Where lays the fate of a man when presumed guilty?

A popular dictum among the writing community says: ‘You cannot write what you do not know.’ This is a truism which cannot be faulted because every piece of creative writing, no matter its claim to fantasy and the boundless world of the imagination, is based on the experience of the writer, his or her observations […]

A popular dictum among the writing community says: ‘You cannot write what you do not know.’ This is a truism which cannot be faulted because every piece of creative writing, no matter its claim to fantasy and the boundless world of the imagination, is based on the experience of the writer, his or her observations or what has been read up by way of research. It is therefore an expected reaction from anyone seeing the title of this subject of review and who also has the foreknowledge that the author is a lawyer to conclude that Anegbe Anthony Asemokhai is on a familiar turf.
Indeed, the content of this 85 pages of free-flowing narrative of the vicissitudes of lives lived precariously in a locale identifiable as Nigeria, is based on the legal doctrine of the presumption of innocence until the contrary is proven by a competent court in any case of accusation. We all know that the reality of the matter is often different regarding this doctrine in Nigeria and in any other place all over the world where the letter of the law has to contend with existing prejudices, perceptions and social stratifications.
The backbone story of this novella entitled ‘Presumed Guilty’ deals with the vagaries of life of the central character, Moses Oshoke, who is caught up in a web of circumstantial happenstance that led to the initial conclusion that he is an accomplice in a charge of murder, robbery and assassination. The character predictably goes through harrowing experiences in the hands of the law prelude to his trial in a competent court of law; which is also on its way to delivering injustice until a late hour confession by the real culprits in the case led to his acquittal. The beauty in this bare narration of the presumption of guilt of Moses Oshoke, is that it afforded the writer the opportunity to tell so many other stories of ‘circumstantial criminals and suspects’ already condemned in the eyes of the upholders of the law and the general society; who eventually wallow in the gallows in their innocence or even perish in the process.
In telling these many stories, the author, through the medium of fiction, is redirecting our minds to societal re-assessment of the way we treat suspects at the point of arrest, arraigning them for trial, and the legal process regarding criminal procedure. The stories also touch on the economic and social imbalance in our society that breeds crime, our desperate political system that fuels same and our horrible prison system that is far from reformatory in content and form.
A novel or a novella is not called one merely because it has cobbled within it a story. The craft in the telling of a story may sometimes be the most defining feature of a novel or novella. For this first time attempt at writing a novella, coming from an author who has earlier on published poems in an anthology, A Melody of Stones, edited by a renowned name in the industry as Femi Osofisan and co-edited another poetry anthology entitled ‘Monuments,’ one can say he has made a fair attempt. However, reading the book leaves one wondering if it would not have succeeded more as a collection of short stories rather than one seamless narrative as it is. This is called to mind because the book contains multiple stories that are seemingly not linked organically to the main story. These other stories would have been better treated independently as separate short stories which can then enjoy the facility of appearing in the same collection. This kind of treatment would have allowed the writer to give each story a unique edge, colouration and more depth and therefore avoid the highly episodic nature of the singular narrative fostered on the reader as it is now. Not adhering to this desired structure that the stories evoke also deprives the author from carrying through the very fresh experimentation with language he embarks on at the beginning of the novella.
   For example, from the very first page of this novella a passage goes thus:
My entire system had been put on red alert, with the brain, as the chief
coordinating officer, issuing out orders to the respective heads of department naturally assigned to oversee the proper functioning of body….‘Sir, we’ve tried all we can, but it’s no use. We have toshut down,’ the head of the emergency response team reported to the brain.
The above passage describes the going out of consciousness of the main character after encountering a situation of mob justice popularly known as jungle justice, which is a disavowal of the capacity of the law to deliver the required justice. In another far flung area of the novella, we encounter this descriptive expression: “the caressing fingers of dawn began to unzip the gown of darkness the night wore on her thin waist.” These imagistic and comical use of language earlier identified are experimentations in the use of language which the author did not sustain enough to give the novella its own linguistic peculiarity. The experimentation in the use of language is uneven and the points of views are mixed throughout the novella which supports the view that each strand of story could have been treated differently and independently for better narrative effect and structure.
Nevertheless, beyond the obvious melodrama and the simplistic lineal narrative structure of this novella, it is a racy read for the average reader in search of the desired creative diversion; especially busy professionals from the constituency of the author, who may not have the time for the convoluted world of very literary pieces.
Talking about creative fiction and the legal profession, I will advise members of the audience who are lawyers and the author to take a journey into the world of John Grisham’s legal thrillers, if they are not already on that, in order to get creatively diverted around a familiar turf. Even those who are not legal persons will definitely enjoy the exposure to the legal intrigues in the world of John Grisham’s novels. Definitely, our courtrooms, temples of justice, chambers, the various ministries of justice and all such other places where the law prevails are not devoid of drama, dark comedy and deadly life defining intrigues. We only need our legal men and women, our self-styled learned friends who happen to be creative writers like Anegbe Anthony Asemokhai, to shift their microscope to legal underbellies and undertones in order to unearth materials for use in our own Nigerian-centred legal thrillers. If Asemokhai takes this advice, which I have given without asking to be paid any consultancy or consultation fees, he may well be on his way to becoming our own John Grisham. I know a couple of lawyers who are also creative writers that are already on that journey. So Anegbe has some catching up to do in that respect.
Denja Abdullahi is National Vice President, Association of Nigerian Authors. He is a poet, playwright and theatre director.