The received wisdom is that social horrors as much of the world is goin through today and especially in Nigeria trains its chroniclers. There is something surprising, therefore, that there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding literary response to the scale of horrors of the past decade or so in Nigeria, from the unbelievable abduction of hundreds of girls from a government school in Chibok to the anarchy still reigning.
It is probably not possible to see everything going on from one standpoint. Some of us who are not in a position to circulate much right now might not be in a position to see or know what the Nigerian detachment of the literary has been up to.
Global agenda setters who happened to be Africans!
Of course, everyone seems to know that Professor Amechi Nicholas Akwanya who is departing UNN academia delivered a Valedictory on “No Longer a Tribe: Chinua Achebe, the Novel, and Optimistic Postcoloniality”. The text is available but in a form that is not immediately accessible. It is sure to throw up important questions for reflection given that Chinua Achebe is just unfolding in scholarship, now straddling conventional literature to international political thought, Historiography in the key realms of poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, decoloniality and Standpoint Epistemology. With Edward Said, Fanon, Derrida, and a few others, they will dominate the academic agenda that is emerging now. It is difficult to see how it will go otherwise because new problems are emerging for which older theories have no answers. For instance, when the story of how colonialism came to be the explanation that forced the ‘loss and damage’ fund in the climate change negotiation recently is told, these linkages could become clearer. Yet, it was the UN’s Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) where eagle eyed government representatives that kickstarted the colonialism-climate change nexus.
In this context, it is important to keep in mind the December 16th, 2022 book presentation of an emerging writer’s work. He might be our marker for what value protest literature can add to the struggle for the remaking of Nigeria. Without preempting the highly qualified book reviewer, it is now clear that the expiring generation has failed the test of high mindedness required to mould an over-endowed Nigeria into an organised society. That task is not going to be accomplished on the terms of the existing discourses, particularly the ones they promote. Much of the existing paradigms cannot sustain the diversity or even complexity of the new world with its new sense of boundaries. New terms are needed which can trigger the re-construction. It is the unique position of literature in that process that compels us to scrutinize emergent writers and what they are putting out. For, they might just offer that new narrative that can be constitutive of a more desirable world.
Even more interesting is what you see on the top left – another indigenous publishing outfit. That should be very interesting and worth supporting by all stakeholders in knowledge production and well to do in the society. So, see ‘we’ all on December 16th, 2022!
