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In this article I focus on Gabeba Baderoon's engagement with nature and the ecological nuances in her poetry. Baderoon is an accomplished South African poet with four poetry collections to date: The Dream in the Next Body (2005), The Museum of Ordinary Life (2005), A hundred silences (2006), and The History of Intimacy (2018). These poetry collections sustain Baderoon's ecofeminist sensibility as she engages with South Africa's ecoenvironmental challenges. In expanding the scope of how ecology impacts on poetry, I strive to illustrate how Baderoon's poetry is intimately bound up with the tropes of environmental humanities, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, and aquapoetics. I interrogate Baderoon's engagement with ecological concerns in South Africa. Previous critical works about her poetry often discount how her poetry creatively harnesses ecopoetic tropes to illustrate the problematics of ecological concerns, climate change, and environmental crises. Rather, they often fixate on the portrayal of racial politics of apartheid as it culminated in the poverty of black people in her poetry. Interestingly, Baderoon does not enforce a strict and total division between these thematic concerns in her poetry collections. I argue in this article that, within the framework of commitment to ecological values, Baderoon explores the relationship between human and non-human agencies in her poetry. Arguably, the conception of human relations with the environment enables Baderoon to advocate for the protection of plants, animals, and water resources for a sustainable ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that the sacred in John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo's Remains of a Tide (Ibadan: Mosuro, 2018) and Harry Garuba's Animist Chants and Memorials (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2017) evokes a contestation of meanings involving "claimed" and "unclaimed" spaces of the sacred. In the analysis of these poetry collections, I apply Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory of memory, and concepts of mythology and mysticism. The unclaimed space in the two collections remains impenetrable, deified, and fetishised, but the claimed space is accessible, liberal, and imaginable. In interaction with the unclaimed space, the claimed space breaks the barriers insulating the unclaimed space to interrogate the real and unreal. The claimed space also accommodates the depiction of symbolic objects of interest by the two poets. For both Clark-Bekederemo and Garuba, landscapes, introspection, and recollection are symptomatic responses to experiences of rupture between the claimed and the unclaimed spaces. This article also illustrates that during a rupture, the unclaimed space can take on new meanings and stereotypical symbols can be reshaped. The sacred in literature is complicated by a structure that blends elements of the familiar and the strange in unusual configurations. The sacred in the two poetry collections is delineated along imagined and reimagined spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the tension between subjugation and resistance as represented in G'Ebinyo Ogbowei's six poetry collections, through the lens of discourse stylistics and eco-linguistic theories. Ogbowei is a prolific Nigerian poet whose work delineates anger and resistance while documenting the Niger Deltan experience. His poetry illustrates themes of emasculation in the aftermath of continued pillage and drums up support for the region's nationalism, expressing the Niger Deltans' frustrated yearnings for self-determination. Venturing beyond the usual boundaries of ecocriticism, Ogbowei's poetry not only engages with the Niger Delta's enduring poverty, ecological degradation and despair but also deploys resistance against the region's continued subjugation, portraying Niger Deltans' determination and struggle to live a fulfilled life in an ecologically-degraded environment. Taking eco-critical concerns as a point of departure, this paper interrogates the poetics of resistance in Ogbowei's six collections: the heedless ballot box (2006), the town crier's song (2009), the song of a dying river (2009), marsh boy and other poems (2013), let the honey run (2013) and matilda (2018). Ogbowei expresses feelings of anger and anxiety through linguistic deviations, collocational clashes, allusions, repetitions and pointed use of lexis, in service of an artistic commitment to resistance and protest. Ogbowei's poetry collections thus provide a literary site where protest, resistance and revolt intersect, relaying the peculiarities of the Niger Delta. Through an analysis of selected poems in his oeuvre, we argue that Ogbowei's work calls for eco-revival and the restoration of dignity to humanity in this troubled region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the maturation of Robert Serumaga's art, politics, and activism as he confronted the dilemma of totalitarianism unleashed by Idi Amin's dictatorship on postcolonial Uganda. The paper establishes a direct link between literature, resistance, and performance of Uganda's political failure within the context of the playwright's individualistic disposition to art as his complicated inclination to revolt. Most obviously, the association between art and politics in Serumaga's lifestyle is embedded in his undeniable prosecution of rebellion through guerilla warfare against Amin in 1979. The striking tenets of reactance and resistance theories are appropriated to contextualize the struggle, resistance, and liberation propensities grounded in Serumaga's revolt theater and activism. Disappointingly, Serumaga's proclivity for resistance has attracted relatively little attention from the earlier scholars of his literary works such as his novel Return to the Shadows (1969), a poem "End of the Road" (1966), and the plays Majangwa (1974), A Play (1967), and The Elephants (1970). His political maturation in his latter productions of Renga Moi (1972) and Amayirikiti (1974) were also rarely discussed, as scholars were more concerned with how Serumaga has sustained tropes of absurdity in his earlier plays. How does revolt exegesis in his latter theater productions reference his involvement with guerilla warfare? Within this evident lacuna, these scholars have also failed to capture how politics and activism have indispensably intruded into his latter theater productions. With respect to the foregoing, the paper aims to interrogate the signification of resistance in Serumaga's theater productions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the foregoing reasons, is it any wonder why Fashek's Kpangolo reggae offers the most gripping narratives of Nigeria's poor and downtrodden's agony, marginality and deprivations? Majekodunmi Fasheke whose stage name is Majek Fashek was a maverick Nigerian singer-songwriter and a guitarist who made a game changing incursion into the Nigerian music industry in [8]. Notably, his Kpangolo reggae music is embedded in critical but philosophical tracks from the albums intersecting politics, dissension and resistance in: I I & I Experience i (1989), I Prisoner of Conscience(Re-lease) i (1989), I So Long Too Long i (1991), I Spirit of Love i (1991), I Best of Majek Fashek i (1997), I Rain Maker i (1997) and I Little Patience i (2005). [Extracted from the article]

The paper addresses the dialectics of protest and revolt in Childish Gambino's musical video 'This is America' and its adapted version in Falz's musical video 'This is Nigeria' within the context of Musical Discourse Analysis. In Gambino's 'This is America', the African-American youths become the centre of attention, while America is depicted as a country of racial inequality. Correspondingly, a revolt thematic is further pursued in Falz's 'This is Nigeria' to reflect a devaluation of youths' lives, and highlight other local conflicts that impinge on Nigeria's continuity as a sovereign nation. Surprisingly, among the emerging hip hop voices in America, Donald Mckinley Glover Jr., otherwise known as Childish Gambino, most clearly heralds revolt against a longstanding racism that all too often result in the lives of African-American youths been desperately wasted through the high rate of mass shootings. Although relatively new on the list of Nigerian hip hop, Folarin Falana, whose stage name is Falz, has made a controversial but compelling reinterpretation of Nigerian social crises in 'This is Nigeria'. His innovative adaptation of Gambino's 'This is America' forcefully brings a formal order out of chaos. Apparently, the visual parallelism in their musical videos engages appropriately with metatheatre to clearly challenge conventional assumptions of youths' lives in America and Nigeria. Suffice it to state that by embracing the path of resistance, both Gambino and Falz have proven that their individual frustrations are the frustrations of youths in their cross-cultural societies. Chaos, marginality and resentment epitomised in the two musical videos undergird the focus of this paper to explore the signification of American and Nigerian youths' cross-cultural pursuit of protest, conflict and revolt through meta-theater in 'This is America' and 'This is Nigeria'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hip hop music on the African continent often constitutes a site for competing anxieties, just as its varied rhythms compellingly appeal to the sensibilities of its diverse audience. In his defence of Nigerian hip hop and its artistes, Adeniyi asserts the primacy of creativity, while also repudiating the perception that hip hop can be blamed as being a causative agent of social vices in the country. Yomi Olusegun-Joseph's 'Singing the Body: Postmodern Orality and the Female Body in the Nigerian Hip Hop Nation' assesses the representations of the female body in Nigerian hip hop. [Extracted from the article]

Genuine euphoria, which accompanied the birth of multi-ethnic Nigeria nation-state in 1960, has been regrettably deflated and more than offset by the onrush of political tension that has ravaged its polity in recent times. Hence, the deforming pressure of inequity in contemporary Nigeria logically stands out as a corollary of political tyranny. From the standpoint of inequity, political marginality ostensibly poses a contentious decoding as it often raises poignant questions in the philosophy of meanings embedded in Esiaba Irobi's Why I Don't Like Philip Larkin. In connection to this, the historical referencing of the amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria in the poetry collection provides a test-case for the thematic quest for Biafra republic's self-determination. Agonized by a perceived marginality, retreat to nationalism offers Irobi a convenient platform to affirm the predatory and ruthless suppression of the Igbo ethnic group during and after the Nigerian civil war (between 1967 and 1970). This paper asserts that Irobi takes power imbalance for his subject matter in order to build on these contrariety and contradictions. This build-up facilitates the exploration of tension between public duty and personal affections. Remarkably, the paper concludes that Irobi's poetic thrust of marginality in the collection espouses a fury which verges on resentment at the lopsided Nigeria nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to articulate the interplay between history and (autobiographical) narrative spaces, and the relationship between those spaces, and the shifting role of memory in the delineation of self-construct against tyranny in Ken Saro-Wiwa's memoir A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary. The paper engages with Saro-Wiwa's twofold campaign against ecological degradation of Ogoniland by Shell and quest for resource control of the crude deposit found in Ogoniland in order to counterbalance its successive exploitation by the Nigerian ethnic majorities in his memoir. Saro-Wiwa, in the memoir, turns away in disgust and despair from the inglorious platitude that calls for the sustaining of Nigeria nation-state's theft of Ogoni and other Delta minorities' wealth by the ethnic majorities. The paper argues that Saro-Wiwa is convinced that the exploitative economic system, which impoverishes millions of oil-bearing Ogoni and other Delta nationalities for the benefit of Nigeria's ethnic majorities, would be unthinkable without the total political emasculation orchestrated by the country's defective federal structure. Suffice it to say, this anomalous appropriation has divided Nigeria into a deeply antagonistic nation-state where the Nigerian ethnic majorities perpetually dominate the Delta's minorities through a sustained military might. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that over time, the mobile telephony and the internet have assisted in facilitating a free-flow of routine digitized communication in which everyone engages in Nigeria. Imbued with committed determination to portray the inherent positive qualities embedded in their respective countries, artists often use their songs for a relentless pursuit of implicit nationalism. These songs serve as archival tool for re-evaluation, repudiation and condemnation of the prevailing, inimical trends that tend to compromise cherished communal values of their respective milieux. In the light of the foregoing, we consider in this paper, the [re]presentation of Computer Mediated Communication in Nigerian Hip hop. To this end, six purposively selected songs by six Nigerian hiphop artists are subjected to textual analysis. We noted in the paper that the cross re-territorialisation of CMC in Hip hop ranges thematically from internet crime, romance to prayer cum religion. Notably, the paper appropriates 'slangification'-- a means to code online criminal activities as it downplays overt sensationalism of sexual perversion. Findings in the paper function as signifiers that counteract the negative identity which well-meaning Nigerians have had to contend with. In conclusion, the paper ostensibly tends to repudiate a dismay labelling of Nigeria as a nation of scammers and internet fraudsters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lyrical ingenuity has been influential in the rise and global spread of hip hop. This has extended to Nigerian hip hop artists, who battle for supremacy and relevance on the airwaves. In carving a niche for itself, Nigerian hip hop has appropriated globalised elements from its American counterpart, while simultaneously accentuating elements of domestication. The result is a hybridised variant, as is significantly foregrounded in the lyrics of Nigerian hip hop. The study presented here, which is text-based, analyses twenty selected Nigerian hip hop lyrics with a focus on its lyrical creativity. Relying on critical linguistic stylistics as a theoretical framework, the paper's overarching concern is the foregrounding of the creative use of language, particularly with regard to functional conversion, neologism, lexical regeneration or extension of meaning, and syntactic ingenuity. These realisations, alongside influences from indigenous oral traditions, are significant in the propagation of the 'glocal' - that is, a blend of the global and the local - Nigerian hip hop variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is presented. It talks about ethnic chauvinism and multiculturalism. Topics discussed include cultural intolerance, ethnocentrism and cultural conflicts between various civilizations of world. It also mentions social issues like tribalism, stereotyping and scapegoating.

An examination of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah reveals a mapping of exponential growth of obtrusive racial tension which leaves in its wakes prejudice, acrimony and hatred. The article argues that despite its dialogic engagement with the possibility of harmonizing the varied characters' racial/cultural backgrounds, Adichie's Americanah's experimentation with transculturalism faded in a miasma of morbid biases and despair. This failure has a marked impact on the cultural downturn in the lives of African immigrants and other economic migrants from other parts of the world who are trapped in the social contradictions prevalent in America and England. Through concerted efforts, Adichie negotiated interracial harmony among her characters in Americanah; especially among ethnocentric characters cocooned in private world of hate, snobbishness and recherché referenced by the turbulent contemporary world. Invariably, Adichie as a transcultural writer is bounded by the need to illustrate issues which verge on individuals' intolerance for people outside their ethno-cultural or socio-political backgrounds. Nevertheless, Americanah's transcultural trope appreciates the fluidity of the present age: the confluence of global cultures, the mobility as well as nomadic nature of the 21st-century man and the need to engender a monolithic cultural outlook in a culturally polyvalent society. The paper concludes that transculturalism could only manifest in a globally differing society if the walls of ethnocentrism and racism insulating it collapse. Curiously, transculturalism in Americanah ostensibly failed due to the obtrusive racial intolerance exhibited by the varied characters who appear to have determined to cling to the divisive racial sentiments identified in their attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It would not be overstating of the fact to say that Chinua Achebe is aforemost African writer, whose influence has been felt in the African cultural affirmation. This is most obvious inThings Fall Apart, a novel crafted to challenge the European conventional assumption that Africa has no culture. However, where Achebe privileges Okonkwo as a paradigm of African communal standard bearer, the third generation Nigerian female writers discredit the masculine violence derived from the Okonkwo's tempestuous trajectory. The paper examinesthe Nigerian female writers' countering of masculinity in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in order to imbue in their female characters a measure of assertiveness needed for a robust African communal development. The paper will further illustrate how Nigerian female writers like Buchi Emecheta, Zaynab Alkali, Lola Shoneyin, Chika Unigwe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have depicted various assertive roles accorded their female characters in the plots of their novels. The paper significantly relies on Judith Butler's theory of performativity which explains the difference between biological disposition and cultural motivation of gender for the development of women in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages with Nigeria's turbulent past in Wole Soyinka's Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known and Femi Fatoba's They said I Abused the Government. Factionalism is adopted to poignantly map the pervasive tension which engulfed the Nigerian landscape during General Sanni Abacha's tortuous military regime between 1993 and 1998. The collections further reflect how satire intersect with protest to explore a sustained anger against the military. The increasing complexity of Nigeria's nationhood comes under close scrutiny as a patchwork of cultures encased in a tenuous geographical sphere, where people of differing nationalities and religions are stampeded into a nation by the obtrusive British colonial authority. These poetry collections articulate a great deal of connection in the thematics of satire and protest: poems in both collections are preoccupied with assertive criticism of Abacha's military subjugation. The paper's overarching concern is the delineation of brutality derived from the recent historical occurrences in Nigeria. Essentially, the poems significantly re-evaluate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre and depressing anomie which reverses Nigeria's sovereignty during this period. Where Soyinka's poetic hacks into the incongruity of Nigeria's nationhood, Fatoba's poetry generates vitriolic humour that verges on satiric tone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commencing within the trajectory of perseverance, this paper sets out to examine the ways in which the phenomenon of waiting has been shrewdly explored by Niyi Osundare inWaiting Laughters[Osundare, N. (1990).Waiting laughters. Lagos: Malthouse]. Waiting is considered in the context of contemporary African literature and the poet’s own Yoruba tradition. It goes on to argue that the poet extends meanings of waiting far beyond their conventional limits, thus making it a complex, multi-levelled construct deployed as an instrument of resistance in the face of deplorable socio-economic and political conditions of contemporary African states. The paper identifies several manifestations of waiting: as patience, as natural progression, as social predicament, as historical inevitability, as humour, as laughter therapy, and as resistance. Each of these notions of waiting is an element of Osundare’s preoccupation with ways of overcoming the inequities, deprivations and injustices of African nations, and thus offers strategies for minimizing the effects of oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 impinges on the youth restiveness in Tomorrow Died Yesterday. The paper interrogates the power of imagination in its appropriation of word, imagery and symbolism to represent the debilitating problematic of environmental concerns in the oil-bearing region of Nigeria. Ecocriticism is utilised as the theoretical framework to argue that socioecological issues of the Niger Delta constitute the major focus of the novel as they underpin the economic emasculation of youths from the region, underlined in the lives of the characters portrayed in the novel. The paper concludes that the radical transformation of the Niger Delta from a peaceful littoral haven into the ransomtaking enclave of the present is grounded in Garricks's creative depiction of the youths' debilitating economic marginality, derived from the perilous environmental degradation of that region in the past decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negritude poetry is often considered the bastion of African literary engagement with the Europe and ultimate summation of the determination of people of the black race to confront racism. But if Negritude as a cultural movement serves as an enduring watershed in the decolonization process of the black Africa and the Caribbean, Negritude poetry on the other hand is incontrovertibly grounded in the committed promotion through writing of the avowed philosophy engraved in the movement's criticism of racial discrimination against Africans and blacks in the diaspora, by the white supremacist Europeans. Indisputably, Negritude essentially celebrates the African cultural renaissance in music, folklore and orature. Despite Senghor's magisterial father figure portraiture and his occupation of a dignified position in the halo chamber of fame in African literature, his writing has been largely described by the critics as conciliatory due to his remarkable volte-face in his latter poetry. An affirmation of this charge has been exemplified in Africanite and metissage culturel. However, David Diop has consistently cut the image of enfant terrible of the Negritude poetry and his poetics have been profoundly iconoclastic. Remarkably, Senghor and Birago Diop's poetry have been strikingly portrayed as confrontational and their poetics belligerent, Aime Cesaire, Leon Damas and David Diop's poetry exuberantly amplify militancy and radicalism mediated by the combative bravura. The paper seeks to evaluate how the selected Negritude poets have eloquently appropriated protest in the language of their poetry, in order to seek restoration of the battered African dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. InThe Beatification of Area BoyandCemetery 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 inThe Beatification of Area BoyandCemetery Road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of Nigeria.s nationhood in the themes of Inflorescence (1989) and Cotyledons (2009) reveals a dogged inscription of Esiaba Irobi.s poems within the context of Nigeria.s interweaving socio-political tragedies: the rapacious rape of her resources by the successive political class, the continuous violation of her humanistic ethos by the rampaging military institution, and the ignoble dispossession of her hopeless downtrodden masses. Irobi portrays a dialectical juxtaposition of the fragmented and haunted existentialism in Nigeria against the sanity and sanctity for human rights obtainable in the Western nations. The grounding of Nigeria.s disillusionment further underscores Nigeria.s stand on the brink of a political precipice. The paper aims to evaluate how Esiaba Irobi.s Inflorescence and Cotyledons have implicitly challenged Nigeria.s inability to live up to its expectations of fulfilling the present and future aspirations of its teeming population in the areas of human and infrastructural developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 social issues in the works of contemporary Nigerian poets, including Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide, Chinweizu, Femi Fatoba, Odia Ofeimun, Ezenwa Ohaeto, Obiora Udechukwu and Ogaga Ifowodo. Viewed in the light of artistic commitment, the paper will demonstrate how satire accentuates the role of these poets as the synthesizers/conduits of social and cultural concerns of Nigerian society for which they claim to speak. As representatively exemplified in the selected poems, the paper will essentially focus on the mediation of satire for the impassioned criticism of social and moral vices, militating against Nigeria's socio-political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 inI 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 inI 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 of abuse of power by the ruling elite, as well as widespread brazen corruption and social inequality in contemporary Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt is a distillation of deep-seated anger against what he perceived as his "unjustified confinement" of twenty-five months by the administration of General Yakubu Gowon during the Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970. Nigeria's haunting, turbulent political history is approached from ostensibly mediation of fact and fiction rendered in poetry. Poems in this collection exteriorize Soyinka's mind as it shuttles back and forth from life to death, fuelled by the fear of palpable death, and the knowledge that his fellow prisoners were dying slowly, unheeded by the prison authority. A Shuttle in the Crypt dwells on notions, conceptions, symbolic actions and relations lifted clean from their social, historical and literary contexts which are fused into an ideal worldview whose coherence is purely conceptual. This essay evaluates the intersection of history, literature and society, to examine the façade of nationhood as orchestrated by the political upheaval and internecine conflict, essentially moderated by the pulsation of Soyinka's mind while in solitary confinement. It further examines the poetics of A Shuttle in the Crypt, as it underscores suspended fear of expression and the need to give expression to an ever greater pressure of grim experience in Nigeria's chequered political trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's literary forte in the last ten years has undoubtedly been fiction, but Heart Songs is her first collection of poems. In this collection, she takes on the roles of social commentator and crusader through the conduit of orature, to criticize the devaluation of cultural and societal norms. The Poetics of Heart Songs is imbued with: the lamentation of the dearth of moral and social values in Nigerian society; the actual but often unspoken degradation of Nigerian immigrants in Europe and America, and the frequency with which corrupt practices have undermined the nation's development. This paper examines how Heart Songs canvasses for a re-examination of societal ethos, which demands that Nigeria's present must settle with the past by recovering social, moral and cultural codes for the restoration of human dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented regarding the book "Anthills of the Savannah," by Chinua Achebe. It discusses the concept of protest literature which is a subcategory of literature and utilizes several techniques including realism, defamiliarization strategies, and liberal deployment of satire. Moreover, it mentions the relevance of ideology in strong standpoints of protest literature.

This essay interrogates the mediation of protest and literature in Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah. It further evaluates the preoccupation of the novel as a veritable record of various forms of protest. Protest and literature are seen to be closely related in the way in which human beings perceive of their society and the actions that they take as a result of those perceptions. Social protest can be said to refer to those mass movements, private initiatives, demonstrations, and other activities which support or oppose specific developments or situations in a given society, with a view to changing it for the better. Literature, for its part, refers to that body of written, verbal, or performed work which exercises the imagination and seeks to offer insights into the nature of the world and the place of humans in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-political consciousness of literature in African society is an inevitable phenomenon which has remained an enduring, even necessary motif in African poetry. Murky politics of post-independent African countries has constantly provoked contemporary African poets to outrage and to near-fatalistic vision of history of their respective countries usually rendered in acerbic tone in their poetry. As may therefore be imagined, the discussion of social issues in African poetry is often graphic and accusatory. Jared Angira is a politically-committed poet whose radical ideological position is explicit in his poetry collections: Juices (1970), Silent voices (1972), Soft Corals (1973), Cascades (1979) and The Years Go By (1980). For Angira, social concern is not optional: it is the very basis of his work, and he has brought a marxist-oriented class analysis of society to bear upon his writing. In doing this, Angira conformed to Louis Althusser's notion of art as being '"to make us see', and what it allows us to see, what it forces us to see, is 'the ideology from which it is born"' (Bennet and Royle, 132). Consequently, in Angira's poetry social issues are not perceived as being the result of chance and circumstance, rather, they are seen as emerging from clearly discernible socio-political and economic factors whose workings could be subjected to detailed scrutiny and rigorous analysis. This paper examines how Jared Angira has entrenched social concerns in his poetry for the purpose of proffering solutions to the perceived social and political problems in Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel tackles headlong the evils of military rulers and their civilian collaborators in Nigeria, between 1990 and 1998. This orchestrates a shift of theme and concern, with the impact of colonization and historical past towards an examination of current socio-political problems of abuse of power by the ruling elite, corruption and widespread social inequality and justice in Nigeria's political landscape. This paper examines how Helon Habila in Waiting for an Angel portrays Nigerian society in a manner that utilizes its status as faction. It takes contemporary facts and analyses them from the perspectives of different characters in order to bring out their deeper meanings for society. The versatility with words and keen insight in the novel's central character enable him to delineate society in such a way that the arbitrariness of historical interpretation of events becomes clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]