Blood On Troubled Waters

By Adebayo Lamikanra

Being something of a bibliophile, one of the most enjoyable things about being a student at the University of Ife in the early seventies was the constant availability of newly published books at the University bookshops, both at Ibadan and Ile-Ife. In addition, there was the annual Ife Book Fair which attracted publishers from all over the world which meant that it was very easy for one to keep abreast of book publication all over the world. It is most unfortunate that the quality of service for which the university bookshop was justly famous has dropped precipitously over the years such that it has become difficult to keep up with what is going on in other parts of the world in terms of getting to read books which are of current interest.

This is why it has only just become possible to get a copy of Helon Habila’s latest book at the University of Ife Bookshop. This book, Oil On Water, was first published by Hamish Hamilton as long ago as 2010 but has only become available in what is my local bookshop a few weeks ago. I expect therefore that numerous reviews of the book are available but I have not allowed this to stop me from writing another one especially since I have not had the opportunity of reading any of the earlier reviews of the book.

By the time I got halfway through Oil On Water, I found that the increasing urge to dip into Habila’s earlier book, Waiting For An Ange, had become irresistible and so I went in search of my copy of the book. Unfortunately, I could not lay hands on the book and in the end had to accept that someone had ‘borrowed’ it and had not bothered to return it, the fate of many of my books. So I had to rely on my memory of the book to compare it to the current offering. I found the earlier book to have been written from the heart as it were but if that is really the case, the writing of Oil On Water could be said to have been ruled by the head.

It is clear that Oil On Water has been written by a master craftsman, one who has learnt a great deal of what is there to learn about creative writing and is prepared to take the reader by the hand, leading him through what, at times, could be described as an elaborate labyrinth of words and ideas even though I am not quite sure that I was able to make a successful exit from the maze of Habila’s narrative.

Oil On Water, as the title eloquently suggests, is set in that very turbulent period when bands of young men plunged the Niger Delta area into chaos by blowing up pipelines, kidnapping foreign oil workers and confronting the Nigerian military in an almost continuous battle in and out of the numerous creeks through which various large rivers, especially the Niger flowed into the Atlantic. It is a story that needs to be told from several points of view as it is one which can generate the interest of diverse constituencies.

The events surrounding this insurgency are still too recent to be regarded as history and it is apt that the narrator is a journalist, a man though fresh to the profession, was steeped in its traditions and had the required luxury of having a very experienced, if faded and disintegrating, Zac, at his side, lending him a great deal of authenticity, at least, enough of it to give his account much needed credibility.

The story was set on the creeks around Port Harcourt and the local flavour which further deepened the authenticity of the story was provided by the fact that the story was told by a local lad who, under normal circumstances, could himself have been in the creeks, his torso festooned with belts of high calibre bullets, his trusty rifle cradled in his arms. Indeed, the war in the creeks did not leave him unscathed as his brother in law on whom his sister, an unlikely casualty but a casualty all the same of the conflagration which consumed many lives and spoilt many more as long as it raged through the creeks, had deserted his disfigured wife and joined his destiny to that of the militants.

As with many stories being told about Nigeria at this time, this is a story that is concerned with existential matters; health, decent food, shelter, employment and other such mundane things dealing with keeping body and soul together. It is a story told by a realist, a realist in the tradition of the French realists of the 19th century; Balzac, Zola, Maupassant and others who wrote about the wretched conditions under which many people were living in a country which was going through the pains of building an industrialised country. Such wretchedness is of course duplicated in contemporary Nigeria which is why the country is producing a wave of new realists who are telling the world of the travails which the average Nigerian, if there is any such person, is living and suffering.

The problem with realism is that it limits the latitude given to the writer of fiction in that his story has to be grounded in the reality of what is on ground. From this point of view however Habila has not quite measured up to what is expected as he allowed himself to be so carried away with his narrative that he was loose with a few facts. One or two examples will suffice to prove this accusation. Anyone who is not familiar with the basic geography of Lagos may not wonder how Rufus and Zac found their way to the Bar Beach through the back streets of Lagos all the way from Ikeja but the truth is that given the fact that you have to cross at least two bridges to get to the Bar Beach, stumbling on it , even under the influence of alcohol, is simply impossible.

The central point of the book is the suffering of the people who live in the creeks from which the nation’s money is extracted in the form of crude oil. The author is well within his rights to paint as gory picture of his subject as the fancy takes him but he has to be limited by the knowledge of what is possible. The Nigerian oil industry is one of the most careless in the world and the situation in Nigeria allows the oil companies to mess up the environment as much as they wish even if environmentalists all over the world are raising a hue and cry about the situation. That is the reality and it is grim enough without the author writing about the effects of gas flaring without actually doing the research which would have given him the authority to educate his readers about this important subject.

The doctor in the story is simply not a believable character, at least as he is portrayed in the story and the feats of medical research credited to him are, in consideration of the facilities available to him are in the realm of fantasy. It has to be said in the author’s defence however that most readers are not equipped to appreciate this point and for this reason, he may get away with it.

The first casualty in any war situation is the truth and ths statement is as true to this situation as to any other war, minor or major. Habila has written a story in which all the characters are either unpleasant, or fatally flawed in some way. Zac, the larger than life journalist turned out to be just a drunk totally incapable of coming to terms with the reality of life. It is not surprising that he was only ever truly happy in his relationship with any woman for no more than four months. His attraction to the so called love of his life, Anita, who he met whilst he was carrying out his study of prostitution on Bar Beach turned out to be a vampire-like figure who sucked the life blood out of him and spat his husk out to face the rest of his life without a focus for the exploitation of what we are made to believe were prodigious talents. Whatever talents he had were however wasted and when we meet him on the pages of Oil On Water, he was no better than a corpse waiting to be buried. Other characters did not fare any better.

Not James Floode, whose wife was supposedly kidnapped nor the various journalists who wandered through the pages of the book at different times,. Certainly, not the Professor who not only killed his mentor but was not sufficiently inventive to find a name for himself but took up the nom de guere of the man he killed and whose post he usurped.

Another character, just as worthless in a human way to the Professor was his main antagonist, the avenging Major who tried to satisfy the sadistic streak tormenting him by repeatedly dousing the helpless people he had captured all over the creeks with petrol but not screwing his courage to a high enough pitch to actually set them on fire.

Oil On Water is a tale of dark intrigue and darker deeds which goes from one despicable action to another, more despicable, leaving the reader wishing for some respite in the same way that Shakespeare always turned to moments of comic relief in even the darkest of his tragedies. This book would have done with such relief which had only the mere suggestion of a love scene, one in which Rufus was virtually dragged to bed by Gloria the nurse whose role in the story was nebulous to say the least since she hardly contributed anything to the grand plot which the author had weaved.

The situation in the Niger delta is grim but even so, life continues there; lovers are still finding succour in each other’s arms, babies are being born, friendships are being made and nature in its many guises is still appreciated. For these reasons, Oil in water has not tapped into life but is concerned almost to the exclusion of other things,with darkness, death and despair. Life in such a state is no life at all.

– Professor Adebayo Lamikanra, Faculty of Pharmacy, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

–First published in TheNEWS magazine