This paper investigates the impact of media campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the rural areas of Enugu State. One hundred and sixty three women attending the antenatal clinics in six rural communities and twenty-four heads of Women groups were selected as sample for this cross-sectional survey. Structured questionnaire and interview were used to collect data while analysis of the data was done with SPSS version 20.0. The results reveal among others that the media campaign against FGM in Enugu state is ineffective. It further reveals that cultural values (51%), poor network reception (23%), epileptic power supply (18%), inaccessible media, and the nature of the content of the campaign are responsible for the ineffectiveness. Given the findings, the researchers recommends the modernization of the media and the contents of its FGM campaign for rural reach/accessibility, the development of pro-Igbo cultural programmes against FGM practice, and the use of visual methods to establish/prove the relationship between FGM, infections/diseases and maternal deaths. Further empirical research on FGM – maternal health care in Enugu State is recommended.

Turner's liminality describes a phase in social life wherein the confrontation between activity which has no structure and its structured results produces in men their highest pitch of self-consciousness. Ifemelu is one of the faces of America's growing youth immigrants whose liminal state is suspended between social structures in a state of continuous transition. The article examines Chimamanda Adichie's modern mythic characters as positive models of Nigerian immigration responding to negative racial stereotypes. The essay analyzes how Americanah, as a fiction of reputation management, renegotiates image rights of immigrants and minorities on a humanistic template engendering social compact of respect and mutual understanding. Adichie's redemptive narrative stresses the bicultural fix of economic exiles, affirming vision of a new cultural space for Africans at home and in the Diaspora. Focusing on the survival and agency of Black immigrants, Adichie advocates immigrants' proud avowal of their bicultural identity in a neo-colonial space.

Growing urban Nigerian cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt continually record millions of poor immigrants from rural areas looking for a new survival space. To be poor in Nigeria is to be a target. Soyinka’s Beatification of Area Boy is primarily a response to the upheavals within the Nigerian society; a dramatic documentation of the different manifestations of power at different historical periods in Nigeria. Soyinka queries a manipulative ordered Nigerian society based on a pervasive and binding morality. He firmly traces this anomaly to the doors of the military, who have ruled Nigeria for a number of years after independence. A dark reminder of the journey the underprivileged has made from independence to date, Soyinka’s play is also a longing to recover Nigeria’s moral territory.

No abstract

With the global #Metoo movement yet to arrive in Nigeria, Jude Dibia’s Unbridled reflects an emblematic moment for the underrepresented to occupy their stories and make their voices heard. The study analyzes patriarchy’s complicated relationship with the Nigerian girl child, significantly reviewing the inherent prejudices in patriarchy’s power hierarchies and how radical narratives explore taboo topics like incest and sexual violence. Contextualizing the concepts of hypersexualization and implicit bias to put in perspective how women, expected to be the gatekeepers of sex, are forced to navigate competing allegiances while remaining submissive and voiceless, the article probes the struggles of sexual victims and how hierarchies in a patriarchal society exacerbate their affliction through a culture of silence. Arguing that Dibia’s Unbridled confronts the narrative of silence in Nigerian fiction, the article explores ways the author empowers gender by challenging social values and traditional gender roles, underscoring gender dynamics and the problematic nature of prevalent bias against the feminine gender in Nigeria.