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the political corruption and psychosocial disorder, using Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist and Okey Ndibe’s Arrow of Rain



CHAPTER ONE


1.0     INTRODUCTION 


          Nigeria’s political problems sprang
from the carefree manner in which the British took over, administered, and
abandoned the government and people of Nigeria. British administrators did
not make an effort to weld the country together and unite the heterogeneous
groups of people. Though, many things we have today is due to their
enlightenment, they still left us hanging. According to Adewele Ademoyega in
his book Why We Struck 1981, he said that when the British came, they
forcibly rubber-stamped the political state of the ethnic groups of Nigeria, and
maintained that status quo until the left. According to him upon their
departure nearly a hundred years later, the people resumed fighting for their
political rights.


          When the British came to Nigeria as an
imperial nation to take over the rulership of the country from 1861 (with the
cession of Lagos),
they met the people of the south totally free, only observing and regulating
their own monarchies and institutions (Adewele Ademoyega: Why We Struck).
Chinua Achebe in his work or novel Things Fall Apart, 1958, tries to
portray the life Africans lived before and during the arrival of the Europeans
in Nigeria.


          Things Fall Apart tells the
tragic story of the rise and fall of Okonkwo and the equally tragic story of
the disintegration of Igbo culture, symbolized by the agrarian society of
Umofia, under the relentless encroachments of British Christian imperialism.


          For Achebe, Mister Johnson represents
the worst kind of portrayal of Africans by Europeans. To him, the portrayal was
all the more disheartening because John Cary was working hard to achieve and
accurate depiction, unlike many British authors during the imperial colonial
period who deliberately, often cynically, exploited stereotyped of Africans and
African society. It was precisely because John Cary was a liberal-minded and
sympathetic writer, as well as a colonial administrator that Achebe felt the
record had to be set straight. Achebe’s purpose then is to write about and for
his own people. His first novels form a continuum over one hundred years of
Igbo civilization. The Europeans have not yet penetrated Umuofia, the setting
of the first novel, when Things Fall Apart beings. When the novel ends
colonial rule has been established. His other novels talk about the different
changes that took place before independence and after it.


          The British governed Nigerian
indirectly through their traditional rulers, as a result, the true leader of
the masses hamstrung and held down. Just because Africans were given authority
to rule over her own people, they saw it as a means to maltreat those that have
wronged them, extort from those that have more than them and sell his/her own
brother and sister for favours from the superior leaders - The British.
(Adewele Ademoyega: Why We Struck).


          These actions by the local and foreign
leaders made the people to sort for independence. Many of them were not
thinking straight any more. Many people now saw the need to transfer their
faults to others using others as an excuse. The present leader blame the
colonial masters and fore runners-for-independence for their actions for not
doing what is expected of them well and also for the embezzlement and stealing
of public funds. They claim that the colonial masters taught them to do so. The
political elites in other to become rich and influencial in the society, steal
and blame it on the economy and leaders. No one takes responsibility for his
own crime and faults.


          Between the politicians and the
military they blame one another for a bad government no one agrees that the
other is better than himself. In the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, people
do all type of things just to steal from the petroleum companies they believe
that it is their own right and bunkering which is a common business there is
not stealing. That is why Tanure Ojaide uses his novel The Activist to
enlighten the people of what is happening in the Niger Delta areas. He says
those that claim to be literate in the society are the Chief Criminals sabotaging
one another. Everybody in the country is in one way or the other suffering from
the harms political corruption brought, we are psychosocial disordered.


          Kole Omotoso in his fictions focuses
on identifying the problems in Nigerian society and proposing solution. He
lived his childhood and adolescence, sharing the nationalist dreams of peace,
progress, and prosperity, as an adult and as a writer, he was forced to watch
the systematic deferment of these dreams after independence for decades after freedom
from colonial rule, Nigeria
was cursed by civil strife, including a civil war (1967 – 1970) and incessant
military coups d’etat. These events, together with undemocratic rule political
chicanery and bureaucratic cynicism resulted in a steady decline in the quality
of life in a nation that, because it is the most populous black nation on earth
is often looked upon as representative of the black race. Omotoso tries to use
fiction to talk about the decay and chaos in the society but he tries to make
it less real like Armah did in his The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born.


1.1     Definition
of Terms


          Political corruption is the use of
legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain misuse
of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political
opponents and general police brutality is also considered political corruption.


          Forms of corruption vary, it include:
bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft and embezzlement.
While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprises such as drug trafficking,
money laundering and trafficking, it is not restricted to these activities.
While political corruption is an illegal abuse of power, psychosocial disorder
is the mental reaction one gets from it.


Psychosocial
disorder is a mental illness caused or influenced by maladjusted cognitive and
behavioural processes.


1.2     Statement
of the Problem


          Due to the political dictatorship and
the high rate of starvation and poverty in the country, many of the people are
suffering from problems caused by the many ways they are treated and
controlled.


          Their manner of thinking have been
blurred with the idea that if they steal or kill to survive, it is not a crime
because their leader are also thieves who loot the national treasure and put is
in their foreign accounts.


          Again due to this, the citizens are
psychosocially disordered and their minds corrupt. The key problem is the
government. Because of the corrupt nature of the society, the government sells
her pride and glory to foreign companies and enterprise. This people now treat
the natural inhabitants of the areas where the companies are located like
animals without dignity. Example is the Niger Delta area of Nigeria which
is the oil producing state.


The major
problem is between the people and her government. Both are psychologically and
socially sick. The pain of poverty and starvation in abundant money have
destroyed the peoples mind that they no longer think or reason straight.


1.3     Aim and
Objectives


          The objectives of this research are;


To identify
the problems caused by political corruption and


To provide
suggestion to the prevention of political corruption and psychosocial disorder
and find a way to eliminate it completely from the society in general.


1.4           
Significance
of the study


Political
corruption and psychosocial disorder using The Activist by Tanure Ojaide
and Arrow of Rain by Oke Ndibe, will serve as a good material to
student’s researchers.


          This work will show how the government
and the citizens and foreign companies helped in the corruption of the society
and her environment and how the act of corruption has disordered everything.


1.5     Scope of
Research


          This project is restricted to the
study of THE POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND
PSYCHOSOCIAL DISORDER, USING TANURE OJAIDE’S THE ACTIVIST AND OKEY
NDIBE’S ARROW OF RAIN
and other relevant literary work of some other
Nigerian and African prose writers and commentaries on corruption.


          The research is divided into five
chapters, chapter one consist of the introduction, definition of term,
statement of the problem, aims and objectives, significance of the study, scope
of research and research methodology. Chapter two is the review of related
literature, chapter three is textual analysis of the novel The Activist
by Tanure Ojaide, Chapter four is textual analysis of the novel Arrows of Rain
Arrow of Rain
by Okey Ndibe and chapter five is the summary and conclusion.


1.6     Research
Methodology


          The main source of this research work
is textual analysis of The main source of
this research work is textual analysis of The Activist by Tanue Ojaide
and Arrow of Rain by Okey Ndibe.


          The secondary materials are from the
library, texts, magazine and some works on African prose writers.














CHAPTER TWO


LITERATURE REVIEW


          According to Chinua Achebe, the consequence
of the loss of predictable political power in a community is one thing; at the
national level, they are quite different. He turns to this latter issue in his
fourth novel, A Man of the People (1966) which is set in the post
colonial period in an unnamed Independent African country. The governance of
the country is, nominally, in the hands of the people. The quality of the
leadership and the response of the people to that leadership are the central
theme. There is neither collective will in the people nor responsible
leadership. Moreover, a collective voice at the community level, through which
agreement is articulated in Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God and No
Longer at East
.

          Consequently,
A Man of the People (1966) completes a tetralogy of novels that reveals
the changes wrought in Nigerian life during the twentieth century against a
background of changing and evolving social and political realities. Chinua
Achebe reveals his concern with individual humanity and with responses of his
character to the social problems in which they become enmeshed. His interest is
in failure, for out of his characters responses to failure new possibilities
arise. This is why A Man of the People is open ended. At the close of
the novel, Odili begins to have a sense of what needs to be done. Odili’s
discoverers allow for due possibility that a new political attitude will
emerge. A Man of the People is a prophetic novel. Its publication in
January 1966 conceded almost exactly with the first military take over in Nigeria. The
worsening political