Discourse of knowledge versus discourse of self-legitimation in contemporary Nigerian popular literature: An enquiry into Adebayo Bello’s self-help pamphlets

Abstract

Several studies have been done on the growing trends in African popular literature, particularly the Onitsha market literature. Most of these works have been carried out by established scholars such as Emmanuel Obiechina, Bernth Lindfors and Stephanie Newell. While Obiechina and Lindfors studied what may be called “the first generation” of African popular literature authors, Newell extended the discourse by investigating the works of largely “unknown” authors, particularly women whose works were on Christian and secular matters. This study draws from both perspectives but however differs from them because it seems to be the first critical study on Adebayo Bello, a prolific Nigerian writer whose work is yet to receive any critical attention. Based on insights from Obiechina and Newell, this study examined the major thematic and stylistic patterns of Bello‟s pamphlets. It looked at how the deployment of linguistic resources enhanced the writer‟s rhetoric on the issues he engaged in the texts. This study also showed how the resources of print culture in Nigeria enabled the writer to legitimize self as an expert authority and concluded that Bello‟s self-help texts, like most self-help pamphlets, are “shaky guide posts” that should not be held as canonical truth because they are for self-legitimation and lack in-depth scholarly orientation.

Keywords: Self-help pamphlets, popular literature, Adebayo Bello, discourse, knowledge, self-legitimation