AFRICAN PROSE ISIDORE OKPEWHO: The Last Duty Comment on the theme of rivalry in the novel

Answer Details

Rivalry drives the action of Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty. Okpewho weaves together sexual, commercial and communal rivalries so that the private appetites of a few men reflect the wider ruin caused by the Nigerian Civil War.

Sexual rivalry over Aku. With Oshevire detained as an alleged saboteur, his wife Aku is exposed and vulnerable. Toje, the rich but secretly impotent rubber merchant, pursues her to prove a manhood he has lost, while his ill-treated nephew Odibo genuinely loves her. Uncle and nephew, living under the same roof, become rivals, and the tension explodes in the violence done to Odibo. Okpewho underlines the irony that the impotent Toje cannot possess Aku yet cannot endure that his crippled nephew might.

Commercial rivalry. Before the war Toje and Oshevire were competitors in the rubber trade. To remove this business rival and open the way to Aku, Toje helps engineer the false charge of collaboration that imprisons Oshevire. Private envy is disguised as loyalty to the state.

Communal rivalry. On the largest scale the novel dramatises the hostility between the Igabo majority and the minority Simbi people, a mirror of civil-war ethnic conflict. Because Aku is a Simbi woman, her very marriage attracts suspicion, and personal jealousy feeds on communal hatred.

These layers of rivalry combine to destroy an innocent family. The bleak ending, with the household broken and Oshevire finally dead, is the bitter harvest of rivalry pursued without conscience, and Okpewho's clear moral is that selfish competition, whether between men, traders or peoples, brings only devastation.