Debo Kotun’s novel Abiku has reconstructed the myth of Abiku to critique the evil machinations under military rule in Nigeria. In the novel, Kotun makes use of highly abrasively bitter and gruesomely satirical temper. He is able to lampoon the military for ravishing and devaluing Nigeria, the hitherto giant of Africa. He depicts the foibles of the military rulers lucidly - corruption, brutality, press censorship, graft, nepotism, lack of freedom and all sorts of neocolonial decadence. In the novel, Kotun relies heavily on the method of magical realism. Improbable events are made probable; the dead enter into phatic communion with the living; African gods and goddesses are also called to a feast. Actually, in Abiku, Kotun, like Okri, vividly illuminates some autochthonous oral traditions of African people in general and the Yoruba people in particular, in order to artistically reconstruct the deadly political subterfuge of Africa.
Debo Kotun’s Abiku can be situated within the inherent root-seeking quest of the African self. Thus, the novelist engages history and societal realities set in Nigeria under military dictatorship to provide a discourse in social history as he refreshes one’s knowledge of recent Nigerian history by introducing literary embellishments which contribute to his enduring brilliance as a creative writer. As one reads the novel he naturally gets immersed in his satiric agenda, and the intermittent
“remembrance’’ of mythic undercurrents in the book betrays the work as basically committed to social and political reformation, and a conscious engagement in social reality, for example ‘when Dr. Ademola entered, the mood in the operating room changed. He took one look at the face of the little boy who lay unconscious on the bed. But the ones that caught his attention were the two old scars on each cheek of the boy’s face … .” (46) These foregoing instantiates of Kotun’s attempt to assert mythic relevance unconsciously makes his plot discordant, but certainly does not encumber his literary agenda, and in fact, his satire is well orchestrated and satisfies the African literary heritage of commitment to the letter.
Kotun’s experiment in fusing history into fiction and vice-versa is remarkable, and thus brings Africa’s messiahs of pain to the centre stage while scarcely veiling their identity thus he describes a set of African rulers:
Sakara looked up and saw a seven-headed phantom seated
where Akin had been only seconds before. From the neck
down the monster was dressed in uniform of a general.
The head farthest from the neck on the left reminded
Sakara of the warlord from the horn of Africa. The next
one looked like that of the butcher of Entebbe, irritating its
neighbor, the five-billion dollar man from Kinshasha. In
the middle was the obnoxious head of the sleeping giant of
Africa from Lagos, lashing an effeminate smile at the
Sergeant-turned General from Monrovia. Next was the
Tuareg Colonel turned president for life from Tripoli (pp.
144- 145).
Accordingly, the novel postulates, highlights and fictionalizes social- historical realties as we remind ourselves that African literature and its writers share boundaries of social consciousness and functionality, which explains the political activism of writers like Christopher Okigbo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka and others who incorporate the satirical temerity of their works. And notwithstanding, Kotun blanks off pretension and dons pungency in the novel that can possibly link to the concrete situationally of the post- 1983 Nigerian state, and virtually all the major events and personalities in the country’s political landscape till 1994 are adequately represented in his work. Kotun’s central character Sakara, a student of military power benefits from the machinations of Babassa, and through Sakara, becomes a searchlight who understands the psychology of power while the consequences of unquenched thirst for power leaves the society desolate economically and psychologically. And in like manner, he uses his characters to lament Nigeria’s breakdown of facilities, norms and values:
… Ademola walked over his desk in the parlor and, hoping against all odds that a miracle might be in the offing…. He stared at the black rotary telephone which looked more like a decorative relic than a communication instrument. Intimidated, the phone did what it had always done... (p.24).
Thus, the grim realities of misrule and socio-economic decadence are captured by Kotun reflecting a reality of power play and corruption setting the fulcrum of discourse. And like several other African writers, he shares a vision of social reformation via a deployment of aesthetic and artistic light to champion a fresh course. Kotun sees a better society through a people with a perfect knowledge of their history that would enable the right cause of action as he fulfills the imperative of a literature and art of social commitment. Therefore, there is a drive for social and historical engagement which accounts for the novelist’s artistic honesty, without leaving any benefit of doubt for his critics. As a result, we can say that approaching the subject of history in contemporary African novel has been confounding, as demonstrated by Kotun illustrating that what is responsible is actually inseparable from the economic woes that contribute to the African literary canon. Consequently, the preservation of history as a well utilized modus in Abiku helps to drum the fictive essence of the narrative while the characters hardly disguise, and thus are identifiable figures in Nigeria’s political history with the mention of specific names and places. For example, Ikeja hospital certainly exists in the Nigerian state (44), and in fact names of towns like Lagos, Abeokuta and Yola are evidences of a writer’s commitment to representing the nation’s history in his fictional work, atendency situated in Kotun’s confessed literary impetus.
In refining the history of the Abiku’s milieu, the novelist understands the role of the artist as the society’s teacher, and although there is a veiled attempt at presenting a people’s history, Kotun still succeeds in conserving the fiction aspects of his historicity. Hence in representing military rulers, he unifies them in logic rather than personality to construct the event that informs the plot. This is interestingly not particularly restricted to any military government in Nigeria, placing it as instructive to understanding the psychology of military adventurisms, irrespective of time or space. This posture seemingly places Kotun as a meta-historical narrator whose art is heavily dependent on social reality as he proves that a constant revisit of history in African creative imagination is pertinent for political order and tranquility.
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