This is a story that contrasts the hero’s fifteen years of living in
cities and particularly Lagos in a Nigeria of probably sometimes between
1945 and 1960, with the hunger, disease and poverty of rural village
life in eastern Nigeria. It is a story highlighting the politics and
lopsided justice system of a society on the change. And it is a story of
a man’s sudden rise to success in Lagos, his misplaced values and the
pursuit of sex, money and a flashy Jaguar to show off, and his immediate
demise on the loss of the expensive car.
Onuma
is the hero, a young man who dropped out from university in pursuit of
money, and the sex and material wealth to be gotten from it. Fifteen
years later, he’s bought a brand new Jaguar on loan, and he is making a
trip to the village for the first time. There he and his car are
celebrated by his parents and the villagers with days of feasting.
Continuing the easy life though, he crashes the Jaguar into a gully,
after an evening at a dance characterized by lots of drinking and food
and a lot of sex. Then his downfall begins. Back in Lagos, he
misappropriates money from his employers to purchase spare parts for the
Jaguar, but by the time he gets back to the scene of the accident, it
has been cannibalized. He dabbles into politics, and ends up killing his
political colleague for his party-owned Mercedes car.
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