MIGRATION AND DIASPORIC COMPLEXITIES

IFEOMA ODINYE’S PAIN IN THE NECK AS A PARADIGM

Abstract

Neo-colonialism, in its wake, left in the tongues of many colonized nations the nerve- stretching bitter taste of inferiority complex. This malady is heightened by the unbridled rate of corruption and other anomalies that have dominated the leadership space in Africa
nay Nigeria since independence. Hence, many Nigerians desire to seek refuge across international borders under the impression that whatever happens in the Western world must be better than what obtains in Nigeria. But then, diasporic literature focuses on
demonstrating that things are not always what they seem on the other side. Many migrants find themselves plunged into deplorable situations of cultural alienation, racial discrimination, nostalgia, scam, drugs, prostitution, etc, all of which eventually culminate in
the cankerworm of identity crisis and/or multiple consciousness. These are the plights well captured by Ifeoma Odinye in her debut novel, Pain in the Neck. Using this text, this present work, thus, exposes the many complexities that beset Nigerian migrants in the diaspora, which ably reveal that things are not always as they seem at face value as far as migration in pursuit of the ‘Golden Fleece’ is concerned. And so, by means of a textual analysis of this selected text under the post-colonial theoretical framework, this study demonstrates that many Nigerians abroad are always stuck with an erosion of their cultural and personal
identities, all in their quest for greener pastures. In other words, they usually end up in the ignoble fate of being neither here nor there, having been alienated as the ‘other’ in the foreign land and also denigrated by their own people, who consider them as ‘never-do-wells’, assuming they return home ‘empty-handed’.