Author Description

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Intellectuals and African Development Pretension and Resistance in African Politics By Björn Beckman, Gbemisola Adeoti Zed Books LtdCopyright © 2006 CODESRIA All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-84277-764-0 Contents Predicament and response: an introduction BJÖRN BECKMAN AND GBEMISOLA ADEOTI, 1, one | Intellectuals, writers and soldiers, 1 Psychopaths in power: the collapse of the African dream in A Play of Giants OLUSEGUN ADEKOYA, 11, 2 Re-establishing the basis of social order in Africa: a reflection on Achebe's reformist agenda and Ngugi's Marxist aesthetics M. S. C. OKOLO, 31, 3 Narrating the green gods: the (auto) biographies of Nigerian military rulers GBEMISOLA ADEOTI, 49, two | Students, youths and people, 4 Ambiguous transitions: mediating citizenship among youth in Cameroon JUDE FOKWANG, 69, 5 Student radicalism and the national project: the Nigerian student movement BJÖRN BECKMAN, 98, 6 Transnational governance and the pacification of youth: civic education and disempowerment in Malawi HARRI ENGLUND, 124, 7 Identity and knowledge production in the fourth generation NANA AKUA ANYIDOHO, 156, Contributors, 171, Index, 173, CHAPTER 1 Psychopaths in power: the collapse of the African dream in A Play of Giants OLUSEGUN ADEKOYA A critical investigation of Wole Soyinka's A Play of Giants (1984), this chapter discusses what the playwright himself calls the 'Aminian theme', that is, African leaders' obsession with power, a seductive drive that breeds moral corruption, dictatorship, delusions, economic distortions and ruination, megalomania, perversion and desecration of all that is good in African traditions. The problem leads to the evaporation of all dreams of greatness, nationalism, liberation from colonial thraldom, disease, ignorance and poverty, and of pan-Africanism nursed in the heady