THE WRITER AS A PROPHETIC INTERVENTIONIST: THE CHINYELU OJUKWU’S AND SUNDAY ABRAYE’S EXAMPLES

Abstract

Ethnic and religious conceit have continued to impinge on the unity
of heterogeneous Nigeria from the colonial to the post-colonial eras,
necessitating the need for creative artists’ interventions. The
interventive writings are rarely explored in Nigerian scholarship.
Two playwrights of Nigerian descent, Chinyelu Florence Ojukwu in
Memories and Vision and Sunday Abraye in Hurdles are a few who
have risen to this interventionist role. This essay, therefore,
examines the two dramatic texts as prophetic attempts at advocating
an inextricable ethno-religious bond in the country. In both texts,
the heterogeneous constitution of the Nigerian nation and the crises
often instigated by ethnic and or religious mix are configured as
mixed marriages and the resistance against them. The major
characters in both texts are symbolic of old and new generations of
Nigerians – the old generation is emblematic of Nigerians with
ethno-religious egotism from which the playwrights prophetically
advocate a departure