Political Corruption and Symbolism in Adichie Chimamanda Ngozi’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain
Chapter One
PURPOSE OF STUDY
The purpose of this paper is to identify the cause of political corruption, its consequences, find a way to prevent it and effect a change. There are also issues were readers find it difficult to identify the presence of symbols in Nigerian fiction and also to understand its meaning the study of this work is to emphasis more on its way out.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
It is over forty years now since the Civil War in Nigeria ended, yet its ugly scars on the Nigerian mind and soul remain visible and glaring. The defective bearing process of the wounds on the Nigerian psyche from the war has resulted in an extensive gulf between the people of the deunct Biafra and Nigeria, the parties in the war that lasted from 1967 to 1970 and the implication of the war are manifested in diverse ways and degrees in
the contemporary Nigeria body politics.
The apparent bitterness and discontent of the people of Biafra about the way they were treated, and the total waste that the Nigerian Biafra was portended, come alive in the fiction on the war. Nigerian fiction on the
war, written mostly by scholars and intellectuals from Eastern Nigeria, specifically the Igbo, who directly suffered and still bear the pains of the war, reveals that it was avoidable. The symbols within which the stories
are couched are profound. They indicate a close affinity between the Nigerian Civil War and madness. The symbols underscore the people‟s recrimination of their Igbo leaders, on the one hand, who plunged into a
war for which they were ill-prepared and ill-equipped.
Achebe in “the madman” skillfully configures a symbolic dimension into the whole corpus of discourse of madness. The symbolism can be decoded through the formula of the civil war in Nigeria, the actual
madman represents Nigeria. Corruption in public life is the most common political theme in West
Africa literature in English from Achebe‟s A Man of The People through Armah‟s The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Nkem Nwankwo My Mercedes is Bigger than yours to the novels of Ben Okri in which politics
an its repercussions are always hovering. One of the consequences of corruption in public life is the immorality of politicians.
In a world of social injustice, economic inequality environmentdegradation, coupled with human right violations, people are asking more clearly than ever before what are the roles of the leaders in bringing about
justice and peace in the nation. Achebe in his book The Trouble with Nigeria, stressed that nothing
was basically wrong with the Nigerian character, but that Nigeria‟s problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to their responsibilities.
Achebe maintains the opinion that Nigerians are corrupt because the system makes corruption easy, profitable and they will cease to be corrupt when corruption is made difficult and inconvenient. In debunking the
phrase “average Nigerian” on the grounds that such Nigerians hardly exist in such social space with limited opportunities for corruption. Achebe emphasize that corruption goes with power, which the average Nigerians
does not posses. He believe that corruption is the sole preserver of the
powerful and the rich.
In the same vain, Wole Soyinka attacks political intimidation and repression in Nigeria‟s second republican government using his autobiography: AkeThe campaign for freedom, equality and justice continues in post colonial societies (8). Also Wole Soyinka while in Ghana during his exile used his editorship of the journal transition to attack Africa‟s military dictatorship. In 1978, after the latest Nigerian military
government refused permission for the staging of his Opera Wonyosi; (1981) in Lagos, he used his newly formed university of Ife Guerrilla Theatre unit to improvise revenue performances in market places and
parking lot for trucks exposing and excoriating the racketeering political murders and army outrage that were the hallmarks of the second Nigerian Republic under President Alhaji Shehu Shagari from 1976 until retirement
in 1985 Soyinka was Professor of comparative literature and dramatic arts at the university of Ife.
CHAPTER THREE
THE POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND SYMBOLISM IN
CHIMAMNANDA NGOZI ADICHIE HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
The novel captures a Nigeria swept up in the turblence of the period following the end of colonial rule, the country plunges into a Civil War when Biafrans, struggle to establish independent sovereign nation with the
support of Britain and the United States, Northern Nigeria engages in a brutal crackdown of Biafrans. Many Biafrans were slaughtered and forced to flee from their homes. Adichie captures the horror of these events
through a perspective of three characters, Ugwu a thirteen years old house boy, the intellectual Odenigbo, Olanna, Odenigbo‟s lover and later wife, Richard the British expact who has come to Nigeria to study the arts and
fall in-love, with Kainene Olanna‟s twin sister.
The novel explains things about politics and geography of Nigeria. The important thing to understand is that the nation of Biafra was founded when one of Nigeria ethnic groups the Igbo attempts to secede from
Nigeria and establish their own country.
The novel squarely confronts Nigeria‟s political history in order to explode presumably stable notions such as nationalism, race, ethnic identity, truth, heroism and betrayal, and bloody wrangling over who
controls the military, the Civil Service, the Oil; The Civil War was, fundamentally, an ethnically motivated war against those identified as ”Igba”, one of the predominant ethnic groups. Years of political unrest
resulted in outbreaks of violence towards the Igbo people, eventually resulting in massacres and starvation.
Adichie contextualizes the polities of the period leading into the war by portraying the frequent gatherings of academics at the house of Odenigbo a physics professor at Nsukka University. Those debates are usually seen from the narrative perspective of Ugwu, the houseboy, who refers to Odenigbo as his master.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND SYMBOLISM IN OKEY
NDIBE ARROWS OF RAIN
The novel is about a very corrupt civilian democracy (in the case of Nigeria, government by looters) or an equally corrupt military regime.
The novel is of three stages, the present, a flash back (recollection of the past) (memories) and the return of the present situation, which now concludes the novel. It‟s set in the fictional African state of Madia,
suffering under its despotic ruler general Issa Palat Bello.
Arrows of Rain is imbued with the capacity to remember what has happened, which in itself is a form of protest given the fact that what is being remembered is subversive of the existing order. Negotiated history
and defiant protest coalesce in the experiences of the central character Ogugua, whose occupation as a journalist enables him to straddle both.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
Novels such as Half of a Yellow Sun and Arrows of Rain suggest that contemporary African writing is becoming increasingly reminiscent of the literature of disillusionment from the late 1960s. Not only do writers such
as Adichie and Ndibe share an ambiguity towards national stability in their work, but the rejection of redemptive conclusions in their narratives is also a return to the disillusioned novels of the 1960s onwards. The twenty-first
century African novel is already a stark contrast to the „magical realist‟, playful techniques of the novels of 1990s.
By situating ethnic conflict at the heart of their narratives, Adichie and Ndibe are part of a new generation of writers who are willing to address some of the difficulties in Africa‟s recent history. They look
beyond the colonial era, not just for literary material but also for ways in which to critically respond to it. These writers are giving voice to those issues that have directly affected the people of their home nations
Okey Ndibe has exposed Military oppression in Arrows of Rain the way civilians suffer and are oppressed by the military and it shows its condemnation through the fate of Ogugua (Bukuru) Iyese, and Tay.
Repression in the text is a signification of a wave of the political apocalypse which engulfed Nigeria‟s social political landscape between 1994 and 1998, greedily fuelled by the military‟s power.
What is of memorable and accomplished about Half of A Yellow Sun is that political events are never dryly recite, rather they are felt through the medium of lived lives, of actual aching sensitive experiences, pictures of
starving children, children suffering the effects of severe hunger and malnutrition as a result of the blockade.
The war for Biafra‟s independence, was born out of highly complex Nigerian and international political circumstances, provides the essential context for the struggle of the civilian Igbo population. Her depiction of
the horrors of the war the starvation and destruction is realistic. Okey Ndibe examines the erosion of moral insight in both public and private life drawing out the complex factors behind the near-collapse
of a nation. Ndibe‟s Nigeria where “Speaking Truth” has often led to exile, imprisonment or execution.
Education and prosperity are the goodies that European colonizers claimed they brought to the colonized but what result is Civil War, death and destruction. Should another war erupt there should be referendum. Let
the people be consulted. Shooting war never settles any problem amicably.
Only the ballot box and the round table do it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Okey Ndibe and other novelists on the
Nigeria-Biafra War have given the nation and the world lasting legacies that should nudge the consciences of men that War, no matter how small is a great evil that should be avoided at all costs.
WORK CITED
PRIMARY SOURCES
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun. Nigeria: Faratina, 2006.
- Ndibe, Okey. Arrows of Rain. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 2000.
SECONDARY SOURCES
- Achebe, Chinua. The Trouble With Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension in Publishing Co, Ltd, 1983.
- Achebe, Chinua. No Longer At Ease. Nigeria: Heinemann 1960.
- Achebe, Chinua. A Man of the People Heinemann UK John Day (US), 1966.
- Ademoyega, Adewale. Why we struck. Evans Brothers, 1981
- Akinwande Oluwole, Soyinka. Ake‟. Methicen Publishing Ltd; 1981.
- Arnold, Guy. Modern Nigeria. London: Longman Publishing Co. Ltd, 1977.
- Ayi Kwei, Amah. The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Ghana Heinneman Publisher, 1968.
- Azikiwe, Nnamdi. Military Revolution in Nigeria. London: C. Hurst, 1970.
- Durosimi Jones, Eldred. The Writing of Wole Soyinka London: James currey, 1988.
- Ebenezar, Babatope. The Socialist Alternative Nigeria: Benin City, Evans publishing Co. 1986
- Emeka, Nwabueze. A Parliament of Vulture. Publisher Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2003