Romance of the Regions

This is a Nigerian story that seeks to handle Nigeria's three major regional identities with forceful bluntness. The unfolding tale takes a detached, yet associated view of the three main characters. The entire narration lumps up the entire imagery of the three main Nigeria tribes and factions into these three characters. The nature of the intricate romance that plays out shows the appropriate immediate situation in the nation. The unfolding complexities of the relationships of the characters reveal a country in need of the nationhood it spuriously identifies as its own. Adudu Wa is the pretty, unmarried Yoruba girl, from an educated family. They are of a dominant almost coastal tribe, West of the Niger delta. A spirited ancient clan, loud in their presence, proud in their culture and rich in creativity as in wealth, at home as abroad. She is too proud to be belittled. She stoops to take in the fine scenery of personal achievement, not caring about the calm but hapless folly she pointlessly embarks upon for outwards luxury. Ewu Kwenu is a middle-aged single Igbo man, with wealthy prospects. He is an industrious half literate, culturally bond to his self-belief and emotionally attached to his fast eroding dominance of his region. He gloats in the densely forested Eastern lands he thinks he rules. He speaks English commonly but uses his native dialect as a sort of military code. He embodies the spirit of his proud dissident linage, made of strong willed people, incredibly hard to harness but easy to win over. Arabiyu Ab'Arewamaliki is a lot younger in more ways than age. A severally married Hausa lad with highly opinionated education that is as vast as it is rigid. He is of an obscure clan of commercially gifted tribesmen consisting of traders, artisans and herdsmen, settled in the arid sub-Sahara up north, above the married rivers Niger and Benue. He has enough formal education to call the bluff of Western literacy's perception of his faith's suppressive rigidity, and act on it. The narrator schooled with Adudu Wa, worked for years as a supervisor in Ewu Kwenu's metal workshop and befriended Arabiyu Ab'Arewamaliki. Arabiyu met Adudu last and also wanted her for his third wife, before she became Ewu's first wife.