The Battle Of All Battles

The Battle of All Battles is a didactic novel written by Melford Ayozieuwa Ewuru, theologian and biological scientist, to dramatise the indispensability of God in the affairs of man. In a continent where lust for power, idolatry and corruption is the rule rather than the exception, the book tends to suggest that until righteous people preside over the affairs of African countries, it would continue to be ravaged by afflictions. The author demonstrates the shape of the battle to be fought in Africa by quoting copiously from the bible. “Therefore, the weapons of the warfare should not be carnal but mighty through God in pulling down strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4. The novel is written in a simple, flowing prose for easy understanding. The author deliberately avoids high sounding words, and complex sentence structure to attract wide readership. Similarly, the book, which has 578 pages, is segmented into 59 short chapters with the aim of holding readers captive till the last page. To create empathy among readers, the author uses indigenous characters like Kaluka, Onwhe, Oderibe and Doiga. And in order not to derail from the religious theme which the book strives to propagate, Ewuru assigns roles to characters whose names are drawn from the Holy Book. Some of them are Clara, Kate and Doris. And in his bid to promote a scenario of war, he assigns crucial roles to characters he simply calls Colonel and General. But do we have leaders who can lead the battle against idolatry and corruption in Africa, the way the Colonel and General did in Ewuru’s fiction? The author believes so. “Africa must be free and it must start somewhere in Africa. But the fight for freedom is not physical; it is spiritual and only men of integrity can lead the battle. Such men abound in the continent and until that last battle is fought and won, development will continue to elude us.” Ewuru regrets that some African leaders use charms to desecrate their offices. He, however, observes that the continent has started raising righteous leaders who are ready to wage war against moral decadence. Interestingly, though Ewuru’s work satirises the polity, it is eliciting favourable comments from some political actors. An example is Prof. Saint Gbilekaa, Chief of Staff to Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State, who praises the writer for veering into contemporary religious issues that are often ignored by authors. The book, says Gbilekaa, is written in simple and readable prose and the issues are handled with dexterity so much that his narration “holds the reader captive until the end of the novel without even letting him know that it is a revelation”. Paul Esah Udenyi, publisher of Newsguard, in his preface to the book describes it as “highly inspiring”. He recommends it not only to the political class but also to African traditionalists and theologians. Commendable as Ewurum’s work is, however, there are manifest flaws, chief of which is the bulkiness of the book on such a “dry” topic.