A DIALOGIC ANALYSIS OF DAMILARE KUKU'S NEARLY ALL THE MEN IN LAGOS ARE MAD AND UGOCHUKWU UGONNA'S WHO DROVE NEARLY ALL LAGOS MEN MAD?

This work examines the dialogic context in Damilare Kuku’s Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad (NAMLM) and Ugochukwu Ugonna’s Who Drove Nearly All Lagos Men Mad? (WDNLMM). The bulk of studies on African literary works often focus on the socio-cultural and political issues, but not much attention have been given to the counter voices in literary compositions that makes literary works much socially engaging. This study interrogates the inter-textual dialogic aesthetics in Kuku’s NAMLM and Ugonna’s WDNLMM, with a view to examining how the two texts respond to each other in an artistically interesting way. The study deployed Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism as the analytical framework, and adopts qualitative approach in the gathering and analysis of the primary data towards realizing the set objectives of the work. The texts were read critically and subjected to in-depth literary analysis purposefully to examine how creative works respond to social issues through inter-textual dialogues. The study finds out that NAMLM by Kuku and WDNLMM by Ugonna present contrasting yet complementary perspectives on gender roles, masculinity, mutuality, complementarity and compatibility. It also reveals how the two authors depict how women and men navigate relationships in a porous and congested urban centres in Nigeria. The study thus concludes that literary texts could be used to engage with critical dialogue about the challenges faced by men and women who find themselves in accidental relationships that somewhat redefine the socio-cultural diversities of which Lagos serves as a melting pot in Nigeria.