Little Rot

These chapters delve into the aftermath of Seun’s murder. The experience is especially hard on Aima, the most innocent and sheltered of the characters. She isn’t “designed for […] stories like this” (213) and is physically and emotionally rattled by dealing with Seun’s corpse. She is struck by the dawning realization that no one around her is who she thinks they are. Ahmed murdered a man he was having sex with; Ijendu knows how to surreptitiously dispose of a body; the supposed “man of God” (226), Okinosho, helps dispose of that body. Aima imagines that she can build a “cleaner life” with Kalu, but he is also keeping secrets from her as he waits for Ahmed in a strip club across town. The lies and secrets permeate deeper than she can imagine, and The Fight to Maintain Moral Integrity threatens to overwhelm her.

Throughout the novel, Kalu and Aima are the “naive” characters, perhaps softened by their time in the United States, “where [people] hide the ugly things they do” (47). They are unaware of the depth of the darkness in New Lagos, and when they see a hint of it, they are shocked and upset. When Kalu sees Machi at Ahmed’s party, he is forced to recognize that the sex party is not all consensual fun—that it involves uneven power dynamics and even coercion and that he is complicit in The Ubiquity of Male Sexual Violence. Aima’s experience with Seun’s body has a similar effect on her—breaking down the walls she has built around her identity and forcing her to confront the violence that exists just under the surface of her world. Each has a close friend, Ijendu and Ahmed, respectively, who is more firmly rooted in the “slinking dark world” (213) of New Lagos. Over the course of the novel’s 36 hours, through the intervention of these friends, both are exposed to previously unimaginable things. As a result, their pure love, which Aima calls the one “true thing,” is slowly corrupted.

This section also includes a brief chapter from the point of view of Thursday, Ahmed’s second. This chapter is important because it underscores the closeness between the two and illustrates how that closeness is based on a shared “darkness.” They have “done cruel, inhumane things for and with each other” (224) and have no secrets. They see one another on a deep level that isn’t reflected in any of the other relationships. A core component of Thursday’s role as Ahmed’s lieutenant is to take on the moral stain that Ahmed wishes to avoid. Ahmed’s wealth is an advantage in The Fight to Maintain Moral Integrity, allowing him to outsource the violent or otherwise morally corrupting work that he prefers not to do personally. 

These chapters also reveal that Ijendu has many secrets and is more deeply involved in New Lagos’s dark underworld than anyone knows. She takes Seun’s body to Okinosho without hesitation, and her godfather tells Ahmed that she has asked him “for a favor like this” on other occasions (217). She seems to fully understand the dangers of revealing Okinosho’s most illicit activities, and Aima finally senses an unusual touch of fear in Ijendu’s voice when she keeps asking questions. Although a certain level of corruption or transgression is expected from people in New Lagos, there is a line that must never be publicly crossed. As the girls leave, Aima thinks that “being reminded that she didn’t really know” Ijendu and the depth of her secrets is a kind of “salvation” (231). It is God’s way of showing her “which paths to turn away from no matter how much love was there” and avoiding “being swallowed by a devouring night” (231). She is able to put “their sinful night” behind her and thinks of building a “cleaner life” with Kalu (231). However, he is about to experience his own “damnation” in the very place Aima and Ijendu are leaving.