Reading the ‘Military Virus’ in Postcolonial African Novels: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain in Context

The novel in Africa plays a pivotal role in social re-engineering. By making its immediate society its subject matter, it often achieves in one swift stroke a kaleidoscopic reflection of socio-political ills that hamper growth and development. In exploring these problems, the African novel not only illuminates them, but challenges society to surmount them. Military leadership is among the worst challenges in African countries; therefore, a deeper understanding of military characters and their conduct would aid society respond appropriately to it in future. This paper probes military characters in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain in order to highlight the personality traits associated with soldiers in politics

THE DANCE OF FREEDOM: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF DANCE IN THE TRIAL OF DEDAN KIMATHI

This study is an analysis of ‘The Trial of Dedan Kimathi’, a play co-authored by Ngugi wa ‘thiongo and Micere Mugo. The analysis focuses on the use of theatrical devices, especially dance and gesture as message media in the play. The theme of the play is the resilience of the human spirit in the face of oppression and injustice. As a fictional dramatization of the struggle of Kenyans under colonial rule, it carries a prophetic and triumphant message, especially in view of the recent admission by the British government of culpability in the horrific torture and murder of indigenous Kenyans during the insurgency of the fifties, known as the Mau-Mau. Existing analyses of the play have examined the use of language and thematic directions, but none of these documents the semiotic use of dance and speech as parallel message media. The research employs internet, library and archival search as well as the main text as sources of data. Viewed from the technical angle, the work validates the universality of the use of dance as the bedrock of African drama

Yoruba Eco-Proverbs In English: An Eco-Critical Study Of Niyi Osundare's Horses Of Memory

In an attempt to promote African culture and tradition, current literary trends have been witnessing an increasing use of proverbs in African writing. New proverbs are cropping up and creatively modifying old known ones. This paper examines eco-proverbs/nature proverbs and its importance as literary resource tool today, in their meanings and relevance to contemporary social and aesthetic realities. We explore how he creatively deploys known Yoruba proverbs to capture and reconstruct nature focused proverbs, and how he uses these to promote his poetic vision of the natural environment related items like fauna, flora, landscape and seascape derived from Yoruba eco-proverbs. This paper is an eco-critical enquiry into the social, aesthetic interpretation of “Who is afraid of the proverb” on one hand, and in order to further explore the dynamics of Yoruba praise poetry, we examined his poetic deployment of nature centered metaphor, personification and imagery in the poem “For the one who departed”

The Patterns of Acquisition of Syntactic Regularities in Pre-Secondary School Second Language Learners of English

The learning of complex syntactic structures of English by L2 learners have not been systematically dealt with in the available literature. This study investigated this problem, with the aim of replicating some works done in the L1, in order to determine their feasibility in the L2 perspective. Limited to a small sample, the study examined the developmental stages in the acquisition of English syntactic structures in 7 to 10-year-old children learning English as a second language. Six test constructs were used to examine linguistic competence over a wide range of surface structures, and statistical analysis provided the basis for interpretation of the general pattern of acquisition. The findings of the study show that the process of acquisition of syntactic structures continues actively during and after the primary school years among L2 learners, and they have implication not only for syntactic acquisition, but for language theory in general and L2 theory in particular

A Research-Based Evidence of the Effect of Graphic Organizers on the Understanding of Prose Fiction in ESL Classroom

Graphic organizers (GOs) are fast becoming acceptable standard instructional tools across subjects in the education arena globally. However, this visual representation of information is yet to be recognized and integrated into the teaching methods in Nigerian schools. This study, therefore, presents a research-based investigation of the usefulness of GOs in the appreciation of prose literature in Nigeria, with a view to foregrounding their use in Nigerian schools. Specifically, the study seeks to find out whether senior secondary students in prose literature-in-English in Nigeria who are taught with GOs perform better in prose and comprehension assessments. Four project secondary schools with total of 100 students were purposively selected for the study. The schools were grouped into two: graphic-based schools (GBS) and non-graphic-based schools (NGBS). Whereas the GBS was exposed to instruction via eight graphic organizers, the NGBS served as control. Subjected to descriptive statistics and one-sample t test analysis, the investigation reveals that graphic organizers make students take charge of the learning process in prose literature classes, and it concludes that these visual instructional elements guarantee student understanding and achievement. The study, thus, recommends the incorporation of graphic organizers in the teaching and learning processes across subjects in Nigerian school

A Redefinition of Woman, Voice and Development: New Nigerian Novels and the Burden of Being

- 717B Speaking with one voice at the face of anti-woman tyranny has always been a tough nut to crack in African / Nigerian novel. This could have been as a result of the tradition that allows the woman to be seen but denies her the opportunity to be heard. This has however become history as the new Nigerian novels are succeeding not just in discovering the voice of the woman but actually amplifying same. Lola Shoneyin in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives narratives signposts the comity of women who beat the man at his games. The stereotype woman who waits for providence appears dated giving way to the woman to whom providence is a design - the pencil of which she places of the canvass by herself. The discovery of the voice has led to such brazenness, boldness, assertiveness and expressiveness alien to traditional African writings. This study engages relevant aspect of postmodernism to examine the potpourri of voices being unearthed in the new novels in Africa especially in Nigeria. Of note is Adichie’s Americanah, Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You by Chance and Adeniran’s Imagine This as postmodern novels creating the needed platforms to amplify the liberty of the woman. This study attempts to answer the questions how best the woman can realize her voice and contribute more meaningfully to advance her society? What is the impact of her personal development on her society

Versifying History and National Trauma in Tanure Ojaide’s The Endless Song

The symbiotic relationship between literature and history is most visible in the writer’s deployment of his or her art to document experiences of the past and their impacts on the feelings and well-being of his or her people in the periods represented in the work(s). This article explores the historical content and significance of Tanure Ojaide’s The Endless Song from a new historical perspective. Most studies on Ojaide’s poetry often focus on his critique of bad leadership and his denunciation of exploitation and pillaging of Nigeria’s Niger Delta region with little attention paid to his poems as history in verse form. This article therefore contributes to criticism on the interface between literature and history. This study further highlights significant motifs in Nigeria’s history in the periods documented in The Endless Song and analyses the traumatic impacts of the events on the well-being of Nigeria and her people. These are aimed at showing that Ojaide’s The Endless Song is more than an outcry against the plundering of the Niger Delta region; it represents the spatiotemporal record of Nigeria’s turbulent history

POETICS OF MAN’S DUALITY, EXPLOITATION AND PRESERVATION IN WOLE SOYINKA’S MADMEN AND SPECIALISTS

This paper examines Wole Soyinka’s representation of man’s duality and his perception and attitude towards the earth and his fellow man in society in Madmen and Specialists. It argues that an exploration of man’s dual nature would aid our understanding of his bizarre urge to destroy the natural environment and inflict pain on his kind at times and preserve both at other times. Through contrastive analysis, it scrutinizes Wole Soyinka’s portrayal of characters with negative and positive tendencies toward mother earth. Those with negative desires are constructed in the male-dominated destructive cult of ‘AS’ while those with positive ones are healers populated by women. This study also explores the tension between the sexes in a patriarchal society where men’s sole motivation is a depraved exploitation of human and natural resources of the earth, while women work hard at preserving and sustaining the earth and its assets. Reader-Response and Eco-Feminism are deployed as theoretical framework in this study. The study concludes that Madmen and Specialists is a satiric comment on the perennial conflict between pro-nature, earth-preserving human forces and anti-nature, earth-exploiting persons. It is also a moral condemnation of man’s irrational craving for power, domination and exploitation. It is a subtle micro construction of the universal tragedy of man’s gradual self-annihilation disguised as wanton exploitation of the earth’s resources

WOMEN IN POLITICS: THE NIGERIAN FACTOR

In a typical patriarchal African setting, women are usually relegated to the background. They are seen, not heard in a man’s world. In the religious circle, for instance, women are not expected to preside over men; they are not expected to be ordained as Priests, Pastors, etc. in most church denominations. Politics in Nigeria has always been a turbulent terrain. There is the usual male chauvinism that the male counterparts don’t yield an inch to the opposite sex. The general age-long belief and practice is that men must always lead and the position of the female invariably is in the kitchen. Could that be as a result of the fact that a woman was created out of a man, which smacks of superiority and inferiority syndrome, a weaker vessel as opposed to a stronger vessel? Undoubtedly, as a result of man’s dominance in the political space of our national life, in Nigeria, men have been able, for some-time, to garner economic power which they use to fight or bargain for political power. This paper identifies and focuses on prominent Nigerian women who have blazed the trail in spite of the hurdles placed on women’s way by the policies and structures of their male-counterparts. The objective of the study is to sensitize the women-folk on the need for leadership positions in the political arena. The main sources of data are the newspapers, journal articles, the internet, the library, interviews and questionnaires from the public