Popular Perception Social Reality: The SAP Experience in Contemporary Nigerian Fiction

Abstract

Nigerian literature, like other literatures, is a product of her history and the social issues which influence it. Colonialism may have come, and can be said to be gone as it was practised in the 1880s to the 1960s, but its effects are great and have lasted especially on the establishment and transformation of the literary culture of the African continent. Contemporary Nigerian writing, especially its prose fiction, addresses two main issues: the negotiation of a contemporary identity, and an expression of a general disillusionment with post-colonial Nigeria. Interwoven in the writings of contemporary Nigerian writers is an engagement with the perception and reality of the effects of the World Bank/IMF sponsored Structural Adjustment Programme of the mid-80s to the late 90s on the populace. This paper explores the SAP phenomenon as reflected in the writings of selected contemporary Nigerian novelists, with a view to identifying these writers’ perception of this experience that has and is still affecting Nigeria’s socio-cultural, political, economic and historical landscape. This investigation, through a general synopsis of selected contemporary Nigerian prose fiction, examines how the implementation of this policy facilitated an increase in the military government’s repressive attitude and the escalation of the economic crisis that was being experienced at the time.