By Moses Ogu

Chika Abanobi’s “What’s-Up Message From ‘Best Dad’ To Dearest Daughter: Secret Worries Of A Doting Dad” is a hands-on book that time has come. In many homes where the falcon can no longer hear the falconer; where things have fallen apart between the father and the daughter, and the centre can no longer hold, this is a book that has come not only to fill the ever-widening void but to also act as a roadmap to the much-needed restoration and reconciliation between dad and daughter.

In it, the author aptly captured the anxieties that perhaps every father who has a girl-child goes through before she is able to become something in life. It’s a book that many fathers and, perhaps, mothers are going to find handy in handling some of the complexes that could arise as their teenage or adolescent daughters march their way into adulthood.

It is garnished with apt quotes that help to drive home the message the author is trying to sell to the reader. Samplers: “To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.” This quote by Euripides, the famous ancient Greek dramatist, philosopher and author of many Greek tragedies, foremost of which are: “The Bacchae”, “Medea”, and “The Trojan Women” seems to be at the root of most anxieties that a father faces while a female child is growing up under his watch.

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“A daughter,” notes Ben Sirach, the Hellenistic Jewish scribe/sage that lived in second century BC, “is a treasure and a cause of sleeplessness.” Another quote by the author, and attributed to Stanley T. Banks who played the character, Tracy, in the 1950 popular comedy film, “Father of the Bride”, explains how and why a daughter is the cause of sleeplessness or anxiety to her father: “You have a little girl. She looks up to you. You’re her oracle. You’re her hero. And then the day comes when she gets her first permanent wave and goes to her first real party, and from that day on, you’re in a constant state of panic.”

That panic, those anxieties and more are what the author tries to capture in this book by using as a template WhatsApp message exchanges between a man and his daughter. “The reason the man agreed to allow the exchange put in book form is because, like he said, there could be parents – dads and mums – out there who need to pass similar messages to their teenage or adolescent daughters,” the author notes in his introduction to the book. But in a strange twist of development, the “a man and his daughter” that the author refers to, turn out to be himself and his daughter. The content and style of writing is such that the reader is allowed to discover that fact for themselves as they keep reading on.

“Abanobi’s decision to initially hide the identities of the man and his daughter in question, starting from the introduction, to what is supposed to be the first chapter of the book, titled, “Your Dad, Best Dad?” not only allows readers to discover for themselves their true identities, in the course of reading the second and fifth chapters, respectively, “Your Story: How I Bribed My Daughter to Read” and “Chimamanda and Malala’s World of Dads,” but also makes for an interesting reading of the work,” observed Mike Awoyinfa, a seasoned journalist, in his Foreword to the book.

Apart from Chimamanda and Malala, other world-famous female figures whose memories of relationship with their fathers were featured in the book include: Hillary Clinton who described her father as “strict” and “highly opinionated” but nonetheless deeply caring and Michelle Obama whose father taught her how to work hard, laugh often and keep her word. The list also include Nollywood actresses like Bimbo Ademoye, whose father made sure they had everything they wanted, even though he couldn’t afford a lot of things; Omoni Oboli, whose father while he lived was her biggest fan, organizing road shows, sharing flyers of her new movie; Uzo Osimkpa whose father knew something about everything;  Belinda Effah who saw her dad as the best dad and Uche Jombo, whose loss of dad became the most difficult moment of her life and forced her to grow up and become the noble and notable woman she is today.

In the book, the author, using as backdrop the relationship between these famous female characters and their dads, tries to get her daughter to rethink and re-evaluate the relationship between them. In one of the chapters titled “Scoring Your Dad On Rules of Parenting,” he tries to get his daughter to score her, something he said every father of a teenage/adolescent girl should emulate and do. “Make whatever point you are going to give me over 100 per cent,” he counseled his daughter. He intends, by that instruction or directive, to open a floodgate of honest conversations between fathers and their daughters.

There is no doubt that the instant-messaging prose style used by the author, himself an Internet immigrant, from all indications, is surely going to cause the book to find a wide acceptance among Internet natives – the generation born in the era of Facebook, WhatsApp, Linked-in, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Zoom, etc.  I join Awoyinfa to recommend the book to all fathers who have teenage daughters, to read and become wiser, and to all daughters who want to make their dads happy.

Vanguard News Nigeria