Religious Hypocrisy and Extremism: Bane to Good Governance in the Selected Novels of Two Francophone African Writers

Abstract

The study is centred on religious issues as captured in the literary works of Sembène Ousmane and Ferdinard Oyono. It interrogates socio-religious matters in Sembène Ousmane’s Le mandat, Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Guelwaar.and  Ferdinand Oyono’s Le vieux nègre et la médaille. The choice of these literary texts is guided by the fact that the novels  represent different cardinal periods of the socio-religious realities in Africa. Religion is a vital instrument of socialization  and mobilization around the world. It is equally a delicate issue being a value based matter and it is on this premise that  we consider the subject-matter significant and worthy of studying. The article deploys sociological approach or  perspective as its theoretical framework and content textual analysis as its methodology. It argues that religion is often  used to influence people’s thinking, sentiments, sense of judgment, and actions in any given human society. The study  reveals that the novelists are dissatisfied with the way religion is used to enslave humans and manipulate them to their  detriment. It is based on this that the works examined are considered novels of resistance, which are aimed at attaining  human development as regards sociocultural, economic and political consciousness for self determination.