Research literature describes Nigeria as “Africa in miniature”. It exhibits all major problems of the continent: regional, confessional, ethnic, social, cultural, etc. Besides, Nigeria is called “the African giant” because of its population: it’s about 180 million people. There is an opinion that 1 in 4 Africans is a Nigerian. Nigeria has the largest economy in the continent and brilliant literature considered to be the successor to classical English, German, French, Russian literature.
The end and the turn of the 20th were marked in with the birth of Nigerian non-fiction. Wole Soyinka made Nigeria "visible" for international readers. His romantic autobiographical trilogy {Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981); Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1946-65 (1989); Isara: A Voyage around Essay (1990)} and memoirs {You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006); etc.} are well known all over the world.
The beginning of the 21st century is quite suitable for creating an anthology of Nigerian memoirs. Given the recent boom in autobiography and personal narratives it is the time to develop this work and current literary, historical and cultural studies. “African Lives” (2013), a pioneering anthology of memoirs and autobiographical writings, which really let Africans speak for themselves―telling stories of struggle and achievement that have the authenticity of lived experience became available.
The best Nigerian memories are written by writers: Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe {“There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra” (2011)}. There are real actors of Nigerian history among the authors: Nnamdi Azikiwe {“My Odyssey: An Autobiography” (1971)}, Obafemi Awolowo created several autobiographical books, Ahmadu Bello {“My Life. The Sardauna of Sokoto”(1962)}, Shehu Shagari {“Beckoned to Serve: An Autobiography” (2001)}, the grand historian of Africa Toyin Falola {“A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt” (2004)} and relatively young Chris Abani {“The Face: Cartography of the Void” (2016}, Anyanwu, Ch. N. D. {“The Days of Terror” (2002)}, etc. Their autobiographies are literature complicated by social and political dimensions.
The borders and dialogue between life and writing in their stories will be in focus in this paper, and the degree to which critical terms text, context and paratext help us understand and clarify their complex interaction will be subject to discussion. In conditions of deficit of professional historians Nigerian authors announced their Prophetic Mission to put their own life in a historical context—comparing their lives’ events to what was happening in the world or in their country and community. Looking at historical events, they also sparked their own memories and vice versa. They interpret the Past and Present in different ways due to age, status, and ethos.
Nigerian memoirs cannot be easily formalized. Their authors are politicians, scholars, scientists, writers, journalists, bloggers, Christians, less often Muslims, patriots, dissidents, and cosmopolitans, mainly those who are now generally called celebrities. Redefining the autobiographical genre altogether, a lot of them miraculously weaves personal, historical, and communal stories, along with political and cultural developments in the period immediately preceding and following Nigeria's independence, to give us a unique and enduring picture of Nigerian history, traditions, pleasures, mysteries, household arrangements, forms of power, struggles, and their transformations. There are truly literary memoir, told in language rich with proverbs, poetry, song, and humor, irreverent, poetic and filled with the kind of ordinary information that makes Nigeria feel oddly familiar, even in its loud, exuberant foreignness.
It's easy to see the influences of European memoirists and both Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka and to listen own voices of the authors. It is equally easy to identify texts written with the help of professionals and non-professionals but those publications also create the ground for thinking about Nigerian memoirs and their context.
The autobiographies are different in their forms and genres: it can be preaching and confession, ego-story and political and literary biography, the main thing is their context not only because of the recreating of the atmosphere of time. In Africa and Nigeria the traditions of contextual culture are still common. And the perception of spoken and written words depends not on what is said, but on who said, under what circumstances it was said, where, how and when. There are marvelous contextual autobiographies among Nigerian texts; and it is the context that makes them not only personal, but real life stories transformed in historical narrative and acquired a socio-cultural dimension. Such is all that written and said by doyens of literature and politics and contemporary celebrities of the Generation of Africa presenting the Name of Nigeria all over the world (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, Taye Selasi, etc).