Title: Juju Eyes
Author: Sam Omatseye
Publisher: Sunshort Associates, Nigeria
Year: 2025
Pagination: 352
The COVID-19 pandemic has birthed so much, including the now buzzwords, hybrid, remote and virtual work. It was this period of hopelessness and fear that Juju Eyes began its formation in Sam Omatseye’s ‘womb’ and eventual birth.

Drawing inspiration from a story on social media of a Nigerian woman who claims to be what she is not, including her education, parents and others, Omatseye crafts a bespoke novel during this period of hopeless and fear.

Titled Juju Eyes, the novel tells the story of a smart, beautiful, but mystical young lady, who navigates between fate and determination. The novel, in fact, is an intersection of culture and philosophy. It interrogates values, beliefs and worldview of African culture.

Omatseye tells the story of Oluseyi Ekanem (Shay) in a manner that is not just simple, but equally striking. The author deploys wry humour and wise sayings to navigate the novel with the goddess as the silent force directing affairs of Maami and Seyi.

The author, in details, interrogates broken relationship with her village goddess, while the goddess’s gift of inexorable beauty becomes both a curse and a blessing.

Dedicated to a goddess in a forest at four by her mother to avoid a devastating wrath, Shay, however, destroys the image of the goddess in a blink of an eye and disappointing those who think that apocalypse has come, leading her to a carefree life afterwards.

With a multi setting traversing cultural and national boundaries, its brilliance, sensual, intriguing and languorous mystery combine to create something special: the everyday nastiness of political tyranny, high- and low-level.

At an early age, she loses her father and her Uncle ID takes her into his care, but as Shay’s beauty begins to bloom in her teenage years, Uncle ID becomes lecherous, refusing to take his lustful eyes away from his until he violates her. Shay’s innocence is taken away like that of the young girl making love for the very first time in Betty Wright’s song, Tonight.

Working through grief and tensions following this evil encounter, she embarks on a road trip to escape. That incident turns her world upside down, making her see every man as a potential casualty.

She winds up in tangled relationships, frequent sex and deceptively simple life. Her life, thereafter, was her own way of paying for the loss of her womanhood at school. This unfortunate family scandal sets Shay on a path that takes her away from her innocent life to a worldly-wise one where she conquers the rich and the powerful and which opens doors to a life of debauchery, fame and wealth, as her body becomes a cesspit of the rich and powerful in the society.

Omatseye’s narrative lends credence to the what-might-have-been sub-theme that plagues many a parent today across Nigeria where values have been upended on account of filthy wealth that people acquire with no known legitimate means.

The author actually uses Shay to mirror the society that is riddled with all manner of characters, who come ready to swindle, squabble and hoodwink the world. Shay is only a vessel through which this tale is told and embellished. And it is told in a way that there is hardly any aspect of this frosty and fake society that is not included.

The 352-page narrative is cadenced by betrayal, with every character sharing a part in that monumental challenge filling up the book. It is no surprise her mum never berates her excesses and also no surprise that everybody does what she likes: political corruption, religious hypocrisy, phoney characters and violators of vulnerable women in society.

Juju Eyes interrogates Nigerian politics and how the idealists fall by the wayside. Osa Osamede, a young, ambitious young man in love with Shay, who, however, doesn’t have a commensurate amount of love for him, and she eventually dumps him.

Osa used to be a student union activist and wants to be a contemporary politician. He soon makes mind boggling discoveries about Nigerian politics. It is full of deceit and extravagant expenditures, which go to the drain once you lose. Shay’s mother may be a peripheral figure in the narrative, but she is symptomatic of Nigerian leadership and how strings are pulled from the margin.

Chief Lambe asks him to make a bonfire of his hard earned money in millions of naira, so he can gain his support for a senatorial district ambition in his Edo, home state.

Omatseye cleverly avoids the blood rituals politicians allegedly carry out for such high stake political favours, but opts to ritually have Osa’s money burnt instead as sacrifice. However, Osa does not gain the expected favour of Chief Lambe for his political ambition for which N3 million goes up in flames and smoke?

The flirtations of Oluseyi, better known as Shay, the major character in the novel, is a parody of Nigerian politics, with politicians who gravitate towards the kitchen where bread is buttered.

As a work where the protagonist opens herself to philosophical inquiry, the reader is left to make a choice between freewill and determinism. What if things had happened differently, what should it have been? What if Shay’s Uncle ID didn’t rape her, would she have been contented with her university boyfriend Ese and live happily ever after? What if she had not burned down the goddess’s shrine, what would her life have been as a priestess? What if her dad had not died in an accident, what trajectory would her life have taken? And what about Nigel or Mista Naija? Would he have come into the fray as Shay’s husband if things had happened a bit differently?

For Omatseye, “the lesson for our nation is that we should know the difference between a wrong value and a right value; and we have to try to navigate our way towards the kind of values that will lift us as a society.”

On the choice of the book’s title, he said that though he couldn’t remember how he got the name, ‘Juju Eye’ but the novel’s protagonist used the expression to mean he is worshipping her lover.

“I call her ‘Juju Eye’ because I am worshipping her. She is such a great woman that I am worshipping her,” Omatseye said. This publication is great for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the culture, politics and the perfidy in the country’s political landscape.