A Campaign that Went Awry

A Review of Draw No Blood Draw No Blood is a novel written by Efemena Agadama, a writer and dramatist who has learnt his voice to civil rights issues in Nigeria and Africa. The writer's book gives a critical look at the dynamics of the Niger Delta struggle. Draw No Blood is a book published by Dorrance Publishing, a US based but the story is original-capturing the exact problems that befall the Nigerian society. Efemena Agadama, a social activist and student based in the United Kingdom captures the intrigues, the fortunate and unfortunate players of oil bunkering, militancy and government’s culpability, even in the kidnappings of western officials of oil companies. It also exposes the reasons behind youth restiveness in the Niger Delta and how it has unfortunately turned into a business instead of a campaign for the saving of the indigenous peoples of the Niger Delta. “The world only gives ears to violent agitation where blood spills from a fountain along a narrow course, creating a poll of floating deaths. The world only gives medicine after death – Dafur, Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the holocaust Jews. Have you all forgotten how promising trees were hewn down in their prime? What did the world do to stop it? Nothing!.” This was one of the voices of the many informed militants that Efemena creates. The militants who sought not shed blood became gun totting when their means of livelihood where taken from them. Annoyingly, the elders who should have helped in several dialogues with government had become selfish and insensitive to communal concerns. Oil has changed the rich cultural systems of the people to the values of oil, guns and blood. Efemena, though a young writer allows his characters to spring up from the stories, as the events emerge, the characters are interlinked. Life in the Niger delta has been reduced to war or nonchalance, with one to choose from. Even the captured feels for the people, as the gradually begin to understand their responses to lack of hope. Efemena’s authorial intrusion is strong and overwhelming but he fails in allowing the characters to engage in exhaustive discussions or interactions. The Nigerian Government does not care about the Nigerian people but when it concerns a foreigner and their international image, all hands are in deck. “The deaf do not need to be told the power of a needle. The deaf need not hear the sound of a wave with grinding muscles before running away”. Efemena employs the language of poetry, rich broken English and well-oiled Niger Delta proverbs to convey the intrinsic message of psychological neglect. Efemena has a grasp on the songs of the Izon people which he employs in order to buttress the changes that has affected the Niger Delta. His use of fine and veritable expressions remain valid in understanding the restiveness in the Niger delta before the amnesty programme of the federal government. The book also posits that even the negotiators are culpable in the game of kidnap. These two-faced individuals are both friends of the government and the community. Using the novel, Efemena captures genocidal actions of the government especially of the Obasanjo regime. Obasanjo, ordered the murder of a whole community in the Niger Delta sometime between 1999-2003. Efemena is no doubt a philosopher of Thomas Hardy stock. His authorial intrusions are commentaries on life and existence that cannot be ignored. This technique was beautifully employed to hint the air of fear, disillusionment and uncertainty in the novel. It will take careful reading to understand the mix of intrigues and events that meet at the crossroads of suspense. Unfortunately, the average reader is not a patient one. At the end the youths realize that they are grub left for the destruction of the community. They realize that their war for wealth redistribution is a futile one.

A Respite to Parenting

The Book Wisdom for Parenting by John K Amah provides both psychological and spiritual approaches to solving Child-Parent relationship problems. The 83 paged book, published by MCEON Technology Consult also teaches valid and valuable parenting suitable for the proper upbringing of a child.

In a Nigerian society fast becoming dark in the area of child upbringing, where incidences of Child Abuse amongst other parental inadequacies is becoming rampant, Amah presents ways to teach and encourage a child depending on their ages, He also posits that Children exhibit a high degree of innocence as a result watch the actions of their parents.

So Parents should learn to live by examples, to show love, encourage creativity, shun abusive and sarcastic instructions, exercise patience, teach them the word of God and monitor the attitude and activities of their wards. These are just bits of the wholesome approaches put in the legible and well packaged book. With Copious bible verses and personal examples, Amah, who is an Evangelist for Children, further convinces the reader that a lot of research has been done to achieve the feat of this book.

Wisdom for Parenting also gives insights to how discipline can be effective and notes that unity amongst the mother and father goes a long way in the upbringing of their lads. Although the book is strictly based on Christian religious dictates, Amah, the author also answers questions that are important for the future of the child and parent relations.

From how to teach children to how to correct and discipline, from How guide them spiritually to how to spend quality time with them. From knowing what their future ambitions are to knowing who handles the placenta, who bathes, who nurses, who teaches the child. Amah also highlights the ingredients needed for Setting up and Maintaining Children Departments. Wisdom for Parenting is a timely book serving as a spiritual and moral compass for Parents, Aspiring Parents, Teachers of Children of all ages, Pastors, Churches and Christian based Children NGOs.

பாவ்பாப் Magazine

FOB/Book Choice
BAOBOB: Growing the Branches of African New Writing
By Femi Morgan
BAOBAB, a 94 page South African literary Journal for creative writers and readers published its 5th issue titled Unfinished Letters. Unfinished Letters was published at beginning of the just concluded 2010 FIFA World Cup. Amidst the fact that the journal is aimed at stimulating and promoting the South African creative writing spirit, it tries to give room to creative writers from other African countries. The 20rand BAOBAB journal with its website as www.baobabjournal.co.za is an independent project of the South African Book Development Council. It gets published thrice a year. It is also funded by the South African Government’s Department of Arts and Culture. Its Founding Editor is Andries Walter Oliphant.

With the focus of the cover being an educative and fecund interview with Zaka Mda in Mda’s Black Diamond. Zaka Mda who is a South African author of The Heart of Redness, The Whale Collar, Cion, Ways of Dying and Black Diamond has exhibited a Magical Realist flair. Mda joins with the league of novelists like Sello Duiker, Garcia Maquez, Isabella Allende, Angela Carter, to mention but a few who have used the magical realist style. Mda, who focused on the Post-Aparthied period, is described as interestingly creative by the BAOBAB. BOABAB Editorial describes Mda style ‘as an elegant rendering of history as the reading of the past and the present through the imaginative form’.
Nigeria still plays a major role in the scheme of things in creative writing, the journal therefore introduces a bold interview of Uwem Akpan, a priest and winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa region. His novel, Say You’re One of Them also got shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2OO7. In the interview titled Uwen Akpan and the Promise of Prose, Akpan vents his thoughts and unapologetic assertions on the resilience of the African Child and the problem of colonialist perceptions. Nigeria’s novelist Seffi Atta, Author of the novel, Everything Good Will Come, is also interviewed in SEFFI ATTA & NEWS FROM HER NIGERIAN HOME where she discloses her experiences growing up in Nigeria, the reason behind her leaving the shores of Nigeria and how these incidences have shaped her stories. Atta who is also the Winner of the Noma Award 2009 contributes a short story titled Hailstones from Zamfara on page 52 of the Journal. Noami Nkealah’s poem In whose Eyes also made the journal’s poetry pages.
The interesting read gives the creative reader a ready ocean of information to glide in. The journal’s creative, simple, witty and beautiful language will endear the journal to its readers. With no disgrace, the journal takes a look at the creative genius of literary greats J. M Coetzee, Philip Roth and Anthon Chekov. The Journal also comes as an advisory towards making not only a good work in terms of short stories and poems but also hints on the important steps to publishing in Some Aspects of Publishing in the Uk Today, an interview of Shelia Lamboe, a publishing Expert. Also, Rose Francis gives An African Perspective in another interview, where she discloses that publishing is ultimately about selling books.
A feature of one of South-Africa’s and Africa’s most influential poets is a thing of note in the journal. With a showcase of some of his popular poems, the literary and even those who had passed through the walls of the subject of literature will feel the nostalgia of Dennis Brutus’s poetic sacrifice during the Apartheid Period in DENNIS BRUTUS, STUBBORN To THE END. There are no bounds to what the BAOBAB Journal offers the creative, it can most probably become a religious book but to the less literary it may be nothing but a carp of boring and longish notes pieced with bold, black and white pictures.
Nevertheless, Twitter Tweedle may catch the fancy of both the literary and the less literary, as it talks about how Twitter is giving Facebook a run for its money and how writers are maximizing Social networking sites in writing minimalist stories with a generally less traditional audience. My Passion also talks about the internal conflicts of the Times’s Fred Khumalo, writer, a journalist and Jazz Critic. Khumalo talks about the possibilities of new art form springing up from music and writing. For him, Journalism is an art of not only finding meaning to life but also finding rhythm to sounds.