Rise of the Phoenix: A review of Florence Oketona’s Ashes in the Times
Title: Author: Publisher: Pages:
BFlorence Oketona
Transconventional Publishers 211
Bizuum Yadok oth Nigeria’s history and her literature enjoy an inextricable relationship; each informing the other and walking hand-in-hand. The year 2009 opened a new chapter in Nigeria’s history by ushering insurgency in the North-Eastern part of the country.
The group which started as a ragtag gang eventually metamorphosed into a sophisticated force and operated mostly across the North-East, while at sometimes extending to other parts of the country.
It is estimated that, since the appearance of insurgency and their wanton activities, over ten thousand human lives have been lost, over three million people have been displaced, and properties worth billions of naira have been destroyed.
Perhaps the height of their activities which generated global condemnation was the abduction of 276 girls from Government Girls’ Secondary School Chibok Borno State to an unknown destination. Pressure has increasingly been mounted on the previous and current administrations to ensure the girls’ release. The incident also gave birth to hashtag #BBOG which is the acronym for Bring Back Our Girls. #BBOG trended for long with different activities from its campaigners, leading to the release of some of the girls. However, a good number of them have been in captivity for over five years now and their fate is still unknown. After the Chibok girls incident, over 100 schoolgirls of the Government Girls Secondary School in Dapchi, Yobe State, were also abducted, and there have been other similar unreported abductions.
There is no gainsaying therefore that the spate of school girls abductions by insurgents greatly inspired the production of Florence Oketona’s debut novel, ‘Ashes in the Times’. The novel comes in handy as a relevant and contemporary literary material. It also has the richness for continental and international acceptance. This is regardless of the author’s provenance.
The book captures nearly all the vicissitudes of the Chibok girls’ episode. It is imperative to note that, as in every crises or war situation, women and girls are often the worst victims of violent activities because they either become helpless widows, childless mothers, or fatherless daughters. This thus makes it more difficult for them to navigate life in a world largely defined by phallocentric conventions. It is therefore not out of place to have a novel focused on the plight of young girls and women amidst crises or insurgent activities.
Though ‘Ashes in the Times’ is a work of fiction, it is undoubtedly a story with palpable real-life events. The book recounts the story of a young girl known as Zarah, but popularly known as Sarauniya. The story traces the circumstances surrounding her birth and moral upbringing. Sarauniya was born as the sixth child to Ishaya and Rifkatu, after five male children. She was initially given the pet name Sarauniya because she was born on the day the Chief of Gaiya was getting married.
Much of Sarauniya’s childhood isn’t covered by the novel but it lets us in on her teenage life in school and beyond. Sarauniya’s story begins from the last holiday before she goes back to school for her final exams. Having seen Tasalla her friend married off against her wish, Sarauniya resolves to pursue her ambition of becoming a nurse. Together with her best friend Hauwa and another friend, Debo, Sarauniya maintains a chaste and educationally focused life in school until they are kidnapped by a band of militants.
A crafty friend of Sarauniya, Dorcas, single-mindedly devises a plan which eventually sees to the escape of seven of the school girls, although one of them dies in the forest. At the camp of the insurgents, the girls meet other women who had also been abducted long before them to serve as cooks, nurses and also take care of the sexual needs of their abductors. Among them are Saidat and Fatouma. Saidat befriends Sarauniya and orientates her about the dos and don’ts of the Camp.
While at the camp, many of the girls are stealthily and serially being abused by the camp commanders. As a result, many of them lose their virginity. Following reports of impending attacks on their camp from spies planted among civilians and the military, the insurgents are continually forced to change the location of the girls from one place to another within the thick forest. In the process of this movement, one of them, Rhoda, plunges herself into the lake to end her misery. One of the girls mentions that Rhoda was raped many times and decided to end her life when she couldn’t hold the depression any longer. Soon afterwards, Kaltume, another of the girls, is bitten by a snake from which she loses her life after a few days. The girls are arbitrarily moved from one part of the forest to another without minding the hour of the day or night.
By and large, the text explores a broad range of themes ranging from effects of insurgency, to violence against women, to toxic masculinism, rape, forceful marriage, love, poverty, corruption, and intra-cultural and inter-religious harmony, especially among the people of Gaiya town. The author brings the typical North-Eastern society of Nigeria under a literary microscope and zooms in on the moral and cultural values therein obtained before the advent of insurgency which paved way for mutual suspicion among adherents of different faiths and even among members of the same belief.
It is instructive to note that Sarauniya is a representative figure of the hapless Nigerian girl who becomes an object of patriarchal construct. Yet, she is resilient and determined to stay her course and overcome herculean challenges in order to emerge victorious in life. She represents the ideal Nigerian girl who rightfully deserves to be called a queen. As her name rightly implies; Sarauniya is the Hausa word for ‘queen’. She is an embodiment of beauty, virtue, character, strength, dynamism, hard work, and success. It is therefore apt to have Sarauniya at the centre of the text. The novelist expresses her concern, as a mother, for the Chibok girls, the Dapchi girls and many other girls who have been kidnapped, raped or maimed by insurgents. The book is narrated from the omniscient point of view and, through the narrator, the author shares her emotions with the reader, which evokes pity, anger, disgust, love and empathy all at once. Of note is the writer’s deliberateness in censoring depictions that could have otherwise been too graphic or gory, thus availing the text to different categories of the reading public. On the whole, one can confidently affirm that ‘Ashes in the Times’ is not just a scintillating read, but also a valuable contribution to the seemingly never-ending conversation on curbing insurgency in Nigeria’s history. Hardly does the author strike as a debutant in the craft of prose-fiction writing, because the suspense of the narrative, its plotline, intrigues and fluidity of the narrative compels one to stay glued until the very last page. Indeed, Florence Oketona would significantly be recognized as an iconic literary figure in the near future. The reader of ‘Ashes in the Times’ is bound to demand a sequel or at least another text from the author because the tail end of the narrative leaves you with a thirst for more.