Relocating Sex And Related Vices In Post-Military Nigerian Fiction: The Example of Toni Kan Onwordi’s Ballad of Rage

Abstract

The demise of military regime in Nigeria has, unarguably, reshaped the literary sensibility of recent Nigerian writers. The euphoria which greeted the advent of civil rule had given a vain hope of utopia which, unequivocally, created an erroneous impression in them. Although their earlier counterparts were not impressed, new writers began to churn out works which privileged erotic satisfaction over cultural re-awakening. Having imbibed the mentality of Western society, albeit uncritically, they became the unofficial mouthpiece of a society whose norms is at variance with theirs! The thrust of this paper, therefore, is the need to checkmate abysmal application of non-Nigerian rhetoric in reading the poetic of recent Nigerian writers. In line with the Afrocentric theoretical assumption, it denounces any critical polemic which negates the quest for development and socio-cultural rejuvenation. It asserts that only the inculcation of the core tenets of African values is apposite for the interpretation of African texts and, invariably, to advance development for the nation. Against the backdrop of untoward consequences of wholesale implantation of ‘hostile’ canon into Nigerian literary landscape, it calls for its inversion which can only guarantee national rebirth.

Key words: Military regime, literary, civil rule, utopia, erotic satisfaction, Afrocentric.