International Research Journal of Education and Technology

Commitment literature interrogates issues of contemporary relevance, to ameliorate them. These issues are challenges of good leadership, economic, social and political mismanagement, etc. These are common day-to-day issues that affect the lives of the people and create avenues for sustainable development and societal stability. Many creative writers –novelists, poets, playwrights and essayists –have identified with and risen against the socio-economic and political crises that bedeviled their nations, especially after political independence. Chinua Achebe fired the first salvo with his A Man of the People (1966). In this novel, he realized the incipient corruption and leadership ineptitude that are the burden of the newly independent Nigeria. On his part, Okey Ndibe, more than three decades after is compelled to revisit this theme in his Arrows of Rain (2000). Borne by the apparent decadence and destitution that this malaise had done to Nigerians, Ndibe is more incisive, provocative and revealing in his novel. He also questions the docile and object status accorded the female gender in Nigeria’s patriarchal-dominated society. This paper seeks to critique these literary texts to explore how the two novelists have proffered solutions to the issues identified in their society, to achieve sustainable development, comparative advantage, and national identity in their beleaguered nation, Nigeria. This study adopts the Functionalist and Feminist theories as the bases for analyzing and critiquing the literary texts studied here.

Keywords: National Integration and Development, Contemporary Relevance, Commitment Literature, Ameliorating, Sustainable Development.