Fresh Efo Riro: A Review of DianaAbasi’s Story Collection by Olumide Olaniyan

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Short story collection
Reviewer's rating: 4 on a scale of 5

Efo Riro & other stories by Iquo DianaAbasi is a potpourri of everything in today’s world. The author engages you right from the cover page with the book’s title, Efo Riro & other stories, its illustration, which is a conglomeration of issues narrated in the work in diagrammatic format. The cover page depicts issues of love, lust, betrayal, modernisation, obsolescence, assertiveness, violence, gender, equity, struggle, and so on, as represented with mammary glands, Cupid’s arrow stabbing a heart, a bottle of poison, a TV set, a hut, a microphone and several other icons telling you the stories in this book, even before you open the first page. If there is one book that its cover page tells its story, it is Efo Riro & other stories. Iquo DianaAbasi book says no to the stance that you cannot judge a book by its cover. Its cover is good, so also are its bough and viscera. 

Iquo DianaAbasi started on a strong note with the first story, Efo Riro, written in pidgin English with a Yoruba title (pages 1-3). She narrates the story of a driver who lost his boss’s car to a swindler because he was carried away with enjoyment that awaited him at the Chop & Quench Buka. The story, which was set in Lagos, warns readers not to be foolish because of (an expected) pleasure. As Lagosians are wont to say, “If someone lives in Lagos and he/she is unwise, even if he/she goes to Western Germany, he would still be unwise.” The story in its hilarity also reminds one of Peter Enahoro’s hilarious book: How to be a Nigerian. Efo Riro tori sweet die, may we not chop and quench in life o. Iquo DianaAbasi is saying you should not only say amen, you should also be wise.

This book, published by Parresia Publishers Ltd, Lagos, has a total of nineteen short stories. The stories are short, issue-focused, captivating, easy to read; each telling a distinct story. 

You cannot but notice the story entitled That Place, That Night. A sad tale of what young girls go through with unwanted pregnancy. Iquo DianaAbasi started this story with a girl attempting to dispose of a dead foetus. ‘It is risky evacuating a twenty-two-week old foetus, especially for a womb that has been evacuated three times in the last eight months.’ (p.27). This statement by the doctor [in the story] says it all. Furthermore, he (the doctor) was also surprised that the young lady (Joyce) had conceived again so quickly despite having ‘… one of her fallopian tubes … blocked.’, (p.27). Joyce finally lost her womb after repeated abortions. Tom, her boyfriend was murdered. Like Joyce and Tom, several young people are being destroyed around the world today, because no one is guiding them on issues of sexuality and challenges of adolescence. 

Kissed by the Tarmac is another story that shows what girls go through carrying the burden of their family. Emem’s father had disappeared. He never returned from work. She and her mother struggled to make ends meet. She was harassed by a village teacher, who wanted to marry her at seventeen. This story depicts family struggle, girl-child molestation, widowhood, pain and tears of mothers. ‘Relax! I won’t hurt you, my sweet princess’ (p.157). Etim, the village teacher told Emem. How many girls have been so deceived by those lines, because of their struggle to achieve their dream?

DianaAbasi puts on the front burner, today’s challenges that must be addressed. She confidently and freely uses Nigerian colloquial expressions. She prepares her Efo Riro & other stories with locust beans (iru, ogiri, dawadawa) rather than using imported curry and thyme; she isn’t interested in appeasement. Like most postmodernists, she believes that one’s voice should count in creativity, and that, that itself, is creativity. 

 Efo Riro & Other Stories is available at Page Book Connossieurs and other bookstores across Nigeria.

About Reviewer

Olumide Olaniyan is a poet, satirist, historian and thinker. His book debut was a collection of poems, Lucidity of Absurdity, published in March 2017. His poem, Behind Closed Doors, won the maiden edition of Communicators League Creative Writing Contest 2017. Several of his poems, including, Déjà vu and Dire Silence have been adapted into community dramas. Another poem, One Sojourn of the Moon received an honorary mention in the Mandela Day Poetry Competition 2016.