Versifying Unease in Postcolonial Nigerian Society: Politics of Corruption and Oppression in Akan Essien’s Stabbed Alive. Rage Alive and Halima Amali’s I Want to Join Them

Abstract

Postcolonial Nigerian society is confronted by corruption and oppression that emerged in the wake of independence. In recent times, these challenges have evolved in the creative consciousness of writers in their versified writings. Poetry, which serves as a veritable medium for the projection of philosophical thought, reflects these vagaries as the unique genre employed by poets for humanity that is dismayed by the irony of hope and survival. This paper examines corruption in politics and oppression of the masses. It showed that the drawbacks witnessed in the country attribute to the aforementioned variables. The choice of Essien’s Rage Alive. Stabbed Alive (2010) and Amali’s I Want to Join Them (2016) is informed by the fact that there is a lack of scholarly research on these collections. The paper adopts spivak’s postcolonial framework in the context of the Nigerian society, while the descriptive method of textual analysis aimed to show how political leaders in their deployment of corrupt and oppressive schemes, advance their kleptomaniac agenda. Thus, the study submits that for a functional and progressive society to exist, fundamental changes in its socio-political affairs must be undertaken.