The Write Squad tackles human trafficking with Ezeigbo’s novel

This was the experience students in Abuja were exposed to through the fictional work of one of Nigeria’s leading writers, Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo. Her 2008 novel, Trafficked, was the focus of this month’s “My Book and I”, organized by The Write Squad, an organization determined to encourage students in secondary schools to adopt the reading […]

This was the experience students in Abuja were exposed to through the fictional work of one of Nigeria’s leading writers, Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo. Her 2008 novel, Trafficked, was the focus of this month’s “My Book and I”, organized by The Write Squad, an organization determined to encourage students in secondary schools to adopt the reading culture in this digital age. The focus for this month’s session, the fourth in the series, was Child Rights, Child Abuse, Human Trafficking and Other Related Matters.

Students from five different schools in the FCT – GSS Kubwa, GSS Wuse Zone III, GSS Garki, Model School, Maitama and Nigerian Turkish International College, converged at the Education Resource Centre, Abuja, for the session. But they were not alone as the National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), whose Executive Secretary, Barr. Simon Chuzi Egede was the read ambassador. He was represented by Mrs. O. A. Aiyegbusi, the Agency’s director of public awareness.

The Novel

The saying goes that literature is everything and everything is literature. That was probably what Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo set out to demonstrate with her 311 page novel which dealt extensively with the issues of traffic in persons. It is principally the story of Nneoma, an intelligent teenager who was tricked into going abroad with the promise of a decent job. Spurred by the increasingly tightening grip of poverty on her family and a rather cheeky quarrel with her fiancé, she decides to abandon her family and her lover and flee in search of the famed greener pasture. She found herself forced to serve the sex market in Europe and after eight years of abuse, she was deported back to Nigeria in shame and without a kobo.

Well written and detailed, the story makes an interesting read, except in long stretches where it risked sounding too much like a social manual on traffic in persons rather than a work of art.

The author also used adages, clichés and proverbs rather too liberally such that sections of the novel are saturated with them.  And there is this demoralising feeling one gets from the novel as a catalogue of woes as nothing good seems to happen; religious riots in the north, plane crashes, Christian/pagans clashes in the east, rape, slavery, family disputes, the wretchedness of unpaid pensioners, abject poverty – all without even a comic relief to soften the blows of our reality which she captures in her novel.

But she obviously set out to create awareness with her novel, something the Write Squad also sees and capitalised on.

In the absence of the author, who happens to be a lecturer at the University of Lagos, Izuchukwu Okeke, deputy editor of She-World Magazine read a segment of the book.

Students’ reaction

Students from each of the schools took time to give their impression of the book, choosing different aspects of the novel that appealed to them. Akhigbe Olohide Ruth of GSS Garki was intrigued by the aspects of stigmatization which the heroine, Nneoma, suffered after her deportation. Her Nigerian employer sacked her when he discovered she was a deportee. Ruth also called on government to help curb some of the social ills that push young women to submit themselves to exploitations in search of the proverbial greener pasture.

For Seun Ojo-Osagie of Nigerian-Turkish International School, he was struck by the aspect of strikes and civil strifes which the author highlighted in the novel, sighting happenings in the novel where such problems affected the lives of the characters, which is what is happening in the society, he said.

‘Combined DishonourS’

For NAPTIP, the problems of human trafficking and drug trafficking is a “combined dishonour” to the country. This was according to its representative at the occasion, Mrs. O.A Aiyegbusi. The agency called on the students to be wary of being enticed with opportunities to study or work abroad and called on them to intimate it on activities of suspected traffickers.

The session came to a close with students of the various schools taking turns to read sections of the book. At the end, it was obvious that the author has managed to create the awareness among this group of students that traffic in persons is a real and present danger in the society.

The founder and coordinator of the Write Squad, Mr. Jerry Adesowo expressed delight at the turn out and said the session will continue in August as schools will be closed in July.