Nigerian newspapers, like newspapers elsewhere, are often established as part of the apparatus for the extension of personal or group interests, to mobilize and contest meaning in the overall project of constructing hegemony in an ethnically fractious polity. In this article, I trace the emergence ofAlaroye, the best-known Yoruba-language newspaper today, by identifying its survival strategies and stabilization against the changing circumstances of a hostile environment. The article aims to demonstrate that, in challenging the oppressive activities of a military dictatorship led by the Hausa-Fulani and a media market dominated by English-language newspapers,Alaroyehas been able to negotiate its existence within the contested space that is Yorubaland in particular and Nigeria at large. In this state of contestation and fierce competition, tabloidization has been central toAlaroye’s success, making it a leader whose example is being closely emulated by other Yoruba-language newspapers. Following from this, the article discusses the genres ofAlaroyeand the newspaper's genre-blurring innovations, including its oral written style, all of which point to its transformation into a tabloid, against the background of its initial failure at the newsstand and the factors responsible for its revitalization and stabilization after three failed attempts.

Emerging mass culture in the popular arts, signposting Nigeria's entry into the postcolonial phase, has helped in creating a site of linguistic identity at variance from the one imposed by British rule. Such a reconstitution of the colonial/indigenous subject/psyche via the 'vernacular' medium of popular arts, which Karin Barber views as a hybridized cultural domain, is sometimes an unconscious, often a decanonical and, to follow Victor Turner, liminal phenomenon that displaces English as the language of 'high' culture and civilization, providing in the alternative a metissage of languages including English, Nigerian Pidgin English, and the so-called vernaculars whose ultimate outcome could be positive for the overall development of society. Framed within cultural studies and postcolonial theory, this article explores the nexus between nationhood and national identity implicit in the efflorescence of indigenous languages and dialects in contemporary popular music in Nigeria.Keywords: Wazobia; wazobia music; wazobia and nationhood; identity Nigerian PidginDi new things people dey do with our art and culture dey show say our people no dey copy oyinbo style and language again. Na true say no be everybody sabi wetin dey happen when dem use wazobia 1 do di things wey dem dey do for our new art and entertainment culture, di culture wey Karin Barber say na mixture of oyinbo and our local style and Victor Turner say make us be like person wey confuse; but di way people dey take yanga blow our local language dem and pidgin English for our art and entertainment culture, so tay dem no dey blow oyinbo grammar like before fit come take style-style do our society better. Di thing I do here na to use cultural studies and postcolonial theory explain di link wey dey between a country and di people way of life, and how our people dey blow our local language (wazobia) for music for Nigeria dis days.

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The historical rise of African literature in Europhone languages, particularly English and French, as a social and disciplinary practice directed at the recuperation of the fractured African persona and world view following centuries of (mis)representation in Western-authored texts, has conferred on it an adversarial tone that is generally viewed as the archetypal character of African literature that is productive of other categories of ethnic/national literatures including those in the indigenous languages of Africa. Protest (commitment) or agit(ation) prop(aganda) as this category of literature is variously called is more often than not seen as the hallmark of African literature irrespective of its linguistic orientation. Framed against the broad backdrop of the counter-hegemonic claims of postcolonial theorisation, this article discusses theme in Ironu Akewi [Thoughts of a Poet] and Emi in mi Emi in re [My Love Your Love] respectively by Olanrewaju Adepoju and Olatunbosun Oladapo, arguably two of the most prominent of contemporary Yoruba poets. Implicit in the article's explorative concerns is the repudiation of the displacement (marginalisation) of Africanlanguage literatures, their denigration in the academy and consignment to a secondorder cadre vis-à-vis African literature in European languages. Such writing "back to the Empire", such reinscription of the indigenous and questioning of a master discourse conforms with the postmodernist blurring of the space between the "high" and the "low", the global and the local -indeed the written and the oral. The article makes the point that the overtly political preoccupation of African literature -English and French -is neither a given of contemporary African literature nor was it the originary character of the literatures, particularly poetry, of pre-colonial Africa. OpsommingDie historiese opkoms van Afrikaliteratuur in die Eurofoniese tale, veral Engels en Frans, as ƌ sosiale en dissiplinêre praktyk wat gerig is op die herstel van die gebroke Afrikapersona en -wêreldbeskouing wat eeue se wanvoorstelling in Westersgeouteerde tekste volg, het 'n antagonistiese klank daaraan toegeken wat oor die algemeen as die argetipekarakter van Afrikaliteratuur beskou word wat produktief van ander kategorieë van etniese/nasionale literature is, insluitende dié wat in die inheemse tale van Afrika geskryf is. Protes (toewyding) of agi(tasie) prop(aganda), soos wat hierdie kategorie dikwels genoem word, word as die waarmerk van Afrikaliteratuur gesien, ongeag sy linguistiese oriëntasie. Teen die breë agtergrond van die kontrahegemoniese aansprake op postkoloniale teoretisering, bespreek hierdie Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 16:59 19 November 2014 JLS/TLW 22 artikel dié tema in Ironu Akewi [Gedagtes van 'n digter] en mi in mi Emi in re [My liefde jou liefde] deur onderskeidelik Olanrewaju Adepoju en Olatunbosun Oladapo,wat stellig twee van die mees prominente kontemporêre Yoruba-digters is. Implisiet in die artikel se ontdekkende aard is die ontkenning van die ontheemd...

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