Postmodernism in Urban Nigerian Writings
In contemporary discussions on Nigerian urban literature, much has been said about how postmodern city life has been represented as fragmented, disjointed, and reflective of the multiple crises that characterise modernity (Akande, 2019; Dubey, 2007; Olusegun-Joseph, 2020; Oripeloye, 2014). Nigerian authors, particularly in the pre-COVID era, were focused on illustrating the chaotic, hybrid, and fractured experiences of city dwellers navigating the interface between tradition and modernity, the local and the global. Such writings of urbanity, before the pandemic, illustrated the constraints attached to life in the city, which can be seen in Welcome to Lagos (2016), in which Chibundo Onuzo rewrites Lagos and portrays it as a welcoming urban space where the good and the bad coexist. This attempt is similar to what Toni Kan illustrates in The Carnivorous City, what El Nukoya reflected in Barons of Broad Street, Chris Abani in Graceland, and Teju Cole in Everyday is for the Thief. Scholars such as Ato Quayson and Pius Adesanmi have described these representations as reflections of postcolonial modernity, where individuals in urban spaces negotiate fragmented identities amid rapidly changing social, economic, and political conditions. The city, in these readings, is a metaphor for Nigeria’s unstable modernity, with its inhabitants symbolising the fragmented psyche of postcolonial urban life.
Urbanity, along with its inconveniences, has long been a central theme for writers prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, as seen in texts like Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018). This novel reflects the sedimentation of globalisation and aligns with what Achille Mbembe describes as “the disillusionment and fragmentation of urban experiences.” Similarly, Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist (2017) offers a graphic portrayal of Lagos as a contested space rife with inhumane, amoral, and distasteful practices. The novel addresses critical urban issues such as sex work, the quick-money syndrome, occult practices, organ trafficking, police brutality, and street violence, portraying the metropolis as a highly territorialised and morally decayed space. Adenle, in a postmodernist approach, deconstructs the notion of morality, rejecting any totalising or absolute value system. The destruction of the established moral order is vividly depicted through the postmodern experiences of characters navigating urban spaces, especially in gender relationships. Here, sex becomes transactional due to the erosion of moral structures, and the female body is commodified—reduced to a product akin to consumer goods, highlighting the psychological impact of urban desire on its residents. Women are perceived as commodities, with men engaging in transactions accordingly. This dynamic echoes Jean Baudrillard’s theory of seduction within a postmodern context, which he describes as a force of attraction and distraction, absorption, and fascination—a power that leads not only to the collapse of sex but also to the real itself. Baudrillard posits that “[a]ll masculine power is a power to produce. All that is produced, be it the production of a woman as female, falls within the register of masculine power. The only, and irresistible, power of femininity is the inverse power of seduction” (12). Adenle’s novel underscores these complexities of power, gender, and seduction in the postmodern urban experience.
As the post-COVID era emerges, Nigerian and African urban writing is undergoing a notable shift. Rather than solely focusing on fragmentation, recent narratives are beginning to engage with how globalisation has become a more permanent fixture, not just in the elite or middle-class spaces, but in the very fabric of street life, high life, and even the underbelly of societal inequalities. This evolving body of literature no longer simply illustrates disjointed experiences but increasingly explores how globalisation is sedimented into everyday practices and lived realities. In this context, urban writings now tackle the reshaping, erasure, and reconfiguration of traditional social structures, including marriage, non-marital relationships, and the entire spectrum of sexual and asexual relations in metropolitan spaces. Scholars like Achille Mbembe have highlighted how globalisation, especially in African cities, does not merely penetrate the cultural and economic spheres but becomes embodied in the social norms that govern urban life. In the Nigerian context, this globalisation manifests in the way gender, sexuality, and relationships are constructed and deconstructed. One of the areas where this is most evident is in the reimagining of marriage and sexual relations. Traditionally, marriage has been one of the most significant institutions in Nigerian society, laden with cultural, religious, and communal expectations. Yet, as urban life accelerates and the forces of globalisation reconfigure societal values, we are witnessing new narratives that depict the gradual erosion or reshaping of these traditional norms.
This article contends that writings in post-COVID Nigeria, such as Lola Akande’s Suitors are Scarce in Lagos, Damilare Kuku’s Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad, and Ugochukwu Ugonna’s Who Drove All Lagos Men Mad, illustrate this shift from fragmentation to the consolidation of new, globalised norms in the city. These works do not simply reflect the chaotic intersections of traditional and modern life but delve into how globalisation has reshaped societal aspects such as relationships, gender roles, and sexual identities in urban Nigeria. These narratives portray how inequalities and shifting norms no longer exist in fragmentation but have become embedded in the urban landscape itself. For example, in Suitors are Scarce in Lagos, Akande addresses how the institution of marriage in the city has been transformed by the pressures of urbanisation and globalization. The scarcity of suitors is not just a reflection of individual choices or fragmentation but indicative of a deeper societal shift where economic precarity, social mobility, and global influences converge to destabilise traditional matrimonial structures. Similarly, Damilare Kuku’s Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad takes this argument further by showcasing how sexual relationships, traditionally governed by religious and cultural norms, have been supplanted by a more global, transactional ethos, where urban relationships are negotiated in terms of power, wealth, and influence. Ugonna’s Who Drove All Lagos Men Mad ties these themes together, exploring how urbanisation has redefined not just relationships but the very idea of masculinity and femininity in the post-COVID metropolis.
Contemporary Nigerian writers are engaging with the idea that globalisation in urban spaces is no longer about the fragmentation of identity or culture but rather about the sedimentation of global values into every aspect of urban life. The city becomes a place where inequalities, social mobility, and relationship norms are renegotiated, often to the erasure of traditional expectations surrounding marriage and sexual relationships. As such, contemporary Nigerian urban writing now serves as a critical site for examining how globalisation is not merely experienced but embodied, particularly in how it reconfigures relationships between the sexes, from the street to the bedroom, from marriage to non-marital unions. In this essay, I explore these dynamics, grounding the discussion in the works of Akande, Kuku, and Ugonna, while engaging with scholarly perspectives on postmodernism, transmodernism, and globalization. This research is foregrounded in the scope that these short story collections represent the shifting norms of marriage and sexual relationships in the post-COVID era, arguing that the urban Nigerian novel has transitioned from simply representing the fragmentation of urban life to actively participating in the reshaping of societal norms. This, therefore, is not just a representation of modernity in crisis but of modernity evolving and becoming embedded in the very aspect of urban life.
The Deconstruction of Romance in Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos (2020)
Akande’s Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos (2020) is a collection of ten published short stories that explores the postmodern nature of romantic affairs and sexual entanglements in the metropolis. These stories capture an avalanche of experiences of individuals in Lagos, an entity that is perhaps one of, if not the busiest, cities in West Africa. Although the novelist captures from a very unique perspective, a novel angle that perhaps unravels what distinguishes Lagos from other cities in Nigeria and beyond, her novel’s thematic focus orbits around the reformation and transformation of social and sexual relations in the metropolis. Some of the stories in this collection, including ‘I Fixed It’, ‘Keep My Secret’, Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos’, ‘Caged Bird’, ‘Nocturnal’, ‘Who Is Sane in Lagos’, ‘A Bullet from Nowhere’, and Testing for Motherhood, reflect the distortion of worn-out traditional approaches to sexual relationships among sexes in contemporary city life. In a subliminal yet provocative manner, Akande questions established norms and placidly lays bare the pervasiveness of newfound romantic idealisations among urban residents, reflecting postmodern echoes, scepticism, and sentiments surrounding romance in a post-pandemic entity. She reflects on the fragmentation of identities in urban spaces and aims for a narrative that powerfully captures contemporary gender and social relations in the Lagos metropolis. Each of the stories in the collection challenges or deconstructs traditional narratives, structures, and expectations related to marital/non-marital relationships and societal norms in Lagos.
Akande’s collection explores the chaotic and complicated nature of life in Lagos as she deftly illustrates the temperaments of the inhabitants of this urban space. Yet, her narrative does not fail to depict the postmodern reality of romantic sexualisation among its characters. The first story in the collection, Who Is Sane in Lagos, while perfectly capturing the frenzied reality of Lagos, presents the experiences of characters that have similar traits to people in the metropolis. There is Aunty Dupe, who had divorced her husband owing to his interminable sexual appetite and incessant demands of sex. However, she was later discovered to also engage in unconventional sexual gratification, such as using sex toys to whet her appetite and balance her need for sexual demands. There is a man, a nameless character, who appears gentlemanly but is a sadist and narcissist, and after his failure to get a woman to marry, he has decided to abhor hate towards women. There is a Danfo driver who stripped himself naked in order to resolve an anomaly on the road. There is also a thief disguised as a gentleman. All these individual experiences are captured by Tokunbo, the story’s protagonist, through whose perspective we witness the unfolding drama that characterises everyday life in Lagos. Through these characters, Akande dismantles conventional notions of morality and destabilises traditional ideas of purity. To add more complexity to her thematic covering, the author disrupts traditional storytelling by presenting a fragmented narrative that weaves together the experiences of various characters navigating the chaotic environment of Lagos. This fragmentation, challenging the conventional linear structure of storytelling, reflects the disjointed and unpredictable nature of urban life.
Akande engages with postmodern themes through the fragmented narrative, deconstructing moral norms, and exploring the fluidity of romantic and sexual relationships in the metropolis. While Lagos is a complex and unpredictable urban landscape, her representation of the city as a cliché of sexual and marital relationships becomes evident and evocative in all her stories. In “A Bullet from Nowhere,” she challenges traditional notions of motherhood, marriage, and societal expectations. In this particular story, Akande presents a gripping tale of family formation in the city. Omoye, a young single mother who engages in prostitution to make money, meets George, an egoistic civil servant looking outside his marriage for a boy-child. Rather than marrying her, George keeps Omoye as a side-chick and draws out a contractual dealing to their relationship. He tells Omoye that he only needs her to bear him a son. The plot involving Omoye’s desperate attempts to secure a “miracle” baby reflects a postmodern skepticism toward established norms. The narrative disrupts the conventional idea of a nuclear family and explores the complex intersections of motherhood and societal pressure. The use of a non-linear plot and the portrayal of unconventional choices contribute to the postmodern character of the story.
Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos is a postmodern literary exploration that collectively contributes to the postmodern character of urban residents by disrupting and deconstructing established norms, subverting expectations, and presenting a diverse range of perspectives on romantic relationships and gendered-societal issues in Lagos. Lola Akande, through these diverse stories, engages with the complexities of contemporary urban life in Lagos. The collection is thus a compelling and thought-provoking feminist writing that stands as a testament to the postmodern-feminist representation of sexual entanglements in contemporary city-life writing.
Postmodern Sexual Interaction in Nearly all the Men in Lagos Are Mad (2022)
The postmodern exploration of Lagos in Kuku’s debut collection of short stories further complicates the practices of city-life entanglements, situationships, and male-female romance. Published in 2022, two years after the pandemic, Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad is punchy, evocative, witty, and humorous in the way it explores the dynamics of marital, non-marital, and sexual relationships. Set in Lagos, the collection illustrates the shifting attitudes and behaviours within the metropolis concerning the relationship and sexual affairs between urban residents. In her stories, Lagos is a dynamic space where traditions are continually contested, rebranded, and refurbished. In the twelve short stories in the collection, Lagos is a city of boundless possibilities, where the unspeakable often leaves its inhabitants unshakable. Kuku’s profound postmodern exploration of romantic affairs challenges conventional norms and delves into the complexities of contemporary gender and sexual relationships in Lagos. The collection of short stories navigates through various facets of romance and sexual entanglements, offering a nuanced perspective on how the city has become a postmodern cultural space to explore the dichotomies of marital and non-marital sexual relationships.
The seismic shift in the relationships between city dwellers reverberates through each story in the collection and also reflects Kuku’s imaginative prowess and quest to explore the dynamics of gender and sexual relationships in the city. To start with, she adopts a text title that directly captures and encapsulates her overarching aim of dissecting the intricacies of marital, non-marital, sexual, and asexual relationships within the metropolis. The title is a bold assertion, setting the tone for a narrative that is unapologetic in its exploration of the diverse facets of human connections. Kuku aims to unravel the complexities of male-female behavior within the context of relationships in Nigeria’s most renowned city. The choice of Lagos, a crucial and dynamic space known for its vibrant energy and cosmopolitan nature, as a backdrop provides a rich collection of experiences that reflect the complexities of romantic relationships in modern-day Lagos. The city becomes more than a mere setting; it evolves into a character itself—a character that shapes, influences, and witnesses the unfolding dramas of love, desire, and companionship. This cityscape is a mirror that reflects the myriad ways in which societal norms, urban life, and individual aspirations intersect and clash. With its diverse population and rapid societal changes, Lagos is an ideal microcosm to examine the shifting dynamics of relationships which makes it easy for her to scrutinize the impact of modernity, globalisation, and evolving gender roles on the behaviour of men and women in various relational contexts. This urban landscape allows her to explore not only the individual experiences of characters but also the collective psyche of a society in flux. The book’s title therefore draws attention to the scope and ambition of the author’s exploration, and Lagos becomes the quintessential stage where the complexities of relationships are unraveled, making the intersections between tradition and modernity, individual desires and societal expectations explicable.
The first story in the collection, “Cuck-Up” is a fitting opening story that explores typical urban family dynamics. In this story, Kuku illustrates an average Lagos family in chaos and disorder. The wife, Isi, threatens to cut off her husband’s scrotum and this act calls for a consequential family meeting where the husband’s relation all strode in the following morning to settle this unconventional marital crisis. Lukumon, the husband, has compelled his wife to engage in questionable activities involving her in illicit affairs for financial gain, which pushed her to the brink of threatening a macabre act. The family members, initially quick to condemn Isi, are taken aback when the underlying cause for her shocking declaration is revealed toward the story’s conclusion. This narrative unfolds as a poignant portrayal of a woman driven to contemplate a perceived ‘abomination’ due to the frustrations imposed by the challenging environment of the ‘carnivorous city’ of Lagos. The character of Lukumon also reflects the behavioural nature of contemporary Lagos men as apathetic, lewd, amoral and narcissistic individuals, which is the thematic thrust of Kuku’s collection.
The stories in Kuku’s debut collection unfold against the backdrop of well-known locations in Lagos, including Ilupeju, Ikorodu, Yaba, Alimoso, Banana Island, and Victoria Island, among others. Kuku adeptly captures the eccentricities of the diverse individuals that constitute the vibrant city of Lagos. In ‘The Gigolo from Isale-Eko,’ the portrayal of Iggy challenges traditional gender stereotypes, portraying a male character characterised by promiscuity, amorality, infidelity, and insatiable sexual desires, thereby subverting the conventional femme-fatale archetype.
In another story, “The Anointed Wife,” she navigates the tale of a religious zealot entangled in a web of infidelity. This story explicates Kuku’s stance that minstrels and pastors populating the city of Lagos are not secluded from the madness that has infected the city’s men.
Kuku’s exploration of life in Lagos is both evasive and witty, presenting a realistic portrayal of the complexities within the city. “International Relations” narrates the travails of Shike, a lady frustrated with the eccentricities of men in Lagos, prompting her to embark on a quest for Europeans. In this way, the complexities of urban dating are brought to daylight. The story captures the nuances of modern relationships, incorporating elements of cultural diversity and the unpredictable nature of romantic entanglements in the cosmopolitan hub of Lagos.
‘Ode-Pus Complex’ explores the incompatibility of a Lagos couple, centring on Uche, an Igbo man, and Yejide, a Yoruba lady. The title cleverly plays on the Freudian notion of the Oedipus complex, which involves a child’s attachment to the parent of the opposite sex. In this story, Kuku subverts the traditional concept, incorporating a play on words by using ‘Ode,’ meaning fool in Yoruba. Uche, a confirmed mama’s boy, struggles to break free from his mother’s influence. Despite the otherworldly connection between Uche and Yejide, his mother imposes conditions for Yejide to meet before marrying her prized son. Yejide, considering Uche’s attachment to his mother’s foolishness, decides to end the relationship.
Kuku’s exploration of women’s choices in Lagos is illustrated in “A Lover’s Vendetta,” a narrative that begins with the ominous line, “If we ever meet again, only one of us will leave the encounter unharmed.” The narrative follows Orode’s journey of meeting and marrying Dele. Their childless marriage prompts exhaustive attempts using both orthodox and unorthodox methods. However, Dele’s confession of infertility and his attempts to bribe doctors every time they go for medical checkups, which trigger Orode’s madness. In a poignant declaration, she declares, “Before I kill you, I would let you ride me with your tongue one more night. At least you will die with the taste of my vagina accompanying you to the hell you came from.” This powerful and thought-provoking exploration of love, deceit, and societal expectations mirrors the complexity of modern-day sexual relationships in the city.
Every story in this collection examines the intricate relationships between the sexes in an urban context. The narrative skilfully dissects the exaggerated machismo of Lagos men, scrutinises the absurdities of male-female romantic encounters, and lays bare the ridiculousness beneath the veneer of everyday life. Covering themes from infidelity, sexting, and ‘situationships’ to the intricacies of the mother-son relationship and its impact on modern relationships, the lives of serial bachelors (both married and engaged), infertility, and sexual assault, Kuku’s provocative debut is a brilliant, witty, and punchy account of the intricate messiness that defines relationships in contemporary urban Lagos.
The Postmodern Complexity of City-Life Romance in Who Drove Nearly all Lagos Men Mad? (2023)
If not anything, Ugochukwu Ugonna’s collection of eleven stories is an interrogation or a re-examination of some of the issues espoused by Kuku. Who Drove Nearly all Lagos Men Mad is receptively pervious in its attempt to examine, not-the-what, but who is responsible for turning the men in Lagos mad. That aside, Ugonna is plain and excoriating in her examination of these issues as she creates characters that are atypical to city dwellers and employs romantic jargon used to define many situations in modern-day romance. Though Ugonna, Akande and Kuku’s narratives only explored the problems related to city-life sexual entanglements, they were too male-focused, as they mainly see men as the individual characters deserving of the blame for the messiness and the postmodern complexity of romance in present-day Lagos. If Akande only explores the deconstruction of marriage in the metropolis and Kuku depicts varied men who complicate city-life romance in her collection, Ugonna attempts to balance the narrative and shed light on city women and their contributions to the messiness that illustrates the relationship of sexes in the metropolis.
The first story in the collection Swiped Right, started with an ominous statement that reflects the commodification of sexual affairs and the fragility of romance. “We dey do hookup, you lose guard fall in love, ehhh Bella. This story perfectly illustrates the complicatedness of contemporary romance. While Ugonna explores how modern-day relationships in the metropolis are an avenue for city residents to unearth their wanton desires, her stories capture a certain kind of chaos and disorder that this brings in its wake. Jide and Bella, the characters in this story, found themselves on Tinder, an online dating app, and their relationship, which is a hookup, has developed into a somewhat marital relationship whereby they live together and Bella cooks and cleans in Jide’s house. The conflicting part of their relationship began when Bella told Jide that she was pregnant with his child. Although in other relationships with three other guys that she has sexual affairs with, Bella wants Jide to be the father of her child because of his affluence. However, Jide was smart enough to send her packing. She later got to Kenny, one of the three men she had been seeing who married her, accepted the pregnancy, and upon DNA on the child, the revelation that the child was not his shook him and threatened their marriage. Bella dramatically won her marriage by deceit, lying that her child was swiped at birth.
Ugonna explores how modern-day romance is full of many loopholes and complicatedness. She reveals issues relating to paternity confirmation, prospecting, and how women are involved in many relationships with different men to see the one they would later end up with—issues related to men raising bastard children.
Other stories revolve around age-old marriage for both men and women, baby-mama issues, how marriage is an opportunistic move for city dwellers, abortion, the conflict between fame and love, and sexual fantasies. Each of her stories captures fantasies and unconventional sexual demands. Each of Ugonna’s titles is invigorating, and they pass a strong message. Titles such as Body Count, The Mugu from Mushin, and Just the Tip all reflect the complexity and painlessness of modern-day romance in a city of shocking possibilities.
Conclusion
The episteme surrounding the representation of Lagos in Nigerian writings has always revolved around the diverse cultural and subcultural expressions, reproductions, and practices in the city. Urban novelists have always strived to encapsulate the dynamism of changing social life within this urban milieu. However, the city of Lagos in contemporary urban-feminist writings reflects how the trajectory from modernity to postmodernity elucidates a significant departure from traditional norms to the embrace of the hedonistic, consumerist lifestyle of today’s society, which necessitates the rejection of rigid values and the emergence of an individualistic postmodern lifestyle. In these narratives, Lagos is a city of endless possibilities, an urban space that makes the exploration of a postmodern critique of established gender norms and power structures a possibility. Globalisation, technology, and cultural transformations have shaped contemporary existence and have, in post-COVID urban writing, resulted in the thematic exploration of the postmodern-secular city-life sexual relations in the city. Akande’s Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos, Kuku’s Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad, and Ugonna’s Who Drove Nearly All Lagos Men Mad? are narratives that push for a newer and transformational approach to examine the city, particularly the relationship and cohabitation of sexes in the city.
While Lagos is a complex and unpredictable urban landscape, the representation of the city as a cliché of sexual and marital relationships in these postmodern, post-Covid representations becomes evident and evocative in the temperament of urban residents and the postmodern complexity of life in the city where norms are consistently challenged and expectations subverted. These narratives present a diverse range of perspectives on relationships and societal issues in Lagos, and their characterisation reflects the fluidity and complexity of contemporary existence. They also illustrate postmodern themes through the fragmented narrative style, deconstruction of moral norms, and representation of diverse experiences within the given spatial and temporal contexts explored. The canonisation of these works under the umbrella term—Urban-Feminist Writings—can therefore be said to be within the sameness of style and the similar themes as well as the narrative context explored by these authors. Akande, Kuku, and Ugonna are postmodern-feminist writers who have dissected city-life romance in their works.
Works Cited
- Adenle, Leye. Easy Motion Tourist. Cassava Republic Press, 2017.
- Adesanmi, Pius. You’re Not a Country, Africa: A Personal History of the African Present. Penguin Random House, 2012.
- Akande, Lola. The City in the African Novel: A Thematic Rendering of Urban Spaces. Tunminike Pages, 2019.
- Akande, Lola. Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos. Tunmike Pages Publishers, 2020.
- Baudrillard, Jean. Seduction. Palgrave Macmillan, 1991.
- Dubey, Madhu. Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
- Dussel, Enrique. Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation. Poligrafi 11 (41/42): 5–40, 2006.
- Kuku, Damilare. Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad. Masobe Books, 2021.
- Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. University of California Press, 2001.
- Olusegun-Joseph, Yomi. “Singing the Body: Postmodern Orality and the Female Body in the Nigerian Hip Hop Nation.” Popular Music in Nigeria: Language, Context and Milieu. Volume 39, Issue 1, 2020.
- Onuzo, Chibundu. Welcome to Lagos. Catapult & Co, 2018.
- Oripeloye, Henri. “Telling the Nation: A Postmodernist Reading of Tanure Ojaide’s God’s Medicine-Men and Other Stories.” Advances in Literary Study, 2, 2014, 95-99.
- Quayson, Ato. Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism. Duke University Press, 2014.Ugonna, Ugochukwu. Who Drove Nearly All Lagos Men Mad? Agbalumo Stories, 2023.