For Lagosians or Nigerians or anyone remotely familiar with Lagos, it is difficult to read Pemi Aguda’s debut novel, One Leg on Earth, and not think of the Eko Atlantic city, that new and humongous settlement emerging out of what we used to call Bar Beach.
Eko Atlantic city is not mentioned once in the pages of the novel, but the image of the city rears up constantly.
Aguda calls the city in which Yosoye, the protagonist of the book, is serving her fatherland Omi City, a clever rechristening of Lagos’ city of promise, the city which in a matter of years will host the United States’ biggest consulate in the world.
Like the Eko Atlantic city, Aguda’s Omi City is emerging from the once-upon-a-time Bar Beach. Almost everything about this city is similar to its real-life kin, the one that when finished will rival the best real estates not just in Africa but in the world.
But, unlike Eko Atlantic city, there is something else about Omi City, something sinister, something absolutely crazy, something Eko Atlantic city and Lagos should never experience.
The larger Lagos refuses the backseat in this novel. We see Lagos where news breaks at the speed of sound: Before you properly digest one, another is upon you. We see suicides but of a different kind.
We see that Lagos evokes the memory of the mythic Esu with two-sided face of different hues as though intent on causing confusion— leaving a resident or a visitor to choose what to believe about this city of promise.
We see that Lagos has grown bloated as if having gorged more than its digestive system can process.
We see a city with no sense of time, where almost nothing starts on schedule. Even when you wish not to be tardy, traffic can mess things up. So productive is the gridlock that anything can happen while in it.
The novel is like a creative critique of the Eko Atlantic city. Once upon a time, along what we used to call Bar Beach and its surrounding areas, thousands of people lived, worked, traded, and fished by the ocean. Their homes were modest, often vulnerable to the harsh moods of the sea, but they were homes nonetheless. Soon, these communities found themselves in the path of one of Africa’s most ambitious urban development projects and in 2008, residents of the Bar Beach settlements were evicted as preparations for the massive land reclamation scheme began.
Human rights advocates, researchers, and former residents still recount stories of homes demolished, families displaced, and livelihoods disrupted. For these people, the birth of Eko Atlantic was not simply the creation of a new city but the end of a familiar world.
Avoiding the danger of a single story requires getting the other side, the side of the Lagos State government and the project’s developers. Till this day, they maintain that the reclamation was necessary to save Victoria Island and adjoining areas from the relentless advance of coastal erosion.
Truth be told: For decades, the Atlantic Ocean steadily ate away at the shoreline, claiming land and threatening property. It used to be so bad that several properties adjacent the Bar Beach were abandoned but the construction of the massive sea wall, popularly known as the Great Wall of Lagos, offered both a protective shield and the foundation for a new city. Yet questions linger about insufficient attention to the people who bore the brunt of that transformation.
Aguda, in this novel, captures both sides of the divide and shows brilliantly that the project, though an engineering marvel, is equally a reminder that every grand urban project carries human consequences and raises the poser: when cities are built, how do we ensure that the people who dwelt there first are not forgotten?
Lest I forget, though Lagos is a major character in the novel, the main character is Yosoye, who while trying to find a new life in Lagos, becomes pregnant and decides to keep it despite the unpleasant circumstances surrounding it, a situation that mimics her own birth, some sort of history repeating itself.
Her pregnancy comes at a time when Lagos and, by extension Omi City, is experiencing something otherworldly: Suicide by expectant mothers who are simply walking or jumping into bodies of water, leaving families and friends confused, the authorities and the general public wondering, wondering about what is going on.
The situation bribgs dread to Yosoye, who is also pregnant, but not even the plea of her mother, Olabisi, is enough to make her abandon Omi City and Lagos for Ibadan, the city she sees as so infinitesimal to accommodate her gigantic dreams.
The author, in resolving the conflicts, uses water as a key metaphor in this work, which reinforces the image of Lagos as a carnivorous city. She makes it clear that water was before land so water is life and it can be redemptive.
Aguda’s prose is adorned, it is elaborate, it is maximalist, and it is beautiful. She appears to not just use words, almost every word seems to have a reason for being where it is. Nearly every sentence is functional and almost every scene contributes something to the equation. She, in short, comes off as someone who understands syntax and deploys it effectively.
One Leg on Earth, a potential award-winner, is one of those debut novels that present the author as fully made.
If you are the type who wants to skip a paragraph or a sentence or a scene, you may not just miss the artistry of Pemi Aguda’s prose, but the essence of the unfolding plot because each of them is like a block and playsa pivotal role in the construction of the complex house that this phenomenal work is.
***Olukorede S. Yishau is the author of two novels: In The Name of Our Father and After The End; a collection of short stories: Vaults of Secrets; and a travel book: United Countries of America and Other Travel Tales. He is concluding work on his third novel. He lives in Houston, Texas.