Enfants-soldats au Nigeria : les romanciers témoignent

During an interview, Ishmael Beah, conscripted in Sierra Leone when he was 13, testified to the fact that the rights of child‐soldiers were constantly violated. In recent years, the plight of these soldiers defined as “anyone under the age of eighteen who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity”, started attracting the world’s attention, following the conflicts which have been ravaging most of the African continent for the last century. While former Biafrans and foreigners who experienced the conflict first hand wrote about casualties and the plight of refugees, the stories of young boys conscripted into the Biafran army has so far attracted very little attention. The present study seeks to assess the impact of the recruiting of child-soldiers during the Nigerian civil war on four Nigerian novelists: Abani, Adichie, Iweala and Saro-Wiwa

The Devil's Colors: A Comparative Study of French and Nigerian Folktales

This study, largely based on five separate published collections, compares French and Nigerian folktales - focusing mainly on French Dauphine and Nigerian Igboland - to consider the role color plays in encounters with supernatural characters from diverse color background. A study in black, white/red and green, the paper compares the naming of colors in the two languages and illustrates their usage as a tool to communicate color-coded values. Nigeria's history, religious beliefs, and language development offer additional clues to what at first appears to be fundamental differences in cultural approach. Attempting to trace the roots of this color-coding, the study also considers the impact of colonization on oral literature and traditional art forms

Nigeria : un siècle de dictionnaires igbo bilingues

The ALLEX lexicography project, the fruit of an active collaboration between Universities in Zimbabwe, Sweden and Norway, has already led to the publication of two monolingual dictionaries, of Shona and Ndebele, showing that lexicography can be used sucessfully to promote the teaching and learning of African languages at all levels and the general use of these languages. After more than a century of lexicographic endeavours, Nigeria cannot boast of any such publications, as bilingual dictionaries still dominate. This study will consider some of the reasons for this situation, from the point of view of Igbo language, the third most widely language in the federation, and will assess the impact of published dictionaries on the development of the language, while highlighting the relationship between the educational sector, the Diaspora and dictionary production

La guerre du Biafra à la radio - situation militaire et livraisons d–armes en 1968 - 1969

A study of the role of foreign powers in fuelling the Nigerian civil war 1967-70. Based on collected information from some ten radios in English and French 1968-70, including the BBC World service, Voice of America and France-Inter

Les missions catholiques françaises et le développement des études igbo dans l’Est du Nigeria, 1885 - 1930

Partly based on archives, this description of the progression of French Catholic missions from Senegal to Igboland emphasizes the crucial roles played by the Congrégation des Pères du Saint Esprit (Spiritains) and the Société des Missions Africaines (SMA) from Lyon in collecting folklore, diffusing the Onitsha dialect throughout Igboland, and developing a system of writing for the language. By comparison with their predecessors (the British Church Missionary Society), these two missionary organizations, through their prublications, opened the way for progress in Igbo studies. These authors can be considered to be harbingers of the current cooperation between France and Igboland in the context of Franco-Nigerian relation

Restoring Igbo dignity: Ike and Adichie on the University of Nigeria

Someone said that the University of Nigeria, which, fifty years on, remains one of the country's major achievements, was a dream come true. Envisioned many years before Independence, it eventually opened its gates on 7th October 1960 and classes began ten days later with an enrolment of 220 students and 13 academic members of staff. Since then, thousands of students and staff from all over the world have settled on its Nsukka and Enugu campuses to study, research and join in a unique experiment. This chapter considers the impact of UNN on Nigerian literature, focusing on Ike's Naked Gods (1970), and Adichie's Purple Hibiscus (2004) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), the only three Nigerian novels focusing on the University of Nigeria. It shows these texts as key documents, revealing UNN, the only Nigerian HE institution developed in a rural setting, as both a citadel of learning and a world in itself, whose influence permeated the whole region and extended far beyond. Whereas The Naked gods (1970) evokes the beginnings of the University, its main campus under construction and the negotiating of the University administrative structures between the British and the Americans under the critical eye of the side-lined indigenous staff and local traditional authorities, Adichie's novels, published in 2004 and 2006, complement Ike's picture as they paint a very different University, now totally manned by Nigerians and where expatriates are on the way out. They equally differ in other ways: whereas Ike chose to focus on the University as a workplace, Adichie presents it as a residential area, a village and a web of close-knit relationships. This comparative study highlights UNN's intellectual impact on both its students and staff and on the nation-building process

Nigerian video-films on history: Love in Vendetta and the 1987 Kano riots

This paper considers a Nigerian video-film from 1996, Love in vendetta, featuring Zack Orji and inspired by the 1987 Kano riots, one of the many incidences of violent outbreaks which opposed Christians to Muslims in the 1980s and resulted in thousands of deaths, injuries and arrests. This Nigerian adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet presents two lovers: an Igbo man and a Hausa girl, who plan their marriage in the midst of strong family opposition on both sides. They eventually discover that their parents' attitude is the result of deep scars left by the 1987 Kano riots and bloodshed. Love eventually prevails, sending a message of hope to the whole country and heralding a time when ethnical and religious differences would be part of the Federation's rich cultural heritage

A lingering nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra

This essay considers the impact of the 1967-1970 Biafran War on ordinary people's lives, through a comparative study of Achebe's Girls at War (1972), Ofoegbu's Blow the Fire (1985), and Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). The three books, a collection of short stories by the acclaimed Nigerian writer, the memoirs of a British lady married to a Nigerian recording her experience as a displaced civilian, and the second novel of a young Igbo writer born seven years after the war, provide a rich platform for a multifaceted approach of the war-shattered country from an insider's point of view. The study focuses on the impact of the armed conflict on daily lives and relationships, and reveals the festering wounds left by the war on Igbo conscience as manifested in its literature

L’organisation et la gestion de l’espace dans la langue et la culture igbo du Nigeria

This study based on Igbo language and literature – especially proverbs and folktales – focuses on the use of space, the way it is distributed, organised and managed. It reveals a highly structured use of a communal space organised around the person, considered as member of the group. Traditions, which protect the communal space and ensure its being handed down from one generation to the next, equally give everyone an individual share in it. This space is both versatile and highly partitioned, closely managed and distributed according to age, gender and the sons’ rank in the family. Folktales describe the human world, represented by the village where life revolves around the house and the market, as close to that of the spirits, with the forest and the stream acting as boundaries. Humans and spirits share this space on the understanding that men are only managing it for a while as representatives of their family

Portraits de femmes au Biafra: Étude comparée de Chinua Achebe et Leslie Ofoegbu

This study explores the impact of the Nigerian Civil War on the daily lives and interpersonal relationships of Biafrans as they are depicted in Chinua Achebe’s Femmes en guerre et autres nouvelles and Leslie Ofoegbu’s Blow the Fire. Achebe, whose work has been translated into several languages, was the first writer to expose the Igbo country to the international scene. Ofoegbu is a Scottish woman married to a Nigerian who lived in Biafra during the war years. Beyond their differences, both authors offer insider testimonies on the conflict which tore the country apart from 1967 to 1970. Femmes en guerre et autres nouvelles is a collection of short stories, three of which are directly inspired by the conflict. Blow the Fire is an autobiographical novel which bears witness to the authors’ and her family’s daily lives at the time. This article highlights traditional values and changes of behaviour in the face of uprooting, exodus, danger and the omnipresence of death. It also reveals the crucial role played by women as the “guardians of life” in the encircled area