Theorising the Abiku/Ogbanje motif in Sefi Atta’s Everything Good will Come

Abstract

One of the central issues (re)presented in post-colonial Nigerian literature is “internal colonialism”. Although writers and critics have widely appropriated the Abiku/Ogbanje motif to represent various sociopolitical situations, robust attention has not been paid to systematising the Abiku/Ogbanje motif to facilitate subsequent criticism. This study, therefore, investigates the constitutive elements of the Abiku/Ogbanje myth, systematises it for the interpretation of literary texts, and deploys it to interrogate Sefi Atta’s Everything Good will Come (2005). In the selected text, the theorising reveals the roles of the Abiku/Ogbanje Child—the political class—and its implications on the Nigerian family-nation. Atta’s Everything Good will Come reveals the subtextual historicity of the political class (Abiku/Ogbanje) and its pillaging of the family-nation’s wealth. Hence, the Abiku/Ogbanje model can be used to interrogate any text that portrays the socio-political hegemony of the citizens by the political class and not just texts representing characters relating to the Abiku/Ogbanje concept.