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abstract |
Someone said that the University of Nigeria was a dream come true. Conceived many
years before Independence, it eventually opened its gates on 7th October 1960, and
classes began on 17th October 1960 with an enrolment of 220 students and 13 members
of the academic staff. Since then, thousands of students and staff from all over the
world have settled on its Nsukka and Enugu campuses to study, research and join in
a unique experiment. This paper examined the impact of UNN on Nigerian literature,
focusing on Ike’s Naked Gods (1970), and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half
of a Yellow Sun (2006), the only three Nigerian novels featuring the University of
Nigeria. It showed these texts as key documents, revealing UNN, the only Nigerian
HE institution developed in a rural setting, as both a citadel of learning and a world
in itself, whose influence permeated the whole region and extended far beyond. Whereas
Naked gods (1970) evokes the beginnings of the University, its main campus under construction
and the negotiating of the University administrative structures between the British
and the Americans under the critical eye of the side-lined indigenous staff and local
traditional authorities, Adichie’s novels, published in 2003 and 2006, complement
Ike’s picture as they paint a very different University, now totally manned by Nigerians
and where expatriates have become a rarity. They equally differ in other ways: whereas
Ike chose to focus on the University as a workplace, Adichie presents it as a secluded
place of learning, a village and a web of close-knit relationships. This comparative
study highlights UNN’s intellectual impact on both its students and staff and on the
nation-building process. |