Exploring Post-Colonial Leadership Crisis in Africa: A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Osundare’s The State Visit and Two Plays

Abstract

SummaryThe colonial experience in most African states alongside the attendant merger of nation-states based on administrative convenience precipitated the urgency for sustained positive leadership. However, the constant punctuations of civil democratic rule by military juntas forestalled the change envisaged by most African countries upon independence. Niyi Osundare is one of the most vocal literary activists from Nigeria whose writings, in reflecting the literary writer’s social responsibility role, have documented and emphasised the paucity of quality leadership in Nigeria, nay the African continent. The present study is a linguistic stylistic analysis of The State Visit, a satirical drama on military encroachment into governance and Two Plays, a social commentary on the effects on leadership crisis on the masses. Emphasis is on lexico-semantics in the (re)presentation of the leadership lacuna in the texts. Culture-specific expressions, neologisms, lexical sense relations, collocational deviations and word range were established stylistic tools found to be preeminent in showcasing the post-colonial leadership rut in which African nations are bespattered.