D. O. Fagunwa's Igbo Olódùmarè as a Security Model for Nigeria
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Date
2019
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English Language Unit, Department of Educational Foundations and General Studies, University of Agriculture, Makurdi
Abstract
Since ancient times, creative writers have been the agents of the advocacy and correction of many societal ills, insecurity inclusive. This is because literature, whether prose, poetry or play, are regarded as the representations of the realities in the society. It is an important means of understanding and interpretmg aspects of human society such as culture, politics, and religions among others. In this paper, wepresent an overview of the roles of the Nigerian creative writers to National security and development. In view of the importance of translation in a multilingual society like Nigeria and for cross-border communication, excerpts from the English translation of one of the novels of Daniel Olorunfemi Fágúnwà, Igbó Olódùmarè serve as data for the study. This paper therefore discusses the relevance of the select work to the exigencies of the contemporary Nigeria security situation. It demonstrates that happenings in Fágúnwà's novels are representations of real situation, especially, Igbó Olódùmarè (1949) translated as The Forest of God by Gabriel Àjàdí in 1984 (published in 1995; and revised in 2005), and also translated as In the Forest of Olódùmarè by Wọlé Ṣoyinka in 2010). The story line, as the representation of real life situation and the solutions proffered in the text are useful in the handling of the security situation in Nigeria. The study likened the criminality and insecurity in contemporary Nigeria with that portrayed in Fágúnwà's novel and offers the ways the traditional society stemmed the tide as examples to be used and even improved on to abate crime and insecurity in Ilorin metropolis in particular and Nigeria as a whole. The study concluded that if these literary works are made compulsory in schools, students and readers of the texts would imbibe the right thinking and world-view
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Development, Security, Translation, Creative Writing