Protest Voice and Narrative of Ethno-nationality Identity: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Autobiography

The tradition of autobiographical ‘self-telling’ cultivated by opposition elements against oppressive regimes in Africa gained prominence during the turbulent days of colonial resistance, where most of the key anti-colonial politicians took to the practice of narrating their encounters as nationalists and patriots in the national liberation struggles. The post-independent era did also brew new flavours into non-fictional literary menus, especially in Nigeria, where military elites and coupists capitalised on the autobiographical platform as creative non-fictional resource for building posterities for their ‘corrective’ roles and exploits in the service. In such stories, the narrators project their gallantry and patriotism in effecting change of regimes or in warfare during the nation’s civil war, fought in the later 1960s. But the depressing account of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s life-narrative: A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary (1995), departs from the earlier traditions, and rather follows in the temerity of Wole Soyinka’s prison memoir, The Man Died (1967), and depicts the politics and conflicts of ethnic-nationality exclusion with the paradoxes that characterise postcolonial/post-independent Nigerian state, where ethnicity, rentalism and new-fangled ‘divide-and-rule’ practices, violent uprisings, totalitarianism in governance and criminal impunities of the ruling elites have brought the nation to its present state of developmental disarray. With Achebe’s There was a Country (2005), a classic rendition in the non-fictional genre, which explicates Nigeria’s disintegrative tendencies, was bequeathed to African non-fictional narrative culture. This paper examines the utility of Saro-Wiwa’s autobiographical account as veritable medium of engagement with the complexities of ethno-nationality identity configurations and the health of Nigerian state.

Keywords: Ken Saro-Wiwa Ogoni Eco-System Sani Abacha Ethnonationality Crisis Autobiography

Author

• David Ekanem Udoinwang
  Department of English, Akwa Ibom State University,
  Obio Akpa Campus, Nigeria