A nativist’s approach to Òkédìjí’s cultural restoration in Ṣango.

Abstract

The issue of culture has always been an area of interest in sociology (Fádípe, 1970), theology (Ejizu, 1973), economics (Goodman, 2001), literature (Ìsolá, 1995, Ogúnsínà, 1995 and Ilésanmí 2004), politics and anthropology (Lamnitz and Ember, 1995). In all, culture is seen as the basis of man's life in any society. Ironically, this aspect of African life in general, and Nigerian society in particular, is what colonial master has successfully rubbished for his own economic gain. The result of this is the hybridization process that subverts traditional cultural values for foreign practices. The thrust of this paper is to explore how Okédiji (1987) has successfully reconstructed history and thereby reinvents those values that the colonial masters have tried to destroy. The study achieves this by using the nativist model of the postcolonial theory as propounded by Williams and Laura (1994) in Adeyemi (2003) to probe the writer's style and techniques in the task of cultural reorientation. The aesthetics of Okédìjí's historical drama, Sàngó is examined to highlight how the author reconstitutes or reinvents history, and reorientates the hybridized Nigerian society to have a good understanding of the values inherent in traditional culture vis-a-vis the role it played in the organization of the Yorùbá society in the pre-colonial period.