~ Book of The Week ~ ON THE BANK OF THE RIVER

The novel revolves around Enitan, an only child of a hardworking single mother. Set in Obade, a village in Old Oyo state in the mid 70s and spanning about 30years, the book chronicles the life of young, beautiful Enitan who has to endure the sadistic and tyrannical tendencies of her mother, Asake, a once beautiful toast of the village, in her quest for self-definition and actualization.

In On the Bank of the River, Enitan’s mother would always tongue-lash her for almost every slip, but genuinely advises Enitan to study hard and not fall prey to the vulturish tendencies of boys and men who would use her and dump her, leaving her with bitter consequences. While Enitan appreciates her mother’s care and hard work, she is always agitated by the mystery surrounding her paternity. She continually thinks about why she is tied to a woman who is always doing “male things”, but without a man in her life. She even tries once to ask about her father, but is unsuccessful. Whenever knotty questions becloud her mind, Enitan would seek solace on the bank of the Obade River with which she strikes a mysterious relationship. But unknown to Enitan, the river at Obade is where the events that define her mother’s destiny and also sow the seed of her very existence.

Ifeoluwapo powerfully reveals the character of the protagonist in this work by allowing the reader intermittent peeps into Enitan’s mind and thought pattern. This she does skillfully by employing the narrative technique referred to as stream of consciousness. This is a technique that many writers happily avoid. But Ifeoluwapo takes the plunge gleefully. And this daring effort marks Ifeoluwapo out.


With On the Bank of the River, the author has successfully demonstrated her power with words. The ease with which she delicately deployed the words cannot but captivate the reader and transmit the urgency in the narrative to the reader as well. The novel, a fast-paced and pulsating account of a conservative Nigerian village with its stark reality of contrasts with city life, also crystallizes the helplessness and vulnerability of the average village girl who, in her innocence, gets swept off her feet by the charisma of city people, especially of the male gender, and it attendant consequences. The novel also exposes the somewhat warped idea that the girl child has to stay at home to attend to domestic duties while her brother has to go to school. This turns out to be the case with Dayo, Enitan’s best friend. Dayo’s mother dies of some mysterious illness shortly after giving birth to her last child, and Dayo’s father insists she must stay at home to take care of the baby while her twin brother, who is less brilliant, goes to school.

One other highpoint of the novel is Ifeoluwapo’s adoption of the naive point of view in the treatment of the coming of age of Enitan and Dayo. The reader is helped to a wide-mouthed smile on reading about the first menstrual experience of Dayo. But just as it is usually the case in this nation, sex education is delayed until it almost becomes late.

With this work, the author makes a bold statement which will continue to reverberate in literary circles for a long time. This book comes highly recommended for all categories of readers, and those who have a knack for good writing. Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi makes story telling real and also knows how to captivate the reader with her skill with words. This is precisely what she has done with her novel, On the Bank of the River.

At the tender age of six, Ifeoluwapo rallied her friends in primary school to tell them stories, not knowing that would set the path to becoming an acclaimed writer. As soon as was old enough to register her thoughts through words, she wrote her first manuscript at age 8, while she was still in Primary 4. Two years after that, precisely September 11, 2001, she launched two works, a novella, The Twin Sisters and a playlet, Last Chance. At the launching in Abeokuta, which was very successful and graced by highly place personalities, the then Ogun State Governor had called her the youngest author in Nigeria.

As a result of her outstanding academic performance, Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi got tuition waivers for her Secondary School, Adeline Ogunlade Memorial Home Secondary School. In August 2004, she was a recipient of the maiden edition of the Osun State Merit Award in Education, which further attested to her outstanding capabilities. Her good educational grounding, got her admission into the Obafemi Awolowo University two months after her secondary education to study Literature-in English.

The next four years in the four walls of a higher institution was a life tailored towards rigorous academic exercise, journalism and politics. Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi became the editor-in-chief of a weekly newsprint on Campus, THE GIST and was also the Vice-President of the National Association of English and Literary Studies, NASELS. She graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University on January 11, 2011 coming out tops of her class.