BOOK REVIEW

Book title: Chukwuemeka Ike: 50 Years as a Trailblazing Novelist
Author: Kanchana Ugbabe (Ed.)
Name of publisher: University Press Ibadan, 2015
Reviewer: Prof. Joy Eyisi
Number of pages: ?
Price: ?

On reading Professor Kanchana Ugbabe’s description of Ike in her introduction to the current volume, “Chukwuemeka Ike: 50 Years as a Trailblazing Novelist,” I was provoked to momentary relapse into an old habit of mine for which I am yet to find a cure. While possessed by this habit, I had wondered what Professor Chukwuemeka Ike could have been were he not to have been a novelist. Having known the man in his grandeur and tenacity, I arrived at the conclusion that Professor Ike could have been an athlete, a king of the track. Perhaps he did not become one only because he did not try or simply because he was possessed quite early by the spirit of the Muse. Whatever the case might have been, I attribute the doggedness of Professor Chukwuemeka Ike, his sense of fair play to traits relating to the athlete, which he never became. Here is a man who retired into work, first as King of Ndikelionwu and then, as Chairman of Nigerian Book Foundation, a platform that helps fight book piracy as well as supports and improves reading culture among Nigerians; and he is not found wanting in any of these challenging assignments.
    As Chairman of the Nigerian Book Foundation, Ike’s purposes were simply altruistic, to use his towering global influence to bridge the educational material gap in Nigeria. He attracts current and powerful books from publishers abroad and distributes these free of charge to Nigerian students, academics, schools and libraries. Once, Ike confronted me with his frustration. He had encountered people on many occasions and in different locations, putting up for sale at exorbitant prices, the books he, through the Nigerian Book Foundation, had given out to them free for institutional use. In anger, he had contemplated legal action against the culprits, but what he actually did and still does, is to brainstorm on possible ways to avoid such abuses.
      Perhaps what the profiteers did not know was that not only were the books secured on the strength of Ike’s reputation, he also used his personal resources to clear them from the Nigerian ports. I was privy to those times when consignments of books accumulated demurrage in the ports simply because Ike was late in raising capital to pay duties for them. It is a disappointment that our governments that granted all sorts of ridiculous waivers to profiteering merchants did not find it worthy to grant waiver to Ike.
     Therefore, occasions like this present us in the academia great opportunity to call for removal of all forms of duties on educational materials. Serious nations should not tax the education of their citizens in whatever guise.
      They say that the pen is mightier than the sword. Possibly, the inventors of the saying did not anticipate the convergence of the pen and the sword in the hands of one man as is the case with Professor Chukwuemeka Ike, the writer and the king. In a setting where the pen and the sword were construed as tools of destruction, Ike has stretched our imagination.
      Here, I want to make reference to the Italian writer, Umberto Eco, who speaks of the limitless power of the interpretative mind. It is this interpretative mind that enables us to transcend the description made of screwdriver, for instance, as instrument of tightening screws. Eco holds that the screwdriver can also be used for other things like scratching the ear, committing a homicide, opening a package, and so on, and so, its description as tool for tightening screws is not in any way imposed by the nature of the screwdriver itself but by human subjectivity. We are grateful that a man, like Chukwuemeka Ike, in whose hands the gods chose to place two destructive instruments, as they were, decided to rise above human subjectivity.
     With the pen and the sword firmly in his hands, Ike chose to be a potter. The two instruments in his hands became his wheels. As a potter, Ike chose to mould the character of youths and challenge the seeming moral failures of adults. He traced the path of national unity, challenged stereo-typing, redirected the trajectory of our educational system and dreamed up the Nigeria he wanted for us all. It is clear from this that Ike’s books are teleological.
     Arts for him, as it is for most African writers of his generation, is never for art’s own sake. It served a purpose. Thus, why you may be excited to laugh out loud at Obu’s outlandish mannerisms as you read The Potter’s Wheel, Ike will leave you in no doubt at the end of the story, that the wits you enjoyed in the book were just like the smooth water that enabled you to digest the harder bones of the book which his messages often are.
     For me, as a person, the most enduring and unforgettable of Ike’s didactics was simply “chew your stick in the privacy of your bathroom.” It was a message about how not to assault the cultural sensibilities of others, about how not to embarrass oneself in the midst of others, and how to live peacefully with dignity in a pluralistic world. I have borne this quote in my head for close to thirty years, and Professor Chukwuemeka Ike has no way of knowing that the very first day I met him in flesh and blood that this was the saying of his that played in my mind.
      It is not just because it contained my favorite quotes of Ike, but also because it was the first of Ike’s novel I read and the one that introduced me to some other books of his that gave The Bottled Leopard a pride of place in my heart. Until a couple of years ago, the idea of a bottled leopard has always struck me as an imaginary creation of a restless writer. However, just few years ago, I was regaled with real stories of leopards and other animals as real alter egos of people in cultures of some localities in Igbo land. This awareness alerted me about how thin the line separating reality from myths is. Indeed, what we regard as myth may in actual sense be a distance reality.
      One thing that sets Professor Ike apart from others is his ability to write to different classes of audience. Some scholars, however, have tended to view Ike’s novels as autobiographical. But are the novels really so much about Ike as they are about anybody who has had even the remotest experience of the cultural settings of his novels? In this sense, if the charge in some quarters that Ike’s novels are a fictional representation of himself is true, it will also be true that they are biographies of many a good number of people who relate themselves with the stories in most of his books.
     Thus, the truth about Ike’s books is that at times, he writes as an eavesdropper, a silent observer who reports your little secrets in public. Subsequently, I think that the strength of Chukwuemeka Ike as a writer rests on the details he pays attention to. Since those details are about our fears, our idiosyncrasies, our labors, our love and joys of being Africans, Ike can be regarded as a humanistic writer. The characters in his books do not live in a moral height; rather they are normal human beings with normal human flaws.
      Since the battles of life are not always won either are they always lost, some of these flaws were overcome by the characters whereas others were not. If fifty years down the line, readers still seek out Ike’s novels, it is because they could relate themselves to the novels. It is also because the novels are written in their own language, simple and ordinary language.
      Just as Kachana wrote, Ike’s works could be read for different purposes. Some read them for pleasure; others see them as pieces of work that call for deeper scholarly investigation, while some read them simply because of their pedagogical nuggets. Whatever reason one has for reading any of Ike’s works, it is worth it.
    Agadinwanyị anaghị aka nka n’egwu Ọ maara agba! At 80, Professor Chukwuemeka Ike is still soaring like the Eagle he has always been. The number of intellectuals and academics who contributed to this work shows how much Ike is loved in the literary domain. His readiness to help and support young writers is both commendable and unparalleled. Indeed, we are celebrating okeosisi-oji (a great iroko tree) and a rare literary icon - a man whose works stand as masterpiece, magnus opus, and whose contributions in the world of literature are invaluable.
     In sum, a diviner is not needed for one to know a person who has wrestled with a lion and defeated it. Professor Chukwuemeka Ike has indeed, wrestled with the lion in the academic sphere and emerged a champion. As a trailblazer, he has not gone to where the path leads; instead, he has gone where there is no path and left a trail. An icon!