Protest and Conflict in African Literature: The Nigerian Experience Expressed in Selected Plays by Zulu Sofola and Tess Onwueme

Abstract

The prevailing social situation in a society at any given time determines the temperament of its literature. African literature of the post–independence period is generally reactive in temperament. This emergent trend in African literature is as a result of the prevailing economic, social and political situations in most African nations. In Nigerian society, for instance, there is inequality, injustice, unemployment, hunger, marginalization, environmental degradation, corruption, political instability, socio-economic ills and religious violence. Obviously, these suffocating experiences are bound to generate protests and conflicts arising from people who are dissatisfied. Drama and prose have been mostly deployed to confront these unjust and inhuman situations. However, this paper focuses mainly on the selected plays authored by Zulu Sofola and Tess Onwueme. The study is basically a survey of Zulu Sofola and Tess Onwueme’s selected plays which explore the thematic concern of this paper. Content analysis of the plays reveals that protest can be used to resist and protest all oppressive structures in society.