Title: Living Dreams
AUTHOR: Obu Udeozo
Publisher:Fab Educational Book
YEAR: 2020
Pagination: 326
Year: 2019
REVIEWER: Henry Akubuiro
Obu Udeozo scribbled his first fiction manuscript in Primary 6. Five decades after, he has come out with a full length novel, Living Dreams. Political fiction is becoming scarce in Nigerian literature as they year go, but Udeozo doesn’t want to wish it away, for ours is still a society imperiled by political shenanigans.
Living Dreams, therefore, is an exposé on misrule, ostentatious lifestyle by those in power and social dysfunction. The theme of corruption hovers over this novel as sky over the earth. There is, however, an undertone of revolution –that burning desire to upset the apple cart when the powers that be become incentive to the governed.
Udeozo’s Living Dreams uses the Federal Republic of Bozrah, an African country south of Sahara, as a spitting image of what a failed, decadent country looks like. It is also a metaphor for Africa as a continent with self-inflicted woes, of which urgent change is needed. Given the systematic elimination of dissidence by the power that be on the continent, the Bozrah model in which America intervened to save the impoverished citizens of this African country is a kite being sold to the rest of the world.
Udeozo’s novel is woven with florid style. The writer treasures poetic diction. On some pages, poetic excerpts are used to complement the prose. For him, creative writing isn’t about telling a story but how beautifully it is told. Reading this fiction is also like taking lessons on high art, civilisations and culture, for there are copious references to the aforementioned on the pages.
If you love flowery fiction, you are at home here. For instance, in his initial description of the powerful woman of Bozrah, Her Majesty Mrs Offodile, we see: “Her skin nearly narrates the pulse of blood singing from her vivid flesh, and her athleticism is an abiding dance of double-bassoons and other instruments of the wind…” (p.1). Elsewhere, you read: “You could not miss her hour glass hips that riveted within the truffles of her diaphanous dress like excited cupids from Michelangelo” (p.2).
In this work, saints are few, stifled to nonexistence and mere passive observers in statecraft. It is a universe peopled with the notorious, extremely, greedy men of power, their families and accomplices. While the Asian Tigers and the Western world advance in all facets of life, the African country depicted here is one that has elevated vainglorious pursuits to a fine art. Udeozo invites the reader to weep, nay see where African citizens have faltered in pulling the David string.
The Offodiles are among the leeches of Bozrah feeding off the resources of this African country, a nation blessed with diamonds, crude oil, gold, sapphire, tantalite, ivory, tin, zinc, coal, bauxite, aluminum, topaz, and chrysophashrase. The military calls the shots here, and it is anybody in their good book that they allow manna to fall on their doorsteps. Udeozo depicts the rot in Bozrah: “The worth of paper qualification at Bozrah was next to nothing. After years of penury, bewilderment and despair, the legion of applicants and unemployed youths will gladly undergo any manner of scrutiny at the hands of any prospective buyer or customer for their useless certificates” (p.20).
There are so many larger than life characters in this novel. General Dongonyaro Danlami is the “immortal metaphor of the impunity that rules the planet of Bozrah”, we are told. The ruling elite of Bozrah (called Lions of Bozrah), led by Sheik Abdullahi Tetengi, is a coterie of power drunk men sitting on the funeral of national wealth. There are too many sacred cows. The Mabera Presidential Villa, also known as African Eden, is emblematic of opulence but sheer waste that defines the entire country, having been “engineered to confound mankind”.
The picture of political turmoil is best captured thus: “After independence, the Federal Republic of Bozrah was shaken to its roots by a flood of military coup d’etats from rival factions and ethnic warlords. Within a period of that black nation south of Sahara had endured twelve fractious presidents, heads of state, prime ministers and heads of government in a domino narrative of bloody takeovers, assassinations and crippling fratricide among the nation’s soldiers and military establishments” (p.69).
The notoriety of the Bozrah apparatchiks is showcased in faraway United States of America when they landed Washington DC for the White House Summit. Annoyingly, the shaggy-dog story the Bozrah leadership takes to the US flies against reality, given the ostentatious lifestyle at display in the US trip. As a pious citizen of Bozrah, Leonard Chukwudebelu, counters: “Bozrah has no problem as a nation. The curse of the nation lies in the greed of their armed forces, their Golden Lions.”
Meanwhile, a clandestine training of a select group of Bozrah youths by America to topple the government is in full swing over the gross impunity playing out in Bozrah. Codenamed Africa Regime Transfer Operations, the American operation is meant to be a sweeping intervention against corrupt regimes on the black continent. The intervention does happen, but handled diplomatically with the evacuation of the Golden Lions of Bozrah to the US, and “celebrations soaked the mountains and rivers and marshland of that abused populace”.
Like every work of art, Living Dreams isn’t without blemishes. The loose plot of the novel and the lack of twists and turns tend to affect the curiosity of the reader. There is evidence of slipshod editing, especially the misuse of italics and inelegant mechanics. It is suggested that the rampant otiose expressions in the novel should be done away with in subsequent edition.