Title: Notice to Quit
Author: Chiemenem Obiezuofu-Ezeigbo
Year: 2018
pages: 220
Reviewer: Simeon Mpamugoh
Chiemenem Obiezuofu-Ezeigbo’s Notice to Quit is set in Ocean city, a fictional, busy metropolis, where nightlife was expected with bathed breath. But the city is confronted with structural challenges.
To Onwuegbu, the protagonist, coming to Ocean city is nightmarish. The Ijekebee boy visits Omoba, his cousin Iheanacho, a trader in the city. As a houseboy in the city before the civil war, he moves to Obongo City where he starts life as a truck pusher who saves money to start his own business.
His cousin is the first set of people to the city after the war. Married to university graduate and blessed with a female child, their marriage is borne out hunger and poverty of the war.
Cramped in “face-me-I-face-you”, building, he is the only tenant in the compound who lives in two rooms with roommates. Ojugo, a local drug vendor, is the main character in the 37-chapter novel.
David and Ojugo scheme for the ladies during moonlight outing, while Onwuegbu indulges in hide and seek game with Chinyere. He moves from Obongo to Ocean where he lives with friends in a room ripped open by bullets and bombs. A night crawler, he sneaks into his room through the window in the afternoon to Adanma, a rice hawker who lives with her Iya’leja mother.
He capitalises on the loneliness of the house for an escapade that lead to her pregnancy. Paul is also living in the house with Ijeoma who lost her husband to the war. She later finds a friend in Ojugo. She saves a little from what she gets from both men to start a petty trade. While her mind ran riots of how to break out of Paul, she is jolted to notice she is pregnant. Whodunit? Ojugo or Paul? Find out for yourself.
The relationship Onwuegbu established with Chinyere glows with fond memories. Six months later, he pays for a room at 20 Araromi Street. The landlord’s lover also lives in the building. One day, the landlord is overheard threatening to quit Onwuegbu for having the temerity to ignore him. In a jiffy, the caretaker brings quit notice one month: “Go and beg him. That is how the man behaves…”
He relocates to the village. Again, another a quit notice resurfaces while he was away for his marriage rites. “So, I have fallen into the hands of wicked caretaker again…,” he bemoans, as he approaches the caretaker to know why he served him a notice to quit. His wife’s arrival was ensnarled by Mama Ifeoma’s traits for gossip, which almost ruined her marriage. Their few days of joy at the village are shattered as they return to their flat in shamble, all the valuables in the house burgled.
From Ojekunle, Onwuegbu moves to Ocean city again. For her, it is a respite from Chief and the young boys at the boy’s quarter. Her prayer is answered when chief says, “You have been one of my best tenants. It is a pity, you are leaving…,” as they bid goodbye to Ojekunle and retire at 4, Kpako Street, Onibido village, where they met a slim, old and an Apostle of liars as landlord. Read the rest of the story by getting a copy of the book.
Notice to Quit is laden with experience and lesson of living in a densely populated city. It exposes antics of caretakers and landlords who try to outwit incautious tenants through quit notices, and the peculiarities of every compound. It is a lesson in resilience, doggedness, and determination in dealing with caretakers’/landlords’ horseplay. The book is recommended to every Nigerian who has something to do with tenancy in the city.