Interview with Albrin Junior (Alex Aigbike)

'Yogi Berra, Baseball Hall of Famer and former MLB coach, put it this way, "90% of the game is half mental". What a good book can do for your mindset is equivalent to what good nutrition can do to your physical performance.'- Inma Zanoguera (2016)

Alex Aigbike (also known by his pen name Albrin Junior) our man who says he plays basketball has a literary work called Naked Coin out in bookshops. While he may have got us angry by not infusing sports into it; in line with our 'read a good book to improve performance both on and off sporting activities initiative called #readthegamescript, we still going to celebrate him (with an interview) and his work (with a critical review-and we will add own sports aspects to make it more entertaining [hopefully]). Kindly enjoy the long drive.

The Critic:
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In one of the English translations of a popular book is the phrase '...because time and unexpected events, overtake (man).... For man doesn't know his time. Just as fish is caught in an evil net and birds are caught in trap, so the sons of men are ensnared in a time of disaster, when it suddenly over takes them'.

The 'man' here is Ikenna's family including his still living father (Nna; a guru at draft), mother (Nne), his sister (Ndidi), his relative (Igbane) and as discovered later his half-brother Chijioke [a rifle and archery specialist who has a eye to representing Nigeria at Common Wealth Games] and Efosa who didn't die thankfully but lived to marry Ndidi, after he meet her in 'Abia State'. The family excluding Chijioke lived in Benin [where Ikenna an egg/sack race champion and a 'Bend it like David Beckham' specialist gets to play a lot of soccer].

The 'time' rests like butter between two loaves of bread in between the years 1967and 1970, when the two and half year's Nigerian Civil War happened. The 'unexpected events & disaster that suddenly over takes them' alongside the romance is what makes Naked Coin an interesting read.

There is 'romance aka roma roma' in this war setting, and it's not about Ndidi and Efosa par say. No! It's about Ikenna and 'your smile that makes my smile, smile', a romantic line phrase Ikenna used to which I turned into an alias for [2021 Olympic bound Nigeria basketball team member] Ivie Osezwa, who Ikenna directed the romance phrase sentence to. [Their Love and Basketball was actually the motivation for the year 2000 film that was written by Gina Prince-Bythewood and produced by Spike Lee et al that grossed +$27 million. Nigerian type of cona cona wantintin love certainly inspires].

Efosa and Ndidi [who uses playing fitness sports and scrabble as means to get away from home to see her ayo aka abula {a type of Yoruba sport} playing Benin man friend] were just nice distractions created by the author to keep us reading; It's the same strategy he used with the jealousy scene when Nne finds out at the same time with Nna, Ikenna and Ndidi that Nna has another son (Chijioke) from another woman with the name Mrs. Anulika who they met when they had to find their way to 'Abia State', as they were setup to believe they needed to run their lives.

The story shows the unexpected change of fortune of this Igbo family at the breakout of the war. Though they live outside the territory called Biafra, the tribal sentiments and suspicion affects them. It is at this time Ikenna who is seeking admission into the University, meets and falls in love with ‘your simile that makes my smile, smile’, who too is equally seeking admission as well.

To know if 'your smile that makes my smile, smile' and Ikenna reunite for a continuation of their 'roma roma' after the war separates them, I need to leave the comfort of my home, do a 'Tour de France' to Benin City of the Mid Western State (later Bendel State, now Edo State) and become 'by fire by force' a member of their family without their consent. This I did successfully.

Ikenna's family [with their fine 65, 000 seater sports center, just big enough for Meadowlark Lemon 'The Clown Prince of Basketball to entertain the warring factions and make them forget their beef], were well to do but lost it, and would be driven to try to recapture it especially by Nne after the war, who moved from a normal house wife to murderer, not once, not twice but thrice-and if you consider Chijioke's death to be from her directly, that would be four times a murderer.

The author did well to keep us glued; gave us many twist and turns. I found myself later scanning [and long jumping] paragraphs quickly sometimes to get to the end to see if Ikenna would reunite with Ivie and hopefully not die. [After their many quarrels on which sport is better and 'your smile...' trying to teach Ikenna how to play and him trying to teach her with a lot roma roma intrigues why shouldn't I?]

'Die!' Death! For a war setting, if death was not part of the story, it would have been like leopard not having spots; it would have been totally incomplete; totally unusual. Death came quickly for many. It took Igbane, Chijioke, a certain Mr. Chigbo (alongside his solider man), [many young promising sporting stars]; and very emotionally for me Nne's mother who she had not seen for more than twenty years or so (after Nne ran away with her lover turned husband); right there at mother and daughter's reunion [and the basket & soccer balls punctured by the bombs alongside fly infected dead bodies still wearing their sports jersey, though now torn and stained which pained Kobe Bryant when he saw things first hand and again prompted him into charity action].

For a book attempting to make Lagos State Secondary School Literature Scheme of work of recommended books, the authors avoidance of (the use of too many) big English words, was ok; this a trap young or amateur authors fall into. With my busy schedule, I certainly didn't want to consult the dictionary too often, unless they were ‘slam-dunkish’ in nature words.

Language level was at Junior Secondary School, so it's easy to comprehend by educated levels above Junior Secondary school. As I was taught, if one is writing for undergraduates, you use the language that Senior Secondary school can comprehend for them. For PhD students, use P.G.D or undergrads language. And if they refuse to comprehend after using their language, basketball ankle break or soccer toros or lawn/table tennis smash etc them [the way Peter Aluma of Nigeria’s mens basketball national team and Liberty University U.S.A, taught me to in order to get them involved].

What attempted to kill my interest though were: poor choice of words for a 1960s Benin setting, typos among others. One was 'Guy' (a nickname for males among young people today). 2020 may be ruled by Americana but in the 1960, it was 'Britico'. Ikenna who was the narrator for the author was in his twenties during the sixties, so he would have being in his fifties in the year 2020-an old man already. 'Guy' certainly won't still be in his 'vocab' to say his children or grand children.
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Yes there was Igbo language been spoken, as well as Nigerian type of English language. That's naturally and understandable. The author using them gave authenticity to his literary work but in Benin, Pidgin English is the order of the day. I didn't experience it. While the saying 'your smile that makes my smile smile' is actually ok, I would have thought he would have expressed it in pigdin- 'na your smile, dey make my smile, smile'; (unfortunately I can't add 'you dey feel me so', as it's a modern pigdin saying) or he would have attempted to toast in the native Benin language-the author is from Edo state by the way.

A part that would have been interesting was the Igbo versus Yoruba scene, which Nne and her tenant neighbor, Iya Rotimi were given the roles to handle. It died out just as it started, leaving me to wonder why it was brought up in the first instance. Did the author chicken out or was it edited out, leaving just the intro as a strategy? That part could have been used as lessons on tribal tolerance leading to national unity to our young and vibrant youth in highly tribalized no trust of other tribes in our society but it now amounted to a lost opportunity.

When Mr.Oyibo a friend of the family informed Nna that they (Nna's family) had been sold out by Papa Rotimi, to which the decision to leave Benin was made, I knew it was a setup, and Nna's house was about to change ownership to Mr. Oyibo. That was an easy read. I had read something like that in another novel, years ago. Then, developing the Iya Rotimi versus Nne part, would been useful here to teach that Yorubas are good people, as in the end it was not a Yoruba man that deceived them but someone from their own- although the author didn't say Mr.Oyibo was Igbo, he did infer that Mr. Oyibo was not Yoruba.

The novel did inform about Mr. Chigbo and solider-man are Biafrans. They both as Igbos did plan to kill Nna and Ikenna, then rape Nne and Ndidi-all Igbos. So Igbo can kill Igbo (like Nne did to Chijioke indirectly), rape Igbo, just like any other non Igbo tribe and Yoruba can save Igbo, just like Igbos will do for another Igbo.
Also predictable was the killing of Mr. Chigbo and his solider-man.

Quality printing was also an issue. There were parts that were faded, thus I could not digest any information-hopefully this and others will be corrected by the next printing.
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There was the issue of the use of the term 'Abia State'. During the Civil War, there was no Abia State during the Nigerian Civil War, unless I didn't inquire well. Also, am not sure if Abia as a word, town or place existed then. I did find out from online research that Abia is a four abbreviation of the most densely populated regions (Aba, Bende, Isuikwuato and Afikpo) that make up the state formed in 1991, at least twenty one years after the Civil War ended.
The author erred there. He should have consulted the history books. Maybe it's a case of poetic license-if so, why for this aspect? What did he hope to gain?

He equally erred by not letting me experience the cannibalism resulting from deep starvation history books informed me about as I toured with the family. No mention of the kwashiorkor infected children, smell from dead bodies which served a fluid and food delight to the house flies and other animals-only bodies falling as they walked. [Knowing david Stern if he knew such would happen, he would have ensured he put no war in the NBA/NBPA Collecctive Bargaining Agreement deal as he cared].

For a war that took close to three years, it looked like three days. If more of this real life horrors etc were there, the literary work would have been classified a 'gothic fiction' fit for turning into a Nollywood show piece.
I was able to locate online information like that of Captain Ben Gbulie; a Civil War veteran's interview from the Vanguard newspaper. There was that from Cornel Daily Sun; Vol. 86; Number 73 dated third February 1970 with title 'Biafran Cannibalism'. On rape and torture which are triplets to death during a war, if you exclude starvation etc, then more gory scenes should have been added. Or is it a case of the publisher cutting out information like these to save cost of typing, printing etc, as I have heard happens? The 'disjoint' on page 230 and 231 resulting in the joining of two incomplete paragraphs or sentences suggests this is what has happened.

Whatever the case, secondary school students and sport are at a loss here as they will have to wait a longer time to learn from history. History which can help teach unity instead of the face off major tribes have against each other in Nigeria or global unity as dearly needed-the U.S.A Iran faceoff and blown plane etc have certainly got many scared and the role sports played (if any) during & after the war, the role sports played in fostering unity.

Two stand outs: man's injustice to man can come from the same tribe-know who really are your friends; and tomorrow can never be predicted accurately. Things that at normal or good now can go bad in a second, but if one picks the good out of bad, one can still succeed. All in all, for a first timer literary work, it's a good start. 

Interview link
Ohio (z) Okhai Elakhe is a communication executive with interests in sports, brand architecture, research, technology, entertainment and the arts. Find him via the brand name At Ohiookhai via fb, Instagram and gmail blog. @ohiookhai via twitter.