From literary aesthetics to behavioural psychology, industrial disputes, economic downturn, value depreciation in educational system, dysfunctional politics, capacity under-utilisation and so forth, the endemic problem of epileptic power supply is at the very root of Nigeria's underdevelopment.
When the mythical bug of their Africaness caught up with Nigeria's post-colonial writers, and they began to source materials for poetic expressions, the Abiku phenomenon lent itself to the imagination of the 1986 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Wole Soyinka, and his compatriot playwright, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo. The Abiku myth, in a nutshell, encapsulates the notion of a child that is born to die but would take pleasure in torturing his hapless parents. While the Abiku persona in J.P.Clark's poem demands supplication from his parents, the one in Soyinka's poem boasts of his mischievous presence. Time and again, he comes and goes in "several seasons" giving the parents the unending hope that someday he might outlive his usual brevity of life span.
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