BEYOND PARDON IN NIGER-DELTA POLITICS: EXPLOITATION AND DISILLUSIONMENT IN CHIMEKA GARRICKS TOMORROW DIED YESTERDAY AND TANURE OJAIDE’S THE ACTIVIST

Abstract

Ever since the advent of the colonial masters in our midst, the Nigerian society is rife with many forms of disillusionment, frustration, dehumanisation resulting from bad governance and poor followership. Thus, Chimeka Garricks’ Tomorrow Died Yesterday and Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist satirised the corruption among the ruling class and the effects in the society. The novelists showed us the society reeking in corruption that gave birth to the literature of post-independence disillusionment. Therefore, instances of oppression, exploitation, corruption, suppression, cruelty, intimidation, man’s inhumanity against his fellow man and, above all, class consciousness as it affects the relationship between the rich and the poor as portrayed by the writers, have been the bane of the society. In Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist, the leaders are shown to be excessively corrupt and exercising brute force in the political scene. The insensitivity and lack of regard for the lives of the people by the leaders were vividly explored. In Chimeka Garricks’ Tomorrow Died Yesterday, the writer showed us how the expectations of the Niger-Delta, the Asiama Community, were shattered. The writer exposed the political activism in his community. Though oil was discovered in Asiama land, the people were denied the major sources of good living. The people faced hardship; some died of hunger and starvation and their women were raped by some corrupt militants. It is believed that the novelists succeeded in exposing the issues that undermine the lives of the people; hence they set out to address those ills in order to usher in rebirth, reformation and development.