A recurring motif in the evaluation of Nigerian literature is the writer’s perennial
disillusionment with the nation’s fractured evolution. This is so because the
environment or milieu from which the writer’s imagination derives validation has
been fraught with experiences which inhere in the tragic. The circumstances of history
appear to have been unkind for Nigeria. This is reflected in the gravitas encountered in
the nation’s literature. Nigeria’s literary history can be negotiated in three broad phases
which are the pre-colonial, colonial and post-independence. Each of the phases throws
up inadequacies that ought to be remedied in the course of time. However, instead of
being ameliorated, the disjunctions continue to deepen and create complex and often
multiple national maladies. It is therefore plausible for Achebe (1975) to say that “the
creative writer in independent Nigeria found himself with a new, terrifying problem on his
hands” (p. 82).
The Nigerian writer’s consciousness is troubled and informed by the seemingly unending
national throes. A realization which enabled Ngugi (1989) to declare that “[t]he present
predicaments of Africa are often not a matter of personal choice: they arise from an historical situation” (p. xii). This condition of perpetual national chaos manifests in the
angst, despair and dread which constitute significant metaphors across phases and
generations of Nigerian writings. If the writings mirroring the pre-colonial epoch throw
up vistas of communal, individual as well as existential predicaments, those of the colonial
encounter foreground the tragic clash which ensued as a result of the imperial onslaught
which colonialism turned out to be. However, more excruciating is the post-independence
era which was mistakenly envisaged as presaging relief for the people’s fractured
consciousness. Rather than privilege of respite for the embattled masses, independence
inflamed the pains already inflicted by the woes of their historical transactions.
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