By Festus Adedayo
Two books engaged my attention last week. Incidentally written by women whose passion for the written word and unquantifiable bother for the regressing values in the Nigerian society are nonpareil, the books synchronize with my belief that, to rescue Nigeria from her current morass, each Nigerian must go to their homes and families and reconstruct the Nigeria of their dream there. Don’t Mess With Their Flowers and Akin and the Fake Doctor, the latter published by renowned University Press, products of the hands of Bukoladeremi Ladigbolu and Modupe Asenuga-Olubanjo, are attempts to locate the dying values of a Nigeria in the 21st century.
While Ladigbolu, in a narrative manner, frontally dissects and confronts the pandemic of rape in Nigeria, Asenuga-Olubanjo teaches the teenager targets of her book that no single individual is too young to make impact in society. Though the rape subject that Ladigbolu dimensions is not a new phenomenon, society is becoming alarmed that if it is not addressed, rape may emerge as Nigeria’s most damming social undoing. Treating such issues as what rape is, its types, facts behind it, why people rape, how to avoid it and experiential encounters with rape, among others, the book is no doubt a therapy to the menace and an explainer of why rape has become this bothersome.
Asenuga-Olubanjo however fictionalizes her bother about the ills that plague society. In five chapters, she treats the incidence of fake drugs, the need for everyone, no matter their age, to be alert to the danger of fakery and how collectively, we can save our society.
In and out of the inks of their books, both women are amazons who are making impacts with their special biases for the youth of tomorrow. Ladigbolu, a certified marriage and relationship coach, spares time to fling verbal cudgel on social deviances like child molestation and relationship abnormalities on the social media. Asenuga-Olubanjo, a journalist turned public relations expert with one of Nigeria’s telecommunications companies, on her own, is a teacher of youths, impacting society with the model of values of traditional African Yoruba society.
Dr. Festus Adedayo is a popular Ibadan-based columnist
