Clogs in the Re-Branding Wheel: Images of Leadership in Nigerian Fiction

Abstract

According to Randall Frost, place branding determines whether a countrymay be chosen as �a tourist destination, a place to invest or a source ofconsumer goods.� Rebranding implies that Nigeria�s image is inimical toattaining these goals. Sensibly, writers are perceived as stakeholders in thisnew project. This study illustrates the fact that fiction has consistentlymounted the image of a nation drifting under a corrupt leadership. FromAchebe to Adichie, it has been a portrait of a self-centred semi-literatepolitical class brazenly suspicious of the intelligentia, through militarydictatorships, looting the commonwealth and sponsoring a pogrom thatculminated in a civil war, to the woeful breeding of a teeming population ofjobless graduates forced into drug-peddling and violent crimes. Fiction hasbeen faithful in depicting verisimilitude. It seems to be saying that Nigerianleaders do not take heed of its prophetic messages.