The Extinction of Menai. Chuma Nwokolo

The Extinction of Menai - Chuma Nwokolo


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      The Extinction of Menai

      Modern African Writing

      from Ohio University Press

      Laura Murphy and Ainehi Edoro, Series Editors

      This series brings the best African writing to an international audience.

      These groundbreaking novels, memoirs, and other literary works showcase the most talented writers of the African continent. The series also features works of significant historical and literary value translated into English for the first time. Moderately priced, the books chosen for the series are well crafted, original, and ideally suited for African studies classes, world literature classes, or any reader looking for compelling voices of diverse African perspectives.

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      Andrée Chedid

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       On Black Sisters Street: A Novel

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       Mrs. Shaw: A Novel

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       The Extinction of Menai

      Chuma Nwokolo

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2298-4

      CHUMA NWOKOLO

       The Extinction of Menai

      A NOVEL

      Ohio University Press

      Athens

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       ohioswallow.com

      © 2018 by Chuma Nwokolo

      All rights reserved

      To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).

      Printed in the United States of America

      Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper

      28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Nwokolo, Chuma, author.

      Title: The extinction of Menai : a novel / Chuma Nwokolo.

      Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, [2018] | Series: Modern African writing series

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017053684| ISBN 9780821422984 (softcover) | ISBN 9780821446201 (pdf)

      Subjects: LCSH: Nigeria—Fiction. | Nigerian fiction (English) | BISAC: FICTION / General. | LITERARY COLLECTIONS / African.

      Classification: LCC PR9387.9.N947 E93 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053684

      Article 10.1

      Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights

      All language communities have equal rights.

      Prologue

      Notes from the National Historian

      Nigeria Archives, Abuja

      6th March, 1990

      Today, six Menai children died from the effects of the 1980 Trevi inoculations in Kreektown. A half-naked procession of a few hundred men and women carried their dead twenty kilometres to the Sontik State capital in Ubesia. Police trucks arrived to keep order, pouring out dozens of armed men, but the topless mourners were tragic, not threatening, and they flowed past checkpoint after checkpoint, chanting Menai dirges, provoking sympathy from policemen and an unprecedented empathy from the public, so that by the time the six bodies were laid out by the gates of the Governor’s office in Ubesia, the numbers of topless mourners had swollen into the tens of thousands. . . .

      No mass hysteria of this nature had ever been reported in Nigeria before, or since.

      22nd April, 1990

      An attempted coup led by Major Gideon Orkar failed to unseat the government of General Ibrahim Babangida, which had been in power since 1985. It was the bloodiest coup attempt in Nigerian history. Many of the plotters were from Sontik State in the Niger Delta region of the country, and the coup had been inspired by the feeling of exploitation of the region’s minority ethnic nations. After the failed coup there was increasing talk of secession in Sontik State.

      17th May, 1990

      Denying any connection with the coup of April 1990 or the secession agitations, the government established several commissions and enquiries to attend to minority issues, including the Petroleum Communities Development Fund (PCDF), the Department of Research and Cultural Documentation (DRCD), and a certain Psychiatric Enquiry by Dr. Ehi Fowaka. . . .

      * * *

       Extracts from the 1990 Interim Psychiatric Evaluation of the Menai People


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