Niyi Akingbe
University of South Africa, English, Department Member
- Cultural Studies, English, Comparative Literature, Conflict Studies, Protest studies, Creative Writing, and 23 morePoetry, Postcolonial Literature, Border Crossing, African Studies, Political Violence and Terrorism, Social Mobility, Social Conflict Theory, Protest Literature, African Literature and cultural studies, African Literature, Music, Anthropology, Globalization, Journalism, Social History, Social Anthropology, Sociology of Culture, Oral history, Media Studies, Cultural Sociology, Philosophy, Business, and International Relationsedit
- Niyi Akingbe, Ph.D., is Professor of Comparative Literatures and Poeticsedit
The thematics of Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka's Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002) demonstrate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre, depressing anomie bedevilling... more
The thematics of Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka's Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002) demonstrate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre, depressing anomie bedevilling Nigeria between 1993 and 1998. This anomie was ruinously orchestrated by the power-hungry military, who annulled the free and fair presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. This military incursion into Nigeria's political sphere was facilitated by a nebulous nation-hood plagued by contending differences among its federating units. The notorious brutality of General Abacha's regime was a cavalcade of incarceration and killings of real and imagined political dissidents. Especially, outspoken politicians who fell victim to unstable power-plays were kept in detention facilities across the country. They Said I Abused the Government and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known's articula-tion of these 'years of the locusts' is epitomized by the closing of newspapers, brain drain, and the imagery of stasis and displacement. These occurrences are captured by the accusatory tone of Femi Fatoba and Wole Soyinka's poetics as they protest the military brigandage in their works. The essay seeks to explicate how protest and satire have been harnessed to articulate the subversion of nationalism in postcolonial Nigeria. Keywords subverting nationalism – historicizing – horrors of the military – Femi Fatoba – Wole Soyinka
This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary imagination, used protest as a mode of expression necessary for assessing the relationship between art, ideology and social consciousness.... more
This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary imagination, used protest as a mode of expression necessary for assessing the relationship between art, ideology and social consciousness. This study examines the relationship of these three elements within the context of selected Nigerian novels dealing with a specific society struggling within difficult economic and socio-political circumstances. The analytical focus is on six primary texts, namely Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987); Kole Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn (1988); Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra (1982); Festus Iyayi’s Violence (1979); Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain (2000) and Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002). The choice of these texts is informed by the fact that their thematic preoccupations and structural concerns are broadly similar. In these texts, the selected writers have attempted to chart a course of communal awareness and social reconstruction as they show concern for the socio-political issues prevalent in Nigeria. In essence, the study takes a close look at the nature of protest, its manifestation in literature and the novel.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-0668-4, paperback, 276 Pages
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-0668-4, paperback, 276 Pages
Research Interests:
" € 59 00 *inkl. MwSt. Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape Fagunwa, Tutuola, Soyinka and Ben Okri's Literary Landscape Klappentext des Buches This book is an appraisal of myth, Orality and tradition in Ben... more
"
€ 59 00 *inkl. MwSt.
Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Fagunwa, Tutuola, Soyinka and Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Klappentext des Buches
This book is an appraisal of myth, Orality and tradition in Ben Okri‘s Literary Landscape. Okri uses magical realism as a vehicle to bridge the gap between the European literary tradition and the post-colonial socio-cultural societies ranging from Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific to Latin America. Undoubtedly, Ben Okri has been enormously influenced by Amos Tutuola ,D.O. Fagunwa and Wole Soyinka, who were the pioneers of magical realism in Nigerian literature. Okri‘s recourse to covert criticism of anthropocentrism and its attendant variables which locate humans at the centre of the world is grounded in both The Famished Road, and Songs of Enchantment. The two novels when read as records of the spirit world, in its relationship with the physical world, underscores the role of myth maker in African literature as both a technician and a visionary. He functions within the two roles effortlessly in his quest to gather, evaluate and analyse the materials available to him: words, wood, raffia, road, river, mountain or whatever, which in themselves carry a spirituality or an innate essence. Since forms and motifs already exist in the imaginative locale of such African writer.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-9877-1, Paperback, 132 Seiten
in den Warenkorb
Freunden empfehlen:
"
€ 59 00 *inkl. MwSt.
Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Fagunwa, Tutuola, Soyinka and Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Klappentext des Buches
This book is an appraisal of myth, Orality and tradition in Ben Okri‘s Literary Landscape. Okri uses magical realism as a vehicle to bridge the gap between the European literary tradition and the post-colonial socio-cultural societies ranging from Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific to Latin America. Undoubtedly, Ben Okri has been enormously influenced by Amos Tutuola ,D.O. Fagunwa and Wole Soyinka, who were the pioneers of magical realism in Nigerian literature. Okri‘s recourse to covert criticism of anthropocentrism and its attendant variables which locate humans at the centre of the world is grounded in both The Famished Road, and Songs of Enchantment. The two novels when read as records of the spirit world, in its relationship with the physical world, underscores the role of myth maker in African literature as both a technician and a visionary. He functions within the two roles effortlessly in his quest to gather, evaluate and analyse the materials available to him: words, wood, raffia, road, river, mountain or whatever, which in themselves carry a spirituality or an innate essence. Since forms and motifs already exist in the imaginative locale of such African writer.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-9877-1, Paperback, 132 Seiten
in den Warenkorb
Freunden empfehlen:
"
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, American Studies, Comparative Literature, Education, Discourse Stylistics, and 11 moreNigeria, Ecolinguistics, Television, Film and Media Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Niger Delta, Arts and Humanities, Theatre and Performance Studies, Resistance Poetry, and Reading and Language
Research Interests:
Arguably, Nigeria's transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only marginally altered its political context dramatically. Nevertheless, corruption and mismanagement of her economic potential portentously... more
Arguably, Nigeria's transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only marginally altered its political context dramatically. Nevertheless, corruption and mismanagement of her economic potential portentously remain her abiding nightmare. Far from undermining and obscuring the debilitating effect of this negative trend, contemporary Nigerian novelists, poets and playwrights have cultivated and sustained in their literary works, an articulation of a plausible political panacea that demands a complete overhaul of the menace of corruption in the country. This concern arises from the need by the writers, to prevent the masses from reacting against a monumental corruption,that could become a catalyst for political implosion. The desirability of Nigeria's radical political change is posited by Irobi's dramatic fermentation of the Igbo mythopoesis and modern theatre appurtenances. This is an experimentation underlined in Nwokedi, a play which legitimizes the...
Research Interests:
Tanure Ojaide, a celebrated Nigerian poet, is a writer who is constantly in search for an alternative social vision to the degenerating socio-political concerns in Nigeria. Social concerns mediated by orature provide the predominant... more
Tanure Ojaide, a celebrated Nigerian poet, is a writer who is constantly in search for an alternative social vision to the degenerating socio-political concerns in Nigeria. Social concerns mediated by orature provide the predominant framework within which his poetry collections have been analyzed. At the debut of his writing career now spanning three decades, Ojaide's entry into the Nigerian literary landscape in 1973 was heralded by the publication of Children of Iroko. God's medicinemen and other stories is his first attempt at writing short stories. This anthology of short stories expresses a deep moral indignation, in its denunciation of the shameful state in which the socio-cultural ethos has been compromised in contemporary Nigeria. This paper evaluates the manner in which Ojaide explores the broad theme of the break-down of social and cultural norms in Nigerian society as exemplified in God's medicine-men and other stories. It also examines how, in the anthology, ...
Research Interests:
Alexander Haralambiev (b. 1930) is a lawyer from Belogradchik. Endowed with creative abilities, Haralambiev in his spare time creates small clay figures. His mother, Boyana Stefanova, and his grandfather, Dr. Alexander Stefanov, were... more
Alexander Haralambiev (b. 1930) is a lawyer from Belogradchik. Endowed with creative abilities, Haralambiev in his spare time creates small clay figures. His mother, Boyana Stefanova, and his grandfather, Dr. Alexander Stefanov, were people of creativity as well. Here we show for the first time a part of the rich collection of his creations: small clay sculptures. Keywords: Alexander Haralambiev, Belogradchik, small plastic art Казвам се Александър Кирилов Хараламбиев. Роден съм и продължавам да живея в чудно красивия Белоградчишки край. Имам вече зад гърба си 60-годишен стаж като юрист и адвокат. Това е напрегната, отговорна и често стресираща работа. След труден съдебен процес вземам в ръцете си мека пластична глина. Мачкам я, без мисъл и идея какво искам да направя, но постепенно се оформя малка 15-20 сантиметрова фигурка. Понякога герой от приказките, които четях в детството си, понякога красиво младо момиче, понякога митичен герой, понякога карикатури на пияници, иманяри или гр...
Research Interests:
Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the culture and politics of the continent. The Nigerian novel ostensibly belongs to this tradition, particularly those that were written in the realist... more
Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the culture and politics of the continent. The Nigerian novel ostensibly belongs to this tradition, particularly those that were written in the realist mode. The fictional situations explored in them are often the writers’ response to the often-harsh socio-political realities of contemporary society. In the pre-independence period and the 1960s, issues of colonialism were addressed. In more recent times, contemporary realities are treated in Nigerian fiction – the vexed issues of corruption, ethnic chauvinism, leadership crises and autocratic rule. This paper examines how Okey Ndibe in Arrows of Rain, frontally engages the evils of the latest incarnation of military rule and its civilian collaborators. This is indicative of a shift in theme and concern from the previous emphasis on the impact of colonization and the focus on the historical past to an examination of current socio-political problems...
Research Interests:
Introduction When examining a sub-category of literature such as protest literature, it is easy to forget the fact that such categorisation often tends to overstress the distinctions that supposedly obtain between it and other... more
Introduction When examining a sub-category of literature such as protest literature, it is easy to forget the fact that such categorisation often tends to overstress the distinctions that supposedly obtain between it and other sub-categories. As Irving Howe rightly observes, ‘we are hardly speaking of genres at all when we employ such loose terms as the political or psychological novel, since these do not mark any fundamental distinctions of literary form’. 1 In order to properly situate categorisations like these, it must first be realised that the differences which establish them are actually more subtle than they first appear to be. In his foreword to American Protest Literature, John Stauffer states:
Research Interests:
This study shows how oral poetry permeates the culture and activities of Africans. In almost all African communities, there are poetic expressions such that poems are sung to express mother/father/child’s emotional state for and at every... more
This study shows how oral poetry permeates the culture and activities of Africans. In almost all African communities, there are poetic expressions such that poems are sung to express mother/father/child’s emotional state for and at every occasion. These include marriage, age grade celebration, departure or separation from one another, death, farming, hunting, trading and religious celebrations. The paper x-rays cultural configuration with the application of cultural theory to delineate societal transformation.
Oraliture is a terminology that is often employed in the description of the various genres of oral literature such as proverbs, legends, short stories, traditional songs and rhymes, song-poems, historical narratives traditional symbols,... more
Oraliture is a terminology that is often employed in the description of the various genres of oral literature such as proverbs, legends, short stories, traditional songs and rhymes, song-poems, historical narratives traditional symbols, images, oral performance, myths and other traditional stylistic devices. All these devices constitute vibrant appurtenances of oral narrative performance in Africa. Oral narrative performance is invariably situated within the domain of social communication, which brings together the raconteur/performer and the audience towards the realisation of communal entertainment. While the narrator/performer, plays the leading role in an oral performance, the audience’s involvement and participation is realised through song, verbal/choral responses, gestures and, or instrumental/musical accompaniment. This oral practice usually take place at one time or the other in various African communities during the festival, ritual/religious procession
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Contemporary Nigerian poets have had to contend with the social and political problems besetting Nigeria’s landscape by using satire as a suitable medium, to distil the presentation and portrayal of these social malaises in their... more
Contemporary Nigerian poets have had to contend with the social and political problems besetting Nigeria’s landscape by using satire as a suitable medium, to distil the presentation and portrayal of these social malaises in their linguistic disposition. Arguably, contemporary Nigerian poets, in an attempt to criticize social ills, have unobtrusively evinced a mastery of language patterns that have made their poetry not only inviting but easy to read. This epochal approach in the crafting of poetry has significantly evoked an inimitable sense of humour which endears these poems to the readers. In this regard, the selected poems in this paper are crowded with anecdotes, the effusive use of humour, suspense and curiosity. The over-arching argument of the paper is that satire is grounded in the poetics of contemporary Nigerian poetry in order to criticize certain aspects of the social ills plaguing Nigerian society. The paper will further examine how satire articulates so- cial issues i...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper focuses on the delineation of the phenomenology of Lagos’s cityscape in the cross-sectional poems of contemporary Nigerian poets. While there is abundant literature on the city and fiction, the same cannot be said for the city... more
This paper focuses on the delineation of the phenomenology of Lagos’s cityscape in the cross-sectional poems of contemporary Nigerian poets. While there is abundant literature on the city and fiction, the same cannot be said for the city and poetry, especially from the African perspective. Being often referenced in the portrayal of social contradictions, Lagos in Nigerian fiction has been explored to represent sophistication, decadence and anonymity. Again, while fewer articles and anthologies/collections have drawn attention to the pervading anonymity, chaos and inclusiveness of Lagos in poetry, several essays and books intersecting the city and fiction have been harvested on the cityscape’s boisterous posturing. Given the paucity of essays on its imaginative portrayal in poetry, we focus, in this paper, on the stylistic representations of the mystique of Lagos in the works of selected Nigerian poets. Apparently, Lagos was the former Nigeria’s political capital, but now serves as i...
Research Interests:
Every literary work emerges from the particular alternatives of its time. This is ostensibly reflected in the attempted innovative renderings of these alternatives in the poetry of contemporary Nigerian poets of Yoruba extraction.... more
Every literary work emerges from the particular alternatives of its time. This is ostensibly reflected in the attempted innovative renderings of these alternatives in the poetry of contemporary Nigerian poets of Yoruba extraction. Discernible in the poetry of Niyi Osundare and Remi Raji is the shaping and ordering of the linguistic appurtenances of the Yoruba orature, which themselves are sublimely rooted in the proverbial, chants, anecdotes, songs and praises derived from the Yoruba oral poetry of Ijala, Orin Agbe, Ese Ifa, Rara, folklore as well as from other elements of oral performance. This engagement with the Yoruba oral tradition significantly permeates the poetics of Niyi Osundare’s Waiting laughters and Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters. In these anthologies, both Osundare and Raji traverse the cliffs and valleys of the contemporary Nigerian milieu to distil the social changes rendered in the Yoruba proverbial, as well as its chants and verbal formulae, all of which mu...
Research Interests:
Themes of despoliation of fauna and the ecosystem of the oil rich Niger-Delta in Nigeria are often embodied in the works of Tanure Ojaide. Notably, the economic pillage of the region constitutes a major focus of his poetry which draws... more
Themes of despoliation of fauna and the ecosystem of the oil rich Niger-Delta in Nigeria are often embodied in the works of Tanure Ojaide. Notably, the economic pillage of the region constitutes a major focus of his poetry which draws inferences from his Urhobo oral history and tradition in order to articulate the disturbing effect of this devastation. Nevertheless, Ojaide in Labyrinths of the Delta (1986) and the endless Song (1989) devoutly criticises the deprivation and dispossession of the common men and women of the pre-colonial Niger Delta by the Ogiso and Orodje – the dreadful Bini and Urhobo traditional rulers who were eventually defeated by the masses. The paper’s overarching focus lies in its engagement with the poetic narrative of abuse of power constructed against the background of deprivation and within the context of a juxtaposition of the pre-colonial dispossession of the Niger Delta by her vicious traditional rulers against the postcolonial siphoning of her oil resou...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article examines the ways in which two prominent Nigerian playwrights, Wole Soyinka and Esiaba Irobi, re-envision common perceptions of the Nigerian armed forces as portrayed in literature. Despite nearly two decades of... more
This article examines the ways in which two prominent Nigerian playwrights, Wole Soyinka and Esiaba Irobi, re-envision common perceptions of the Nigerian armed forces as portrayed in literature. Despite nearly two decades of often-tumultuous democratic rule, Nigeria is yet to attain full membership of the league of democratic nations. In The Beatification of Area Boy and Cemetery Road, Soyinka and Irobi respectively look at the ways in which authoritarian regimes have sought to repress and subjugate hapless indigenous populations. The country increasingly finds itself between two psychological dispositions: the traumatized psyche occasioned by the military in the past, and the democratic dispensation which represents the present. Soyinka’s artistic commitment is ostensibly demonstrated in constant questioning and an accusatory historicization of the role of the military in the tragedy of Nigeria’s decadence in his play, The Beatification of Area Boy, while Irobi dramatizes the weaving together of the historical massacre of the peasants of Bakolori by the army in Northern Nigeria. The important question raised by this article is: How does the Nigerian nation-state atone for the evils of brutality, torture, forceful evacuation and displacement perpetrated by the military on its citizens, especially the Ilaje ‘Maroko evacuees’ and the Fulani victims of the ‘Bakolori massacre’? The article concludes that Soyinka’s and Irobi’s deft appropriations of historiography have been utilized to explore the inherent complexity of the interplay of Nigeria’s political anomie for the interrogation of military dehumanization of defenceless Nigerians in The Beatification of Area Boy and Cemetery Road.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Abstract This article focuses on the entrenchment of Gikuyu's resources of orality in metatheatre by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii, to satirise the hypocrisy of the Janus-faced Kenyan Pentecostal Christian elite's... more
Abstract This article focuses on the entrenchment of Gikuyu's resources of orality in metatheatre by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii, to satirise the hypocrisy of the Janus-faced Kenyan Pentecostal Christian elite's desperation to hastily convert the peasants in the postcolonial Kenya to Christianity; subsequently robbed them of their ancestral (land) inheritance; and further pauperised them through tithing/offering collection. Metatheatre is a long established theatre tradition whose aesthetics have been sufficiently calibrated and put into a utilitarian proclivity in I will marry when I want. The article will evaluate how the playwrights have successfully exploited the Gikuyu's oral performance tradition of song and dance to articulate the interface of politics and religion in I will marry when I want, in order to foreground the hypocrisy of land theft as underscored in the exploitation of the downtrodden masses, by the land grabbing Christian elite of the Kenyan society.
Research Interests:
Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the culture and politics of the continent. The Nigerian novel ostensibly belongs to this tradition, particularly those that were written in the realist... more
Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the culture and politics of the continent. The Nigerian novel ostensibly belongs to this tradition, particularly those that were written in the realist mode. The fictional situations explored in them are often the writers' response to the often-harsh socio-political realities of contemporary society. In the pre-independence period and the 1960s, issues of colonialism were addressed. In more recent times, contemporary realities are treated in Nigerian fiction-the vexed issues of corruption, ethnic chauvinism, leadership crises and autocratic rule. This paper examines how Okey Ndibe in Arrows of Rain, frontally engages the evils of the latest incarnation of military rule and its civilian collaborators. This is indicative of a shift in theme and concern from the previous emphasis on the impact of colonization and the focus on the historical past to an examination of current socio-political proble...
Research Interests:
The study was conducted to examine the role of storytelling in the moral upbringing of the Nigerian youth. Storytelling is one of the important subgenres of the prose form of oral literature. Being a verbal art used in traditional African... more
The study was conducted to examine the role of storytelling in the moral upbringing of the Nigerian youth. Storytelling is one of the important subgenres of the prose form of oral literature. Being a verbal art used in traditional African society for entertainment and didacticism, its usefulness in inculcating in children values, mores and cosmological beliefs of traditional African society cannot be downplayed. In recent times, however, the art seems to have suffered atrophy since it is rarely told by parents to their children. One factor responsible for this is the creeping pace of the poor economic climate currently ravaging many African countries. Suffice it to state that, a poor economy has continually forced many parents to scout for the fleeting means of survival which prevents them from spending quality time with their children. As it appears presently, storytelling seems to be threatened in Nigeria, and by extension the entire Africa, by the overbearing influence of the cyb...
Majekodunmi Fasheke whose stage name is Majek Fashek was a maverick Nigerian singersongwriter and a guitarist who made a game changing incursion into the Nigerian music industry in 1988. His tumultuous emergence was heralded by an... more
Majekodunmi Fasheke whose stage name is Majek Fashek was a maverick Nigerian singersongwriter and a guitarist who made a game changing incursion into the Nigerian music industry in 1988. His tumultuous emergence was heralded by an electrifying album Prisoner of Conscience which topped the charts for weeks. ‘Send Down the Rain’ the album’s provocative track became instant success as it responded to peculiarities of the Nigerian socio-political context characterised by deteriorating economy, crippling poverty, currency devaluation and overwhelming dissatisfaction with the destructive years of military rule. If Nigerians had hopelessly endured a long wait for the restoration of democracy, the social and music circles were anxiously waiting to experience an implosion as Fashek sauntered in slowly with an upsetting bang. His stealth emergence ushered in iconoclastic freshness in lyrical composition and upscale musical performance as they amplified and contextualised the pervading misery ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Arguably, fear, anger and despair dominate the poor, uneducated, twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas’s daily existence in Richard Wright’s Native Son. Nevertheless, old lies of white supremacy that have held black people in perpetual turmoil... more
Arguably, fear, anger and despair dominate the poor, uneducated, twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas’s daily existence in Richard Wright’s Native Son. Nevertheless, old lies of white supremacy that have held black people in perpetual turmoil are crushed through violent reaction when Bigger strikes at white hegemony through the killing of Mary Dalton. This backlash throws the white community into panic mode. Apparently, African Americans’ increased susceptibility to the inferiority complex of the 1930s was dictated by the dubious racial stratification that allotted a place of superiority to the white race over the black race, which was considered inferior. This misconception was supported by Arthur de Gobineau’s The Inequality of Human Races ([1853] 1915) and Lucien Levy-Bruhl’s How Natives Think (1926). Bigger’s humanity, like that of other African-American youth of this period, is overwhelmed by the racial prejudices of the supremacist whites which demand that they must be meek, submissi...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
An attempt to illustrate how the environment has a far-reaching, marked impact on literature in respect of Chimeka Garricks’s Tomorrow Died Yesterday (2010) entails an eclectic, cross-disciplinary preoccupation. It is an initiative that... more
An attempt to illustrate how the environment has a far-reaching, marked impact on literature in respect of Chimeka Garricks’s Tomorrow Died Yesterday (2010) entails an eclectic, cross-disciplinary preoccupation. It is an initiative that considers why Niger Delta’s youths have to contend with not only enduring economic disenfranchisement but also environmental degradation emanating from regular oil spillages in the region. Often in a particular ecocritical literary work, a writer has to present a balanced view. For Garricks, artistic, political, economic and environmental concerns raised in the novel are inextricably interwoven with Niger Delta’s youth restiveness. The article reassesses how this novel portrays the interaction between environmental degradation and youth marginalisation in the oil-bearing Delta region in contemporary Nigeria. It further examines the way Garricks explores the theme of environmental devaluation of his Niger Delta society as it impi...
The thematics of Femi Fatoba’s They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka’s Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002) demonstrate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre, depressing anomie bedevilling... more
The thematics of Femi Fatoba’s They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka’s Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002) demonstrate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre, depressing anomie bedevilling Nigeria between 1993 and 1998. This anomie was ruinously orchestrated by the power-hungry military, who annulled the free and fair presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. This military incursion into Nigeria’s political sphere was facilitated by a nebulous nationhood plagued by contending differences among its federating units. The notorious brutality of General Abacha’s regime was a cavalcade of incarceration and killings of real and imagined political dissidents. Especially, outspoken politicians who fell victim to unstable power-plays were kept in detention facilities across the country. They Said I Abused the Government and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known’s articulation of these ‘years of the locusts’ is epitomized by the closing ...