Festus Iyai, "Noruwa's Day of Release(I)"(Japanese Translation)
2003 Volume 7 Issue 1 Pages 111-120
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2003 Volume 7 Issue 1 Pages 111-120
Festus lyayi is considered not only one of the major novelists in Nigeria, but also one of the most politically committed African novelists. His novels, with uncompromising and radical political perspective based on the tradition of social realism, are comparable ideologically to those of Sembene Ousmane in Senegal and Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Kenya. Festus lyai, as a key figure in the trade union movement, had struggled against the military dictatorship for most of the 1980s. He was arrested on charges of treason in 1986, and dismissed from the faculty of the University of Benin for his revolutionary political and labour activity. Nigerian political climate has been very severe. In Nigeria,"Corruption has become not just a way of life, but life itself. Military officers live above the law; the judiciary has been totally intimidated, corrupted, compromised and rendered useless; traditional institutions have been domesticated and bastardized; trade unions, student associations, prodemocracy movements and other popular coalitions have been suppressed and their leaders jailed or forced into exile; unemployment and under-employment have reached unprecedented levels."(Globalization and the Dilemmas of the State in the South, Macmillan Press LTD, 1999). Awaiting Court Martial, published in 1996 under such Nigerian socio-political conditions, is a collection of short stories by Festus lyayi. 'Noruwa's Day of Release (I)', is one of the short stories included in Awaiting Court Martial. In this story, it is vividly depicted through the protagonist 'Noruwa' that innocent civilians, caught in the crossfire of corrupt and murderous conflict, cannot be cured and cannot lead an ordinaly human life even after the civil war because the socio-political situation has not basically changed at all. Those who have read the story cannot help reflecting on the necessity of changing the status quo, the military regime that has been torturing common people both physically and mentally.
