POWER DYNAMICS IN CHIMEKA GARRICKS’ TOMORROW DIED YESTERDAY AND AYỌ̀BÁMI ADÉBÁYỌ̀ ’S A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS

Abstract

Power is a complex yet significant concept in contemporary life. Its nuanced deployment is imperative to governance and human relations. Chimeka Garricks' Tomorrow Died Yesterday (2010) and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ 's A Spell of Good Things (2023) are interrogated against the backdrop of power and exclusion. The study investigates the representations of power and exclusion in the selected novels, examines the historical, political, and socioeconomic contexts that explain these portrayals, and explores the relationship between fictional representations and the lived experiences of government failure and systemic marginalisation in Nigeria since independence. The study employs a qualitative textual-analytical approach, grounding its reading in Gayatri Spivak's 'Subaltern theory' and complementing it with Frantz Fanon's postcolonial critique of domination, psychological alienation, and structural violence. The study finds that power and exclusion in both texts are dynamic, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing. The study argues that Garricks uses Tomorrow Died Yesterday to spotlight militarised governance, environmental injustice, ethnic marginalisation, and repressed dissent in the Niger Delta, revealing exclusion as an outcome of economic interests and political authority. In A Spell of Good Things, Adébáyọ̀ projects exclusion as an embodied, everyday experience defined by poverty, political manipulation, institutional failure, gendered hierarchies, and knowledge control within family and social spaces. The study concludes that in both novels, subaltern voices are silenced through repression, systemic neglect, and narrative erasure. Thus, these novels serve as counter-narratives that reassert human dignity, reclaim marginalised agency, and highlight governance failures in post-independence Nigeria.