Nigerian Literature

Amerikana, içinde yaşadığımız modern toplumların en temel meseleleri hakkında sarsıcı saptamalar yapabilen, bunu yaparken de okuru adeta katılımcı bir yöntemle düşünme pratiğine dahil eden, dolayısıyla hem kapsam hem de yöntem açısından çok güçlü bir roman. Azgelişmişlik ve Üçüncü Dünya, gelişmiş ülkelerde göçmen olmak, ABD'de ırk ve ırkçılık hakkında bildiğinizi sandığınız ama aklınızın ucundan geçmeyen olağanüstü nüanslar, uzun yıllar “Batı”da yaşadıktan sonra “vatana” dönmenin yarattığı ikinci yabancılaşma romanın temel eksenlerinden. İki ana karakter olan Ifemelu ve Obinze'nin hayatlarını, lise yıllarından otuzlu yaşlarının ikinci yarısına kadar izleyen roman, bir kuşağın hayatındaki popüler kültür öğelerine ve dönüm noktalarına da ışık tutuyor.

The great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once wrote: “Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.” One can see then why the Nigerian-Irish writer Melatu Uche Okorie, who spent over eight years in the direct provision system, turned to literature. Her slim but weighty short story collection This Hostel Life tells of that experience. First published in 2018 by Skein Press, Ireland’s new platform for minority writers, the book is now being republished by the prestigious Virago Press.

Ser hombre o mujer homosexual no es tarea fácil ni permitida en África. Actualmente, las relaciones homosexuales y entre personas transgénero están prohibidas en una sociedad hetero-sexista que defiende la heteronorma y desprecia aquellas manifestaciones o identidades queer que transgreden las nociones normativizadas de género y orientación sexual. Artistas pertenecientes a nuevas generaciones de africanos recuperan y comienzan a reflejar estas realidades en distintas manifestaciones de la literatura, cine o fotografía. Este texto pretende reflejar el estado de esta cuestión a través de los relatos cortos escritos por los autores nigerianos Chinelo Okparanta con su relato "Grace" (2013), Arinze Ifeakandu con su relato "God's Children Are Little Broken Things" (2013) y Chukkie J. Domadi con su relato "My Full Form" (2016). Estas obras tratan de visibilizar la diversidad de opciones identitarias y sexuales, empoderar y brindar un espacio lícito a aquellas personas repudiadas por su orientación sexual.

The lack of local literature bedevilled African and Nigerian literatures for a long time. This contributed in no small measure to a few critics averring that Africa and Nigeria lack literature of any major type especially of the traditional form. The twentieth century Onitsha Market Literature in Nigeria which came in pamphlets, novellas, and chap-books is just an example to disprove this assertion. Within this traditional but regional literature is a compilation of oral literary sourced works and documented solutions to modern life issues. It is a potpourri of life experiences of Nigerians within the colonial and post-colonial life. This paper, through pedagogical and bibliographical modes, situates the development and effect of this onerous popular fictional phenomenon as a relevant precursor to the origin and development of not only present day Nigerian Literature but also to a large extent, to the Anglophone West African Literature.

Autrefois, les femmes se rendant au marché laissaient leur bébé à la garde d’un des plus jeunes membres de la maisonnée ; « quand c’était possible, on choisissait un garçonnet pour un bébé garçon et une fillette pour un bébé fille » (Basden 1921 p.64). Aujourd’hui, avec l’exode rural, le déclin des valeurs traditionnelles et la levée des tabous, la régression de la polygamie, l’engouement des Igbo pour l’éducation scolaire et le respect moins strict de l’espacement des naissances, les jeunes couples se trouvent souvent démunis à la naissance de leur premier enfant. Ils vont donc chercher dans la grande famille celui/celle qui va le garder, le porter sur le dos – de préférence une fillette – en igbo onye kulu nwa, baby nurse en pidgin. Séparée de sa famille, souvent mal reçue, mal intégrée dans sa famille d’accueil, cette moderne Cendrillon est présentée dans la littérature comme cette « petite bonne isolée, maltraitée, croulant sous les corvées, humiliée, et qui se venge sur les jeunes enfants confiés à sa charge » (Ugochukwu 1992 p. 12). L’étude qui suit se penche plus spécialement sur six contes recueillis en 1986-1987 au Nigeria en pays igbo  et qui évoquent ces petites filles mal aimées en même temps qu’ils témoignent de l’évolution des traditions.

This study investigated the effect of crude oil pollution and remediation on the fungi and bacteria communities of M. indica and E. guineensis rhizospheres using three sites - Unpolluted Site (UPS), Polluted and Treated Site (PTS), and Polluted and Untreated Site (PUS). Population of fungi in both M. indica and E. guineensis rhizospheres was highest in UPS while the bacteria population was highest in PUS and UPS in M. indica and E. guineensis rhizospheres, respectively. The highest similarity in fungi species was observed between UPS/PTS (67%) and PTS/PUS (87%) in M. indica and E. guineensis rhizospheres, respectively. Similarity in bacteria species was highest between UPS/PTS (50%) in M. indica rhizosphere while it was highest between UPS/PUS (60%) and PTS/PUS (60%) in E. guineensis rhizosphere. The diversity of fungi was highest at UPS in both M. indica (H ꞊ 1.04; Simpson 1-D ꞊ 0.63) and E. guineensis (H ꞊ 1.17; Simpson 1-D ꞊ 0.67) rhizospheres. Bacteria diversity in M. indica rhizosphere was highest in PUS (H ꞊ 0.70) when Shannon-Wiener index was used but highest in PTS (Simpson 1-D ꞊ 0.42) when Simpson index was used; and highest in PTS (H ꞊ 039; Simpson 1-D ꞊ 0.20) for E. guineensis rhizosphere. Most of the evaluated attributes compared better in UPS; however, bacteria population and diversity in M. indica rhizosphere was highest in PUS and PTS, respectively. Get more articles at: http://www.innspub.net/volume-6-number-4-april-2015-jbes/

"The author of this paper examines the symbolism of pollution in
various modes in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart. He explains the symbolism of pollution as a
mythic form contained and apprehended in literature. The
interpretative procedure he uses is Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. As a
probing instrument, it draws upon similar serial structures from
these works exploring contrasts and aporias. Hermeneutics fits
most because of the valued qualities of authorial distanciation,
explication and readings derivable from majority of presences and
textual existents. Of these readings, the symbolism of pollution
grasped under the aspect of fear is the issue which exercises the
characters as they are tethered to activities which demean, abase
and humiliate them, and which appear in different shades. Dr
Chukwumah locates the root and figure of pollution in Joseph
Conrad’s Lord Jim from where he inaugurates and articulates every
other implicatory reading. Pollution impacts on the consciousness of the individuals, echoing the existential. Though it manifests through various characters, it takes different dimensions as the reading progresses, leaving behind echoes of what pollution could (not) mean and how it matters."

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.2, 2014                                                                              Pp.236-243

The Influence of Arabic on Nigerian Literature: a study of selected works of Abubakar Imam in Hausa

Jamiu, Muhammad Yunusa
Department of Languages and Literary Studies (Arabic Unit)
College of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences
Kwara State University, MALETE


Abstract
The heritage of a people is, without doubt, the bedrock of their identity. The sheer size of the Northern part of Nigeria makes it a very important part of the country. This vast region has been having a common identity forged by literacy in the Arabic language. For many centuries before the coming of the imperialists, Arabic provided universal understanding among people of the Northern Nigeria. It was so important that even the imperial agents studied Arabic language in order to penetrate the culture of the people of the area they wanted to colonize. When the foreign power eventually succeeded in enthroning its own language as the official language, Arabic still remains very visible not only as a religious language but also as a springboard for literary endeavors in both local and foreign languages of the North. This paper therefore intends to study the influence of Arabic on the Nigerian Literature using Magana Jari Ce and Ruwan Bagaja  by the renown Hausa writer, late Alhaji Abubakar Imam, as a case study. The paper is divided into: introduction, short biography of Abubakar Imam, Arabic influence on selected stories, general analysis of the stories, conclusion and recommendation.
Keywords: heritage influence, identity, Arabic language, Nigerian literature.

ÖZ Bu çalışmada, Flora Nwapa'nın Women are Different adlı romanından yola çıkılarak Nijerya toplumundaki toplumsal cinsel kimlik modelleri incelenecektir. Bu romanda, Flora Nwapa Nijeryalı kadınların hakları konusunda örneğin eğitim hakkı gibi nasıl bilinçlendiklerini anlatmaktadır. Ayrıca, Flora Nwapa henüz yeni bağımsızlığını kazanan Nijerya'da yaşamanın kadınlar açısından avantajlarını ve dezavantajlarını da bu romanında gündeme getirmektedir. Romanda, (bir çelişki gibi de gözükse) bazı Nijeryalı kadın karakterlerin eski İngiliz yönetiminin olduğu günleri özledikleri gözlenmektedir, çünkü özgürlük onlara beraberinde bazı sorumluluklar da getirmiştir ve yeterli eğitimsel donanımları ve ekonomik özgürlükleri olmadığı için bu sorumluluklar bazı kadınların omzunda bir yük olmaya başlamıştır. Tüm bu olumsuzluklara rağmen, çoğu kadın karakter sömürge dönemi Nijerya'sından sömürgecilik sonrası Nijerya'ya geçiş döneminde elinden geleni yapıp sorunların üstesinden gelmeye çalışmıştır. Bu konulara ek olarak, Women are Different adlı romanda Nijeryalı erkeklerin toplumsal cinsel kimlik konusunun yanı sıra, toplumsal sorunlara ve sosyo-politik konulara olan tutumları da okuyucuya aktarılmaktadır. Romanda, Nijeryalı kadın ve erkeklerin toplumsal sosyal cinsel kimlik modelleri karşılaştırılarak, sadece Nijerya'da değil, aslında tüm dünyada kadın hakları konusunda bir bilinç oluşturmanın ne kadar önemli olduğunun altı çizilmektedir. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışmada Flora Nwapa'nın Women are Different adlı romanından örneklemelerle sömürgecilik dönemi sonrası Nijerya'sında kadınların rolleri ve sorumlulukları incelenecektir. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to analyse the gender patterns in Nigerian society with reference to Flora Nwapa's novel, namely Women are Different. In this novel, Flora Nwapa narrates how the Nigerian women begin to gain consciousness about their rights such as having access to education. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of living in a newly independent Nigeria for the Nigerian women are brought forward by Flora Nwapa. Related to this, in the novel, paradoxically it has been observed that some Nigerian women characters begin to long for the old British colonial days due to the fact that freedom brings some responsibilities as well. Lacking the necessary educational background and economic independence, these women's new responsibilities begin to be a burden on their shoulders. Yet, they try to cope with all the problems successfully during the time of the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial period. In addition to these, the Nigerian males' attitude towards all these political, social and gender problems are conveyed to the readers in Women are Different. Meanwhile, the Nigerian female gender patterns are compared and contrasted with the Nigerian male gender patterns and eventually, the importance of raising consciousness about the women's problems not only in Nigeria, but also all around the world has been underlined in the novel. Accordingly, in this paper, the Nigerian women's role in the postcolonial Nigerian society will be evaluated with regard to the examples given from Women are Different.

Modern African poets have shown a consistent commitment to the socio-political and economic trends of their various nations, becoming both the mouthpieces of the people and the watchdogs of leaders in all spheres of the society. This article examines animal symbolism as markers of Nigeria’s socio-political history. To do this, it relies on the animals’ behavioural traits as an interpretative paradigm. The article adopts semiotics, particularly symbolism, a meaning-expanding literary device, in interpreting Remi Raji’s Lovesong for My Wasteland (2005) and A Harvest of Laughters (1997). The semiotic ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce undergird the basic framework for the explications. Moreover, the selected symbols are analysed within the context of socio-cultural beliefs and historical events in Nigeria. Hence, the study reveals that the poet’s usage of cultural semiotic markers such as “the Elephant,” “the Wolf,” “the Dog,” and “the Hyena” to indicate Nigeria’s socio-political trajectory underscores his poetic elegance and social vision. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the poetry collections are symbionts and in dialogue with each another. Ultimately, the article captures dialogue as the poet’s panacea for progressive coexistence in a heterogeneous nation like Nigeria.

The concept of mutual illumination between texts, genres, arts, and disciplines has been used in scholarly work for decades (Weisstein, 1973, 1993). Nevertheless, much of this literature lacks a firm anchor with regard to a literal source of the analogy " mutual illumination. " We argue that by observing natural phenomena that actually mutually illuminate, influence and otherwise affect each other, greater insight into how texts interact in similar ways can be achieved. Thus, drawing concepts from astrophysics, with specific reference to multiple star systems, a conceptual framework is derived in which analogous relations are proposed and interrogated. This framework couches the discussion in a stylistic analysis of our primary text, Jí mi S ̣ó lańke ̣ ́ 's O ̣̀ na ̣̀ La ̣̀ , which is analyzed both on its own and also with reference to other texts which are interconnected, interrelated, and serve to " mutually illuminate " each other. We find that when considered in light of other related texts, the analysis of O ̣̀ na ̣̀ La ̣̀ becomes much richer and, in the process, the understanding of the other texts is also enriched. Stylistic tools used in the analysis include various types of intertextual and intratextual parallelism, repetition, and silence.

Abstract:
Consider now Taiye Selasi’s ‘Bye-Bye Babar’ article in The Lip Magazine of March 3, 2005 and the emergence of what has been variously described as a movement, a critical theory, a label and even a cultural commodification. Afropolitanism
represents for twenty-first century young Africans what Pan-Africanism represent for their fathers. Indeed, as it is with the emergence of a new art movement or philosophy, the controversy stirred by Afropolitanism is yet unresolved. This essay is not an attempt to fuel it. Instead, this paper places Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah within the context of Afropolitanist discourse. It tries to reveal how the novel befittingly fits into an afropolitanist mould, through a conscious juxtaposition of Afropolitanism’s definitive article andAmericanah in order to expose their points of overlap. This essay therefore is a reading of Adichie’s Americanah through an Afropolitanist lens.

Keywords: Afropolitanism, afropolitanist, discourse, americanah

Politics have been defined in countless ways by several scholars and academic materials. Aristotle, who is regarded as the father of politics, defines politics as a noble activity in which men decide the rules they will live by and the goals they will collectively pursue. Since independence, there has been an upward motion in the participation of women in politics. For instance, in 1992, Nigeria witnessed the appearance of the first female presidential candidate, Sarah Jibril. Besides, the constraints imposed by the protracted period of military interregnum and dictatorial rule, there were quite several factors that render the level of political engagement of women in democratic politics marginal or at best tokenistic.
This study tends to educate its readers on the need to consent to women’s full participation in Nigerian politics; and to divulge the historic imprint of women who had had the opportunity to serve the nation through politics.

Across various mediums, the continent of Africa with its vast and dynamic span of cultures, countries, identities and people, is often homogenised and reduced to a single entity or concept. Of course home to extensive differences, from religious to linguistic, philosophical to customary, ethnic to cultural to name but a few; mediums such as the public international media, international charities, Western development agencies and popular culture, both past and present, notoriously evoke a unified, generalised and stereotyped image of Africa (Fru Doh, 2009). Yet emerging narratives across the continent increasingly materialise from within and beyond its shores, both intentionally and even secondarily working to diversify and dismantle these sweeping and emphatically wrong and prejudiced external notions. Postcolonial literature as one such medium and literary canon progressively emerged across the global south and into the global north, or West, over the twentieth century; particularly surrounding the end of many occupied and colonised lands and the establishment of new and independent countries from the 1950s. Writers, poets, playwrights and philosophers among other writers and orators from Africa and other continents of newly-independent states across Asia, Australasia and The Americas, began to write back to the dominant canon of English literature whose classical and contemporary works of fiction often tied into imperialistic ideologies, colonial rhetoric and racial superiority (Said, 1978). Canonical texts were renounced and challenged by writers through their own re-writings and revisions, such as Une Tempête by Aimé Césaire (1969) in response to The Tempest by William Shakespeare (circa 1610). These re-presentations sought, and indeed continue on in contemporary literature, to both highlight these maligned ideals and respond with their own agency and reclamation through their works.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is largely read as a direct response – and more – to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), which alongside his critical lecture (originally given in 1975, see Achebe, 2001) lead a momentous shift across Nigeria and far beyond. Frequently cited as inspirational, ground-breaking and pioneering in its cause and triumph, the text helped to propel Nigeria and Africa at large into the contemporary literary scene globally, particularly penetrating the Western literary scene, from syllabi to the stubborn ranks of Western literary criticism. Shifting perspective, Achebe served as inspiration for new generations of African writers (Sickels, 2010). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s writings and stance is both often compared to and held in regard to those of Achebe. Citing Achebe’s influence, Adichie stated in a 2005 interview that “his work influenced not so much my style as my writing philosophy: reading him emboldened me, gave me permission to write about the things I knew well” (Adichie, 2005). This ‘permission’ inspired an expanse of writers and contributed to movements of liberation to challenge assumptions and perspectives internationally. An ‘emboldened’ backbone grew from within, Achebe came to be seen as a voice to be heard: a Nigerian writer as opposed to a European or Western writer, thus one who had also experienced the realities and continuing legacies of colonial pasts and a neo-colonial present-day that Adichie refers to, as well as – simply put – life in all its complexity as told from Nigeria outwards, and finally not just non-Africans speaking about and on behalf of Africa.

ABSTRACT. Nigerian narratives always reveal corruption, disillusionment, mythological entities, political
instability, cultural backgrounds and traditions of the tribes and nations used as context. Textual resources
advertise literary works as realistic. In general, the recurring presence of the characters in these narratives is almost
ignored. Unlike earlier interpretations of the Nigerian narratives, this essay is based on the theory of Frye’s five
mimetic modes or categories. Based on the analysis of The Interpreters (SOYINKA, 1972) and The Famished Road
(OKRI, 1992), this article examines the defiant hero as a recurring presence in Nigerian narratives. In fact, the
hero is a character of resistance, which, in many ways, is in conflict with the laws made unbearable for others.
The article also shows how the character, revealed by the constant manifestations of the structure of the primary
activities of the hero of narratives such as myths, gradually and systematically hides in later narratives of mimetic
modes through the emergence and influence of realist art. Similar processes in which the hero is involved are
abundant in many Nigerian narratives. The insights revealed by these discussions serve to rethink previous
critical views on these texts.

Stories in literature and in mythology carry a unique ability to teach, admonish, and denounce while representing a way to fight against conventional images and ideas. This article analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013) as a postcolonial coming-of-age story, which rewrites the stereo-typical plot of romance and the male-female double Bildungsroman, from the perspective of two mar-ginalized characters, simultaneously deconstructing the Eurocentric patriarchal literary canon. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Fiction award, the novel describes the formative processes of a heroine and a hero who meet and fall in love in Nigeria, migrate to the West, and ultimately reunite in their home country fifteen years later. Through the tension of adaptation and resistance to white norms and white privilege, racism, sexism, and classism of British and American societies, Adichie attempts to define the hybrid identity of the two protagonists and explore their strategies of resistance to overcome suffering. Approaches to gender, decolonization, globalization and Afropolitanism have been purposely adopted to clarify and deepen the analysis of their stories, with a special focus on the importance of Nigeria for the writer and her characters in the interconnection between Africa and the West, the 'global South' and 'global North'.

God make him rich so he can go to India. Mallam Sidi, husband of Hotiho. Sidi's ambition is for God to make him rich so he can go to India. 'Mallam Sidi is the husband of Hotiho' The sight of a 15 ft image of Sridevi, dancing erotically on the screens of the open-air cinemas of northern Nigeria, or the tall, angular figure of Amitabh Bachchan radiating charisma through the snowy, crackly reception of domestic television have become powerful, resonant images in Hausa popular culture. To this day, stickers of Indian films and stars decorate the taxis and buses of the north, posters of Indian films adorn the walls of tailors' shops and mechanics' garages, and love songs from Indian film songs are borrowed by religious singers who change the words to sing praises to the Prophet Mohammed. For over thirty years Indian films, their stars and fashions, music and stories have been a dominant part of everyday popular culture in northern Nigeria. If, as Bakhtin (1981) writes, communication is fundamental to human life, that self and society emerge in dialogue with others surrounding them, then Indian films have entered into the dialogic construction of Hausa popular culture by offering Hausa men and women an alternative world, similar to their own, from which they may imagine other forms of fashion, beauty, love and romance, coloniality and post-coloniality. Before I began my research I read all I could find by Nigerian and Western scholars on media and film in Nigeria. For the most part, this scholarship dealt with the complex and continuing problem of cultural imperialism-the dominance of Western media and most especially Hollywood films. When I first visited Kano, the major city in northern Nigeria, it came as a surprise, then, that Indian films are shown five nights a week at the cinemas (compared with one night for Hollywood films and one night for Chinese films); that the most popular programme on television was the Sunday morning Indian film on City Television Kano (CTV); and that most video shops reserved the bulk of their space for Indian films (followed by Western and Chinese films, Nigerian dramas and religious videos). The question of why Indian films are so popular among Hausa viewers has occupied much of my research since that time.2 What pleasures do Hausa viewers take from films portraying a culture and religion that seem so dissimilar and are watched usually in a language they cannot understand?

Les compositions romanesques de l’écrivain nigérian Chinua Achebe mettent en évidence la façon dont la colonisation a tenté de juguler un rapport accélérationniste à la temporalité par l’imposition d’un schème développementaliste global. Contrairement à une lecture souvent proposée de la trilogie africaine d’Achebe, mon hypothèse est que le récit de la colonisation en pays ibo ne raconte pas l’accélération d’un processus déjà engagé de décomposition de la société ibo traditionnelle, mais le blocage de toute dynamique accélérationniste par une temporalité impériale verrouillée au nom de la civilisation et du progrès.

This paper offers an insight into a variety of female characters taken from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, Purple Hibiscus and her short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, focusing on “Imitation”, “Jumping Monkey Hill” and “The Arrangers of Marriage”. These characters, after being contextualized in a postcolonial environment, are analyzed in terms of gender subjugation, exploring the amount of freedom they enjoy and the opportunities for liberation they can access, finding elements of both submission and resistance in most of them. Also, possible symbols or connections to recent African history are examined, in order to give domestic stories a bigger meaning.

Literature has always inspired filmic adaptations, and African literature has its films too, mainly sourced from Francophone novels, some of which have been examined by Techeuyap, Anyinefa, and Mestaoui, among others. Nigerian literature, on the other hand, has inspired little number of adaptations, with the notable exception of Achebe’s first novel, published in 1958 and which has, over the years, inspired several adaptations—films and plays. This article will compare Achebe’s first novel with its main screen counterpart and seeks to highlight the reasons for the huge success of this televised program, revealing some of the ingredients behind the success of Nollywood films and helping to get a better understanding of their content and message.

The Postcolonial Historical Novel is the first systematic work to explore how the historical novel shapes understandings of the past in former colonies, and how it has been transformed by its appropriation in these settings. Focusing on contemporary writing from Africa and Australasia, this book challenges conventional understandings of literary realism. It shows how plausibility and verifiability are fundamental to fiction-writing in places where the past is contested, and suggests new ways for thinking about the relations between historical truth and creative imagination. By analyzing how this commitment to realism and plausibility functions differently in texts from Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand, this book explores how the historical novel has been inflected by distinct postcolonial pressures. In particular, it outlines three key variations or subgenres: settler allegory (which reflects the ideological tensions implicit in much colonial writing), transnational realism (which emerges from authors' desires to explore processes of globalization in their fiction), and melancholy realism (in which the boundaries between past and present dissolve).

This study revealed that Coping Mechanism or Strategies of Women victims of domestic violence  is based on empiricism (experienced
based), Rationalism (logically based, and based on calculation), as well as “Metaphysism (based on assurance that are beyond comprehension on practical level)”, that is, coping mechanisms are Rationally, Empirically and metaphysically Constructed. Also, this study revealed that coping mechanisms varied across individual women.

In spite of the encomiums often poured on Chinua Achebe for inventing the modern African novel, his orientation of resuscitating a sense of pride in Africa " s own cultural achievement tends to overshadow his interest in city life. This paper offers a study of Achebe " s engagement with city life through No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People and foregrounds his demonstrable concern about the problems plaguing the modern African city. The paper uses the Postcolonial approach which focuses on the destructive effects of colonialism on traditional values to critically examine Achebe " s literary rendering of city experience. It pays particular attention to what seems to be Achebe " s conclusion that what happens in the city are a brain child of colonisation and that urban pollution is a result of the invasion and destruction of African values by colonial experience. The parochial attitude of ethnic groups in the city often rob city dwellers of confidence of citizenship; hence, they tend to regard the city as an entity that creates or exacerbates their misery and generally stand in their way of achieving true happiness. This unhelpful attitude has negative implication for the reading public since people act from perception rather than reality.

This paper analyse the level of financial inclusion in Nigeria using data from the global findex indicators. The findings reveal that Nigeria witnessed growth in several financial inclusion indicators in the early years of financial inclusion in 2014 but the benefits were not sustained in the later years especially in 2017. Nigeria's level of financial inclusion is very low compared to the World average. In the population group analysis, it was observed that the female, poorest, male, older and uneducated population were worse-off in all indicators of financial inclusion in 2017. The implication of the observed decline in the level of financial inclusion in 2017 suggest that there are barriers to financial inclusion in the post-2014 years.

The present volume intends to show the move from theory to activism: from Marx’s reflections on Shakespeare to the ways certain narratives have an impact on social movements such as BLM, to the critique of institutions such as universities through the discussion of politically-engaged plays and fictions, to the impulse that arises among many colleagues in academia working to raise awareness in places as inhospitable as prisons, or as fundamental as their own classrooms, to those who organise forums with activists or try to become active in the fight for freedom and equality.

In this paper, I explore the feminist activism represented by the creative
and critical works of the award-winning Nigerian writer, Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie. In a move that signalled her growing international
influence as a cultural critic, her 2012 essay, “Why We Should All Be
Feminists” was distributed to high school students across Sweden. Her
three accomplished novels feature female protagonists through whom
she provides powerful critiques of the androcentric social, cultural,
and political structures of the societies she focuses on. The novels are
Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and Americanah
(2013). These are the major ways in which Adichie has made
substantial contributions to feminist activism both on a global scale
and in postcolonial societies. Using a narrative and socio-literary
framework, I examine the feminist critique offered in these works to
highlight Adichie’s contributions to current feminist literary activism
and scholarship.

The application of trauma theory to postcolonial literature has provoked anxiety from critics concerned about its capacity to impose Eurocentric interpretations. This article evaluates the use of trauma as a paradigm for interpreting Nigerian civil war literature, examining the concept in relation to Chris Abani’s 2007 child-soldier narrative Song for Night. This novel’s formal qualities – temporal disjunction, repetition and communicative ambivalence – signify an intertextual engagement with trauma theory, reflecting the concept’s emergence as a generic framework mediating representations of history in various contexts. Far from effacing historicized detail as some claim, Abani’s engagement with trauma generates an allegory of the war’s significance in post-conflict Nigeria. Song for Night expresses the desire for a border-crossing perspective that would reconcile former antagonisms, while pointing to the obstacles that preclude this. Above all, the fractured subjectivity of the traumatized victim-perpetrator protagonist emerges as an emblem of the conflict’s refusal to be relegated to the completed past.