Twenty-First Century Nigerian Migratory Fiction: A Postcolonial Analysis oF Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked

Abstract

This paper examines how Nigeria’s narrative fiction has been dominated by issues of migration and trafficking in the twenty-first century which have led to the formation of a Nigerian migratory fiction. The major argument is that two dominant experiences of the twenty-first century Nigerian fiction are the experiences of migration and trafficking which are manifestations of postcolonial distortions of reality after independence. This paper explores the fictional narrative of migratory Nigerian fiction and the experiences with a view to mapping out how this pole has conditioned the literary imagination in Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked. The major focus of this essay is on how Adimora-Ezeigbo has represented the postcolonial conditions of migration and the experiences of exile. The major finding is that conditions of banality or loss of meaning are the dominant motifs of twenty-first century Nigerian fiction, and in Trafficked, Adimora-Ezeigbo uses the experiences of the female protagonist, Nneoma to capture the experiences of migration and trafficking which are the dominant trends in modern Nigerian fiction. The paper adopts Homi K. Bhabha’s strand of postcolonial theory to contextualize this emerging discourse in Nigerian fiction. The interrogation reveals a strong useful link between what he calls “conditions of anomie” and migration or the desire for exile. The paper argues that Adimora-Ezeigbo’s narrative contextualizes postcolonial contradictions, thus making the narrative a platform for exploring the consequences of both forced and voluntary migration in recent Nigerian fictional narration. The paper further argues that because of the willingness of the characters to migrate in search of better opportunities, the novel can be classified as belonging to the Nigerian migratory fiction of the twenty-first century. The paper concludes by interrogating the psychological shock which immigrants trapped by the forces of globalization experience within the contexts of disempowerment and banality.