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Journal articles on the topic 'Contemporary Nigerian literature'
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1
Olátúnjí, Michael Olútáò. "The Indigenization of Military Music in Nigeria Issues and Perspectives." Matatu 40, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 427–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-040001028.
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This essay investigates the development of European-style military music as practised in Nigeria with regard to the influence of its indegenization processes by its practitioners on the Nigerian soil. The areas in which the development is discussed include the new roles and functions of performance, the new thematic sources of military music arrangers, instrumentation, the stylistic and technical bases for orchestration as well as the overall institution of military music in Nigeria. It also raises an argument on the parameters for judging the African identity in a contemporary Nigerian military music composition and those of its allied genres. The essay concludes that, by virtue of its new contexts of performance as well as performance structure, Nigerian military music has shifted from being a substratum of the European music tradition in Nigeria to being a substratum of contemporary music on the Nigerian music scene.
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Alabi, Aliyu Sakariyau. "Parrésia and the Business of Publishing Contemporary Nigerian Literature." Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies 7, no. 1-2 (February 17, 2021): 23–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2020.1853656.
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AFEJUKU, TONY E., and E. B. ADELEKE. "Myths, Legends, and Contemporary Nigerian Theatre." Matatu 47, no. 1 (August 22, 2016): 97–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-90000397.
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Femi Osofisan belongs to the new breed of writers, inadequately referred to as ‘second generation’. An accomplished writer whose works include plays, poems, essays and novels, Osofisan is widely regarded as the most significant playwright in Africa after Soyinka. As a committed playwright, Osofisan focuses on the reappraisal of his immediate society and the challenges of living in this society. He calls attention to all that is undesirable in the politics, economy, and religion of contemporary Nigeria and asks for a change of attitude which, hopefully, will bring sanity to the country. One of the means by which Osofisan achieves his artistic objective is the use of myths and legends from Yorùbá mythology. Specifically, we shall show in this essay that Osofisan makes use of the myths of OEango and Èṣú and the legends of Môrèmi and Solarin as a means of thematic exploitation. By so doing, he creates a unique contemporary Nigerian theatre which other playwrights emulate and develop. Many Colours Make the Thunder King, Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, Morountodun, and Who Is Afraid of Solarin? are used as illustrative texts.
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Afejuku, Tony E., and E. B. Adeleke. "Myths, Legends, and Contemporary Nigerian Theatre." Matatu 49, no. 1 (2017): 54–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-04901004.
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Femi Osofisan belongs to the new breed of writers, inadequately referred to as the ‘second generation of writers’. An accomplished writer whose works include plays, poems, essays, and novels, Osofisan is widely regarded as the most significant playwright in Africa after Soyinka. As a committed playwright, Osofisan focuses on the reappraisal of his immediate society and the challenges of living in this society. He calls attention to all that is undesirable in the politics, economy, and religion of contemporary Nigeria and asks for a change of attitude which, hopefully, will bring sanity to the country. One of the means by which Osofisan achieves his artistic objective is the use of lore from Yorùbá mythology. Specifically, we shall show in this essay that Osofisan makes use of the myths of Ṣango and Èṣù and the legends of Môrèmi and Solarin as a means of thematic exploitation. By so doing, he creates a unique contemporary Nigerian theatre which other playwrights emulate and develop. We shall use Many Colours Make the Thunder King, Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, Morountodun, and Who’s Afraid of Solarin? as our illustrative texts.
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Krishnan, Madhu. "The storyteller function in contemporary Nigerian narrative." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49, no. 1 (December 12, 2013): 29–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021989413510519.
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Yemisi, Ige Adejoke. "Alternative Dispute Resolution and Collective Conciliation in Nigeria: A Review of Contemporary Literature." International Journal of Business and Management 12, no. 8 (July 18, 2017): 261. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v12n8p261.
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The aim of this paper is to present detailed contextual understanding of employment relations, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and collective conciliation in Nigeria. This contextual understanding is important in order to comprehend the specific evolution of ADR and collective conciliation in Nigeria, the particular configuration of employment relations institutions and the role of different stakeholders such as trade unions and employers’ associations. The outcomes of this study, affirms the significance of the roles and responsibilities of the actors (employer, trade union, state and conciliator) and highlights the procedures inherent in the dispute resolution mechanism hence, revealing how the weakness of state machinery tends to frustrate the process of conciliation in practice. Additionally, this study offers a reflection of what previous studies have presented, concerning the perceptions of users about the outcomes of collective conciliation within the Nigerian context.
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Ademakinwa, Adebisi. "'Acquisitive Culture' and its Impact on Nigeria's Socio-Economic Development." Matatu 40, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 285–300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-040001020.
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This is an interdisciplinary study of the role of culture in the development of Nigeria as a nation. The essay raises questions, among which are: what are the externalized and internalized aspects of Nigerian national culture? Which innate concepts of this culture do contemporary Nigerians understand and which concepts are grasped or misunderstood by foreigners? Russian and Nigerian literary works – Nikolai Gogol's and Chinua Achebe's, to mention but two – are utilized to determine similarity and dissimilarity of the pervasive nature of materialism in two different cultures. The essay finds philistine the platitude of Nigerian cultural managers inherent in such externalized cultural fiestas as FESTAC '77 and Nigerian Carnivals, while the more beneficial one, the internalized aspects which we call the fundamental culture, are merely mulled over, wholly misjudged, and mostly left unexplored. The essay finds, furthermore, that development can only be strengthened when the internalized aspects of Nigerian traditional societies are understood and synthesized with modern hybrid cultures before human development can take place. The essay makes no pretence to being a specialist study; rather, it crosses the borders of fiction, the social sciences, cultural anthropology, and history.
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Newell, Stephanie. "Petrified Masculinities? Contemporary Nigerian Popular Literatures by Men." Journal of Popular Culture 30, no. 4 (March 1997): 161–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1997.3004_161.x.
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KOUSSOUHON, Léonard, and Fortuné AGBACHI. "Ambivalent Gender Identities in Contemporary African Literature: A Butlerian Perspective." Journal for the Study of English Linguistics 4, no. 1 (June 6, 2016): 81. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/jsel.v4i1.9558.
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<p>This paper is an attempt to examine the way male and female participants perform gender in 03 novels, <em>Everything Good Will Come</em> (2006), <em>Swallow</em> (2010) and <em>A Bit of Difference</em> (2013), by a contemporary Nigerian writer called Sefi Atta. The study draws on Gender Performative Theory as developed by the feminist Butler (1990/1999). This theory considers gender identities as being socially constructed. The study highlights the multiple ways in which male and female participants perform gender according to established social norms in the selected novels. Regarding the existing social norms in Nigeria, the findings by scholars like Fakeye, George and Owoyemi (2012), Mejiuni and Awolowo (2006), Bourey et al (2012), Gbadebo, Kehinde and Adedeji (2012), Okunola and Ojo (2012) exude that men are traditionally portrayed as career people, assertive, powerful and active, independent and violent while women are stereotypically depicted as housewives, submissive, powerless and passive, dependent and non-violent (or victims). Based on the above dichotomies between men and women, the study unveils the ideology that underpins gender performances in the novels.</p>
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Akapng, Clement. "Contemporary Discourse and the Oblique Narrative of Avant-gardism in Twentieth-Century Nigerian Art." International Journal of Culture and Art Studies 4, no. 1 (April 28, 2020): 9–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.32734/ijcas.v4i1.3671.
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The history of Twentieth Century Nigerian art is characterized by ambiguities that impede understanding of the underlying modernist philosophies that inspired modern art from the 1900s. In the past five decades, scholars have framed the discourse of Contemporary Nigerian Art to analyze art created during that period in Africa starting with Nigeria in order to differentiate it from that of Europe and America. However, this quest for differentiation has led to a mono-narrative which only partially analyze modernist tendencies in modern Nigerian art, thus, reducing its impact locally and globally. Adopting Content Analysis and Modernism as methodologies, this research subjected literature on Twentieth Century Nigerian art to critical analysis to reveal its grey areas, as well as draw upon recent theories by Chika Okeke-Agulu, Sylvester Ogbechie, Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor to articulate the occurrence of a unique Nigerian avant-gardism blurred by the widely acclaimed discourse of contemporary Nigerian art. Findings reveal that the current discourse unwittingly frames Twentieth Century Nigerian art as a time-lag reactionary mimesis of Euro-American modernism. This research contends that such narrative blocks strong evidences of avant-garde tendencies identified in the works of Aina Onabolu, Ben Enwonwu, Uche Okeke and others, which exhibited intellectual use of the subversive powers of art for institutional/societal interrogation. Drawing upon modernist theories as a compass for analyzing the works of the aforementioned, this paper concludes that rather than being a mundane product of contemporaneity, Twentieth Century Nigerian art was inspired by decolonization politics and constituted a culture-specific avant-gardism in which art was used to enforce change. Thus, a new modern art discourse is proposed that will reconstruct Twentieth Century Nigerian art as an expression of modernism parallel to Euro-American modernism.
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Gibbs, James, and Ezenwa-Ohaeto. "Contemporary Nigerian Poetry and the Poetics of Orality." World Literature Today 73, no. 2 (1999): 380. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/40154826.
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Ike, Chukwuemeka. "Contemporary Nigerian Youth and the Reading Culture." Matatu 33, no. 1 (June 1, 2006): 339–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-033001038.
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Diala, Isidore. "Bayonets and the carnage of tongues: The contemporary Nigerian poet speaking truth to power." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 52, no. 1 (July 26, 2016): 116–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021989415575800.
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The paradigmatic antagonistic relationship between the Nigerian poet and the despot in his guise as a military ruler has often been examined in terms of a hegemonic contestation of power between unequal rivals. The military state’s typical response to the poet’s “truth” with the display of excessive might, often involving the emblematic battering of the poet’s tongue by the imposition of silence even in its eternal form of death, entrenches the notion of a powerful antagonist pitted against a weak opponent who nonetheless incarnates the spirit of the masses. A close reading of anti-military Nigerian poetry, however, underscores that the situation was replete with paradoxes: the inability of power to ignore apparent powerlessness; the ultimate triumph of powerlessness over power; and the fascinating replication in the counter-discourse of the (discursive) strategies of the dominant hegemony it battles against. This study highlights these trends in contemporary Nigerian poetry inspired by military despotism by paying particular attention to the work of the “third generation” of Nigerian poets.
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Schulze–Engler, Frank. "Civil Society and the Struggle for Democratic Transition in Modern Nigerian Drama: Ken Saro–Wiwa's and Wole Soyinka's." Matatu 33, no. 1 (June 1, 2006): 267–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-033001034.
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In the wake of new democratic movements in Africa, the dynamic of democratic transition has become a key issue not only for the social sciences but also for literary studies. The following essay analyses the seminal role of the politics of civil society in two contemporary plays, Ken Saro–Wiwa's and Wole Soyinka's , reading them against the background of the turmoil undergone by Nigerian society in the 1980 s and 90 s. Not only have both authors been heavily involved as 'public intellectuals' in Nigeria's democratic transition, but they have also satirically highlighted the shortcomings of contemporary Nigerian society in their literary works. Both plays have contributed to setting up a public sphere shaped by the politics of civil society rather than those of ethnicity or religious fervour and have thus assisted in the 're-invention' of the Nigerian nation at an historical juncture where those responsible for ruling the country seemed about to destroy it altogether.
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Nnodim, Rita. "City, identity and dystopia: Writing Lagos in contemporary Nigerian novels1." Journal of Postcolonial Writing 44, no. 4 (December 2008): 321–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449850802410424.
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Shehu Umar Sa’id, Khairul Saidah Abas Azmi, Abdullahi Bala Alhaji, Ali Usman, and Idrith Ahmed Yusif. "Combating Fraud and the Challenge of Political Willingness: Evidence from Nigerian Public Sector." Journal of Economic Info 7, no. 1 (May 3, 2020): 56–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.31580/jei.v7i1.1351.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the lack of political willingness in Nigeria as a challenge to combating fraud among public employees. This study is a qualitative approach. The sources of data collection involve government reports, newspapers and interviews. In all, 12 participants were employed for the study. The study found that a lack of political willingness in Nigeria shows a persistent challenge to combat fraud. Our findings suggest that (1) political intervention, (2) party system or political party and (3) lack of commitment from the government make fraudulent practices in Nigerian public sector (NPS) perennial. Thus, it has hindered the effort to combat fraud in NPS. This study has practical implications for regulators (like CBN), and anti-corruption bodies such as EFCC, ICPC, AMCON, and CCB. The study could perhaps redirect their efforts and eases the way of mitigating fraudulent practices in Nigeria's public sector. The study also has an academic contribution to the body of knowledge and inFraudsight to the literature. This paper is original and unique in its form and has the value on fraud prevention, detection of corruption, combating the contemporary fraud cases in the Nigerian public sector, and useful to those who might cherish its standing.
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Umar Sa'id, Shehu, Khairul Saidah Abas Azmi, Abdullahi Bala Alhaji, Ali Usman, and Idrith Ahmed Yusif. "The Combating Fraud and the Challenge of Political Willingness: Evidence from Nigerian Public." Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences 6, no. 3 (May 17, 2020): 217–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.31580/apss.v6i3.1334.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the lack of political willingness in Nigeria as a challenge to combating fraud among public employees. This study is a qualitative approach. The sources of data collection involve government reports, newspapers, and interviews. In all, 12 participants were employed for the study. The study found that a lack of political willingness in Nigeria shows a persistent challenge to combat fraud. Our findings suggest that (1) political intervention, (2) party system or political party and (3) lack of commitment from the government make fraudulent practices in Nigerian public sector (NPS) perennial. Thus, it has hindered the effort to combat fraud in NPS. This study has practical implications for regulators (like CBN), and anti-corruption bodies such as EFCC, ICPC, AMCON, and CCB. The study could perhaps redirect their efforts and eases the way of mitigating fraudulent practices in Nigeria's public sector. The study also has an academic contribution to the body of knowledge and insight to the literature. This paper is original and unique in its form and has the value on fraud prevention, detection of corruption, combating the contemporary fraud cases in the Nigerian public sector, and useful to those who might cherish its standing.
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Dalley. "The Idea of “Third Generation Nigerian Literature”: Conceptualizing Historical Change and Territorial Affiliation in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel." Research in African Literatures 44, no. 4 (2013): 15. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.44.4.15.
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Ijisakin, Eyitayo Tolulope. "Printmaking in Nigeria: Its Evolution and Developmental History." Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 8, no. 2 (July 1, 2019): 247–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/ajis-2019-0036.
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Abstract Despite the prolific and ingenious productivity of the printmakers in Nigeria, the significance of their creative endeavours has not been given adequate attention by scholars of contemporary Nigerian arts. Scholarship on the printmakers has been limited to catalogues of art exhibitions, skimpy art reviews in magazines, and a few sketches on their biographies. This study therefore probes into the evolution of printmaking in Nigeria. This is with a view to obtaining its developmental history and enabling a more nuanced and useful understanding of the ways in which printmaking contributes to contemporary art praxis in Nigeria. Relying on field investigation, data were collected through in-depth interviews of printmakers, art critics, art historians and gallery owners, using oral or interactive formats; and collection of visual media sources. This study justifies the need for a developmental history; it identifies and examines the key actors who pioneered printmaking in Nigeria. It further appraises printmaking in Nigeria through the lens of relevant literature; and examines workshops, training, and techniques of printmaking in Nigeria.
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Adeaga, Tomi. "The Decline of the Nigerian Educational System Its Impact on the Younger Generation." Matatu 40, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 301–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-040001021.
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In the 1960s through to the 1980s, the Nigerian educational system as a whole was a role model for a number of other African countries, and its institutions of higher learning attracted many gifted scholars from all over the continent and beyond. It is on this strong foundation that contemporary Nigerian literature, for example, was also built. Significantly, this literature grew out of the group of vibrant Nigerian and African scholars including Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, and J.P. Clark, as well as the unforgettable German scholar, Ulli Beier. They brought Nigerian literature to heights which to date remains unsurpassed. However, those proponents of Nigerian literature who, years ago, prognosticated a rapid growth of Nigerian literature would be disappointed to find out that its progress has been slower than anticipated. This can be attributed to the drastic decline in Nigerian educational standards. It is in this vein that this essay seeks to explore the impediments in the continued growth of the Nigerian educational system in relation to literary studies. The focus is on the present younger generation and the role good education plays in their lives. The primary and the secondary school systems are analysed; the latter is exemplified by poor performance in the Joint Matriculation Examinations and the low number of highly qualified teachers. Also, the role of the universities and other institutions of higher learning are analysed and future prospects discussed. This is linked to those Nigerian scholars whose dedication to their professions is reflected in their efforts to revitalize the Nigerian educational system and to keep it from breaking down completely.
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Salami, Gitti. "The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art by Simon Ottenberg." African Arts 38, no. 3 (October 1, 2005): 10–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/afar.2005.38.3.10.
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Dibua, J. I. "The Idol, Its Worshippers, and the Crisis of Relevance of Historical Scholarship in Nigeria." History in Africa 24 (January 1997): 117–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3172021.
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In his brief essay on the crisis in modern Nigerian historiography, A.O. Adeoye effectively highlighted the origin and nature of the crisis. However, his work was more of a review of the different perspectives, as well as the existing literature on the issue. But the crisis of relevance that Nigerian historical scholarship is currently facing is so acute that it may not be an exaggeration to say that the discipline of history is being threatened with extinction. This has created a great amount of apprehension and self-doubt among Nigerian historians. Nevertheless, the crisis is manifested in all aspects of historical scholarship in Nigeria.One major area in which the crisis is manifested is at the apex level of the professional association of Nigerian historians, that is, the Historical Society of Nigeria (H.S.N.), which was formed in 1955. Apart from being the first professional body of academics to be formed in Nigeria, the society was so highly regarded that even up to the early 1980s, its activities were enthusiastically embraced by most Nigerian historians. By the mid 1980s, however, interest in the association had so much waned that majority of Nigerian historians, including very senior academics stopped paying their annual dues and participating in the Congresses. The situation has reached the depressing point where institutions now find it difficult to find enough finance to host the annual Congresses.The attempts to revive the interest of historians by choosing themes that are relevant to the contemporary Nigerian situation have not being successful.Similarly, the prestigious Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria (JHSN) which was established in 1956, was last published in 1985 (even though there are a number of manuscripts awaiting publication) while Tarikh, which was supposed to popularize history at the tertiary and secondary school levels and among non-historians, has not fared better. In addition, the publication of the Ibadan History Series has long since been discontinued.
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Nureni, Ibrahim. "Religious bigotry and military despotism in Olukorede S. Yishau’s In the Name of Our Father." Global Journal of Sociology: Current Issues 10, no. 2 (November 30, 2020): 32–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.18844/gjs.v10i2.4539.
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Although religious bigotry and military tyranny have been overtly delineated by the first and second generation novelists, especially the ones who witnessed the military maladministration in Nigeria, the contemporary Nigerian novelist also attempts to contribute and provide with more resources on the rights of the people and the liberty to be free from the imposition of religious and/or political doctrines that are socially constructed upon the people. In the Nigerian context, religious and political/military despotism are considered to go hand in hand since their ideologies formulate part of the hegemonic, determinist superstructures that push the masses to be at the corner of receiving end. Within Nigeria’s copious output of literature written in English, this paper, using Yishau’s debut novel In the Name of Our Father as a case study, attempts to develop a bird’s eye view of the religious and military issues in Nigerian society. Adopting the praxis of Marxist critical thinking, this paper acknowledges how the author, Yishau, allows his intellectual capacity in the form of a novel to direct his writing in relation to the religious bigotry and military despotism that spearheaded Nigerian society, most significantly in the military regime between 1966 and 1999. The outcome of this paper is that Yishau has accorded a pedigree for himself on the shore of Nigerian novels by leveraging critical attention to unfold the thematic precepts of religious bigotry and military despotism in his first literary, textual appearance. Keywords: Religious bigotry, military despotism, Nigerian novel.
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Omonijo, Dare O., Michael C. Anyaegbunam, Chidozie B. Obiorah, Samuel N. C. Nwagbo, Caleb A. Ayedun, Victoria Ajibola Adeleke, Elizabeth I. Olowookere, Jonathan A. Odukoya, and Chioma Agubo. "Examining the Social Problem of Kidnapping as a Reaction Against Injustice in Nigeria." Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 8, no. 2 (July 1, 2019): 176–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/ajis-2019-0029.
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Abstract Although, studies have shown several cases of kidnapping in both developed and developing countries but the case of a developing country like Nigeria is seems to be pathetic and worrisome, largely because of its contributions to the ancient slave trade that greatly affected several Nigerians for many centuries in the past. With such awful experiences in the past and its contribution to backwardness of the human race, one would have thought that cases of kidnapping would never occur in Nigeria, but the reverse has been the case in the contemporary. Hence, several studies have emerged on the subject of kidnapping in recent times. However, it could be observed that these studies are strongly connected with rituals power, wealth and traditional purposes. While the nature of the Nigerian society which is characterised by injustice and its contributions to the menace of kidnapping has been hitherto neglected in academic literature. The present study intends to address this flaw in knowledge by addressing the three research questions raised. Being a review paper, the study engaged secondary data in collecting relevant information to analyse and illustrate questions raised. The study argues that if the current high level of injustice in Nigeria could be reduced, there may be a corresponding reduction in the cases of kidnapping.
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Otu, Oyeh O. "Political Topicality and Literary Aesthetics in Wale Okediran’s Novels." Matatu 49, no. 1 (2017): 145–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-04901008.
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The prolificity, contemporaneity, and topicality of Wale Okediran’s themes are irrefutable indices to his claim to a place in the Nigerian literary canon. His engagement with and exposé of Nigeria’s intractable neurotic leadership disorders are timely and highly commendable. Also worthy of note are the promotion and popularity that the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) has given his latest novel, Tenants of the House, as it fills a significant gap and promises a positive turn in the development of Nigerian literature. This essay examines Okediran’s topical themes in relation to his craftsmanship; it investigates his deployment of aesthetic devices in the realization of his artistic vision. It fundamentally asks: what constitutes literariness in Okediran’s novels? Where does this belong in the Nigerian tradition of the novel? If it marks a shift from the conventional novelistic tradition, in what ways does it advance it? Considering that Okediran is one of Nigeria’s most prolific contemporary writers, it is important to determine his place in the Nigerian canon and also to analyse critically the factors responsible for that position.
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Salami, Ali, and Bamshad Hekmatshoar Tabari. "IGBO NAMING COSMOLOGY AND NAMESYMBOLIZATION IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S TETRALOGY." Folia linguistica et litteraria XI, no. 33 (2020): 39–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.31902/fll.33.2020.2.
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Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God and A Man of the People, the first four novels by Chinua Achebe, the contemporary Nigerian novelist, are among the most outstanding works of African postcolonial literature. As a matter of fact, each of these four novels focuses on a different colonial or postcolonial phase of history in Nigeria and through them Achebe intends to provide an authentic record of the negative and positive impacts of ‘hybridity’ on different aspects of the life of native subjects. Briefly stated, Achebe is largely successful in taking advantages of variable discursive tools he structures based on the potentials of the hybrid, Igbo-English he adopts. Thus, it might be deduced that reading these four novels in line with each other, and as chains or sequels of Tetralogy, might result in providing a more vivid picture of the Nigerian (African) subjects and the identity crises emerging in them as a result of colonization. To provide an account of the matter, the present study seeks to focus on one of the discursive strategies Achebe relies on in those four novels: Igbo Naming Cosmology and Name-symbolization.
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Richards, Sandra L. "Toward a Populist Nigerian Theatre: the Plays of Femi Osofisan." New Theatre Quarterly 3, no. 11 (August 1987): 280–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00015268.
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Though his work is as yet less familiar in Europe and the USA than that of Wole Soyinka. Femi Osofisan, while acknowledging a discipleship to his predecessor, is more concerned with specific social issues than with universalized themes, and is pre-eminent among contemporary Nigerian playwrights in combining a radical perspective with a recognition of the importance of cultural traditions. In this article. Sandra L. Richards explores his work in terms of the way that its social analysis elicits an active response from its audiences, through the reshaping of recognizable forms – ‘whodunits without solutions’ – while accepting the often-limited resources of theatre machinery and personnel on which most of his directors will be able to call. Sandra L. Richards spent two years in Nigeria as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Benin, and is presently Assistant Professor of Drama and Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University, California. An earlier version of the present article was presented at the annual African Literature Association conference held at Michigan State University in 1986.
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Salami, Ali, and Bamshad Hekmatshoar Tabari. "IGBO NAMING COSMOLOGY AND NAMESYMBOLIZATION IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S TETRALOGY." Folia linguistica et litteraria XI, no. 33 (2020): 39–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.31902/fll.33.2020.2.
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Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God and A Man of the People, the first four novels by Chinua Achebe, the contemporary Nigerian novelist, are among the most outstanding works of African postcolonial literature. As a matter of fact, each of these four novels focuses on a different colonial or postcolonial phase of history in Nigeria and through them Achebe intends to provide an authentic record of the negative and positive impacts of ‘hybridity’ on different aspects of the life of native subjects. Briefly stated, Achebe is largely successful in taking advantages of variable discursive tools he structures based on the potentials of the hybrid, Igbo-English he adopts. Thus, it might be deduced that reading these four novels in line with each other, and as chains or sequels of Tetralogy, might result in providing a more vivid picture of the Nigerian (African) subjects and the identity crises emerging in them as a result of colonization. To provide an account of the matter, the present study seeks to focus on one of the discursive strategies Achebe relies on in those four novels: Igbo Naming Cosmology and Name-symbolization.
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Raji–Oyelade, Aderemi. "Representational Exposures: The Album of Nigerian Women's Poetry (1985–2006)." Matatu 33, no. 1 (June 1, 2006): 293–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-033001035.
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In this essay, I argue that the provision of a calendar of Nigerian women's poetry is a necessary discursive means of foregrounding and symbolising the displaced and subalternized arm of the literary tradition. I note that the visibility of the female writer in much of contemporary Nigerian (and African) writing can best be contextually determined in the province of poetry since this is the genre where women's performance (as authors) is most suspect, or deferred. Therefore, in producing an album of the female authorial presence over two decades, I draw attention to the dominant tropes of "women's poetry" as a distinct but integral part of a literary canon which requires re-definition.
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Nwakanma, Obi. "Metonymic Eruptions: Igbo Novelists, the Narrative of the Nation, and New Developments in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel." Research in African Literatures 39, no. 2 (June 2008): 1–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/ral.2008.39.2.1.
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McBean, Kevin, and Ingrid Johnston. "Creating New Meanings and Understanding with Postcolonial Texts: Teaching Purple Hibiscus in a Grade 10 Classroom." Language and Literacy 20, no. 4 (January 7, 2019): 78–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29441.
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This article invites readers to share the experiences of a teacher and his Grade 10 students as they read and discussed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Nigerian novel Purple Hibiscus. The novel was selected as part of a national action research study in which literacy researchers and teachers select postcolonial literature for the classroom and develop new pedagogical strategies for teaching the texts. The article suggests that contemporary international novels such as Purple Hibiscus have potential to raise complex questions of social justice in the classroom and to create new understandings of a changing world.
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Hale, Frederick A. "Ibo Spirituality and Marriage Customs On the Eve of Nigerian Independence: the Testimony of Onuora Nzekwu's Wand of Noble Wood." Religion and Theology 7, no. 1 (2000): 24–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157430100x00108.
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AbstractFor many years scholars of African religion have appreciated the potential insights that imaginative literature can provide into religious beliefs and practices in rapidly transforming societies, not least with regard to the confrontation of indigenous religions and missionary Christianity. Generally ignored, however, has been the fiction of Onuora Nzekwu, a talented Ibo novelist who during the 1960s was hailed as one founder of Nigerian letters but who stood in the shadow of Chinua Achebe and a handful of other contemporary literary giants. The present article is a study of enduring commitment to Ibo spiritual and marital traditions and the critique of Roman Catholic missionary endeavours in Nzekwu's first novel, Wand of Noble Wood (1961). It is argued that in this pioneering treatment of these recurrent themes in African literature of that decade, Nzekwu vividly highlighted the quandary in which quasi-Westernised Nigerians found themselves as they sought to come to grips with the confluence of colonial and indigenous values and folkways on the eve of national independence in 1960. Nzekwu did not speak for all Ibo intellectuals of his generation; his portrayal of the weakness of Ibo commitment to the Roman Catholic Church is squarely contradicted by other literary observers, such as T Obinkaram Echewa.
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Lare. "Afropolitanism and Cultural Ambivalence in Contemporary Nigerian Drama: A Case Study of Ade Solanke's Pandora's Box." Research in African Literatures 50, no. 2 (2019): 238. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.50.2.15.
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Oladokun, Timothy Tunde, and Bioye Tajudeen Aluko. "Corporate real estate strategies: the Nigerian experience." Journal of Corporate Real Estate 17, no. 4 (November 9, 2015): 244–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/jcre-04-2015-0011.
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Purpose – The paper aims to contribute to the empirically scarce literature on corporate real estate management (CREM) strategies by providing meaningful insights on the different strategies likely to contribute to business performance in a developing country like Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – Primary data collected using questionnaire administered on property managers of the 105 business organisations in the list of registered companies with the Nigerian Stock Exchange were used for the study. The questionnaire elicited information on the real estate holding pattern and the adopted strategies for acquiring and managing real estate assets. The data collected were analysed using percentages, mean and proportion method. Findings – The study established that 41 per cent of the organisations were public organisations. Others were private companies (31 per cent), government departments (18 per cent) and multi-nationals (10 per cent). The result indicated that 31.8 per cent had no CREM strategy. Strategies used were: cost reduction (18.75 per cent), facilitate production (20.17 per cent), flexibility (15.5 per cent), promote human resource objectives (10.86 per cent), promote the marketing message (4.33 per cent), promote sales and selling delivery (18.67 per cent), facilitate managerial process and knowledge (7.5 per cent) and capture real estate value (6.5 per cent). The study concluded that CREM is a useful tool that the organisations can make effective use of to improve their performance. Research limitations/implications – Limiting the scope of the study to the perception of the respondents could reflect an element of bias and might pose a great challenge to the representativeness. Also, the use of closed question questionnaire may limit the validity of the results. Practical implications – The study has major implications on business performance in Nigeria. There is the need for corporations to reappraise their real estate strategy and realign it with their corporate objective. There is also the need for Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers to train its members for contemporary business requirements. Originality/value – The paper is a useful guide to corporate real estate managers in developing countries towards using real estate strategies to minimize the overall cost of their companies.
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Essien, Essien D. "Ethical Appraisal of the Role of Civil Society in Nigeria." International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change 3, no. 2 (April 2016): 23–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijcesc.2016040102.
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Contemporary studies surrounding the creation of civil society in Africa have revealed two important findings. First, despite the effort of civil society organizations in supporting inclusive democratic governance, promoting participation, advocating for transparency and accountability, sustainable development and stability remain elusive due to the challenges of social exclusion. Second, institutions central to the exercise of governmental powers exhibit inefficiency, weakness, lack transparency, and low credibility which worsen extreme poverty, inequality, and deprivation. Drawing upon extensive contemporary literature on social exclusion and inclusive growth, this study examines the role of civil society organisations as a pathway for social inclusion and sustainable development. Findings reveal that the management and distribution of services in the Nigerian society is largely inefficient and exclusionary, leading to myriad of social problems. This study has a significant implication for cumulative research on the subject of inclusive society and sustainable development.
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Nwaozuzu, Uche-Chinemere. "The Market Metaphor and Women Empowerment in Contemporary Nigerian Drama: A Study of Three Plays." International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 8, no. 2 (March 31, 2019): 79. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.8n.2p.79.
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The importance of market in human society has been recognized not only from the practical utilitarian point of view but also from the theoretical dimensions of economics, anthropology and other social sciences. In most traditional society, the market like other institutionalized components of the community, started in a relatively simple pattern and gradually developed into a relatively complex and heterogeneous organization where women play an important part. The aim of this paper is to investigate the portraiture of women in the market place in three contemporary Nigerian plays and examine the signification of this against the larger backdrop of women’s economic, social and political empowerment in traditional society.
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Adedeji, Femi. "Singing and Suffering in Africa A Study of Selected Relevant Texts of Nigerian Gospel Music." Matatu 40, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 411–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-040001027.
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A major aspect of African music which has often been underscored in Musicological studies and which undoubtedly is the most important to Africans, is the textual content. Its significance in African musicology is based on the fact that African music itself; whether traditional ethnic, folk, art or contemporary, is text-bound and besides, the issue of meaning 'what is a song saying?' is paramount to Africans, whereas to Westerners the musical elements are more important. This is why the textual content should be given more priority. In terms of the textual content, Nigerian gospel music, an African contemporary musical genre which concerns itself with evangelizing lost souls, is also used as an instrument of socio-political and economic struggle. One of the issues that have been prominent in the song-texts is the suffering of the masses in Africa. This essay aims at taking a closer look at the selected relevant texts in order to interpret them, determine their message, and evaluate their claims and veracity. Using ethnomusicological, theological, and literary-analytical approaches, the essay classifies the texts into categories, finding most of the claims in the texts to be true assessments of the suffering conditions of the Nigerian masses. The essay concludes by stressing the need to pay more attention to the voice of the masses through gospel artists and for people in the humanities to work energetically towards fostering permanent solutions to the problem of suffering in Africa in general.
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Akpa, Victoria O., Asikhia, Olalekan U., and Okusanya, Adedoyin, O. "Leadership Styles and Organisational Performance in Nigeria: Qualitative Perspective." International Journal of Engineering and Management Research 11, no. 1 (February 5, 2021): 46–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.31033/ijemr.11.1.7.
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Organizations in different sectors of the Nigerian economy continue to record high cases of misappropriation, embezzlement, immoral and unethical practices, gratifications, high labour turnover, inability to meet basic required obligations, and employees’ dissatisfaction, which have further resulted in poor performance. The theoretical paper dwelled on the concepts of leadership styles as opined by several scholars in the literature and used these as springboards to arrive at elaborate ones that encapsulated all and introduced a range of common and contemporary models and approaches, including an addition of a cutting-edge competitive list to help managers discover, devise and adjust their individual management practice and style for navigation towards a sustainable organizational performance.
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Paye, Michael. "Beyond a Capitalist Atlantic: Fish, Fuel, and the Collapse of Cheap Nature in Ireland, Newfoundland, and Nigeria." Irish University Review 49, no. 1 (May 2019): 117–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/iur.2019.0384.
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Irish director Risteard O'Domhnaill's 2010 film, The Pipe, documents the battle of a small Mayo community against the Corrib gas pipeline project, following a number of local residents in their eight-year struggle against state-sponsored and corporate violence. In his next major production, Atlantic (2016), a comparative documentary of fishing and fossil-fuel industries in Ireland, Newfoundland, and Norway, O'Domhnaill retreats from the possible anti-systematicity of the Rossport struggle, taking a reformist, nationalist attitude to the question of oil and fish extraction. In this article, I will demonstrate how O'Domhnaill naturalizes this mobilization and ‘cheapening’ through a vocabulary of rightful ownership and human-centric dominance. Using world-ecological and energy humanities theories, I will then demonstrate that numerous other contemporary depictions of life and labour at the fish and oil frontiers, across the Global North and South, articulate how systemic contradiction materializes as environmental violence, focusing on works by Irish author Mike McCormack, Canadian author Lisa Moore, and Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor.
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OLUFUNWA, HARRY. "Resident Aliens." Matatu 47, no. 1 (August 22, 2016): 127–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-90000399.
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Identity-politics refers to the way in which a specific section of a given society agitates for equal rights, increased recognition and greater opportunities based on the specific ethnic, religious, gender or other characteristic that simultaneously binds it together as a social group and sets it apart from other groups. This essay looks at the changing nature of identity-politics in the drama of the contemporary Nigerian dramatist Ahmed Yerima. It argues that the playwright traces crucial shifts in relationships that obtain between and within the individuals and social groups depicted in his plays as part of his overall concern with the nature of society.
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ROSELLO, MIREILLE. "‘Wanted’: Organs, Passports and the Integrity of the Transient's Body." Paragraph 32, no. 1 (March 2009): 15–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/e0264833409000388.
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This article focuses on Stephen Frears's 2003 Dirty Pretty Things. I argue that Frears's portrayal of the encounter between a Nigerian man and a Turkish woman in contemporary London invites us to re-conceptualize the relationship between the migrant and the host country. The film invites us to compare the circulation of migrants across a globalized transnational world to organs removed from one body and implanted into another. It questions our usual definitions of home and belonging, host and guest, health and the power to circulate. It both refers to the hospitality paradigm and radically rephrases it by making us consider the relationship between migrants and nations according to a different grid (hospitality vs./or organ trafficking). It does not simply propose an alternative grand narrative but rewrites a familiar script without trying to erase it.
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Hale, Frederick A. "Ibo Spirituality and Marriage Customs On the Eve of Nigerian Independence: the Testimony of Onuora Nzekwu's Wand of Noble Wood." Religion and Theology 7, no. 4 (2000): 24–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157430100x00261.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractFor many years scholars of African religion have appreciated the potential insights that imaginative literature can provide into religious beliefs and practices in rapidly transforming societies, not least with regard to the confrontation of indigenous religions and missionary Christianity. Generally ignored, however, has been the fiction of Onuora Nzekzuu, a talented Ibo novelist who during the 1960s was hailed as one founder ofNigerian letters but who stood in the shadow of Chinua Achebe and a handful of other contemporary literary giants. The present article is a study of enduring commitment to Ibo spiritual and marital traditions and the critique of Roman Catholic missionary endeavours in Nzekwu's first novel, Wand of Noble Wood (1961). It is argued that in this pioneering treatment of these recurrent themes in African literature of that decade, Nzekwu vividly highlighted the quandary in which quasi- Westernised Nigerians found themselves as they sought to come to grips with the confluence of colonial and indigenous values and folkways on the eve of national independence in 1960. Nzekwu did not speak for all Ibo intellectuals of his generation; his portrayal of the weakness of Ibo commitment to the Roman Catholic Church is squarely contradicted by other literary observers, such as T Obinkaram Echewa.
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Löschnigg, Maria. "‘Sublime Oilscapes’: Literary Depictions of Landscapes Transformed by the Oil Industry." Anglia 135, no. 3 (September 6, 2017): 543–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ang-2017-0049.
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AbstractLiterary reactions to the transformation of landscape by modern technology foreground the fragility of the planet while at the same time suggesting notions of immensity and inspiring awe. Oil mining, in particular, threatens and destroys essential mega-biotopes, as for example two of the biggest wetlands on earth, the Athabasca Tar Sands in Canada’s northern Alberta and the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria. While we are flooded, daily, by media reports on environmental damage and by scientifically based scenarios of future catastrophes, it is literature with its specifically ambiguous and multidimensional make-up, which proves to be an ideal medium to foreground the ambivalence of twenty-first century societies regarding their attitude towards a radically modified natural environment. The double aesthetics of the sublime, in particular, proves to be a congenial creative (and critical) approach to these fear- and awe-inspiring landscapes, which have been forged and shaped by technology and industry. In my essay I want to show how twenty-first century Canadian and Nigerian writers have responded to the effects of oil mining in their respective countries by drawing on notions of the sublime as they came to be articulated by Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century and have been taken up by scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through their narrative and poetic ‘sublime oilscapes’ these authors effectively foreground the problems inherent in the split attitude of contemporary societies.
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Zabus, Chantal. "Informed Consent: Ezenwa–Ohaeto between Past and Future Uses of Pidgin." Matatu 33, no. 1 (June 1, 2006): 115–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-033001025.
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The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.
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Gamso, Nicholas. "Exposure and Black Migrancy in Teju Cole." New Global Studies 13, no. 1 (April 24, 2019): 60–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2019-0003.
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AbstractThrough a reading of Teju Cole’s novel Open City (2011), this article argues that the exposure of black migrants constitutes the principal organizing conceit of global literary culture and knowledge production. The novel’s protagonist, a Nigerian emigre named Julius, is faced with ceaseless scrutiny as he traverses urban spaces in the US, Europe, and West Africa, meeting other migrants. In staging Julius’ encounters with others, the novel allegorizes a structure of racialized subjection continuous with the modern history of western epistemology and glaringly present in the contemporary. Yet it also provides grounds for a recursive ethic of opacity, which Julius eagerly endorses. The article surveys critical studies of race, migration, infrastructure, and world literature, in addition to Cole’s writings on photography. The aim is not only to uncover the logics of racialization at play in the enactment of culture, but also to conceive of culture itself as a historical infrastructure of privation and control.
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Brodzki, Bella. "History, Cultural Memory, and the Tasks of Translation in T. Obinkaram Echewa's I Saw the Sky Catch Fire." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 114, no. 2 (March 1999): 207–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/463392.
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Across a range of disciplines and discourses, translation has become a central concern for many scholars working in the humanities. Indeed, the notion of translation has begun to inflect the most compelling and consequential debates on meaning and representation. My essay gives attention to Walter Benjamin's redemptive and generative notion of translation as survival and to postmodern currents in translation studies alongside a contemporary Nigerian diasporic novel written in English, I Saw the Sky Catch Fire. Framed by a passing on of the story of the Women's War (the Igbo women's tax revolt against the British in 1929), Echewa's narrative critiques the complicitous practices of translation, colonialism, and anthropology. In this exemplary instance of a type of hybrid postcolonial textuality, processes of intergenerational and intercultural transmission, conceived as both acts of translation and instruments of historical consciousness, perform as well as disrupt the work of cultural memory.
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O. Efeoma, Meshack, and Ola Uduku. "Assessing thermal comfort and energy efficiency in tropical African offices using the adaptive approach." Structural Survey 32, no. 5 (November 4, 2014): 396–412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ss-03-2014-0015.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to adduce the most appropriate thermal comfort assessment method for determining human thermal comfort and energy efficient temperature control in office buildings in tropical West Africa. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines the Adaptive Thermal Comfort Standard, from its research evolution to its contemporary use as an environmental design assessment Standard. It compares the adaptive component of ASHRAE Standard 55 and the European CEN/EN 15251. It begins by reviewing relevant literature and then produces a comparative analysis of the two standards, before suggesting the most appropriate Adaptive Thermal Comfort Standard for use in assessing conditions in tropical climate conditions. The suggested Standard was then used to analyse data collected from the author's pilot research into thermal conditions, in five office buildings situated in the city of Enugu, South Eastern Nigeria. Findings – The paper provides insight as to why the ASHRAE adaptive model is more suitable for thermal comfort assessment of office buildings in the tropical West African climate. This was demonstrated by using the ASHRAE Thermal Comfort Standard to assess comfort conditions from pilot research study data collected on Nigerian office buildings by the author. Originality/value – The paper compares the adaptive component of ASHRAE Standard 55 with CEN/EN 15251, and their different benefits for use in tropical climates. It suggested the need for further research studies and application of the ASHRAE Adaptive Thermal Comfort Standard in the tropical West African climate.
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Culea, Mihaela. "“Middle Ground,” “Duality,” and “Diversimilarity” as Responses to Postcolonial and Global Challenges in Chinua Achebe’s “The Education of a British-Protected Child” and “No Longer at Ease”." Respectus Philologicus 24, no. 29 (October 25, 2013): 151–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.15388/respectus.2013.24.29.13.
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This paper discusses two literary works by Chinua Achebe—No Longer at Ease (1960) and The Education of a British-Protected Child (2011)—in the context of the issue of diversity in the postcolonial setting. It aims to approach Achebe’s work from a new perspective, by applying a theoretical paradigm employed in business to the study of literature and culture. The “diversimilarity” paradigm, used for managing cultural diversity in organisations, is applied and shown to be pertinent to the investigation of literature, too. The methodology employed combines theoretical data with the practical implications of the conceptual framework on Achebe’s work. The paper starts with a discussion of the diversity concept and then moves on to tackle the diversimilarity paradigm in business. Then the investigation focuses on Achebe’s “duality” and “middle ground” concepts as they assist diversimilarity, concepts which work together at the levels of mentality, ideology, and identity. Finally, the paper focuses on language and the methods proposed by Achebe to manage and solve the existing linguistic diversity problems in Nigeria. The findings show that in the works explored, the diversimilarity paradigm is assisted by other concepts as solutions for the Nigerian people to cope with diversity. Moreover, Achebe shows that the other conceptions that support diversimilarity are still effective, even though they are rooted in the ancestral values of his Igbo people. The originality of the paper results from placing Achebe’s literary work in the context of contemporary concerns related to human identity in the postcolonial globalized environment and from expanding the scope and methods of literary research by employing concepts from other areas of human activity. Thus, the intersection between the worlds of the economy and culture seems fruitful for the investigation of cultural diversity.
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OKOH, MARY ENWELIM-NKEM. "Revamping the Environment for National Development: A Lexico-Semantic Reading of Niyi Osundare’s The Eye of the Earth." International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 3, no. 2 (June 29, 2021): 242–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.36892/ijlls.v3i2.556.
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Environmental poetry is relatively young in the literature of the Nigerian literary writers and critics. Literary scholars of an earlier generation before Osundare – Soyinka, Okigbo, and Okara have dwelt more on the themes and language of cultural heritage, cultural conflicts, colonial and post-colonial political, socio-economic and religious issues. They barely scratched around the themes of environment and ecology. More so, their language may be adjudged obscure and esoteric. Therefore, the present study engages in the exploration of Osundare’s innovative and full-scale venture into pivotal issues of the environment that have become of utmost concern nationally and internationally in contemporary times. Also of interest in this study is Osundare’s efforts to redefine the diction of Nigerian poetry to reach a wider audience. Osundare’s poetry collection, The Eye of the Earth is our focal text. It has been observed that critical studies on this collection are largely centered on literary interpretations. Lexico-semantic exploration of this collection can be considered inadequate, which necessitated the present study to strike a balance in deciphering Osundare’s language and thematic preoccupations. This study is anchored on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and eco-criticism theory with insights from lexical-semantic theory. Poems of environmental background are purposively selected from the collection. The study reveals Osundare’s tactical manipulation of “common” language in exposing man’s pernicious activities in the natural environment. In a similar manipulative skill in language use, the study unveils consequential roles imperative for a man to obviate his adverse activities on nature in order to achieve development at different spheres of life.
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Justina N., Edokpayi. "Lexico-semantic Features as Creative/Stylistic Strategies in Joseph Edoki’s The Upward Path." International Journal of World Policy and Development Studies, no. 62 (February 15, 2020): 19–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.32861/ijwpds.62.19.27.
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This study examines and explicates the lexico-semantic parameters, which Joseph Edoki deploys to convey his themes in The Upward Path, his second novel. Edoki is a contemporary Nigerian novelist who is preoccupied with the socio-political problems in Africa with the hope of a brighter future. The novel is the story of Mr. Gaga, a Rhwandan American PhD student, on a fact finding mission in Savannah, an African country, for his Thesis entitled ‘’ Why Africa is Underdeveloped’’. For failing to portray Africa in line with the negative views about the continent in his proposal, Gaga’s supervisor recalls him back to America in anger. But in defense of his conviction and research findings about Africa, Gaga remains in Savannah to complete his Thesis. This study is of significance because as a linguistic study, it will serve as a springboard to future researches in the language of African literature. Moreover, the good governance, which Edoki presents in Savannah, the fictional country, in which the novel under study is set, is a blue print for the development of Africa.