Mr. Emmanuel Abiodun Damola

Iroko Can You Hear Me?: None Mr. Emmanuel Abiodun Damola

The story of Iroko is intriguingly thrilling and shrouded in African mystery. Iroko was born deaf and dumb but a very brilliant mathematician. At birth, he was already an orphan ? Shadrack, his father had died searching for a male child who would carry on his lineage in a land bedevilled with primordial superstitions and diabolism. Mabel, his mother had also given up the ghost during his birth; few months after the demise of his siblings, Mary and Martha, in the hands of envious uncle and cousin. The responsibility of taking care of Iroko rested on Aunty Mutty, the only surviving member of his family and Doctor Joe Sawyer; who was his late mother's lover ? a forty eight year old medical doctor and widower. An incredible suicide-like note, written by Mabel before her death, had put pressure on Dr. Joe Sawyer to take young eighteen year old Mutty, as future partner. He had carried out this last-wish to the letter and married Mutty. Iroko was adopted and later, Dr. Joe and Mutty were blessed with two other sons, Junior and John. At fifteen years of age, Iroko was abducted by the CIA, after a gruelling gun battle with three Soviet agents, both of whose governments required his mathematical ingenuity for their space programme research. An impaired lad, Iroko worked as a mathematician at the Kennedy Space Centre, Orlando, Ohio, where he made a breakthrough in the relatively unknown hypothesis of Aerodynamics. Disaster struck along his stay at 'Hilltop', as most agents referred to the Space Centre: Iroko became a vegetable of sort and lost his mental equilibrium to continue with the research work More questions arose: Did Iroko survive the disaster that caused his mental imbalance? Was Iroko's impairment physiological or psychological and diabolical? Why did the US and the Soviets embark on a near fatal cold war because of an impaired lad like Iroko? What roles did Dr. Sawyer and Mutty play in the life of Iroko, their adopted son? This book is a must read.