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- ItemIdioms of Migration Narratives in Selected Poems of Niyi Osundare(2025) Olaleru, O.Immigration and Diaspora have become global issues of concern in our contemporary times, engendering almost equal media and scholarly attention and focus. Scholars have regularly looked at impacts of different forms of relocation on individuals and by extension, a nation. Regardless of possible underlying sense of excitement, the prospects of leaving familiar terrain for strange lands abroad, often render sojourners vulnerable. As a result, the nature of encounters at the first points of entry often add to a prospective migrant’s anxieties. This paper explores experiences, couched as idioms and metaphors through varied immigration experiences in four poems selected from by Niyi Osundare’s Waiting Laughters (2002), “Entry Point Encounter”, “Waiting for the Anxious Fumes”, and “Feathered Heels”, and “If Only the Road Could Talk” in If Only the Road Could Talk (2017). In the poems, the poet highlights immigrants’ unpleasant and sometimes comic experiences with border officers, using the poetic diction of sarcasm, but that is both idiomatic and metaphorical, thereby deflecting what may have appeared to be sharp criticism of migrant treatment at entry. Adopting Postcolonial theory as framework, the paper explores diaspora realities such as identity, race issues, and power dynamics, and how they interconnect. The paper concludes that non-white migrants are often subjected to racial profiling, psychological trauma, as well as to deliberate disrespect using preconceived biases, while lawfully exercising their rights to free movement as free citizens of the earth.
- ItemPatriarchy and the Concept of Power in Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter(2025) Olanike, O.Whereas the human species is biologically and inherently delineated in dispositions, yet socio-cultural, and even religious institutions continually project other attributes unto them. These contrived gender attributes, largely synthetic tend to mould the genders into forced constructs within which they must operate, or else society will be displeased. Moreover, the contrived male-female categorisations determine their personalities, abilities and capability, in short, their power of being. Within the African cultural space, behavioural attitudes, reinforced by entrenched belief systems, persistently endows the man as characteristically strong, honourable, and having authority, but the woman as feeble, of minimal-intellect and emotionally unstable, and therefore feeble in critical decision-making capabilities. This paper sets out to debunk the fallacy of this patently false portraiture of the gender types; and argues rather that women are able to, and have taken courageous actions in the face of difficult challenges just as men. The paper contends also that women are not emotionally stable, but they are no less secure as men when dealing with difficulties of life. Employing the Liberal hypothesis of the Feminist theory, the paper argues using qualitative analytical method that the patriarchal concept of power being strictly male-domiciled, is demonstrably false, as it overlooks the particular variables of personality, inner strength as well as the resourcefulness and intelligence of individual women. This paper’s textual analysis of Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter reveals how the well-judged actions of Ramatoulaye and Aissatou rescued them from becoming victims of their strongly patriarchal society, thus upturning the prevailing male-female power dynamics. Having suffered societal-enabled and devastating marital betrayals, these women competently handled the accompanying fallouts without falling apart. Their individual and successful, overcoming of culturally-engendered tragedies disprove received notions about male superiority. Ramatoulaye and Aissatou, by their strong actions in the face of overwhelming societal opposition and hostility, proved that when women strategically confront cultural stereotyping, the status-quo is reversible. The paper therefore concluded that the concept of absolute male power and female feebleness is only a false contrivance of the patriarchal system.
- ItemD.O. Fagunwa: Navigating the Yoruba Folkloric Sense of Audience(2025) Olaleru, O.
- ItemWomen in Obasá’s Poetry(2021) Ayoola Oladunnke Aransi; Hakeem OlawaleObasá’s creativity cuts across virtually all aspects of Yorùbá socio-cultural ̣ settings and his works have attracted the attention of various scholars. It is evident that his poems are laden with topical issues that are of national interest. Most of his works, as described by previous scholars, are based on his love for and interest in Yorùbá language, social values, language, style, cultural practices, and the recovery endangered Yoruba oral art (Babalolá 1971, ̣ 1973; Olábimtán 1974a, 1974b; Ògúnsínà 1980; O ̣ látúnji 1982; Akínye ̣ mí 1987, ̣ 1991, 2017; and Nnodim 2006). Tis essay focuses on the representation of women in Obas ̣ á’s poetry, a topic that has not been given adequate attention. ̣ The essay attempts a close reading of Obas ̣ á’s poems within the Feminism and ̣ womanism theoretical frameworks. The research reveals that the representation of women in the poetry of Obasa did not go beyond the stereotypical and derogatory portrayal of women among the Yoruba.
- ItemTense and Aspects(Kwara State University Press, 2021) Gobir, M.T &; Aliyu Abdulkadir