Character’s proactive consciousness in the African novel: A postcolonial reading of Tanure Ojaide’s <i>The Activist</i>

Abstract

The incidence of oil boom in Nigeria and the attendant doom for the people of the Niger Delta region has continued to incite creativity. Many of these writings focus on the people of this degraded, neglected, disfigured and devastated minority community in the Nigerian nation. TanureOjaide, a poet, novelist and scholar is certainly one of the leading voices from this region. Hehas consistently bemoaned the predicaments of his people as a result of oil exploration and exploitation. In The Activist, Ojaidelends his voice to the need of the people of this region to shun selfishness and make sacrifices in order to get rid of the powers that hold them down. Through the proper deployment of narrative techniques such as character, voice, action, setting and metaphor, Ojaide calls on the people of the Niger Delta region to rise above the complacent acceptance of their neglect, dispossession, deprivation and misrepresentation from the selfish and insensitive Nigerian government who are in collaboration with multinational oil companies. Using the Postcolonial theoretical paradigm, as well as the qualitative research methodology, this paper sets out to examine Ojaide‘s fictional contribution to the existing oeuvre on the predicaments of the people of this neglected region and his call for a positive change. This is with the aim of creating consciousness on the urgent need to pay attention to both fictional and factual voices from the region crying for sincere human and physical development of their homeland.