CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Chinua Achebe and Abubakar Gimba are both Nigerian and post-colonial African novelist. They belong to African most renowned novelists who are representing the African social and political environment in a thoroughly realistic way. Their novels depict the Nigerian situation in post-independence
phase, during the time the country became a ‘cesspool of corruption and misrule’ in the context of colonial-style, social and economic development, a situation that resulted in conflict between the emergent elitist middle class and the general populace. Achebe’s reputation as a novelist for instance rests on his impartial understanding of, and ability to represent the Nigerian environment.
THEME OF CORRUPTION IN THE POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN NOVELS: A STUDY OF CHINUA ACHEBE’S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE AND ABUBAKAR GIMBA’S WITNESSES TO TEARS
His realistic characterization and diagnosis of his country’s malaise has the power to inspire a revolution informed by African ideologies. His works have primarily focused on “African politics, corruption, and disillusionment, the depiction of Africa and Africans in the West, and the intricacies of pre-colonial African culture and civilization, as well as the effects of colonization to African societies” (Achebe, 1988b).
While on the other hand, Abubakar Gimba as a prolific and proficient writer is interested in the world and the people around him, particularly in the intrigues and intricacies of the civil service and the bureaucracy. His works revolve around morality, encoding sympathy for the innocent characters that are usually persecuted and unfairly treated by the system. Gimba’s works are intensely concerned with decency, proper use and control of power and the creation of an egalitarian society. The significance of Gimba’s works lies in the way that he locates his motifs strictly within the bureaucratic structures of post-colonial Nigeria from where he takes a panoramic view of the entire society.
THEME OF CORRUPTION IN THE POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN NOVELS: A STUDY OF CHINUA ACHEBE’S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE AND ABUBAKAR GIMBA’S WITNESSES TO TEARS
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Corruption is one of the core diseases that have that eats into the cultural, political and economic fabric and destroys the functioning organs of the Nigerian society. It is also “one of the greatest challenges affecting the contemporary Nigerian and Africans as a whole. It undermines good government, fundamentally distorts public policy, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms the private sector in the society.
Also, the problems facing Nigerians today and African societies are multi-dimensional and in phases. Slavery is the worst and darkest experience in the history of African people. Colonialism immediately followed and now neo-colonialism through African dependent on the Western World for its economic and political stability. To sustain and promote their interests at the expense of Africa, the international hegemonic forces have ensured that their African collaborators remain in power to do their biddings.
These agents consider and pursue policies that satisfy their interest and those of their imperialist masters even at the brink of economic collapse occasioned by the “fictitious debts” ostensibly owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other Western banks and financial institutions, like the London and Paris clubs. Day in and day out, the African continent is racked by afflictions, disasters, macro-economic crises and dysfunctions, debt over-hang, corruption, high level illiteracy, squalor, disease, hunger and other negative and destabilizing conditions thrown up by imperialism in cahoots with greedy and unpatriotic ruling class.
Originally posted on April 24, 2021 @ 3:19 am
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