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Title: Radio Sunrise
Author: Anietie Isong
Publisher: Narrative Landscape, Lagos
year: 2021
Pagination: 2021
REVIEWER: Henry Akubuiro
Legendary British journalist, Anthony Terrell Sampson, once said, “In America, journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history; in Britain, as an extension of conversation.” In Nigeria, however, journalism functions on both wings of play.
Anietie Isong’s novel, Radio Sunrise, has a radio journalist, Ifiok, as a central character, caught up in the cesspool of Nigerian socio-political filth where he discovers, to his chagrin, the rot in the system is grimed on multiple surfaces, even from within.
The fiction offers insight into militancy in the Niger Delta and its debilitating politics. It makes us realise, too, that, in a capitalist society of a developing country like ours, art programmes that touch the hearts of many can easily be sacrificed when a fat envelope is placed on the table from the pulpit.
Here, the main character serves as a periscope with which we see contemporary Nigerian society and its perilous alleys. The author reviews the social contract between the individual and the society in postcolonial Africa and how it has come short.
Aniete’s narrative goes beyond recounting the workaday life of a roving journalist in the Lagos metropolis, his chronicles and threatened radio drama. There is a love angle that throbs and stokes passion at one end and fizzles and flickers at another end.
The plot begins near The Lord Is My Shepherd Foods canteen in Lagos with a reported missing penis case: a man has just accused another of taking away his manhood mysteriously. But when the accuser is compelled to undress, his John Thomas is found intact. Talk of false alarm! The news is subsequently reported by Ifiok on Radio Sunrise where he works.
The narrator recounts the theatrics of a mobile salesman whose “natural key to good health” drug being hawked in a city bus can cure anything from malaria to cholera. The author invites us to look at this survival strategy which raises a question mark on the country’s health regulatory agency.
A sudden pall is cast on the narrator’s popular radio programme, The River, on Sunrise Radio. When the pro-government general manager, aka Apollo Man, announces that The River will be taken off air because the radio station cannot afford to fund the programme, Ifiok is crestfallen. It is more heartbreaking when it is replaced with Hour of Holy Anointing Fire, a church programme.
“Shame on our leaders… for ignoring the arts. May our forefathers judge them,” Chief Ojo, an elderly fan of the drama programme, curses on hearing about the development. Two attempts for sponsorship for the radio programme fail to materialise. Also, Ifiok is disappointed that the media, which is the fourth estate of the realm, is not totally innocent of societal putrefaction. At Radio Sunrise, he and his colleagues are taught to regularly plagiarise news stories from other media sources, which is an indictment of ethical journalism. “We are a nation of thieves,” admits Ifiok.
There are Delilahs everywhere. Having failed to lure Ifiok during her first unannounced visit to his house, Sarah, a new intern’s romantic bait, eventually pays off in the radio studio and continues at home before Yetunde, Ifiok’s lover, runs onto them dancing naked, walking out of his life momentarily. The sack of Boniface, his best friend at Radio Sunrise, for allowing a caller during a call-in programme to abuse the president on air, doesn’t go well with Ifiok.
Ifiok’s travel to his hometown, Ibok, “the land of yellow soil and plentiful palm trees”, in his native Niger Delta midway into the narrative, leads us to different social problems different from what obtains in the Lagos setting. He is welcomed by a horrible gas flare. His mission here is to do a documentary on ex-militants. A visit to Ubong, the vice chairman of Ibok Local Council, exposes his hypocritical nature. His documentary assignment takes him to a training programme organised by the government for ex-militants.
Ifiok is also on hand to witness the revolt of the ex-militants who have resumed their attacks, having concluded the government isn’t serious about the amnesty programme, kidnaping the local government chairman thereby forcing Ubong to go into hiding.
Sadly, on his return to Lagos, Ifiok is told by Apollo Man that his documentary script won’t be aired, because it’s not favourable to the government. When he protests, he is immediately suspended. The continued restiveness and threat by the youths of the Niger Delta weakens Ifiok’s hope for a better future, but it sums up the sorry postcolonial condition being depicted by the author every reader must read and ponder on.
