WITH THIS GUN, I THEE WED

Dukyaria is a fictional African country founded on the assumption that hitherto independent and antagonistic family estates, or 'dukyars', will voluntarily surrender fractions of their freedoms and come together to form a modern state. This state will safeguard individual and collective interests simultaneously. It will be a state where no dukyar is more equal than another. Conflict ensues as each dukyar's self-appointed representative attempts to seize control of the commonwealth and turn it into his own personal estate all over again. No sooner has Dukyaria been created than it succumbs to bigotry, narcissism, and greed. Instead of expending its energies on the preservation of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, the dream state soon becomes an estate that all contestants are ready to kill and die to possess.

The narrator of the intriguing political drama, Tunde Soares, lost his mother a day after he was born. Raised by a liberal-minded father, he grows up believing that all are born free, equal and, above all, reasonable. However, as he leaves home and interacts with the world outside, he faces the challenge of reconciling his father's idealism with the wider society's realist impulses. A member of the Bekunja region's Odu ethnic group with Brazilian roots, Soares starts off at the elite Kings College, Laguna, where he forges a strong bond with Ahmad Sani, a member of the Yamin region's Kasar ethnic group and son of the Union Minister for Inter-Regional Affairs. Soares's idealism comes under attack immediately Dukyaria becomes an independent nation. He and Sani decide to celebrate the attainment of independence at the Bar Beach only to be embroiled in an ethnic quarrel started by Kelvin Ike, an Ndi from the Orient region. The Bar Beach incident opens Soares' eyes to the Dukyaria reality--meaning, the average Dukyarian's pathological hatred of rival ethnic groups.

However, the Bar Beach fracas does not prepare Soares for the challenges, including the climate of intolerance, awaiting him in Olu'lu, capital of the Bekunja Region dominated by his own Odu ethnic group. As a Lagunian, he and his office supervisor, Mary Adekoya, belong to the "coastal Odu" category thoroughly reviled by the "up-country Odus".

Soares manages to survive the internal Odu rivalry and Bekunja political intrigues but carries the memory to the Yamin region. As a foundation student at the Jameel Imam University up north, he finds himself juggling academic pursuits with student politics which curiously mirrors Dukyaria's ethno-regional rivalries.

It is at the university that Soares comes in contact with a few memorable characters. Among them are Joel Iyamoye, an Odu (from the Yamin region's Kabba Province) who feels more at home with the Kasars of the north than with his kith and kin in Bekunja south-west region; Adeolu Ajayi, an Ekiti Odu who comes to Yamin already biased against the northern Kasars and returns to his Bekunja south-west region with his bigoted view of the Kasars and deep distrust of the Ndis of the Orient; and Nicholas Nwoke, an Ndi idealist whose sympathy for the suffering Odus of Bekunja region costs him the office of Students Union President. Ahmad Sani, Soares's buddy from Kings College, is another Jameel Imam "foundation student" who starts with a liberal outlook only to become an uncompromising defender of Kasar interests and trenchant critic of the Ndis. The statuesque Iverem Tor, the Chairman of the Students Election Board, is living proof of the adage that what a man can do a woman can do equally well if not better. She promises free and fair elections. She delivers on her promise. And in case, a male chauvinist thinks he can push Iverem around, he should think twice. The weight-lifter from Aliade Grammar School in Tiv Division of Yamin's Benue Province is ready to face any aggressor head-to-head, man or woman.

Running parallel to Jameel Imam University's student activism are the shifting

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