POLITICAL GANGRENE IN DANIEL INYANG’S DEAREST DANIELLA by Onyeji Nnaji

The popular view of Achebe is that literature has one setting, the society. The role of the writer in the society is therefore justified in the manner and ways in which he uses the art in his possession to address the social ills in his society; for he is both a teacher and the moral conscience of his people. As the conscience of his society, his task is to formulate principles and justify some atrocious policies and actions in the society. As Achebe remarks, “Today literary artist who does not write about his prevailing social and political condition will likely end up becoming irrelevant.” Ngugi also affirms that,

A writer responds with his total personality to a social environment which changes all the time. Being a kind of sensitive needle, he registers, with varying degrees of accuracy and success, the conflict and tensions in his changing society (Society 47).

Daniel Inyang’s Dearest Daniella is a good proof that a “writer responds with his total personality to a social environment which changes all the time”. The novel’s analysis of the Nigerian post-colonial situation is unique and particular to the touching of his audience.

Similar passion and commitment geared towards problem solving made Daniel Inyang’s epistolary, Dearest Daniella and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter to be relatively synonymous. Perhaps, because of the different settings of the novels and their recipients, both works address power structure in two varying positions. While the former is overtaken by the political consciousness of his country which appears to define who actually exists and who does not, the latter grossly scavenges power structure on the cultural chauvinistic dominance of her society. One sees culture instilling power from different angles in both works. But, while Ba’s So Long a Letter is dexterously divulging chauvinistic tendencies from every angle, Dearest Daniella is committed to unveiling gangrene with paranoia showing up in various pages as the author tries to hide behind his ink. His view of his country’s gangrene is summarized on page 99 in the following statement:

Dear one, do you know that for celebrating evil, this nation has made her bed with woes? We have grumbled. But grumbling hasn’t made us better. We rather have dispensed most valued energy in futility because we have brought home ant-infested maggots that the visit of lizards shouldn’t make us peeved. The tidings we receive today from our kinsmen are stranger than those that western albino came with…       

In the prose work, Dearest Daniella,” Inyang tries to build opposition to resists the dominant corrupt political leadership of Nigeria by examining the ways in which her social and economic machinery and their harbingers, displaying incompetence,  corroded and deformed the lives of the masses whom, according to him, “grumbling hasn’t made… better.” He subtly critiques the dominant political belief that power belongs to a certain set of people; the belief which today has torn the nation out of place for incurable decay. His purpose is very clear here. He rightly intends to dissuade his audience, his “dear one,” from drinking of the same wine that makes her leaders irrational, should she find herself in any position of influence anytime. He considers Nigeria as a patient of gangrene whose political situation has defiled every therapeutic attempt. And with the decay affecting the institutions that define her unity, the nation counts down to her disintegration date.

Unlike most of Inyang’s writings, Dearest Daniella is hardly understood against the historical backdrop of the author’s society and nation in general. This collection of policies and laws was a massive social and political experiment that stretched roughly from 1914 till date via a marriage of the south and the north; and which reality spells itself obviously in the aftermath events of the Nigerian 1960 independent that the unity the country had was merely the unification of “The Pebble and the Clod” in the view of William lake. This marriage created a history of political and economic entanglement that lords the inexperienced north over the rest of the country’s population. And because the economic and political power rest on the inexperienced and their loathsome converts of few elites, the nation resumes a journey towards decay while disunity awaits her at the end.  1820s saw the inception of the British colonialists who brought with them the sword of disintegration among the native south, dividing them against their conscience and consciousness to the bond that made them one. The primary intention only was found with the illegal marriage of the chanted 1914 amalgamation. The unwholesome handover by the British colonialist proves itself about the kind of product the British Empire has produced of Nigeria. The foremost election in the country was the practical beginning of the nation’s decay. The election saw all forms of rigging masterminded by Sir. James Robertson, a Swis, in favour of the European northern ally, Belewa. Harold Smith made this clearer thus,

I was one of the British officers serving on the headquarters staff in Lagos, chosen by the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, to mastermind the covert action to rig Nigeria's elections.

This introduced corrupt practice degenerated into insatiable desire for power and finally culminated in a civil war. The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme was introduced to help reconstruct the masses minds, but it failed. This was the scheme during which the author wrote this novel.

The ideology behind the institution of this scheme was deceptively simple: the various ethnic groups occupying the country which are not compatible should be made to have a rethink of oneness. With this thought of oneness, the tendency of any revolution could be watered down by the continuous emphases of “One Nigeria”. To this end, the khaki government intended to establish “homelands” in the psyche of indigenous native tribes with essential reservations that were loosely based on traditional tribal geography, while the history of leadership continuous with the kingly tribe, their level of education notwithstanding. The writer expresses his bemused view of the country’s history and concludes that, “The tidings we receive today from our kinsmen are stranger than those that western albino came with”.

The novel captures the condition of the nation’s teaming population as that of native prisoners in their own home after the 1966-1970 civil war as follow,

You yourself came from a place, a native area, though one of the earliest, but most underdeveloped because they can’t live above the psychological problems associated with the long-gone war. People accused them of not selling their land to their visitors. Truly this people can’t forget in haste that the visitors they have embraced decades ago into their communities to carry out their businesses were the ones who turned around to destroy them greatly during the war… your people are still shaped in the mentality of a once tied hen, which though has been freed, refuses to walk away because psychologically it’s bound (P.34).

The author is of the suggestion that, although the war has ended as a physical combat, the people still see war in their deformed psyche since they could hardly differentiate between the subjugation of the defeated and those of captives who are no heroes of the war. And like the fictionalized Warringa of Devil on the Cross, the defeated has lived in degradation and mental torture that compels him to hide his face at the sight of reality. The defeated shy away from real political contest to positions of power and value, and resigned to homeland politics to unleash terror on his own people. The warlords become the valued animals to rule with considerable penalty to their flaws. This is clear via the narrative voice in the following way.

It saddens us that the punishment for such a capital crime as looting of public funds is a few months suspension, which happens in rare cases. This suspension is only meant to calm the tension that may follow the news of the crime. When the tension seems to die down, the person is appointed to head another sensitive sector (P.166).

Do you know why? “A thief doesn’t catch a thief, neither does a thief call a thief a thief. Two of them have secrets that they keep from the public to protect their images.” The novel treats power structure with certain ease that allows the author the freedom to suggest his own views, using rhetorical questions as a technique. Such a question as “How will you attend the burial of someone you know was killed by you?” is one that necessarily does not require attention rather than to create certain consciously induced statement that questions morality. It appears the fellows in power have lost every sense that makes them human. The true sense of what is good and what is bad has left their persons, let alone thinking of which to do. And beyond style, such assertion is not inept to address certain decay that has succeeded in destroying the human’s feelings and moral consciousness.   

The decay of the writer’s Nigerian society is an incomprehensible gangrene as the narrative weaves itself connoting everything that has the breath of life in it. Interlacing all these, the novel grades the Nigerian political decay the same with the exacerbated and unpredictable society as Ayi kwei Armah’s The Beautifle Ones Are not yet Born. Such a society that even the elites who should serve as the sensitive needle to sew her together rather become overtaken by the decisions of the kingmakers in their pursuit of recognition should rather be utopic; but that is Nigeria. The elites even aid the power-drunk leaders to play on the nation’s integrity as the author shows on page 153.

Could you fathom why INEC officers (some of the learned university dons) would stoop so low to be bought and locked inside a room to duplicate their thumbprints on every ballot paper, disenfranchising the electorates?

Details follow this excerpt. The interaction that succeeds this excerpt shows that the nation’s elite who are supposed to be her saviour  eventually become machineries for the institution of power as they have left the society they are supposed to sanitise and taken to hunger games. Hunger bestrides the decay of the educated class. And because they are not rigid enough to stand corruption, the political power stride excessively overtakes the entire society. Power, politics and exercise of political influence inform and foster the gangrene spoken about in Dearest Daniella.

One important relief one finds to ease off tension of the decay in Dearest Daniella is on the humor in the author’s sagacious use of folklores to form a comparative technique. A good instance is the contest of the bigger thief allegorised into the folkloristic “cat and dog” fable. Incidence of theft is a very large part of the reason why the fairy-tale residents of the story’s affluent suburb begin, installing the power circle or ruling class. Fiction such as this produced by a native writer at the time when the country is almost in apartheid indicates that there existed dissenting discourses even within the dominant class.

One aspect of the Nigerian gangrene remains in the text that instills fear, looking at the fate of the Nigerian posterity. Armah created a decaying Ghanaian society that only one man may be meagerly spared. Although this fellow, for the fear of losing a dear friend, aided his escape, he was confident enough to differentiate moralities from corruption. Yes, it may be argued that he was not free as Armah likened him to the Chichidodo bird; his ability to resist certain corrupt money shows that the societal decay has not wholly catch up with him.  In the Nigerian case, there is not one prophet left. For a Chichidodo to eat rotten things and yet be clean, it is clear that certain iota of morality is still left in its conscience. Imagine the level of decay in the society that ostracizes a businessman because he insults an elderly person, only to welcome the same man later because he returns as the spokesperson for Chief Naga. Such a society must be putrid and dead to the reality of truth. It is apparent that they take whatever they see, provided it represents the power structure. That is the Nigerian society painted by Inyang here in Dearest Daniella.

The Nigerian situation is no just decay; it is gangrene and death. We find in the novel situations like those in Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero. The church as well as its inhabitants is no longer cleric but political religionists. They have soaked their cassocks spackling clean in corruption.

I shout this warning to you, if you desire to keep your virginity, run from that man on the pulpit, that choir director, that worker, that one you innocently call DADDY entrusting the whole of you to his hand as a spiritual father. Watch it for he is still the one that will entice you with what looks like a work of charity, call you daughter, and won’t fear the father-and-daughter bond when he abuses you (p.121).

Religious leaders are devourers. They devour more than the attempts to protect their adherents. In this whay it is apparent that the fictitious story of a typified postcolonial Ghanaian society painted by Armah is not completely comparable to the level of decay that has overtaken the Nigerian society since independence. When the church becomes worldlier in her pursuit of mundane things, the flock she is to protect gets scattered beyond recovering. There is no trust for the cleric position as doing so would amount to taking irreparable risk. With this situation it becomes glaring that the obvious reason for the insistence of gangrene in the author’s society is that those who are supposed to attack it with full force sit down and let it prevail. All these put together make Nigeria a “shit hole” where anything can possibly settle. Immigrants flock in from neighbouring countries and are indigenized simply because they have certain historical legendry as those of the power circle.

It strikes to listen to the speeches of the cleric politico, Matthew Kukah to hear him confess his involvement in the policy making of the presidents of Nigeria, beginning from the regime of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. It was euphoric expecting to hear how much he has influenced the policies of these leaders, but disappointing to take nothing useful home. There is no benefit of his presence at the time when these policies are made because he just sits and watch the leaders to draw conclusion on the poor masses. That is why Osibanjo, having witnessed the heavy rate of rigging in the 2019 presidential election, has the effrontery to announce to the world that there was no rigging. Yet the denomination that installs him a cleric could not withdraw him from the pulpit. The reason they would not is simple; he is a very strong source of the financial reimbursement of the church. The author’s conclusion is perfect about the characteristics of Nigerian cleric in perpetuating their nation’s decay. 

Why wouldn’t everything glow in flames when the righteous is too righteous to step in and help a dying nation that they live in to prepare for heaven? You look at this situation and imagine how frustrated this creation could be waiting in vain for the earnest manifestation of the sons of God that are not ready (P.130).

It is established in the traditional aesthetics that when certain evil practices last up to a year, they rather become traditional. The same goes to decay. When decay sets in, the institution suffers setback. It continues to downsize the institution until death overtakes her. Political gangrene in Nigeria, as reflected in Dearest Daniella, attends its peak the very time it degenerates into such society of ploy chanted by Achebe as Be Ware of Soul Brother. How would one explain such euphemism that makes one’s fellow hunter to look like their hunted animals so suddenly? It is simple; there is no brother in jungle. One’s own brother becomes his enemy anytime he sees himself at the corridour of power. That is the characteristic feature of the politicians in the novel.     

This life is characteristic of every political leader in this nation. Democracy has either made a mockery of us or we have made a mockery of it. You can’t explain what happens when the leader you elect just suddenly feels you are an enemy, the one after his life, that the first thing he does after you have elected him is to raise a wall so high around his house. At other times he absconds. You wonder what could suddenly make this environment in which he was nurtured an uninhabitable place just overnight. You wonder what turns him into the stranger he is among his people… (P. 159).

In summary, one of the beauties of a prose work is the fancy it carries. That is one thing significant about Dearest Daniella. The situation addressed here is multifaceted and entangling as no one, not even the writer, is free from the blushful lash of the decay in his society. The kind of decay that turns humans into animals and prepares them for consumption is more than what it is meagerly called; it is better addressed as gangrene.

The novel presents everything very malodorous as long as it has the tag, “politics” because power drunk has affected the society and insists on sustaining the boundary so created. The reader finds disappointment, not only in the author, but also in himself. He only finds relief on the rhetoric that patterns the novel as an epistolary. Rhetoric is the art of using language for persuasion, in speaking or writing; especially in oratory. It involves an artful arrangement of words to achieve a particular emphasis and effect, as in apostrophe, chiasmus and zeugma. No rhetorical figure changes the meaning of the structure, instead it adds colour to the work of art. Popular rhetoric in the text begins with, “Could you imagine…”, “You will not believe that…”, “The very day you…”, “If you desire to keep your virginity, run…” and others. These have the sense of apostrophe, for the author speaks to his “Dear one” as though she is there present. This is the appropriate tone to address gangrene, especially the Nigerian type.