Looking for a text that showcases different problems and lifestyle that surfaces in the Niger Delta region, Yellow Yellow by Kaine Agary is one of the texts that is suitable for it. Yellow Yellow seriously dealt with the happenings in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, it showcases issues such as political demagoguery, corruption, mixed raced problem, poverty, crude oil issues, incompetence of the government amidst others.

Through the main character, the author is able to make the reader navigate from the rural area to an urban area, and the reader is able to see the differences and the similarities in both environment, how life treats people differently based on environmental factor and how the understanding of people is shaped due to environment.

The text centers on a young girl Zilayefa who is known as Yellow Yellow in her village due to her skin pigmentation that she got from her Greek father. He left her mother after impregnating her and left the country without knowing that he has planted a seed already in Bibi- Zilayefa’s mother.

Bibi wants her daughter to surpass her in life, she wishes that she can be able to do more than what she has done and that Zilayefa will be able to shine brighter and become someone in life. This is a result of the abrupt stop to her ambition to be great at the earlier part of her life due to the pregnancy.

She leaves her village for Port Harcourt after getting done with her senior secondary education and having passed her final examination so well she determined to get to Port Harcourt to make fast money and be successful in life. But due to the love line between her and her lover -a Greek sailor in Nigeria- she got pregnant and with her lover at nowhere to be found, her dream become shattered and she is left with no choice than to cater for her child and make her great.

After Zilayefa has completed her secondary school examination, she decided to move out of her village to make her life better, not really because she really wants to further her education but because she wants to have a change of environment. She prays that a rich man comes to her village for her to be able to elope or travel out of her village with the rich person.

Fortunate for her, Chief Semoke’s funeral comes up in the village and Sergio, the deceased son’s friend attends the burial ceremony, he is also a Greek man, he develops interest in Zilayefa and they both have moments together with that they eventually kissed. As at then she was sixteen and she started to have butterflies flying in her, but eventually, Sergio leaves the village without notifying her and this makes her sad.

She gets lucky and is being recommended by Pastor Ikechukwu to Madam George who is also known as Sisi in Port Harcourt where another version of her life begins. There, she is exposed to sexual life, hard work, and decides to follow Lolo (a close friend of Sisi, though she quite younger than Sisi, Sisi is very fond of her), who she chose as her mentor.

She meets Retired Admiral Kenneth Alaowei Amalayefa during his sixtieth birthday, Admiral is an acquaintance of Lolo and they both (Lolo and Laye –as she is being called in Port Harcourt) arranged and organized his birthday party.

After the party, Admiral gets fond of her and wants to have sexual relationship with her, though Laye knows that Admiral is fond of young girls and that he has two children, a daughter who is of her age and her brother, she also gets fond of him and longs for him. 

Eventually, they both have sexual intercourse for some times and Laye gets pregnant which she later aborts and determine within herself that henceforth she will be concerned and serious with her education and life and will not allow any other thing to serve as hindrance to the kind of life her mother has planned for her and the Lolo’s kind of life that she envies.

Kanine Agary is able to critically embed lots of issues in the text. She is able to orchestrate and bring to reality the multiphase activities and occurrence that happens to man, especially in Niger Delta and the half-cast in the society.

Agary is able to capture so well the lifestyle of people in the rural area and the urban area, a situation in which Zilayefa is our guide to understanding the endoscopic societal trappings of both societies. This is even evident in different alias given to her in the two different environment. This shows probably their level of civilization, exposure and education. In the village she is regarded as Yellow Yellow while in the city she is known as Laye. There is quite difference in the reason and the angle at which both names come from.

Also, the novel captures the sufferings of people in the rural area, situation whereby they are the ones who are producing the oil, feeling the effect of oil accident and other catastrophic incidents because of the oil, yet, whenever there is monument or any governmental dividend, they are being cut out because they are small in population.

In Agary’s quest to unraveling the society, she is able to accurately portray the corrupt act and play of power by the government -the legislature, executive and even the judiciary (the judges, lawyers and other law enforcement agencies)- this shows that the whole process is faulty and crooked, no side is left out or is innocent.

Agary also show that corruption is not only evident in the life of those in authority alone, it is evident in the base already, she portrays how students manipulates their way into having better scores by bribing and cheating during exam, bribing the examiners or even bringing into the exam hall illegal materials, all just to pass. This portray that corruption does not only start from the top, it also starts from the base and meets at the middle. Corruption everywhere in the society.

The novel also explains different levels of insecurity, within the people and from external forces. Each village member cannot trust one another with their wards, because “the World is bad” (pg. 16). 
Life and property of people are not also secured, spilled oil destroy their farmlands, some die in the cause of that and those who decides to speak up either disappear mysteriously or are being killed, Ken Saro Wiwa is a great example of those who died in the name of speaking up against all forms of insecurity.

There is insecurity for the journalist also, those who supposed to be neutral, who supposed to do their work without fear are all under the control of fear by the government. Yes, there is freedom of speech, but freedom after speech is not guaranteed. To a meaning degree, Agary is able to capture this kind of country in Yellow Yellow.

Because of spilled oil issue, insecurity and bad governance, poverty is inevitable in the society. Agary architectonically shaped the level of poverty in both environment, rural and urban, sometimes what those people in the urban area calls poverty is really not poverty in the rural area. This enables the reader to understand how life operates and deal with people based on environment. And also, how poverty ranges in different environment.

Another point that struck my heart is the ability of Agary to describe what the whites have done in the country, producing mulatto and leaving their mothers to fend for themselves. Right from the beginning to the end it is germane in the text. The effect of this action and how it pushes these children to venture into different dangerous enterprise. It succinctly also explains that there are lots of these children in Port Harcourt who do not have a father, some cannot even reckon if they remember or not what their father look like, while some does not even know them, because before they were born, their father has left.

Also, the text shows the vulnerability of little girls in big cities, how vulnerable they are to falling for old men whom are old enough to be their father, being used and dumped by these men, some because of desperation to make it and for others like Laye, they just want to feel what it feels like to have a fatherly figure, and since they are to gain at double edge, romantically and psychologically, they do not care about the effect at the end.

Yellow Yellow therefore is a text that captures a lot about life, Nigerian life in the past, present and from there one can be able to forecast what will happen in the future.

©Joshua Temitope OLADEBO, 2022