A Sterling Tale of Crime
Atoto Arere by Oladejo Okediji
Year of Publication: 1981
Publisher: University Press Limited, Ibadan.
I first encountered Atoto Arere by Oladejo Okediji at nine and since then, the novel has been a favourite. However, it has been quite unfair to the author’s brilliance that I have had few individuals to discuss the novel with, in the past ten years. Some people regard tastes for books written in indigenous languages, Yoruba in this case, as uncultured and they go to lengths to avoid being caught in such dark leagues.
This is pathetic because instead of aiding the emergence of James Kirkups, the man who distinctly translated Camara Laye’s French works into English, we are ‘dinosauring’ our indigenous languages. It is cringeworthy; the imbalance contemporary parents create in toddlers and young children. Schools have already vernacularized and would forbid indigenous languages on their premises, yet parents serve the budding sensibilities with English. A family friend believes that an early and total interlocution in English would result in her children’s quick mastery of the language. Well, at least for the perpetuation and possible globalization, of indigenous books, both indigenous and English languages should be learnt simultaneously.
Atoto Arere is about the life of Alaba, a victim of family disintegration. His parents separated when he was eight. His fate fell into hardship almost immediately in the hands of the harsh stepmother. It would not have been so had his father not rebuffed his mother’s attempt to take him with her or had he checked the stepmother’s assaults. As it is inevitable and normal for human beings to seek alleviation for yokes in the strangest of places, Alaba ran to Ibadan with the money he salvaged from the stepmother’s wares. He could not go to his mother’s as it would take only hours before his father would get him back.
From the escape till he got webbed in the rings of crime, it was all vicissitudinous for him. Working on a hint that house-boys were being employed in University of Ibadan’s quarters, he applied to be one. The man he saw could not employ him but had his brother at Ife University to. With the family, his life was fitting into shape before he engaged with the boss’s daughter, Bimpe, who wanted to open her father’s safe box. They were caught. Alaba was dismissed.
It was while roaming Ife that he met Saminu, a central character that would mentor his progression from petty thievery into armed robbery. Saminu was tricky and slippery. He was a bad fate for Alaba’s honest attempts at life. He once left him in the lurch, making away with their joint money. When he reappeared from the ashes of time, he caused Alaba to leave his mechanic work and set him a shop. The shop, that stocked with stolen goods, later sent Alaba to prison.
Saminu was a bad fate for Alaba. Alaba was a fatal fate for Saminu. The one casualty, bank robbery attack that got Saminu executed was carried out by Alaba and Situ, a member of Saminu’s gang, on night Saminu celebrated Alaba’s release from prison.
The novel opens with a poem and closes with two, a feature I am yet to see in any novel. The second chapter satisfies the curiousity aroused by the book’s cover image with the heart palpitating description of Saminu’s execution. One then gets taken off that pedestal with the flashback to Alaba’s beginnings.
In 263 pages, one walks the lives of men who get circumstanced (or not) into crime and with the driving factor of the bank loot stashed somewhere, and everyone wanting it for themselves, the reader is in for a crime thriller that ends rather sadly. The novel is a Yoruba classic. I can only hope for its translation into English.
