The impact of war on the human condition in African literature and society has not been taken as seriously as it deserves. It is now becoming, like the study of the colonial experience, a terribly repugnant exercise in which sometimes America is also studied and classified along with postcolonial Africa as a post-colonial subject. Thus, in contemplating Africa's wars, the cost of war in both impalpable and palpable human terms is wrapped in the wool of fanciful and fashionable paradigms, literary exercises better suited for the full-belly faddish reflections of blasé coteries of the metropolis. This attitude or inclination is responsible for the shoddy and haphazard diagnosis of the ills of the African continent. It blights the efforts of governments and distorts the projects of governance. No matter how well-meaning a rescue might be, certainly, it is clear in all circumstances that a problem must first be recognized and understood before one begins to proffer solutions. Many African poets and novelists are engaged in that enterprise.

The quiet agony of imperial humiliation left the new generation of African leaders and many new-breed post-colonial intellectuals who stepped into the master's shoes in a giddy Manichean desire to be like the master.