A Rhetoric on Conflicts in Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's Trafficked

In the novels branded as Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s trilogy, the intrepid female protagonists are known to appear in an impervious mould, challenging the patrilineal order within their Igbo society. In Trafficked, the novel that follows the trilogy, Nneoma is painted with visible modesty as her contemplations reveal ardent commitment towards revivifying her desecrated decency after the deportation from overseas. As the protagonist, Nneoma’s personality summons the several metaphorical levels which reveal character reformation and maturation. This also brews suppositions on the writer’s recline from the known morbidity in her feminist proposition towards a seemingly temperate one. Is it an attempt to tread the path of recompense for an extreme mould of characterization in her trilogy? Or, further still, a creative experimentation with her ‘snail sense’ feminism? The switch in the feminist tenor is seen to go with the probability that a determined rhetorical force is achieved with a craft that ranks the ethos ahead of the logos and pathos. Pertinently, there are more urgent conflicts in the African literary arena at the time of contemplating the novel, Trafficked. In this regard, this paper examines the spate of conflicts which inundate the novel, there relatedness to feminist issues in Africa particularly, the measure of the intended harmony and the extent to which each conflict may have been revoked
or reconciled. While some of these conflicts are merely highlighted as grave socio-political challenges, there is a consideration that each conflict provokes the kind of self awareness that stands as antidote to a barrage of disillusionments, a result of multiple anti-social acts which the trafficking and the sex trade underscore.