The Discourse of Development in Nigerian Fiction: Aid, Poverty, and the Representation of International Relations

This dissertation examines the discourse of development, international aid, and global economic relations in Nigerian fiction, developing an original critical framework for reading how Nigerian novelists represent the politics of aid dependency, poverty narratives, and the North-South economic relationship that shapes so many Nigerians' daily experience and political consciousness. Development discourse, understood as the system of knowledge and power through which the Global North constructs the Global South as an object of intervention, has been extensively analysed in development studies and postcolonial theory, but its literary critical dimensions, how it enters and is contested in fictional narrative, have been underanalysed in the Nigerian literary context. The dissertation constructs a critical framework drawing on postdevelopment theory, world systems analysis, postcolonial critique of humanitarianism, and theories of narrative representation of structural inequality. The framework is applied across close readings of seven Nigerian novels that significantly engage with development, international aid, NGO work, or global economic relations, including novels by Chimamanda Adichie, Helon Habila, Chris Abani, and three lesser-studied texts. Analytical chapters examine the characterisation of NGO workers and development professionals, the narrative treatment of humanitarian photography and representation of African poverty, the construction of the relationship between Nigerian characters and their Western counterparts, and the novels' own implicit positions on the politics of international solidarity. Original contributions include the critical development fiction framework, a typology of development discourse critique in Nigerian fiction, and new close readings of all seven texts. Keywords: development discourse, Nigerian fiction, aid politics, postcolonial critique, international relations.