Adanna is the long-awaited girl in a family of all-boys children. Will the father’s overindulgence make or mar her life and future? Asks SAMUEL ODAUDU
The novel, A Father’s Rosebud written by Mark Irechukwu, is a 148 pages book published in 2024 by Pen-Impact Writing and Publishing Enterprise in Abuja. It is a fluent story set in Umuagu village in Igbo land. The subject matter is deeply rooted in the sentiment anchored on preferences and natural desire for balanced sexes among children in the family. This is more prevalent, especially in families with all-male or all-female children.
In this particular instance, the issue is illustrated through the prism of the family of Mr. Udeh and his wife, Ego, which already has six sons thus sparking off the desperation for a female child. When the girl child, Adanna, is finally born, the huge celebration is worth it; however, instead of uniting the family in a harmonious focus towards the future, Adanna begins to grow with infantile crass behaviours that threaten the family’s peace as a result of Udeh’s excessive affection for his only daughter. This is against repeated protestations and warnings by Adanna’s mother.
Without home discipline, Adanna is a spoilt child, indolent and a character hazard. While Ego wants her daughter well brought up and groomed as a responsible child, future wife and mother whose conduct must be molded through routine domestic activities, Udeh’s over pampering of Adanna is a spoke in the wheel. Udeh forbids Adanna from doing house chores, treats her preferentially by buying a bicycle for only her, she gets whatever she wants, wakes up late, does not go to the farm, she is immune to discipline among other morally detestable behaviours.
Adanna’s character failure is worsened by wrong associations in the school. Udeh’s selective affectionate indulgence on his beloved daughter, which is analogous to the famous Biblical Jacob-Joseph coat of many colours syndrome, is a booby trap for her future..
The fundamental defects in her grooming adumbrated Adanna’s poor academic performances, bed-wetting and repulsive disinclination towards corrective instructions. It took bundling of Adanna to her disciplined, no-nonsense maternal grandmother, Mama Rose, to exorcise her infantile stubborn spirit with consistent and unbendable discipline, must-do daily chores among other children undergoing character and moral rehabilitation.
The moral rejuvenation of Adanna at Mama Rose’s place – after a period of protracted truancies and self alienation – will later culminate in her positive growth in character and academic progress as she graduates successfully from secondary school and the university against all odds. This is where the thematic thrust of the writer berthed.
It is equally fascinating to find a comparative thematic juxtaposition between A Father’s Rosebud and The Potter’s Wheel (1974) by Chukwuemeka Ike, which is indicative that Irechukwu has been receiving tutorials under the tutelage of one of Nigeria and Africa’s master story tellers. The striking, topically complimentary novels invite attention to the endless conversation on the dialectics of didactics in African literature, culture and tradition among old and young writers in the continent.
The upbringing, training and development of a child, in a setting where character counts, is a product of dedicated good parenting, which actually mirrors societal values. So also, virtues of discipline, respect, truthfulness, honesty and good names are still being upheld as badges of nobility in public identity for individuals, families and a people.
While Ike expounded the primordial cultural notion of a male dominated society in lineage continuity predominant among the Igbo ethnicity through Obu, the long awaited son in the family of Mazi Lazarus Maduabuchi and Mama Obu, Irechukwu diametrically dealt with the issue of all-boys and one girl children in the family of Udeh and Ego through Adanna. Obu is spoilt by Mama Obu’s overprotective love devoid of discipline, Adanna’s case is the excessive and morally destructive love of her father, Udeh, a devout Catholic.
The grave concern of Obu’s father over the excessive mother’s love with its attendant ominous consequences for his future is what Adanna’s mother feels concerning Adanna father’s excessive pampering of their only daughter.
The way Maduabuchi sent Obu to a strictly disciplined couple, Teacher Zaccheus Kanu and Madam Deborah Onuekwucha Kanu, at Aka, who are described by Mama Obu as a “wicked man and the witch he has as wife” is the same way Mr. and Mrs. Udeh sent Adanna to a literarily iron-handed Mama Rose at Amaike (pp59-65). Both scenarios are meant for moral and character molding of their children in company of other children of different ages from different backgrounds (pp67-73). It is under the Mama Rose that Adanna learns and experiences positive metamorphosis (pp75-84).
Using the character trait of Adanna and her later positive transformation, Irechukwu is not undermining the desirability of children of balanced sex; what he however finds questionable is the inability of the father to balance the love for his daughter with the requisite concomitant discipline needed for the proper upbringing of Adanna. Just like Obu, thanks to the physical separation of the father from his daughter, she would have derailed in life like some of her school mates and other wayward young girls of her age.
The thematic preoccupation of A Father’s Rosebud has African and universal implication: the implicit danger of self destruction by giving children freedom without borders in the name of affection and care. The writer is therefore suggesting that the best thing that one can bequeath to children, the next generation, is not landed assets and properties, cars, skyscrapers and barns of yams, sophisticated cities whose streets are paved with gold.
It is practical, proper and adequate training to prepare them for the future, a training that truly reflects the emphasis that satisfies our educational certification “In learning and character”. This is summarised in pages 127-137 where Mama Rose, “The Octogenarian” is celebrated by several young men and women who went through her dormitory but have now achieved great feats in their different endeavours.
In Africa, as explored in this novel (also in A Potter’s Wheel), upbringing of children is a training process steeped in institutionalised cultural and moral codes of conduct at homes, farms, communal gatherings, as well as in other layers of formal and informal relationships or settings. For instance, if Adanna was not taken to Mama Rose, she would have become a failed child with a broken future who may never actualise her enviable height as a couple celebrity musicians with her husband. She would have become a moral and character disaster that will bring shame and sorrow to herself, family and the society at large. This conforms with the popular quote that “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
The question is: will modern era overindulgent and intemperate parents/guardians sanction Mama Rose and Teacher Zaccheus Kanu and Madam Deborah Onuekwucha Kanu’s child rehabilitation dormitories or prefer to visit their children/wards at Police Stations and fortified prisons with their favourite snacks, packs of juice, fried rice and chicken?
In this debut novel, the writer has largely succeeded as a promising narrator. His linear plot of the events in the novel, proficient knowledge of Igbo culture, dexterous application of proverbs, language, as well as characterisation are demonstrably impressive.
Irechukwu has been successfully baptised by literary immersion with A Father’s Rosebud, but as it is in arts generally, there is always enough room for improvement. The budding writer can further hone his craft, especially in the skill of handling suspense which sustains reader’s interest. Also, there is a need to sift modern language or slang from rural settings as observed in some of the conversations among the village people. Of course, these do not in any way diminish the beauty and quality of the narrative.
A Father’s Rosebud is a collector’s item for parents, guardians, educationists, teenagers and advocates of revival of African family values. It can be used as a campaign tool in the modern era where corporations, agencies and agents of moral corruption, as well as over protective parents/guardians freely give children and teenagers unrestrained freedom in exchange for their future.
…Odaudu is deputy editor Blueprint Weekend