Motherhood and mothering are universal commons that depend on thereby making mothering progressively a syncretism of locale-specific norms and multicultural ideas. This paper examines critically the authorial articulation of motherhood and mothering in a Nollywood film A Tribe Called Judah, to highlight the polemics of familial dysfunction vicious cycle, plausible reasons behind instances of negative mothering, and its impact on children. This paper argues that the social construction of reality theory is a pertinent articulation in explaining rationales informing the authorial classification of mothering in A Tribe Called Judah as one of the following: or bad. This paper utilized an interpretive approach in analyzing selected scenes in A Tribe Called Judah by cross-referencing them with selected portrayals subsuming relevant suppositions in other studies. In the end, this paper reaffirms the importance of girls' pre-mothering nurturing as a nonnegotiable obligation. In addition, this paper observes with dismay the banality and indifference that define realities of troubled-mothers and how their society blames them when familial dysfunction becomes evident. Our view is that Jedidah's travails and tribulations are avoidable and unfortunate. Her mother's derisive lampoons typify the injustice child-mothers like Jedidah endure. Her father's actions represent entrenched opprobrium, selfishness, and sanctimonious proclivity elucidating Jedidah's Nigeria. Lastly, Funke Akindele's creative vision in utilizing A Tribe Called Judah as an enduring space for an interrogation of motherhood and mothering validates the utility of film as an efficacious platform that enables conscientious portrayal of pertinent social realities.

The study provides an interpretive analysis of the creative vision shades and visual metaphor contexts in the depictions of bipolar disorder praxis in Marta Araujo"s painting and Sohrad Allaie"s drawing from the interpretations of ten respondents. The study discusses the areas of portrayal convergences and divergences in the arts" articulation of bipolar disorder as a universal commonality, the evidences of effectual clarity and cathartic ambiance in the painting and drawing. More so, the cognitive channels through which plausible interpretive attempts are projected through visual metaphor and creative vision are assessed through the respondents" responses. The study adopts a viewer-response analysis approach in its attempt to come up with plausible deductions and extrapolations explaining the embedded significations in the painting and drawing. To deepen the purview on efficacy of art as stimulus for emotion activation, the study applies select theories explaining contexts of visual metaphor, creative vision, and erratic mood swings propelled by the painting and drawing. In the end, the study suggests that Marta Araujo"s painting and Sohrad Allaie"s drawing are effectual attempts at depicting bipolar disorder syndrome, which yielded variant interpretations in line with art theories adumbrating the ability of art to instigate differing ideas and attributions.

This paper examines Soji Cole's dramatic portrayal of the atmosphere of agony and predicament that subsist in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Northeast Nigeria in the play Embers. The play relays the disquieting social implications brought about by the rebellion and insurgency, such as the wanton destruction of lives and properties, rapidly growing poverty due to loss of livelihood, and investment halt. By applying the Jungian theory of archetypes, this paper examines the play characters' exhibition of the archetype (shadow), which exemplifies man's moments of inordinate, despicable, and inhumane behaviour. In the end, through the words and actions of the characters, the story indicts the political elite and the Government for failing to avoid the atmosphere leading to insurgency, their inability to end it immediately, and their poor handling of IDP. The play serves as a reminder that poor governance will lead to a socio-economic crisis and inhumane proclivity.

This study interpretively discusses two characters in Wole Soyinka's play The Lion and the Jewel to ascertain how their behaviours and idiosyncrasies reflect the established theoretical understanding elucidating self-presentation and impression management as human day-to-day realities propelled by phenomenon of nature and dynamics of nurture. Specifically, our focus is on self-presentation as a conscious and strategic action in line with Sandra Metts (2009) elucidation, which highlights on behaviour dynamic patterns as that, which provides an observer with suppositions and attributions about an individual's propensities and capabilities, and the motivations behind the displays. To discuss the select examples of selfpresentation, impression management, or lack of it, as exhibited by the three characters in The Lion and the Jewel , we shall focus on content analysis to examine how the characters through self-presentations project themselves as 'tackles', 'abstinent', 'helpless', 'worthy', 'competent' or 'friendly', strategically or otherwise. Our finding is that self-presentation by a person during interaction may or may not be strategic, thus, not all self-presentations are examples of impression management.

In many climes, witchcraft is designated a paranormal phenomenon because its manifestations lack empirical evidence, interpretation, and clarity. In Nigeria, the acknowledgment of the efficacy of witchcraft as an abiding and pervasive reality reflects a culture-specific worldview. Stories of witchcraft manifestations abound in Nigeria and in Nollywood films; however, the veracity of these narrations remains a continual subject of passionate argumentation because the supposed deeds by witches are not empirically verifiable. This paper represents another interpretive attempt, seeking a deeper elucidation of witchcraft phenomenon portrayals in a Nollywood film, which looks at the role of music and creative vision in narrative realization. In addition, this study interprets the application of choice authorial utilization of magical realism and relevant creative arts to generate visual metaphors in scenes of shape shifting in My Village People, a Nollywood film which until now, has not received a dedicated study. examining its portrayal of witchcraft and the utility of music in extending witchcraft narratives. Furthermore, this study highlights the film's efficacy as a platform for worldview re-aggregation and in the end; the study concludes that the shape-shifting depictions with distinct creative vision represent a critical intersection of arts and ideology, and a narration-enhancing approach that motivates quality-screening experience.

Focused on eco-drama decrying polemics of conflicts between elders and youths, government and inhabitants, because of the subsisting environmental degradation in Niger Delta, the article exposes dimensions of frightening inhumanity, wastage, and monumental governance failure. Eco-literati such as Ahmed Yerima and Barclays Ayakoroma objurgate a repulsive culture of hypocrisy, mediocrity, nepotism, lack of patriotism, social injustice, and dysfunctional socio-political structure. This paper discusses the nuances of convergences and divergences in the playwrights' utilization of eco-critical language in portraying shades of victimhood claims, and deplorable actions and inactions, which are inimical to the environment and wellbeing of the people in the region. Drawing from eco-criticism and interpretive approach, the paper examines the portrayal of implicit and overt instances of complicity in the actions and inactions of key characters in the plays as metaphors representing social-political negativities propelling retrogression, pain, and restiveness in the Niger Delta. The observation is that both plays blame the upsurge in discontent and violent restiveness on abysmal leadership by local elders/leaders, as well as the state, federal government and the multinationals.

The efficacy, messages and aesthetic value in a socially-engaged art depend on a number of variables such as the artist's creative vision, skill, inclination, worldview, emotional disposition, and agenda. Similarly, the audience/beholders' meaning-making and contextualization trajectories are in many ways attributable to their interpretive competence which are enabled by the variables listed for the artist. In this study, our focus is to provide a clear description of what 'socially -engaged art' and a 'protest art' denote, and how the designated arts of EB Mike Asukwo and Ganiyu Jimoh fall within each interpretation. In addition, this study seeks to deepen understanding of the dimensions of creative application of 'subtlety' and 'aggressiveness' as artistic metaphors in select protest cartoons by Asukwo and Jimoh. This study utilizes interpretive analysis to provide plausible insight into the embedding of metaphors in a cartoon in conjunction with applicable communication theories of art, to elucidate the kind of information the beholders can draw. In the end, this paper provides logical collocation behind the classification of the designated cartoons by Asukwo and Jimoh as 'socially -engaged cartoons' and 'protest cartoons', and how some variables influence the shades of meaning and message both artists infuse in the selected works.

The study is an interpretive discourse of creative vision nuances in Kareem Olamilekan and Alex Idoko's select hyperrealism arts. It presents a theoretical assessment and fresh articulation of key cognitive or information-processing approaches detailing the mechanisms underlying an interpretive reading of art. In addition, it illuminates the metaphors of anxiety, aesthetics, creativity, and ingenuity in the select works. It utilizes an interpretive assessment approach to provide a plausible way of explaining the anxiety aura and creative vision similarities in the works. Our finding is that perspectives and comments about a given work of art by different individuals represent their flow/stream of consciousness towards the art, and these responses and comments, reflect abiding inclinations, experiences, and worldviews.

Studies on self-construal indicate that man is propelled by what happens around him to react in a certain manner and this reaction, we suggest is a human universal common and a representation of conscious purposive response to concomitant environmental and circumstantial realities. This purposive response encapsulates messages, which an observer articulates and interprets; hence, our study is about deepening our understanding of the factors and variables responsible for victimhood self-construal projected in select texts on the Niger Delta environmental despoilment. Drawing from the theories of eco-criticism, victimhood, and self-construal, this study utilizes an interpretive approach to discuss select instances of victimhood portrayals in the poem ‘Delta Blues’ by Tanure Ojaide, in the drama Hangmen also Die by Esiaba Irobi and in the film Blood and Oil, directed by Curtis Graham. The study examines the primary reason, which is the dispossession of livelihood by environmentally destructive oil exploitation, adduced by the Niger Delta inhabitants to understand how it generates variables that instigate victimhood self-construal. Our observation is that in the texts the inhabitants’ victimhood self-construal can be described as purposive, the propelling variable is their concomitant environmental realities and the texts as communication media have different encumbrances and advantages regarding their efficacy and utility for advocacy.

In Nigeria and other nations with their territory being part of the Lake Chad Basin, anxiety is high and growing because Boko Haram’s “strident messages exacerbate intra-Muslim tensions and worsen Muslim-Christian relations in the region” (Thurston 2016: 5). In addition, because the agenda of Boko Haram appear jumbled and its sponsors indistinct, curiosity has led to the conceptualization of theories aimed at providing illumination. The study interpretively discusses how insecurity and anxieties in northeast Nigeria resulting from Boko Haram’s insurgency propel the articulation of several conspiracy theories explaining Boko Haram’s emergence, evolution and agenda, and the areas where lack of consensus subsists. The study classifies the theories into three categories, namely, the Freedom Fighter and Soldiers of Faith, Proxy Political Tool, and Islamic Caliphate Quest theories, and examines their suppositions and arguments to highlight the degree of plausibility. Substantially, the study expands the ‘Islamic Caliphate Quest’ theory to include the place of ‘oil’ and ‘water’ as likely variables that illuminate other trajectories.

This paper examines the social interventions, inclinations and paradigms in Temsula Ao's poem "My Hills" and Tanure Ojaide's poem "Delta Blues" as reflections and interrogation of deplorable human actions propelling the degradation eco-heritage in Nagaland Northeast India, and Niger Delta south-south Nigeria. Thus, our focus will be on how both poets present similarities in their lamentations and advocacy against monumental inhumanity destroying natural environment. Therefore, drawing from the concepts of ecocriticism, this paper examines nuance of advocacy and interrogation of the direct/indirect complicity and disinterest subsumed in the shades of actions and inactions of both 'insiders' and 'others' who are in many ways, interwoven in the social malaises and negativities Ao and Ojaide project. To add rigor to the analysis, this paper adopts 'eco-criticism', to discuss the portrayal of social identity questions, environment despoil, and the subsisting human/environment symbiosis in Nagaland and Niger Delta as portrayed in the selected poems. In the end, the study observes that the selected poems are advocacy texts subsumed in nuances of social intervention paradigms that project certain universal commons reflective of inhabitants of regions in despoil and environment degradation.

The need to proffer solutions to the consequences of girl-child forced marriages in Nigeria has continued to draw scholarly attention within the ambits of sociology, history, law and human-right, women and gender studies, health, and psychology studies. However, studies examining the application of Nollywood films as advocacy texts in this regard are scarce. In response to this gap, this study examines interpretively Stephanie Linus' 'Dry' as a filmic advocacy text, portraying the psychological trauma and the socio-economic burden of girl-child marriages in northern Nigeria. Our interpretive analyses utilize theories espousing how denial of childhood can become traumatic to the child-wives and eventually become a socio-economic burden to their family, community, and country. The key observation is that 'Dry' typifies a proper and efficacious utilization of film as an advocacy platform to interrogate and communicate matters relating to health and wellbeing revolving around girl-child forced marriages.

The purpose of this study is to extend scholarly reading of the contributions of Michael Soi’s politics paintings to social debates as a means of deepening our understanding of the complex relationship between art and politics. Thus, this study assesses relevant variables indicating how Soi’s selected paintings are effectively his means of projecting his views about his experiences, expectations, dreams, fears and reservations concerning his society’s socio-political realities. In an attempt at analyzing the functionality and aesthetic significances of Soi’s paintings, this study discusses relevant perspectives from individuals on politics paintings particularly how they can propel meaningful debates. Therefore, to gather relevant information on people’s responses to this kind of painting, we utilized viewer response approach and follow-up interviews. More so, we applied interpretive analysis in assessing the paintings (as metaphors depicting social realities), the collated responses (as means of espousing more on the concepts of cognitive process mechanisms), and relevant literature (as a means of assessing the trajectories of scholarly views on this subject). In the end, we observe that Soi’s politics paintings are efficacious medium of communication and that each individual viewer of these paintings produces responses that are similar or dissimilar but not exact because their subsisting ideological, political and philosophical inclinations are not exactly the same.

We learn from history that some consequences of abysmal government policies and dysfunctional tactics include socio-economic retrogression, increased deprivation ideology, victimhood, rebellion, war and revolution; and theorists have provided several plausible contextualizations for elucidation. One of such conceptualizations is Ted Robert Gurr’s theory of relative deprivation, which can be applied to illuminate sufficiently how discontent enacted in Ahmed Yerima’s trilogy can lead to aggressive responses. Thus, through an interpretive approach, we shall look at how Yerima portrays creatively in his trilogy – Hard Ground, Little Drops, and Ipomu why a show of force, divide and rule, carrot and stick tactics by successive Nigerian governments have exacerbated grief, restiveness and rebellion in Niger Delta because of unwholesome oil exploitation and ineffectual corporate social responsibility approaches. In the end, this study proposes that Niger Delta oil exploitation related discontent will fester and linger if functional inclusiveness and proportional infrastructural development are not deployed progressively.

This study examines the aesthetics, efficacy, and propriety of the embedded metaphors in characterization, music, and colour application as creative vision in projecting victimhood atmosphere around traumatized Niger-Deltans due to many years of deprivation in Blood and Oil. Thus, this study explains how Blood and Oil represents a credible narrative, subsuming polemics of environmental degradation, health misery, massive unemployment, subjugation, and violent restiveness in Niger Delta due to poor political leadership, greed, and corruption. On creative vision, we are discussing how the ingenious application of characterization, music, and colour combined effectively in creating an enduring mood for the scenes in the film as channels of accentuating intended messages. To add relevant scholarly rigor, we applied victimhood theory and interpretive discuss approach to create relevant and lucid insights regarding the inclinations and actions of select characters in the film as well as analysis of relevant secondary texts. In the end, we deduce that the apt portrayal of Niger-Delta oil communities’ extensively degraded and polluted environment validates the reality of anguish and victimhood because of the massively diminished fishing and farming prospects. Lastly, the implication of this scenario is increased unemployment, psychological distress, diseases, and violent restiveness which have reduced enormously the wellbeing of Niger Delta inhabitants.

Artistic symbols in many ways act as complimentary narrative tools that elevate and define the message from the artist, which can help to generate efficacious consciousness and mood aggregation in the beholders. The purpose of this study is to deepen the appreciation of the embedded significances of keys as symbolic objects in selected symbolist art by Alex Idoko which represents variously, mystical attributions and significations as understood within different worldviews. Through the application of interpretive discuss approach in relating relevant concepts of symbolism, the study elucidates on the symbolical, mythological, mystical and metaphorical denotations and attributions of chains, padlock and keys in line with Victor Turner’s concept of operational, exegetical and positional meanings. In the end, we observe that the selected work by Idoko subsume deep and dense creative vision projecting deliberate effort in using art as a means of sharing cultural ideas, mystifying aesthetics, propelling curiosity, and mood/emotion intensity.

Poor leadership has unarguably been recognized as a major national question around which many socioeconomic and political problems revolve in Nigeria. It has led to decadence and a squandermania mentality which breeds all sort of vices, mass poverty, absent and decaying infrastructure, kidnapping, agitations, banditry, and all kinds of insurgency. Playwrights, like other social scientists, have continued to interrogate this ugly phenomenon, which make socioeconomic and political development a will-o'-the-wisp in the country. This paper attempts to examine Emeka Nwabueze's A Parliament of Vultures and Uche-Chinemere Nwaozuzu's The Candles, especially as they deploy the vulture and the candle, respectively, as metaphors to elucidate the question of leadership failure in the unstable and politically explosive minefield that is Nigeria. The study adopts Clifford Geertz's thick description approach to interpretation as its methodology. The researchers discovered that self-aggrandizement, incompetence, "fire-brigade approach," poor institutions, lack of meritocracy, blackmail, and violence were the social realities that encumber the flowering of good governance in the country.

This study examines the application language and speech for the purpose of deception as a means of achieving concealment of information as portrayed in two plays of a Nigerian playwright Emeka Nwabueze. Thus, this study attempts to discuss some typologies of deception and concealment of information as a means of understanding better, the reasons and circumstances that inform the description of concealment of information as good, bad, devious, ugly, legal or illegal. This attempt will help us to interpret why and when concealment of information as well as deception are essential in achieving survival, progress, redress, defence, discovery, illumination, satisfaction or vendetta directly or indirectly. Though concealment of information can occur through inaction and nonverbal mediums, we are focusing on deception through language and speech, and how worldview aids in locale specific definition and perception of forms of deception and concealment of information. The discussion in this study revolves around interpretive analysis approaches as means of accessing applicability of some theories of concealment and deception in describing behaviours in these categories as universal common with shades of interpretive community perspectives. Lastly, the didactic relevance of Nwabueze’s projection of presumed propelling forces and the consequences of concealment of information in the plays understudy, subsumes the understanding of deception as a universal common with trajectories of interpretive community suppositions.

This study examines the aesthetics and shades of portrayals of ghosts as supernatural and metaphysical realities in two Nollywood films Heart of a Ghost and A Ghost Story as representations of Igbo worldviews on ghosts' realities. Our aim is to present an analytical explanation of the filmic attributions in relation to historical as well as the subsisting socio-cultural worldviews of the Igbo people regarding ghosts. Therefore to extrapolate on the subsumed Igbo worldviews and philosophies about ghosts in the selected films, this study adopts theoretical purviews on magical realism and Charles Peirce's inclination on interpretive community theory as the preferred conceptual praxis. Furthermore, this study applies critical interpretive analysis as the adopted analytical approach. Thus, the relevance of these portrayals to the subsisting sociocultural worldviews about ghosts among the Igbo forms part of our thematic purview. Essentially this study sufficiently provides plausible answers to questions bothering on whether ghosts exist in the manner portrayed in the two films, as well as plausible analysis of the significations of ghosts' appearances in clothing and whether ghosts do change their clothing like humans from time to time.

This paper examines the politics and didactic nuances of authorial projection of rational choice behavior in Emeka Nwabueze's(1) Rainstorm in the Desert in relation to social burden of concealment. Thus, this paper analyzes the playwright's portrayal of the multiple effects of devious concealment to individuals and the society. To this end, this paper attempts to discuss how aspects and forms of concealment have become subsisting tradition in families, communities, professional conducts, and state governance. Thus, this paper applies the ideas espoused in 'Rational Choice Theory' as a deliberate means of creating a thematic foci aimed at deepening discussion that will enhance the understanding of the propelling forces and variables that compel individual's to make their preferred choice of actions. Also we shall apply the theory of Interpretive Community as a means of discussing the rationale of locale specific perspectives on rational choices and irrational choices. As regards to the analysis of the portrayals, authorial inclinations of the playwright and our application of the selected theories, we adopt interpretive discuss approach. In the end, this study observes that behaviors are describable and measurable as rational or irrational in line with a given Interpretive Community's inclinations even though rational choices are ultimately influenced by factors and variables such as awareness, knowledge, intent, ideology, philosophy and state of mind.