Synopsis Of Festus Iyayi’s Violence

SUMMARY OF VIOLENCE

The novel, Violence, revolves around the life of Idemudia, a poor, jobless man in his late twenties who faces hardship and struggles to make a living. The desperate need for Idemudia to fend for himself and his wife, Adisa, often pushes him to extremes such as selling his blood. Unfortunately, all he ever gets is temporary relief as poverty refuses to release its tight grip on him. When he gets a menial job as a laborer, he clutches onto it like a drowning man would straw only to work himself into a coma. Confined to his sick bed, life seems very unfair to Idemudia. He concludes that “his unfinished education, his joblessness, his hunger, his poverty, all these … were different forms on violence” exerting themselves on him.
Similarly, in her desperate bid to save her husband from the grip of death and offset the mounting hospital bill, Adisa commits adultery. This act of desperation threatens the couple’s marital life until Idemudia recognizes the depth of sacrifice both of them have had to make to survive the ‘violence’ of forces that Queen, Obofun and the society at large have wielded on them. Though the novel portrays the life of a poor, jobless man in Nigeria of the 70s, it equally mirrors the struggles and hardship thousands of jobless youths face today.

 More importantly, it raises a few issues on business ethics and human resources management which are worth reflecting on in today’s business environment. One important issue raised in Violence concerns remuneration. One may ask if there is not a fair and acceptable standard for determining the wages or salaries an employer pays or an employee receives for his labour? It seems workers tend to receive only a part of what employers can or are ready to pay.“ if they [Idemudia and three other laborers] refused, she [Queen] would obviously have to offer them more than five naira each …. Satisfied [that they did not refuse], she went into the motel to seek her husband.” Interestingly, the reason for poor wages is provided in the novel. Employers capitalize on prevailing conditions like high unemployment and poverty to impoverish the workforce. A worker “… is paid so little because he accepts it. And he accepts it because he would starve if he refused it. Even if he refused it there would be many more people who would accept it.” The story, however, reveals that workers do not always accept what is dished out by employers and sometimes seek ways to negotiate more pay as happens when Idemudia and his co-workers are forced to call a strike when all efforts to negotiate with Queen fails. The threat of a strike is met with resistance and Queen makes all attempts to suppress the strike.

This style of human resources management is what Idemudia describes as slavery: “A man gets a job and he cannot protest. He cannot ask for higher wages, the period of his leisure is cut down arbitrarily and he must come out to work when he is old. This was slavery” Sexual inducement and sexual gratification are ethical issues that Violence highlights. In the business world, the belief that you use what you have to get what you need seems to support the unethical behaviour of businessmen and women who see sexual inducement (as frequently practiced by Queen to receive government contracts, and Obofun’s demand for sexual gratification before he (Obofun) can offer Adisa assistance in the form of whiskey to sell) as a justifiable means to an end. Violence is full of suspense and has a twist at the end when Idemudia suddenly learns about Adisa’s infidelity. Furthermore, the treatment of business ethics and human resources management is thought-to provoke and remains topical decades after the book was written.