Multi-Culturalism in Abdullahi Abubakar's A New Weft in the Loom, Citizens or Strangers and Corper'tion

Abstract

Multi-Culturalism is the commonest cause for the various conflicts in different parts of the world. Africa has witnessed, and is still witnessing, its own share of these ethnic uprisings. Nigeria, with its diverse ethnic groups and subsequent ethnic-based upheavals over the years, stands as a sad example in the continent. Being products of their societies, Nigerian literary artists have been influenced by issues concerning multi-culturalism which they put to different purposes in their various works. In this paper, using the descriptive method, we investigate the recourse to ethnicity in Abdullahi Abubakar’s drama texts A New Weft in the Loom, Citizen or Strangers and Corper’tion. The analysis revealed that Abubakar’s foray into multi-culturalism is an aesthetic to mediatise and provide workable solutions to the conflicts in the play texts. The conclusion in the paper is that rather than being tools of division, pride in an individual or group's ethnicity is a common and natural element of life and therefore multi-culturalism can be used for mutual understanding of the differences between separate societies and consequently for national development.