I just want to know what the good people in the House think of this piece of writing. Is it good, promising, bad, etc?


PROLOGUE: (Jos, Nigeria. January 2002).

The taxi, a dusty, blue Volkswagen Golf slowed down to a stop in front of the house and the occupants started coming out. The ride from the airport, though short, had been completely enjoyable. If nothing, it had helped to ease the tension that had engulfed every member of the family in the morning as they prepared to come back to Jos from the village. The tension had followed them slowly but surely even as they entered the airport and the plane. When the plane landed, the uneasiness was still with them. It can be felt from their reticence, their pallid faces and their forlorn mien.
However, the short ride in the taxi did a lot to soften the tension within them. The fact that the taxi was driven by a Hausa, a member of the ethnic group that has caused them much pain initially got them upset. But when, in the middle of the ride, the driver ignited a lively conversation, they reluctantly went along with him. Three minutes into the conversation, they all had a change of heart and even toyed with the idea of inviting the driver to lunch or dinner sometime! The mood in the car changed for good.
From the conversation, they learnt the driver’s story. Although his name was Hausa, he was Igbo like the rest of them. His mother was from the north while his father was from the east. He also has an Igbo name, Ikenna, which he kept in abeyance for – according to him – ‘security reasons’. His father was a wealthy Igbo trader who lived in Jos from the seventies. He brought palm oil from the east to sell in the north and equally went home to the east with groundnut, yam, beans or any crop that was in its season in the north to sell.
His mother was the daughter of one of his father’s customers who usually bought his palm oil and sold him groundnut. They met, talked, and everything else fell into place.
“When I came,” the driver continued, “there was a kind of mini ethnic clash between my parents as to what to name me.” He laughed. “My father wanted an Igbo name while the wife wanted a Hausa name. It was finally agreed that I bear the two. Even at that the ‘war’ lingered: Mother would always call me Idris while Father would go for Ikenna. Finally, Father gave up and started calling me Idris in order to ‘respect the soil’ since we were living in the north.”
“Didn’t you ever travel to the east?” asked Obinna, the eldest child.
“Of course, we did. Once in the east it’s Ikenna all the way, no one remembers Idris. I guess the folks in the east didn’t even know of that name.”
There was a brief intrusion by silence.
“Do you speak Igbo?” asked Obinna’s mother, Ifeoma.
“Christ! What do you guys take me for? I am a full-blown Igbo man; forget my mode of dressing and my name. I am a complete Nwa-Afo. Son of the soil; very grounded in our proverbs and traditions.”
“When last did you visit the east?” Amaka, the only daughter among the four children of the Ojis, asked.
“Well, about four or five years now,” the driver answered slowly.
“And you say you are a “complete Nwa-Afo”?” Chinedu, the second son and the third child who was twenty-three, asked.
“Traveling to the east regularly does not make me true son of the soil, does it?”
Chinedu, ever funny, ever debate-ready, fired back. “What does? Dressing like a Hausa or having Idris as a name in a foreign land? You should dress and behave more ‘Igbotic’ when in a foreign land to show that you are proud of where you are coming from. Or, better still; dress in suits and ties to show neutrality. Don’t just try reading the gospel of Luke from the Holy Koran, it’s never done!”
“Do you know,” said Uzoma, the twenty year old last child of the family who has not spoken a word since the conversation started, “that racism lives in every man. We may pretend and preach all we want about anti-racism but, in the end, we are all eligible to grace the hangman’s noose for being racist.”
“God bless you,” said the driver.
“And what are you implying?” asked Chinedu.
“That you are racist,” Obinna said. “Or aren’t you?”
“Well, he didn’t particularize. All of us are.” He turned to Uzoma. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Martin Luther.” He spat out the ‘Martin Luther’.
“That would be enough for now,” their mother intervened, knowing the debate was bound to go on and on. “Ikenna,” she was addressing the driver, “how often does your father travel to the east.”
“Very often. Christmas, New Year, Easter, New Yam Festival, etc.”
“That’s commendable,” Amaka said.
“Very commendable,” Obinna added.
“And didn’t he take you along with him?” their mother continued.
The driver was silent for a while. Finally, he answered: “He used to.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, like they say in the old traditional way, he had joined his ancestors.”
“Pity.”
“Sorry about that,” Obinna said.
“What killed him?” Uzoma asked.
“Death!” Chinedu snapped.
“He didn’t ask you,” Amaka said, “or were you privy to the man’s death?”
“Enough!” Obinna said as Chinedu made to open his mouth. They all knew his next comment would all but bring peace. Chinedu smiled and shook his head like a dethroned but proud king.
“My father died about eight years ago, during the 1994 ethnic clash that started when the governor appointed an administrator for Jos-North Local Government Area. He did not go to the market that day but said he was going to see if he could get money from his debtors. He left around ten in the morning. When he was yet to return by three in the afternoon, my mother got a bit worried. We would have gone in search of him had we known which part of the town he went to. So, since we don’t know where to start looking for him, we patiently waited for his return.
“By nightfall, he was yet to return. My mother and I ran to her father’s place in tears and told him what was happening. It was late then and nothing useful could be done. We were about to go when my mother’s elder brother, an onion dealer, came back from the day’s work with the story of the clash. It was happening in another part of the town. Since my mother’s father knew a lot about my father’s business, we asked him if any of my father’s customers or associates could probably be living in that part of the town. His answer was a sullen “yes”.
“My mother rolled herself on the ground and cried. His brothers and father and his father’s other wives were all pleading that she take it easy as they were yet to confirm whether my father was alive or not. Despite the pleas, there was palpable fear on the face of everyone.
“The following morning, my uncles set out to search for my father, or his corpse. They did not succeed as soldiers were still everywhere, trying to restore peace to the troubled area. They came back home. The next day they left again. They found his body among others in a crowded government hospital. His body was kept together with dozens of others scattered on the hospital’s passage and the balcony as the mortuary was already filled beyond its capacity. It was with difficulty that they found him among the bodies because he was nearly beaten beyond recognition before he died. He was without an arm.”
He shook his head sadly.
“Well, what else does the living owe the dead but to bury them? So, two weeks later, we buried my father.”
“Your story is indeed sad,” Amaka said. “I’m very sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. I’ve tried to put the part of the story that I can behind me and move on, but it’s not as easy as I thought.”
For a long while nobody spoke a word. The driver concentrated on his driving while the rest of the family shared the same thought within themselves. Their story and that of the taxi driver was very similar, if not the same in all aspect. Ifeoma, their mother, buried her head in her white head tie and sobbed quietly.
The family, the Ojis, were just coming back from their village, Mbaise, in the eastern part of the country, were they had gone to bury their father, Professor Emeka Oji, a lawyer. Professor Oji was among the many victims of the recent ethnic clash in the state. The clash was as a result of the governor’s decision to appoint a Hausa as the state’s coordinator of the National Poverty Reduction Programme, NPRP.
When the decision of the governor was made public, the indigenous tribes protested seriously. The governor, in order to give peace a chance, reversed the decision. Almost a week later, a fight broke out between the indigenous tribes and the Hausas. Hundreds of lives and properties worth millions of naira were destroyed within the three days that the fight lasted. The security agents proved their inefficiency once more. The federal government, as expected, set up a panel of inquiry to investigate the cause of a fight which they already knew, and went to sleep. That has always been their best in cases like this.
Professor Oji obviously underrated the seriousness of the fight, or perhaps his time has come, as he had gone to the affected area to see a client in relation to a case with the federal government. The rest of the family had traveled to the village to bury Professor Oji’s younger brother, a medical doctor, who was shot dead by the police while traveling to the village from Onitsha on a Sunday.
Dr. Akachi, a rights activist like his brother, had run into some mobile policemen beating up a bus driver for failing to part with the usual twenty naira ‘tithe’. He had questioned their right to collect the money and instructed the driver not to pay that he was going to take up the case. An argument ensued. The policemen threatened to shoot him because, in their words, “nobody would question” them. The doctor dared them and they made good their threat.
After killing him they took his body to the police station, called some press men, and announced that the doctor was a “notorious robbery kingpin” shot dead in a shoot out with the police. Unfortunately for the police, one of the journalists at the police station recognized the body and consequently alerted the family. The police, upon learning the family the man came from, sang a new song.
The new song was that the doctor answered to the description of a notorious robbery suspect who drove the same car with the doctor. And that, seeing the car approach their checkpoint, they had motioned for the driver to stop. The driver had slowed down and quickly picked up speed upon getting to their checkpoint, an action which righted their hunch that he was indeed their man. Consequently, they opened fire on the fleeing car, bursted its tyres, shattered the glasses and consequently killed the driver.
This story proved useless as the police had earlier allowed the journalists to take photographs of the doctor and his car, which showed the car was unscathed. When they realized how stupid the story was bound to sound, they rolled out yet another edition of the story from their machines.
The current edition was that he was brought down by a bullet meant for another person, a stray bullet. His death – being a case of accidental discharge – was, therefore, accidental, and that the police were indeed sorry that an important medical doctor of his rank was the victim of this “official slip”. This version of the story sounded somewhat remorseful and showed the police have no intention of clashing with Professor Oji. But the deed has already been done, and Professor Oji was already on his way to the court.
In Nigeria, the police have several terms (euphemisms) for explaining away the ubiquitous cases extra-judicial killings. The position of the victims’ family on the rung of the economic ladder determines, to a large extent, the term applicable to his or her case.
If the victim comes from a family whose name is ‘loud’, “accidental discharge” or “stray bullet” may be summoned. On the other hand, if the victim is from a not-so-popular family, “stray bullets” or even “armed robbers” may be held culpable.
However, if the victim’s family were so unfortunate as to reside on the wrong side of the economic ladder, then, anything from the victim being a member of a “notorious robbery gang” that have been terrorizing the denizens of a certain area, or being the leader of the gang himself, is to be expected. The same hackneyed terms have been in use from the military days till this ‘democratic’ era.
A week before the burial of Dr. Akachi, Professor Oji instructed his family to travel home in order to prepare for the burial, that he would be joining them at the village two days to the burial. He drove them to the airport and they said their goodbyes, a goodbye that turned out to be the very last.
Two days after the family left for the village, a fight broke out among the Hausa and the indigenes over the NPRP appointment. With the speed of a rocket, the fight spread to other parts of the state. People were slaughtered like rams while properties went up in flames. The security agents, being ill-equipped as usual, were generally powerless. Thus, hell was let loose.
Had Professor Oji stayed in his own part of the town, he might still be alive today as the fight never got to his own part of the town. But he didn’t. So, it was because his charred remains were found inside his equally burnt jeep that his family found something worth burying.

I don't think this is bad at all, infact I see some falshes of brilliance.

I like the theme you based the story on, which is a very touchy one. We already know your characters, each has shown a distinct personality.

But I think you packed a lot into this prologue that could go into the main body of the book.

I would flesh out the scene with the driver, make his story more gripping and then push the professors book into chapter one or the backstory to be pieced as the reader goes along.

You write well, and maybe it is your style but critics will say, show don't tell. And use fresh words instead of the usual. For example

"and the occupants started coming out" could be "and the occupants tumbled out" and others like that.


Honestly, you've piqued my interest in the Oji family and I would like to read more.

Myne White:

I don't think this is bad at all, infact I see some falshes of brilliance.

I like the theme you based the story on, which is a very touchy one. We already know your characters, each has shown a distinct personality.

But I think you packed a lot into this prologue that could go into the main body of the book.

I would flesh out the scene with the driver, make his story more gripping and then push the professors book into chapter one or the backstory to be pieced as the reader goes along.

You write well, and maybe it is your style but critics will say, show don't tell. And use fresh words instead of the usual[b]. For example

"and the occupants started coming out" could be "and the occupants tumbled out" and others like that.[/b]


Honestly, you've piqued my interest in the Oji family and I would like to read more.

noted. will insert the corrections!

Nice work, but permit me to be critical.

1. The beginning of your novel was not gripping enough as I had to steel myself to read it to finish. Always invest energy at beginning of your novel as that will make your reader want to read it to finish.
How many times have you picked a novel and dumped it halfway only to pick it up when you are bored and have nothing to fill your past time?

E.g,

Philip dashed out of the the office in quick strides and swung himself into his big white mercedes car revving the engine to life and sped off! A crime was about to be committed and he will be damned if he allowed his past to resurface again after living the last eleven years by a haunted conscience.
Why had he not taken notice of the timing? 11.30pm everyday the calls had always come through on his private mobile and the caller always kept mute whenever he picked.
11.30pm everyday for two weeks!
He was about to make a right turn to Lagunda avenue when he saw the flashing neon lights of the police in his trail flashing him to slow down.

'Not now, philip cursed under his breath as he slowed down and he saw the female police officer coming towards his car window.

'licensce please? she asked looking sternly at him.
'Ma'm, am in a haste and i really have to go, philip replied flashing her his best dazzling smile which had always melted the fragile heart of his female friends.
'do you want to show me your licensce now or will you prefer to do that at the station? the curvaceous officer inquired less aggressive than before as she began peering closely at him.
Then it hit philip immediately.

' Grace Thompson! Government scince Ibadan, right? philip screamed at the officer.
'Philip, em, Philip Odukoya! what a small world, Look at you so grown up now, she responded so elated.

They had ended up having a cup of ice cream and gala while reliving old times that Philip forgot that he was about going to save the world and Grace forgot that she was about apprehending a traffic violator earlier that afternoon.

2. The names where too much at the beginning:
Chinedu, amaka, obinna, ikenna, uzoma, ifeoma, dr. akachi, oji, etc.

U make ur reader keep going back to know who is who and what.

3.Best advice? Always start your story with an action!
Eg Chimamanda's purple Hirsbiscus:

'Papa swung his big leather missal, (cant remember the brothers name again).
That first sentence was strong.

All in all, your novel is good and promising, hoping to see your books at bookstores someday.
Cheers.

This should not be a prologue. It should be in the main book.

A prologue is typically short and very intriguing and should not introduce so many characters.