NIGERIAN CHILDREN’S FICTION AND PROPAGANDA: A STUDY OF IFEANYI IFOEGBUNA’S WAITING FOR THE MESSIAH

Abstract

Children’s literature is to an extent a cultural and artistic product created for the child reader (s) to pleasurably digest. Quite a number of Nigerian writers such as Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Olajire Olanlokun to mention a few has delved into the art to further grow and develop it. Some of the children’s texts have equally received a considerable amount of critical attention. However, children’s texts written by Ifeanyi Ifoegbuna are scarcely investigated. On that note, the paper subjects Ifoegbuna’s Waiting for the Messiah through the social realist lens to explore the nature and to what extent societal issues are propagated in the text. Although the Animal Republic of Malinger is Ifoegbuna’s fictional setting ascribed to his Waiting for the Messiah, the story replicates the Nigerian political maneuvering especially one that reveals its campaign processes and life afterwards. By this, the paper broadens the analytical corpus of Nigerian Children’s literature and further asserts that beyond the didactic hue of Children’s literature, encapsulates political undertone necessarily propagated to disseminate and influence positive behavior. The paper finds out that political corruption, looting of public funds, economic bankruptcy, favoritism, and hardship are some of the issues embedded in the text which Ifoegbuna, through his characters, suggest ways by which those ills should be exterminated.