The Anambra state correspondent of Blueprint newspapers, Comrade Okechukwu Onuegbu, has unveiled his first novel, The Adventures of a Determined Child, a two hundred pages works of fiction.
Onuegbu, whose other published works include two collection of poems, the Songs from a Solemn Mind and the Mirror of the Minds, a short story (The Mysterious Housekeeper) and a health book, Diet Guides ( Tips to healthy living), says the book published in print by Devoice Creative Network would be accessible in all bookshops nationwide from October 1st.
The author, who disclosed this in a statement, explained that the Adventures of a Determined Child, which according to him, is equally sold on Amazon, is a story of a youngster born into a family of story tellers whose experience as educational disadvantaged home disallowed him from pursuing his academic goals.
“The hero, Okwuchukwu also known in this book as Okwy, was the ninth and youngest child in an educationally disadvantaged and economically backward home. His parents were uneducated and saw nothing good in education and as a result, forced all their children to drop out of school whilst in primary school. The eldest child, a girl was married at the age of sixteen after completing her primary education. Her younger brothers with the exception of Okwy all abandoned their education to become apprentices otherwise known as igba boyi.
“Okwy, like the stubborn housefly, went to secondary school and thereafter insisted on university education. This decision set the family on fire, yet he persisted. In annoyance, his eldest brother who ought to bear the cost of Okwy’s education, decided to get married in order to frustrate his dream of attending a tertiary institution. To actualise his dream, Okwy engaged in several ventures and managed to acquire an Ordinary National Diploma (OND) from a polytechnic.
“When no company was ready to employ him with his OND certificate and he had no money to further his education to obtain either a Higher National Diploma (HND) or Bachelor’s Degree from a university, he sought for greener pastures outside the shores of the country and in the course of that, fell into the hands of human traffickers. The journey exposed Okwy to many harrowing experiences including drinking the urine of young girls. But when he narrowly escaped death and returned to his country, he his dreams were actualised through a dint of hard-work,” he noted.
