Abstract:
Chinua Achebe (born Nov. 16, 1930) is a Nigerian novelist, critic and poet; he is
one of the most-read African authors. The primary concern of Chinua Achebe, the
recipient of the
Man Booker International Prize, 2007, was his society, more
precisely, the
destiny of his people. Achebe, perhaps the most authentic literary
voice from Africa, wrote not only to record the African, especially Nigerian, life
but to analyse the reality experienced by the native people in different times and
situations. In his view,
the writer must be accountable to his society. To him it was
absurd to think of art as a pure and autonomous entity coming into existence by
itself in an aesthetic void. Accordingly, his aim was to make his fiction an
instrument of awareness seeking to el
evate the social reality to a higher level. In
this regard, the paper is an attempt to show Achebe’s endeavour to expose the
rampant corruption and evil in Nigeria to exert a decisive and positive influence
on his people. For Gimba, the intrigues and conte
station over power, especially
within the civil service, assume a metaphoric significance in unraveling social
contradictions in society. Gimba thus, evaluates the various dimensions of power
and how it is used to subjugate or oppress people. In most of hi
s works, Gimba
pillories the repressive nature of power and the conflicts it engenders are
graphically illustrated. In his articulation of this disabling environment, Gimba
evokes a consciousness, concerned with Manichaenism and alienation. Gimba is
sensit
ive to his characters as they adjust to the uncertainties of a postcolonial
society with all the indices of underdevelopment, greed, corruption, bureaucratic
tardiness, indiscipline, political instability etc. These characteristics of modern
Nigeria form t
he background from which Gimba’s characters are drawn. However,
drawing from their Islamic background, the characters in Gimba’s works express
their morality, conviction and thought through the ideals of the religion. This leads
to a remarkable blending of
social and moral concerns with the supervening
influence of Islam without sermonization. The outcome of this fusion is a balance
between aesthetics and spiritual interests in a way that captures the essence of
Northern Nigeria with vividness and freshness. Gimba, like Tahir, therefore relates
the traditional and cultural values of the people to their response to the dilemma of
new experiences and their interpretations of them.
