REVIEW: Ifeoma Nwoye tackles social-economic ills in 8 novels and short stories

A woman in an unfamiliar turf. This phrase seems to portray May Ifeoma Nwoye. An Accountant, a former Bursar of University of Benin, a professor of Business Administration at the Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) University and teacher of Business Administration, Management and Enterpreneurship. For a woman of this credential to become a prolific writer sounds […]

A woman in an unfamiliar turf. This phrase seems to portray May Ifeoma Nwoye. An Accountant, a former Bursar of University of Benin, a professor of Business Administration at the Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) University and teacher of Business Administration, Management and Enterpreneurship. For a woman of this credential to become a prolific writer sounds odd to those who expect every writer to hold a doctorate degree in literature, creative writing or English Language. Incidentally, Nwoye has written, not just one book, but eight works in prose form.

Equally, a prolific writer and literary critic, Ezekiel Fajenyo, has done an exhaustive study of this professor’s writing and has come up with an addition to his own dozen review of literary works. This latest work is entitledThe Writings of May Ifeoma Nwoye: A Critical Literary Analysis. In this book, Fajenyo successfully provides an  illumination upon the literary activities of this emerging female author in Nigeria’s literary landscape. Known for his passion for critical writings, Fajenyo is the author of over prose, poetry, and many non-fiction writings and has taken on frontline writers like Abubakar Gimba and Rasheed Gbadamosi by doing a critical review of the works.

Fajenyo’s enterprise on Nwoye’s writings  of 589 pages. They include Endless Search, Tides of Life, Blind Expectations, Death by Instalments, A Child of Destiny, Fetters and choices, The Broken Promise, and Oil Cemetery. Though Nwoye is a specialist in financial management, she put on the toga of a developmental activists as the themes of her works vary from gender issues, challenges facing marriages, environmental degradation,  economic mismanagement, diseases, national wealth, injustice, poverty, historical issues and other contemporary challenges facing the Nigerian society. In this way, anyone who picks any of the books would find courageous and engaging stories to read. For instance, Endless  Search dwells on man’s search for “fulfilment, destiny, righteousness, true friendship, psychological peace, marital perfection and love.” (113). The second work, Tides of Life, deals with issues of widowhood, parental obligation to children education, illiteracy, official non-challant attitude in public offices, corruption, greed, violence, immorality and other social issues.

Writing on Nwoye’s third story entitled Blind Expectations, Fajenyo says the work is a focus on political issues, especially that of assassinations that are prevalent  across the country since the beginning of the current democratic dispensation. Political assassinations are the by-products of rivalries that characterise the struggle for political power. What should ordinarily be considered as a game of numbers slip into criminality that destroys the lives of the youths. Fajenyo writes about Blind Expectations thus:

One of the recognisable strategies of these politicians is to arm youths and inspire them with drugs and money while sending them out on murderous missions. In some African countries today, politicians recruit thousands of young men and women who are wildly indoctrinated through cultism and pushed to the field to waste lives and property. They are often called “youth soldiers”… and they kill, maim, rape and set people and property ablaze at will (235).

In this way, Nwoye writes of how youths are manipulated, cheated and pushed into violence, raped, exploited and massacred for a token, like as little as N50,000.00 which may not be paid as expected by victims of political treachery. Fajenyo says Nwoye has used characterization to drive home the theme of greed, lust for money and false expectation of wealth to describe the fraud and frustration in the society.

Another novel by Nwoye, Death by Instalment, dwells on the conflicts in the relationship between civilians and the military, bordering on “corruption, self-enrichment and greed.” (283).  The role played by one of the major characters, Professor Samuelson Nikoro, in his relationship with a military officer exposes the decadence in the academia, as, instead of holding up the torch of ideals before the military officer, the two engage in fraudulent enterprises which dovetail into bloodshed.  In his remark on the relationship between the military and the civilian Fajenyo says:

The powerful did not readily love the needy, but befriended them in order to exploit them for selfish purpose; the weak are manipulated and marginalized at will and were being forced to embrace a system which nosily undermined their intelligence and humanity. The evil leaders and their agents have got themselves immersed in activities that made them “normal pollution” to their society.” (320)

In this work, the principal characters lose their lives or engage in acts that bring them to the abyss of immorality. They languish in pain, frustration, and agony in the world of criminality and wickedness which they created around them. Nwoye, speaking in an interview on Death by Instalments says, “Although everybody criticize the soldiers, the military, during the time when there was scarcity of everything, including money, amenities and what have you, the Professor played into a captain’s hands in the sense that the army was supposed to be junior, while a professor is supposed to be senior to an ordinary soldier. … But because of need and want and scarcity, he had to play into the hands of a captain, going to beg for contracts and the captain just manipulated him.”(25).

In his review of the story entitled Oil Cemetery which won a Chevron award in 2014, Fajenyo explains how the author treated another contemporary issue in the Niger Delta – the exploitation of the oil resources in the region by international oil companies, leaving the people of oil-producing communities in hunger and poverty as the environment is totally devastated.  In the story, oil companies use “criminal negligence, impious suppression of workers’ needs, sponsoring of divide-and-rule method among workers, bribing some greedy traditional leaders and youths,” (416) as strategies to keep their operations alive, but forcing the people to live in odious squalor, nauseating poverty, and poverty” (416).Speaking on how she was inspired to write this story, Nwoye said in an interview that: “I have encountered families in pitiable lamentation of their losses as a result of oil exploration in their communities. But then you can see the truth beyond that, and it can be a frightening and traumatic experience for vulnerable poor to survive ecological problems. These experiences formed the basis of Oil Cemetery.”

In the review, Fajenyo says the author of the eight works employed diverse literary styles that demonstrate her skills as a confident novelist. She explains her writing in an interview which Fajenyo quotes in the book. Nwoye says though she is a trained accountant “I also account for the words I use. As a management scholar, I try to manage my time and my creative imagination”(26). According to Fajenyo, the woman, in her writings, “is accurate, simple, pointed and economical in her narrations, descriptions, allusions, character and scenic presentations and settings”(27).However, the strength of her work is in her courageous examination of the ills in the society, and doing so from all perspectives – the rich, poor, powerful, political and wealthy. In this way, everyone who picks any of the eight works would find stories that would engage him or her.

Fajenyo, on his part, has done a thorough and exhaustive work that opens the window of Nwoye’s works to any would-be reader. In the voluminous book, Fajenyo elaborately treated the themes, narrative and descriptive techniques, characterization, plots, and other stylistic devices in each of the works in such a way that students of literary stylistics would find the book on the writings of Nwoye as reference and background materials in feminism, political corruption, thuggery, drug abuse, and other contemporary social malaise in Nigeria. 

To a great extent, Fajenyo, in carrying out the critical review of  Nwoye’s work was on a familiar terrain as he an award-winning writer as well.  He has written many works, including Night of the Godmother (1990); The Bandaged Candles (1994); The Writings of Abubakar Gimba (1995); Grassroots Educational Mobilization in Nigeria (2003); A Critical Study of Dzukogi’s Writings (2010). Others are Current Trends in Mass Communication (2003); Rasheed Gbadamosi: The Man and His Works (2008); Golden Footprints of the Mandarin (co-authored, 2002); Words on Marble by General Abduylsalami Abubakar (co-authored, 2002); and Abubakar Gimba: Perspectives on His Writings and Philosophy (co-authored 2008). His has contributed to many anthologies of short stories and poetry, and has a couple of works in literary criticism which are yet to be published. Fajenyo is a Fellow of both Global Foundation for Enhancement of Culture and Environment, and Social Engineering Research Initiative (SERI).