Ennul

- inla, a soc iopath ic pol iceman.

Thoroughly incapable of learn

ing, Kabiru drops out of school

I

to become a commercial bus driver, an occupation he eventually

finds himself mentally incapable of.

A stolen certi ficate gets him into the pol ice force where he

pursues a career of extortion and terror. He makes friends with

a robbery gang to share their loot, but soon kil ls them in a disa

greement about sharing. His income drastically reduced, Kabiru

resorts to indiscriminate fleecing of street miscreants. Eventually

though, a vengeful old man with a voodoo vendetta summarily

terminates his criminal career.

There is also the essential assortment of hopeful adventurers,

including Dennis Tom-Dick-Harry, amigrant from the violent, oil

rich swamplands, who comes to Lagos seeking a new and easier

life. It is a dream that seem destined never to be realised because

his family has suddenly grown as large as a football team. Again,

there isAJiyu Mai-Guard, the eponymous drifter from the hot, dozy

and desert Nor th , dreaming also to come to Lagos not only to

escape the languorof his village but to possibly also become rich.

In Lagos, l ife proves to be really not what he expects it to be

and he soon, again, craves the sanity of the place he left behind.

Duncan Hill is the outsider looking in. Duncan is a British com

puter engineer visiting Lagos on holidayswith his newwife. Feeling

very adventurous and desirous of getting a good feel of the city, he

f inds accommodation in a hotel on the mainland, where he meets

with a shifty London businessman, who soon disappearswith

a large amount of his clients' money.

A case of mistaken identity nearly gets Duncan

lynched bya mob. Regardless of this unhap

pyexperience, when Duncan is offered a

job in Lagos bya friend, he is able to ~ .

an opportunity too good to miss, beyund

the social imperfections of the city.

How and where do all these disparate

threads connect? For Herbie and Tom-Dick

Harry, the courses of the ir lives col lide in a

Lagos Molue bus. It is an extremely hilarious

encounter, which sends Herbie on his way to a

psychiatric hospital where he would meet Kabiru

the policeman as well as Femi Falase, who has suf

fered an unfortunate nervous breakdown. Present

here as well is an assortmen, of other patients of

various miseries. Here, life in Lagos succinctly gets

summed up in discussion byJamba, oneof the inmates:

'You know, I read a newspaper art ic le once. And the

general argument is that there are so many people out

there in the streets doing nothing except embarrassingour

government by behaving like lunatics. Government people

say they are about ten million in Lagos alone. By simple

ari thmetic, there are three hundred and fif ty million lunatics in

this our beloved country, excluding the Federal Capital Territory.'

The doctor's office at this hosp ita l is the opening scene of

the book. It is also where it ends - with the doctor engaged in a

discussion with Femi and his wife.

Femi,

tired and defeated, finds

himself torn between the choices of a quiet future tucked away in

the mental hospital and the need to remain strong for the sake of

his two children. Love seems destined to win.

The pleasureof readingA Conference in Ennui l ies mainly in the

selection of impeccably rendered non-sequiturs rather than in an

epiphany or surprise achieved by the aggregate. The characters

are believable and look real enough to actuallywalk of f the pages

of the book. The background canvas of the story is of historical

facts and all conspire to nearly make the story to be regarded as

non-fiction. Indeed, if one were to write a post-oil boom history

of Nigeria, it might no t be possible to do it any livelier.

7Gofiq Adu is afreelance editor and media consultant.

TheNEWS July 08, 2013 35