Corrupt Practices in Africa in Soyinka’s The road and Chris Egherevba’s the Labourer’s Blood
Abstract
This research study exposes the corrupt practices in Africa in Wole Soyinka’s The Road and Chris Egherevba’s The Labourer’s Blood. The study revealed that, corruption, exploitation, poverty and social injustices are the major societal challenges confronting the poor masses in our Nigerian society. The study also showed that the rich and the political leaders are the causes of this corruption and poverty in our contemporary society. In Soyinka’s The Road, Soyinka portrays the corrupt attitude of the protagonist, professor, with a clear picture on how he make his money through corrupt and bad attitude of selling Aksident spare parts.In addition, the author portrays chief Obazee as one of the rich men who exploits the poor. The author portrays his sitting room as a hurriedly converted into an emergency conference room for a meeting of the Board of Management. Refreshment flows lavishly. During their conversation for.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Wole Soyinka and Chris Egharevba are among the Nigerian writers whose writings specifically centres on the political corruption and political disillusionment in African and Nigerian society. Unlike Soyinka, Egharevbai is a post Nigerian civil war writer and he can be situated within the second generation of Nigerian novelists. He is a pioneer of social realism, a literary approach that analyzes society and its problems in Marxist terms. His works deal with the everyday oppression of the common man by his fellow Africans; his works also clearly describe the concept of class struggle. His novel, The Labourer’s Blood, is referred to as one of the first truly proletarian novels in Nigeria, which x-rays the Nigerian society as it progressively moves towards the path of retrogression, degeneration, corruption and moral decadence.
Corrupt Practices in Africa in Soyinka’s The road and Chris Egherevba’s the Labourer’s Blood
This is a clear manifestation of the Nigerian society as a class society with all the contradictions and problems inherent in such a society. With the adoption of such narrative techniques as flashback, simple diction, bitter tone, irony, juxtaposition, symbolism. According to Black, Egharevbai is able to graphically and truly present what he sees and experiences personally, and concludes that Nigeria is a class society where nothing goes well: a society based on violence, injustice, brutality, immorality (45).
A society where greed and corruption of the privileged and the ruling class has created a big gulf between the few wealthy and the majority of the poor masses, thus creating a society woefully lacking in proper human relationship and brutal economic relations. We are reminded of Festus Iyayi which takes a deep philosophical look at a neo-colonial set announces violence as its guiding principle of social protest. The dominant structural element is the opposition of the oppressors and the oppressed.
Corrupt Practices in Africa in Soyinka’s The road and Chris Egherevba’s the Labourer’s Blood
As noted by Fatunde and Gugel Berger says: ,Iyayi presents the working people as individuals who believe in struggling for their liberation, as fully conscious humans who are ready to combat their problems headlong with courage whether male or female. At the same time, they are not presented as infallible heroes but humans who have their own shortcomings and weaknesses irrespective of gender In the view of Maja-Pearce says… those novelists who concern themselves with themes that assess topical issues in a post oil boom Nigeria. They are almost far removed from the themes of colonial rule and the cultural conflict in their writings (74).