Daily Trust - the online edition

Nagaga is a country where nothing goes in accordance with internationally accepted standards. It is a country on the brink of political, economic, and social disaster: a country where the outcome of elections is totally non-reflective of the wishes of the electorate; what is more, when aggrieved parties go to election tribunals, the judges are either manipulated or, if they are incorruptible, shoved aside to make way for those who will deliver the desired judgement.

Economically, the country’s future has been adjudged by experts to be "bleak", that "danger is imminent", and that "the economic eclipse of this country is imminent". Those who find themselves unemployed discover that, unless they are able and willing to make "sacrifices" or have influential guarantors, they are doomed. They are told point-blank that "Unless you give, your appointment letter will be given to willing ones".

On campuses, students are made to pay for marks, in cash or with their bodies if they are women. Although the practice is frowned upon by a number of lecturers, the situation is so bad that students from descent homes find the environment very suffocating. In addition, the students themselves are so warped that they are willing to commit murder to have access to any girl they fancy.

Those (particularly girls) who are not fortunate enough to go to school, or whose parents are gullible enough to fall for empty words, are being packaged and sent abroad to work in brothels. The women who engage in the business of this trafficking are the wives of ministers, ambassadors, and other influential personalities. One of them gets caught and she tries to bribe her way through, asking the officer in charge of checking this sort of thing to tell his oga "that I have paid in his share of the deal into his account".

Life in the country becomes so unbearable for some that they aspire to leave it by hook or by crook. And while those left behind idolise the lucky ones and dream of the day they too will join their fellows in the developed world, it is revealed that they too are, in fact, not enjoying a bed of roses. They go there to engage in all sorts of degrading chores. Some end up in prisons where they are paroled to wash the clothes, sweep the houses, and serve the old mothers of prison officers.

Back home, unemployed youths are made to commit dastardly acts by the wealthy who are bent on getting political or economic benefits. Some are made to steal other people’s vital organs to be used in witchcraft and those who run foul of the influential get themselves thrown into police cells where bugs and hardened criminals keep them company. Compassion has become so rare that children of school age are subjected to inhuman treatment and forced into child labour.

Everywhere you turn to, the Nagagan (read Nigerian) society is in shambles. A journalist, Kuku, whose father, Vanga, fell victim to an assassination because of his insistence that politics must be played according to the book, laments over all of this. A novel satirising the sorry state of the Nigerian society, The Last Man Standing is, in effect, a series of short stories put together into one narrative by the thread of events. They are, however, clearly marked by the sudden end of the individual events—i.e. most do not have logical endings. That may be a reflection of the society itself, where nothing appears to move in a logical direction.

One other thing that stands out from the book is the fact that in many cases, Kuku, through whose eyes (or pen) the rot in the society is explored, reports the incidents not actively as a witness, but passively as a third party. To narrate some stories, for instance, he quotes his colleagues or other papers. Although it is understandable that, as a journalist, he is expected to have a beat, he leaves some of the narration half way and relates what he read from other sources because he was not able to continue with the investigation.

But that may also be a reflection of the society and, in particular, the attitude of journalists who appear passive in the face of all that corruption because if they reveal some of the things that are happening, they will be killed. As a colleague of Kuku’s told him, "Everybody likes to read your incisive reports, but…someday, you may find yourself battling to save your life…". The colleague informs kuku that "gentlemen of the press realised that only mad men fight against armed men". The only editor who refused to toe the line one day received a "press release" which he "inquisitively opened…and ignorantly inhaled his death".

Because Kuku dedicates himself to his job as a journalist in a relatively struggling newspaper—his boss found it difficult to even register the paper because he was not willing to give bribe, a necessary ingredient for the smooth running of any business—he discovers that he has become, wittingly or unwittingly, isolated. His girlfriend disowns him because he has taken a risky job, and he stays away from his village and, ultimately, his mother because he cannot afford to bring home bags of rice and money, which is expected of him like others who leave for the city.

But Kuku’s decision to become a journalist is a result of a number of factors: he happens to be one of the graduates who can neither afford to make sacrifices nor find influential persons to say something on their behalf to get jobs. And his doggedness in shunning corruption is a result of his resolve to implement his father’s will to the latter. As he was dying, Chief Vanga had told his son that: "This country called Nagaga is out of kilter. It is the type where one plus one has refused to be two and would never be, if care is not taken. It is a place where if you cannot beat them, you either join them or speedily vacate the hot zone. I’ve tried to fight a just cause, but my efforts have landed me in this mess: the victim of an assassination attempt…. [T]ell the generations unborn that I, Chief Vanga, advise them to rather be political observers than participants in the polity of Nagaga until a revolution comes".

Since, as a university graduate, politics (which he cannot join), for someone in his circumstances, is the means through which society can be changed, he has to take the ironic option of being an active observer—to become a freelance reporter. And while reporting the ills and evils happening in the society, he now and then says what he believes is responsible for the rot even if he does not proffer a solution. For example, after staying on the campus of his alma mater, where he failed to talk the admission officer into admitting his cousin (for obvious reasons), he reflects that: "One of the factors responsible for campus vices is academic pressure on the students", because the lecturers arrange crash lectures to meet up with the academic calendar which is often disrupted by strikes.

Kuku, who discovers that he is virtually alone in his struggles, soon finds the truism in his father’s words that you either join them or vacate the hot zone staring him in the face. In his final assignment as a journalist, he witnesses the arrest of a drug trafficker who happens to be the wife of a police chief. The woman, who returns to the country dressed in military uniform, gets accosted by an anti-drug agency officer whom she tries to bribe.

The officer suspects foul play and calls the military to confirm that the woman arrested is not a soldier. The officer then calls the police but, seeing that the suspect looks pregnant, suggests that she be taken to hospital where it is discovered that the protrusion of the woman’s belly is not due to pregnancy but the ingestion of bags of illicit drugs. Police officers appear shortly after to take the woman away. Kuku has the chance to take video clips of the proceedings, but he never gets to write the story.

After returning to his office thinking that he has a scoop, Kuku escapes being carted away by two men, one of whom he recognises as one of the officers who took away the drug trafficker from the hospital. A while earlier, he has heard that the officer who arrested the drug trafficker was killed by armed robbers, and a nurse calls him to say the doctor who operated on the suspect has also been killed.

Kuku immediately decides to "vacate the hot zone" and runs to his village, where he gets killed, eventually, by witchcraft. Thus the last man standing among the debris of Nagaga suffered the same fate as his father. This in contravention of Kuku’s father’s belief that "In the history of our race, no one has ever used charms against us and succeeded". This, perhaps, clearly shows the depth to which the author’s hope in the society has sunk.

But, even though the last man standing for ‘due process and the rule of law’ fell in the end, hope was not absolutely lost; there was one institution that has, in the face of intimidation and inducement from corrupt politicians, refused to budge: the labour union.

The Last Man Standing has attempted to look at the myriad problems confronting the Nigerian society which have made people of good will to resign themselves to waiting for a revolution. Some readers may, however, want to see each of these problems addressed individually so as to have as captivating a narrative as that in the last but one chapter of the book.

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