For close to two decades now, Nigeria has been faced with a worrisome security challenge as orchestrated by the faceless Islamic fundamentalists known as "Boko Haram", a sect driven by the desire to Islamise Nigeria such that Nigeria will be governed by Sharia laws. To achieve their set objectives, the Islamic sect has continued to launch series of attacks on schools, churches, markets, barracks, parks, mosques, and other public infrastructures; creating mayhem, destroying properties worth billions of naira and killing close to a million Nigerian citizens since their emergence. Since Nigerian writers (novelists in particular), have remained ardent chroniclers of the socio-political realities of their country, this paper examines how Obinna Udenwe and Helon Habila use their literary imaginations in Satans and Shaitans and The Chibok Girls respectively to recreate spectacles of the bloodletting footage and their repercussions on the citizenry. This paper analysis the trajectories of the issues imagined in the select texts that are connected with the lingering fundamentalism and traumatising experiences of terror victims as well as the colouration of power hegemony in Nigeria. It concludes that Boko Haram and other insurgencies are part of postmodern fragmentations which violate and contradict the very ethos of what religion represents.

This essay argues for the potential of children’s literature in Nigeria as a genre serving as a means of building nationhood in the minds of children growing up in the country. It posits that because of the greed of the ruling elites, the potential in terms of both human and natural resources was frittered away after independence, thereby vitiating the function of children’s literature in helping reinforce Nigeria’s presence in the comity of nations. It is still possible to retrace our steps as a country by progressively deploying such literature, through its themes and character delineation, to inculcating in children a sense of nationhood and patriotism so they can relate across both ethnic and religious divisions to espouse ideals as a people with a common destiny. The literature that is the focus here is that written in English as the language of interaction among the different ethnic groups in the country, and as the language of instruction in our schools.