saviour known as "Savon." They are of the view that the expected saviour will deliver the impoverished folks of Cannibaldom from perpetual suffering. Unfortunately, when the first self - made Savon appears, they are disappointed as he is a military dictator who farts and punishes them for his own farting. His name is General Alraf. He turns out to be a brute, but relinquishes power to a civilian administration, which he dubiously installs, through an election marred by gerrymandering Nonetheless, it should be noted here that, the three central characters are the symbolical representatives of the three major tribes in Nigeria, otherwise called Cannibaldom by the playwright. Ego represent lgbo ethnic group, Sarki represent Hausa/Fulani group, while Mbati represent Yoruba ethnic group. With very technical employment of humour and legal erudition at his disposal, the author dissects the legendary supremacy struggle between the trio tribes that have been responsible for the stagnancy of Cannibaldom for eons. This is clearly showcased when Ego becomes a victim of conspiracy by both Mbati and Sarki who timidly accuses him of farting, when they know full well that General Alraf is the culprit. Ego is also sidelined as a candidate without the right to contest for the throne of Cannibaldom, when General Alraf voluntarily hands over power to a civilian administration. Mbati is trickily elected as the new occupier of the throne during an election clearly marred by rigging and violence. Ego's protests against the injustice being meted on him and his folks from the eastern region of Cannibaldom are swept under the carpet. Thereafter, Mbati starts showing his own devilish style of ruling. He looks down on Ego and Sarki, who are hitherto his balkanized co-sufferers. He claims to be the real expected Savon, but turns out to be worse than General Alraf in farting and looting of public funds. He instructs Zombie, a character that serves any occupier of the throne, to massage his tired legs. Zombie does so obediently as his name implies, to the joy of Mbati. It is noteworthy to state here that Zombie could be a metaphorical representative of any of the security organisations guarding a sitting head of state or a civilian president in Cannibaldom. From the foregoing, it can be said that the play has a linear-plot, which means it has no multiple sub-scenes, because all the actions and dialogue are happening in a particular space (throne) within intervals of time, divided into three topical segments aforesaid. All the issues raised in the drama are still staring at Nigerians faces till date, even worse than before. There is no true saviour of the citizenry in sight. It has been tales of woes by the populace since the country gained independence from her colonial masters in 1960. A clique of hypocritical monsters in human form either in military or civilian administrations have been making the citizenry wake up from one nightmare to another, while the inept politicians keep blaming the military for usurping democratic power. The politicians are horrible than any military regime that had ever ruled Cannibaldom, seems to be one of the messages the playwright showcases in the drama. He also seems to advocate for the disintegration of Cannibaldom where there is no true sense of nationhood, as Ego is denied his right to leadership, which the election of Mbati exemplifies. As the playlet speaks volume about what is still going on in Cannibaldom till date, I therefore highly recommend it for every Nigerian to read. No psycholpgical / mechanical noise or typos are in the contents of the book. The diction is very simple to understand, coupled with a glossary of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba words in it. The author and publisher deserves great commendations for that. However, as a point of correction for better visibility, the fonts used for the book's blurb are rather too tiny. There is the need to increase it to a bigger size as there is still space to accommodate such increase, by closing the too open gaps between the paragraphs, and apply indentation paragraphing style. Isaac, the playwright, is also a literary essayist, poet and short story writer. He is published in Drumvoices Revue, USA (2006), Prosopisia Vol. 1 No 1 India (2008) and international anthologies. He is a fellow of LNPFA, Nollywood Script Writing and British Council Radiophonics Programme. He is a practicing lawyer. ----------------------------------------------------------- *NOTE:* The author can be reached through this number: +2348035933577, while the reviewer can be reached via either WhatsApp: +2348059265333 or direct call: +2348067538922. https://bulkybonnews.blogspot.com