Tackling National Challenges in the 21st Century: The Role of Oral Literature
In all parts of the world, the 21st century portends the escalation of many life-threatening challenges. These challenges include excruciating poverty, outbreaks of diseases, plastic pollution and contamination of land and sea, extreme challenges in the biosphere, uncontrollable climatic changes and so on. In addition, each nation has her peculiar challenges as can be seen in the rampaging actions of terrorists and regional militants, inflation and embezzlement of public funds, epileptic power supply to mention but a few as can be seen in Nigeria. Many are the challenges and there is the need to tackle them all. A cursory look at them seems to suggest that only the expertise of social and physical scientists are needed. Oral in all its genres, one may say, may not be useful since what is needed is the technical expertise of other professionals. This view is wrong because oral literature apart from being capable of solving some of the problems, can impact its usefulness on those who are to do the work by helping to orchestrate the needs of the people, entertaining, consoling, satirizing and exhorting them. Folklore’s second mentioned method of solving social problems is in line with the stand of the United Nations Organization which after enumerating its seventeen goals that can transform the world, asks whoever wants to be involved to start by telling these goals to others. This is how the work of a folklorist can help in propping up the efforts of these scientists who are directly doing the job. It is in this capacity that the different genres of oral literature can be used in combating the challenges of the 21st century in this nation. As one Igbo proverb puts it: “Nkwadebe ogu ka onunu ya mma – Preparation for war is better than fighting the war itself”.
Keywords: 21st, century, challenges, literature, national, oral, role, tackling