Corruption and Marxist Tendency in Nigerian Society: A Critical Approach to Ngozi Chuma-Udeh’s The Presidential Handshake

Abstract

Literature is a tool, a mirror with which writers explore their societies. Writers have become the voice of truth from whose hands and inspirations the society strives towards peace, harmony, peaceful co-existence and above all decorum. Corruption as a socio malaise gave rise to post independence disillusionment. Corruption is an inherent foible that formed the backdrop to most Nigerian post-independence literature. It is imperative that the researcher here did an impressive study of the concept of corruption as explored in Ngozi Chuma-Udeh's The Presidential Handshake to reveal the pathological effects of corruption in a nation. Subsequently, the fiction under study, reveals to a great extent the issues that serve and address the general interest of the study. The novelist has to examine corruption and its practices in all forms, making the readers comprehend how corruption has brought or produced nothing but economic degradation and social unrest. Indeed, the novelist created awareness, and drew attention to several social issues of her time. The novelist is also against the deplorable human conditions, against the unbridgeable gulf between the proletariats and the bourgeoisie classes; hence the fiction is a clear example of literary work exposing the evils of selfishness, corruption and materialistic tendencies in the Nigerian society. The theoretical framework is Marxism which refers to the social, economic and political doctrines of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and their disciples. They teach a theory of value based upon labour, the economic determination of all social actions and institutions, the class struggle as the basic pattern in history, the researcher did a thorough analysis of the work under study and identified insincere and corrupt masses as the major challenge in our contemporary societies as portrayed in the novels.