Review of The Aireginan Dream by Kunle Ajibade (The News Magazine)

When seers, saints, priests, visionaries and writers set apart a date in their calendars, the dateline is always meant to put a spell on us. Overwhelmed by the intricate web of magical dates, we drape them in clothes of dreams, myths and emotions in order to make them survive. We feed on those dreams to lengthen and strengthen our shadows and realities. In mortal fear of apocalyptic time people have been known to swap their being for nothingness. Many people in this gathering know that the roots of survival of Christianity are very deep in the soil of a terrifying and comforting End-time.

In literature as in history, human beings have demonstrated the extraordinary power of vision. All those who have read George Orwells 1984 would have noticed the near accuracy of its prediction and the searing power of its vision. Orwell predicted in this 1949 book that by 1984 the solid foundation of the essential horrors of totalitarianism would have been well laid. It is a tribute to the intellectual coherence and honesty of 1984 that the world speaks today the language of that book. When you hear Big Brother, Double-Speak and The Thought-Police, the copyright belongs deservedly to George Orwell, who used them to describe the creeping tyranny that would envelope the world in 1984. George Orwell was not a prophet, but who can now deny that he had a talent to see far beyond the ordinary? In the wake of the Al Qaeda ferocious resurgence now known worldwide as religious terrorism, a phenomenon which Samuel P. Huntington has described elegantly but inaccurately as the clash of civilizations, the world is, irretrievably, a victim of irascible Big Brothers and thoughtless Thought-Police.

Wole Soyinka, our respected Nobel Laureate in literature predicts in The Man Died, his prison notes, what the Nigerian society would look like in the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War. I quote from the book: Militarist entrepreneurs and multiple dictatorships: this is bound to be the legacy of a war which is conducted on the present terms. The vacuum in the ethical base&will be filled by a new military ethic---coercion. And the elitist formulation of the army, the entire colonial hangover which is sustained by the lack of National revaluation will itself maintain and promote the class heritage of society. End of quote. Soyinka went on to say that a corrupt and rapacious mafia would take absolute control of this society and the mafia would be difficult to defeat. Soyinka is not the biblical Joseph but I find the accuracy of his vision here as uncannily transparent as the dreams of Joseph. See what Nigeria has become as a result of that senseless war. The sanctity of human life has become a major casualty of that war. We put evil on the throne these days and we genuflect to it as if it is God. What we used to treasure as our core values have been dumped in the dung heap.

If Soyinkas dream is necessarily scary, Martin Luther King, Jr.s I Have a Dream speech which he delivered before the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963 was both startling and liberating, believing as he always did that every unearned suffering is truly redemptive. He dreamt that one day the sons of former slaves and sons of former slave- owners in America would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. We know that, with a lot of struggle, sixty percent of that dream has come to pass.

I started this brief remark talking about the power of dateline nurtured by a strongly desired purpose because the year 2013 is very central to Dupe Olorunjos The Aireginan Dream. That is the year of political fulfillment in this book, the year of a political triumph in an imaginary homeland called Airegin, which when spelt from the rear is Nigeria. The Aireginan dream, then, is the Nigerian dream. What is this dream about? It is about a country in which those who live in it will be treated with civility. It is about a country that will stop making itself a laughing stock in the comity of all decent nations. A country in which equity and justice will form the basis of the relationships among its ethnic groups. It is about a nation that will place premium on hard work. It is about a country of healthy, educated, happy people who live safely in boundless hope and prosperity. A country of God fearing individuals whose humanity is nourished by all the values that make other civilized human beings survive and endure.

And who are the dreamers dreaming this tall dream? In what form are they dreaming it? They are some of the best of our young and upwardly mobile concerned professionals in this imaginary motherland. They are people who believe that the meaning of life ought to consist of living useful lives. They are the professionals who have made significant contributions in the corporate world. Professionals who are compelled to act, not just to save their country from imminent disintegration but also, out of enlightened self-interest, set out to save their own businesses and wealth from collateral damages. Theirs is a group of principled humanists linked by a religious ideal of the Christian variety. Any wonder that their presidential candidate who eventually defeats the incumbent president is Peter not Abubakar. I dont need to tell you that this is a deliberate choice. It is a choice that is partial to Christianity, a choice that keeps a loud silence on the existence and possibilities of other religious faiths.

Those of us who are Godly but not so religious do forgive Dupe whose high sense of moral and political obligations in this novel deserve commendation. Some gender warriors, however, would question the absence of women at all the crucial meetings held by these wonderful dreamers.

Nadine Gordimer the South- African novelist, who won the Nobel Prize in 1991, writes eloquently in her essay, The Essential Gesture about the dual commitments of a writer: a commitment to society and a commitment to literature itself. Dupe struggles to strike a balance between religious and secular ideals in this novel.

In several ways, The Aireginan Dream is a meditation on private, corporate and political responsibilities. The author takes us to the slums where we witness a debasement of human beings in its raw form. She beams a searchlight on our streets where we see beggars, mendicants, hooligans and cruelties. We witness daylight robbery, robbery that we can account for. But we also see robbery that we cannot easily explain: the robbery of the dignity of the nation. Are the people not constantly stripped of their citizenship when their votes dont count at the polls? What about the robbery of our childrens rights to education? We dont always account for that. Do we?

When the president of this nation and his vice engage in a relentless war of attrition for four solid years, are they not robbing our young ones of the wonderful opportunity to have role models-- a necessary experience this young Nigerians need for their rounded development? How many young Nigerians today would say confidently that they want to be like many of our leaders?

The characters, the dreamers, in this novel have something to say to us, and we should listen to them. One of the great things that they have to say is that we should all get involved in a collective struggle that will lift our thoroughly abused nation from the quicksand in which it now lies prostrate. Dare the daring catalyst of the struggle that produce the president in this book has a remarkable magnanimous spirit, a spirit that is sadly lacking in our country today. If it is not me it is nothing. Thats the ethic of this season of rampaging locusts who call themselves our leaders. These characters are saying that we deserve a better deal.

By way of conclusion, let me say that some of the elements we always associate with novels of great power--elements such as psychological surprises, unexpected turns of evens, utterances that make you pause and ponder, the endlessly imaginative language that flows; accurate descriptions that make you gasp for breath etc -- are not here. In the end, the power of this novel lies essentially in its urgent political parable.

It is a profoundly challenging parable because it is a wake-up call to a country that is a deep mess. Frantz Fanon the great humanist, psychiatrist and revolutionary, captures the spirit of this wake- up call in his The Wretched of the Earth. I quote: Every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.

On that Fanonian note, I thank you all ...