Abstract

This paper examines Othuke Umukoro's satirical poem “If God Was a Nigerian” as a contemporary instance of social realism in Nigerian poetry. Adopting social realism, buttressed by the sociological theory of literature and the tradition of committed African writing, the study reads the poem as an artistic mirror held up to the fractured realities of the Nigerian nation-state. Through a close textual analysis that quotes and interprets the poem line by line, the paper demonstrates how Umukoro converts the grand theological premise of his conditional title into a catalogue of concrete national afflictions: the collapse of the university system, cybercrime, human trafficking, political corruption, terrorism and communal killings, environmental devastation in the Niger Delta, irregular migration, state repression, child destitution, police brutality and the precarity of the artist. The analysis argues that the poem's hypothetical framing imagining even God as subject to Nigerian conditions is a rhetorical strategy that universalises national suffering and indicts the structures responsible for it. The study situates Umukoro within the lineage of socially committed Nigerian poets such as Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide and Odia Ofeimun, while noting the distinctly digital-age idiom of his imagery. It concludes that “If God Was a Nigerian” exemplifies the enduring capacity of poetry to function as social document, moral protest and call to civic consciousness, and it recommends greater critical attention to emergent Nigerian poets writing in this realist mode