Nigerian Intellectuals and Socialism: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

Many Nigerian intellectuals have persisted in their enthusiasm for a socialist revolution. Historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists, novelists, and playwrights in the universities have presented a Marxist critique of the political economy and society, and variously sought to provide a socialist solution to the multiple ills of their country. For example, in November 1985, Tunji Braithwaite was insisting that ‘socialism is the way out’ of the political and economic impasse besetting the nation, while Krees Imodibie was claiming that the Nigerian social ethos expressed the essential precepts of socialism. Even the National Political Bureau appointed in 1986 by President Ibrahim Babangida to devise the blueprint of a civilian government for the 1990s recommended, albeit rejected by the Armed Forces Ruling Council, ‘that Nigeria should adopt a socialist socio-economic system’.

Cold War sponsorships: Chinua Achebe and the dialectics of collaboration

“…African political actors engaged in anti-colonial and decolonization struggles during the years of the Cold War that included forms of African socialism as part of their strategies. Demands for and repudiations of an African socialism, for example, animated exchanges between African leaders and politicians and ensuing debates and experiments with socialism intersected with cold war politics in complex ways (for an introduction to those intersections for Nigerian intellectuals, see Sil [1993]). Achebe responds to the challenges these complicated intersections posed to all camps of African intellectual life by exploring the motivations of political actors without ascribing a pre-given content to solidarity.…”

Literature in the time of tyranny: African writers and the crisis of governance

“…According to him:`Unable to stage an actual revolution, some self-styled revolutionaries in Nigeria write ® ctional accounts of the exploited but politicised working class, and release their venom against regimes and leaders no longer in power' . 23 It may be appropriate to consider how the masses who are supposed to be the bene® ciaries of the struggle against the malignant post-colonial state fare in these ® ctional accounts. In A Man of the People, 24 we see them as a cynical lot, disenchanted, disempowered and technically disenfranchised, waiting patiently for Odili, the new democratic pretender, to receive his comeuppance.…”