Title: Till Dawn Comes With A Song
Author: Theophilus Ejorh
Publisher: Methuselah Press, Dublin
Year of Publication: 2020
Pages: 219
Reviewer: Kunle Animashaun
“His grip was firm when he took the note to read the third time. The message stared at him. He stared back at it. The warning was brief and clear-cut. They would kill him if he was not very careful.” These are the opening sentences of Theophilus Ejorh’s new novel, Till Dawn Comes with a Song. Impressive in its intensity, the novel is a high-octane story inspired by real events. Set in a political climate that suppresses free press, Ejorh’s novel is redolent of the consequences of corruption, bad governance, avarice, state-sponsored terrorism, and environmental degradation. The story also highlights the misery and dereliction that are prevalent in the oil-producing communities of the Niger Delta. Although the events in the region are well known, Ejorh gives the narrative a vibrant freshness and intensity that provoke haunting images. The story adopts a third-person narrative technique, and the chapters are not too long or tedious, such that the reader finds turning the pages appealing.
The novel focuses on the intricacies of the military dictatorship era in Nigeria, exemplified in the autocratic endeavours of General Gee, a despot who wields enormous influence and control over the country. The General has just introduced stiff rules aimed at restraining the Press. The Stallion magazine’s founder and editor-in-chief, Ebiye, and its energy reporter, Ndukari Peterside, both based in Warri and their Lagos counterparts have resorted to fighting a dangerous war with the ruler in their bid to combat corruption in high places and install a new socio-political era characterised by good governance, human freedom and wellbeing. Their weekly exposé unearths the profound corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering and the executive intemperance of General Gee’s junta. In the Niger Delta region, the locals, led by Olotu the freedom fighter, are raising all kinds of clouds of dust against the ecological damages of their land, inflicted by powerful multinational oil giants like the Avatar Corporation Plc. and others of that streak. The press resorts to covert means to continue their work, but they and the armed agitators are up against the national armed forces’ superior firepower. Tensions are high, and the ensuing bloody conflict becomes inevitable.
From the first few paragraphs, there is a palpable sense of foreboding that something deadly will happen. Will these characters make it alive in the end? General Gee’s henchmen make several attempts to eliminate Ndukari, forcing him to go into hiding. During his flight into the thick forest of Ondo, a viper bites him, but total strangers fortuitously nurture him back to sound health. Ebiye and Olotu are not so lucky, as both meet their demise in the hands of Gee’s henchmen. The different characters in the novel and their relationship to one another, though profoundly intricate and nuanced, are believable and developed, and one can recognise them in real-life situations.
Factual accounts on the Niger Delta region reveal that oil prospecting in this area had been ongoing since the early 1950s. On Sunday, January 15, 1956, oil prospectors comprising Dutch, British and German engineers working for Shell Darcy, later known as Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), and British Petroleum that was later nationalised as a Nigerian government entity, discovered oil in commercial quantities. By the 1970s, the revenue from oil had accounted for ninety-five per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. The multinational oil companies’ activities and their failure to manage frequent resultant spillages affected the natural eco-system, damaging wildlife in the area with severe implications for the local communities’ livelihoods. To make matters worse, these companies, led by Shell and the Nigerian government did not make any serious effort to provide necessary infrastructures such as good roads, hospitals, electricity, among others, for the people.
The author’s profile declares that Ejorh once had a career as a journalist on the Energy beat at Vanguard newspaper and African Guardian magazine, which sums up the investigative disposition of the novel. His vivid description of the “environmental genocide” of “the worst ecological atrocities of modern times” is a poignant reminder of the Niger Delta situation. The graphic description of the haunting images of malnourished children, some with protruding bellies from contaminated foods is understandably emotive. When Ndukari, his love and co-worker Ezinne Onochie, and Kevin O’Kane, a journalist from Ireland, accompany Olotu to one of the communities bearing the savage indications of oppression and environmental devastation, they observe the distressing condition of Luckere, Chief Potoki’s second wife, whose breast cancer is a consequence of the toxicity of the area. Explicitly distressing images of starving children, and Luckere’s sordid ailment, aptly illustrate the calamity’s magnitude. This level of dedication, zeal, and creative passion in depicting such conditions in the Niger Delta region could only have come from someone like the author who had witnessed first-hand the “cloak of gloom that lent the area an air of unbeing.”
The many references to the Niger Delta pioneer activist, Adaka Boro, in the novel are insightful and indicative of a factual event. On February 23, 1966, Boro led other volunteers in an armed uprising against the Federal Government. The opposing forces subsequently captured and incarcerated him alongside his co-agitators. Successive Niger Delta activists like Ken Saro-Wiwa and MEND have often referred to Boro as a significant inspiration. In the novel, the execution by firing squad of the five militants, four men and a woman, accused of destroying two flow stations is a reminder of the 1995 brutal killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders by the regime of General Sani Abacha.
Nonetheless, despite the unyielding dose of danger pervasive in the novel, Till Dawn Comes with a Song is a literary work replete with delightfully charming encounters of passion and desire incumbent on the willpower of some of the characters to overcome the daunting obstacles in their lives. For example, the irresistible chemistry between Ndukari and Ezinne juxtaposed with the almost purely physically sexual interaction between him and Dorcas, and the maternal-esque obligation of his sister, Boma, is artistically woven into a delicate tapestry as a triangle of loving care, albeit from different vantage points.
The sporadic poetic expressions in different parts of the novel evoke imaginative awareness by a very talented poet/author. The allure of the figures of speech and the phrases’ compactness enables us to become privy to the character’s inner thoughts. The richly developed moving expressions by Ndukari may be considered intrinsically innate to a character struggling to make sense of his world. In turn, they offer the reader a deliberate psychological appraisal of that world in reality.
Incidentally, there are some lingering questions. Perhaps, the answers to these are what the novel has decided to avoid. For example, who ‘really’ is Kevin? Does he have another agenda in Nigeria, other than investigating the oil and gas sector? Is he playing both sides against the middle? The $9.6 billion P&ID scandal readily comes to mind. Ironically, P&ID is an Irish firm involved in a questionable contract deal with some corrupt Nigerian government officials to build a gas refinery plant in the Niger Delta region.
Ejorh’s novel is explorable, and there is a potential for a future sequel. What would be interesting is whether a follow-up would inculcate the curious instances where citizens from the region bestride the corridors of power, yet contributes further to their indigenous communities’ oppression. At the end of the novel, the country’s parlous state is exemplified by the announcement of a coup d’état. One is not sure whether to feel sad or happy. One can only hope that the regime overthrow would bring the desired changes to people’s lives. The ‘Hope’ factor is one of the great gifts of life epitomised in Ndukari’s continued presence in the novel’s world. Without doubt, there are possibilities of a new beginning for the region, the novel’s original catalyst.