By Dr Abubakar Othman
MADAGALI is a fictional story about Lance Corporal Bukar Salisu, a young energetic soldier who was sent to Madagali, a town in North-Eastern Nigeria, to lead a team of soldiers fighting the Boko Haram insurgents.
In the course of the mission he ends up falling in love with the daughter of one of the repentant commanders of the Boko Haram sect.
Told through a kaleidoscope of characters, scenes and incidents, MADAGALI x-rays the politics, intrigues, international conspiracies and the challenges facing the Nigerian military in the fight against insurgency, banditry and terrorism that threatens the country.
From the war front in Madagali the story veers off to Kano in North-Western Nigeria, where L/C Salisu and five of his other wounded colleagues are taken to the National Orthopedic hospital for treatment. It is at the hospital that we are to learn in details the circumstances surrounding the Madagali ambush from the conversation between Lt. Col. Bala Hamus (Brigade Commander) and Lt. Tunde Okoka (Platoon Commander) who came to visit L/C Salisu and his colleagues at the hospital.
It becomes apparent from the conversation that the military has a divided loyalty and some of the soldiers are actually moles who supply the insurgents with information and logistics.
The narrative style later changes in focus as the author shifts attention from the war front to the conspiracies and complicity of some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the International aid agencies feasting on the Boko Haram crisis in the North-East.
As the Salisu put it; “Part of the fallout of our interrogation of the Boko Haram POW was the overwhelming evidence of how the humanitarian agencies were pampering the insurgents in a classical case of “feeding the enemy’.
MADAGALI, though a fictional narrative was born out of rigorous research. Okediran narrates his story with the expertise of a military historian, offering professional details and tactics of war, factual statistics of death and casualties, ranging from the classical Vietnam war, through the unending Sri Lankan War, down to the Nigerian civil war and the current Boko Haram war in North-Eastern Nigeria.
Leveraging on the flexibility of polyphonic narrative style, the author employs different methods to advance the plot of the novel. In his attempt to radicalize the young soldiers to rise against the corruption in the military, he adopts the intellectual approach by using lecturers in the military academy to conscientize the young soldiers. The protest letter written to the President about the challenges in the military is a fall out from the radical thinking they learnt in the military academy.
Another fall out is from the emergency meeting with the Chief of Defense Staff where all grievances of the soldiers are addressed, prominent among the issues being the need for overseas training for junior officers in the military.
The young officers return to Nigeria with adequate knowledge and strategies of fighting guerilla war and all kinds of insurgencies. They also find a well equipped and well funded military which gives them the desired motivation.
MADAGALI is not entirely about the horrors of war; it is also about love in times of war. As if to say love conquers all pains and fears, the author injects in L/C Salisu the love tonic to extenuate the pains of war.
“I was restless throughout that day after I got confirmation from my sister that Jewel was on her way to see me in Nigeria… I was happy that my girlfriend and “future wife” would be around to visit me”.
This is Jewel, the Liberian girl L/C Salisu’s mother offers him as a “wife” when he visited his mother who is now back in her country, Liberia, after his father’s death.
But this is not the conflicting love affair. The real love affair that is to complicate matters for the Lance Corporal is that of Safiya, daughter of the repentant Boko Haram leader, Aminu.
The author gave an account of how they met thus:
‘After Aminu’s arrest and debriefing, the middle-aged insurgent had relayed to his daughter how I had saved his life when he was first captured. Somehow, the daughter wanted to thank me for saving her father, she tracked me through some aid workers.
That was the beginning of a complex and complicated ethico-moral love relationship between a patriotic and disciplined soldier fighting doggedly to end the Boko Haram war, and a beautiful, resourceful and intelligent daughter of a repentant Boko Haram Commander.
The love theme presents a significant nexus between the Nigerian military, the Boko Haram insurgents and the international aid organizations with Safiya serving as the nexus. A cordial relationship develops gradually between the two in spite of their political affiliations.
According to Lt Corporal Salisu: “Due to my closeness to Safiya, I was to learn as much as possible from her about Boko Haram and the international aid groups which she worked for.”
Safiya thus becomes the author’s mouthpiece to divulge classified facts and information critical to the fight against the insurgency.
To ensure the free flow of the romantic relationship between her and Salisu, Safiya reminds him that,
“Some of the best weddings had taken place in war time. That of the former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon and his wife, Victoria is a good example”.
Although MADAGALI may be a work of fiction but it is also an essential resource material on the problems of insecurity, insurgency and the menace of some international aid organizations working in Nigeria.
In addition, MADAGALI pays a fundamental attention to the pathetic nature of Nigeria’s prolonged fight against the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents, and it follows a complex dilemma of love.
Dr Abubakar Othman (Late) holds a PhD in Literary Psychoanalysis and teaches African poetry and Creative Writing at the University of Maiduguri. His published works include The Palm of Time (2000, Malthouse), The Passions of Cupid (2013 Kraftbooks), and Blood Streams in the Desert (2013 Kraftbooks).
