Trends in the Nigerian Auto/biography

Every society has its means and methods of chronicling events, and lives, in a way peculiar to it. Despite the considerable shift in contextual paradigms that foreground the quill of the non‐literate era and the cursor of the twenty‐first century, the Nigerian auto/biography as life‐portrait has stuck to and remained faithful to its traditional role of projecting a major personage, as well as archiving and documenting key social and historical events. So far studies in the Nigerian auto/biography have continued to lay emphasis on its prose narrative form. This paper argues that by virtue of its idiosyncrasies, auto/biographical narratives are not limited to the prose (non‐fictional) literary sub‐genre. Rather, auto/biographies are to be found in other generic forms of literature. It argues further that this sub‐generic form of literature pre‐dates the colonial era, and that most, if not all, forms of Nigerian literature, oral and written, are either steeped in auto/biography or characterized by it. The argument in this paper is that because auto/biographies focus on the lives of significant persons in society they reflect the cultural values, aesthetic trends and practices of the people as well as their socio‐historical epochs. It concludes by demonstrating how the tilt towards self‐presentation makes this form reflect the dissonance in points of views and the myriad conflicts that characterize the Nigerian society at the same time that it enhances dialogue between the author/subjects of auto/biography and the public.