African Literature

The Emergence of written literature across Africa came with the colonial intervention. The literary genres vigorously copied from the existing genres of Europe, Portuguese, French and English became the official languages across the continent. African writings in English had dominated and defined much of the space of what is today regarded as African literature. Among the prominent African writers the contribution of Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Senghor are noteworthy. The landscape of English literature developed in divergent dimensions during the later half of the twentieth century. Nations of Asia and Africa, freed from colonial rule, tried to build their own literary composition on the lines of their

It is this dignity that many African peoples all but lost in the colonial period and it is this that they must now regain. The worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost. There is a saying in Igbo that a man who can’t tell where the rain began to beat him cannot know where he dried his body. The writer can tell the people where the rain began to beat him. (“The Role of Writers in a New

He does not hesitate to call a spade a spade. He lambasts the rulers for the rampant corruption that has percolated down the social ladder and seems to have reached a point of no return. The ordinary Nigerian too hears the brunt of his attack because it is he who was has encouraged corruption and has witnessed its unchecked growth with a sense of complacency. The Trouble with Nigeria is a short booklet published in 1983 and it contains Achebe’s criticism of the military rule in Nigeria. The military rulers in Nigeria have perpetrated their rule since the Biafran war in 1966. There have been more than 11 military coups but none of them has given a long lasting, corruption, free rule. There is no peace under military rule and it is only the fear psychosis that keeps men in check. Anyone who opposes the military regime would be hounded and put behind the bars.Chinua Achebe remarks:

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal examples which are the hall marks of true