By Henry Akubuiro
The Root, Jeremiah Oyebode, SCLK, UK, 2022, pp. 97
Jeremiah Oyebode is a writer who writes creatively, as well as provides articles for print and digital spaces. He is also a public speaker on contemporary issues. In The Roots, a new short story collection, Jeremiah Oyebode is speaking to us through the medium of a book about social issues in a dystopian milieu.
Though the author resides in the UK, the majority of the eight stories in the collection are set in Nigeria, and talks about Nigerian experiences with Nigerian characters. When the setting glissades across the Nigerian borders, the author maintains a fidelity to his sociological homebase in terms of characterisation and narrative focus.
Oyebode, in this collection, is chiefly concerned with the didactic side of fiction. Every story has a lesson to tell, whether it is retributive justice, reward for good, familial dereliction or role models to follow. The author is consciously in sync with apologists of the writer as a teacher.
The titular story entitled, “The Root”, in the The Root, touches at the umbilical cord of home training: how you train your children may be how they relate with each other and what they pass across to others. Any form of imbalance in cohesion within the family tree may lead to devastating consequences. Abomination echoes in this story, and it could have been avoided.
This first story in the collection centres around Chief Adeniji’s family, which disintegrates on his death, leading to incest by his children. Though Adeniji came from a polygamous home, being the 22nd child of his parents, he earned a trade and became a successful businessman and married Aderonke, a marriage that produced three boys and three girls. The children, in turn, grew up to raise their own families.
The trouble here began when Chief Adeniji died and his house, which was a rallying point for his children and grandchildren, so everybody went their ways, some abroad for schooling. In the process, two of his grandchildren (a male, Charles; and female, Jeniffer) who arrived in the US for education bore different surnames and attended the same school. They became friends and then lovers.
On arrival from the US to Nigeria with a baby to consolidate the marriage in Nigeria, their parents were shocked to realise the two love birds were actually cousins. It was considered an abomination in their culture, and they were turned back.
The author captures the disaster thus: “Both parents regretted that a disaster of such magnitude would have been averted if they had followed the legacy laid down by their father to keep their family together. Charles and Jennifer become completely disoriented in a foreign land” (p.15).
One of the most interesting stories in this collection is “A Life Mystery”, told by the protagonist, Clara, a woman “with great dream”, whose husband not only blocked her from traveling to America after winning an American visa lottery but also raped her daughter left under his care.
It is a story that pillories the dominant male narrative about the man being the boss in the house who can do anything he likes and gets away with murder. Oyebode presents us with a mirror to see our foibles in this fascinating short story collection.