The Un Sustainable Development Goals (Sdgs): What Role for Nigerian and African Literature?

Could literature be relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this giant stride by the UN to make this world a better place to live in? Does Nigerian or African literature have any precedential capacity that can accord it some vital roles to play in a virtually virgin field like the SDGs? This paper provides plausible answers to these questions. It endeavours to coin out a synergy between literature and the SDGs. It forays into the inner recesses of the three genres in search of existing structures into which the objectives of this vision could conveniently fit. The paper argues that such structures exist prior to the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 and its relaunch in 2015 as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The structures comprise feminist criticism, ecocriticism or environmental literature, utopian literature etc. The paper is of the view that the SDGs literary criticism emanate from the post-independence disillusionment literary criticism to the extent that the latter is the forerunner of the former.