Persecution in Igbo-Nigerian Civil-War Narratives

Abstract

Sociopolitical phenomena such as corruption, political instability, (domestic) violence, cultural fragmentation, and the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) have been central themes of Nigerian narratives. Important as these are, they tend to touch on the periphery of the major issue at stake, which is the vector of persecution underlying the Nigerian tradition in general and in modern Igbo Nigerian narratives in particular, novels and short stories written in English which capture, wholly or in part, the Igbo cosmology and experience in their discursive formations. The present study of such modern Igbo Nigerian narratives as Okpewho’s The Last Duty (1976), Iyayi’s Heroes (1986), Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), and other novels and short stories applies René Girard’s theory of the pharmakos (Greek for scapegoat) to this background of persecution, particularly as it subtends the condition of the Igbo in postcolonial Nigeria in the early years of independence.

Portraits of the Nigerian Soldier in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty and Festus Iyayi’s Heroes

“…Many other studies on the military in Nigerian novels explore military despotism, oppression, tyranny, and other forms of anarchical leadership. These include Carrol (1990), Ogu (1990), Ojinmah (1991), Folorunsho (1993), Benson and Conolly (1994), Eghagha (2004), Asika (2011), Akung (2011), and Onwuka (2016 among several others. The two studies of Onwuka come closest to analyzing soldiers on character basis, but their major concerns were on military dictatorship and oppression in society.…”

“…Similarly, Ni Chréacháin (1992), which analytically compares Iyayi’s fictive narrative of the Civil War with Obasanjo’s autobiographical My Command (1980) of the same event, explores soldiers in groups and proclaims Heroes “the re-writing of history, the exposure of the social contradictions, [and] the unmasking of the military and the ruling class” (p. 56). Finally, Chukwumah and Nebeife (2017) examines Heroes and TLD alongside other texts in exploring issues of scapegoatism/victimhood in investigating “persecution in Igbo-Nigerian Civil-War Narratives.” The authors’ application of a persecution theory in the reading of the texts indicts the Nigerian army as a group for mob action against Igbos led by their Commander-in-Chief, General Gowon, who ruled Nigeria in the war period. In all, soldiers are explored as groups in these studies, not as individuals.…”