African Prose Fiction and the Depiction of Corruption in Islamic Society and Religion: A Critical Study of Abubakar Gimba’s Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples Oluchi Chris Okeugo 1 *, Obioha 2 , Jane Onyinye 2 1 Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria, 2 School of Midwifery Alex Ekwueme Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki Ebony State Corresponding Author: Oluchi Chris Okeugo, E-mail: oluchi.okeugo@unn.edu.ng ABSTRACT African prose fctions have written on a whole number of ideas and perception, but have conspicuously paid little or no attention to what is predominant in the Islamic society and religious world. For Gimba, the intrigues and contestation over power, especially within the civil service, assume a metaphoric signifcance in unraveling social contradictions in society. Gimba thus, evaluates the various dimensions of power and how it is used to subjugate or oppress people. In most of his works, Gimba pillories the repressive nature of power and the conficts it engenders are graphically illustrated. In his articulation of this disabling environment, Gimba evokes a consciousness, concerned with Manichaeism and alienation. Gimba is sensitive to his characters as they adjust to the uncertainties of a postcolonial society with all the indices of underdevelopment, greed, corruption, bureaucratic tardiness, indiscipline, political instability etc. These characteristics of modern Nigeria form the background from which Gimba’s characters are drawn. However, drawing from their Islamic background, the characters in Gimba’s works express their morality, conviction and thought through the ideals of the religion. This leads to a remarkable blending of social and moral concerns with the supervening infuence of Islam without sermonization. The outcome of this fusion is a balance between aesthetics and spiritual interests in a way that captures the essence of Northern Nigeria with vividness and freshness. Gimba, like Tahir, therefore relates the traditional and cultural values of the people to their response to the dilemma of new experiences and their interpretations of them. Gimba draws his sources from The Holy Qur’an in the delineation of setting, action and character. As a liberal feminist, he chooses urban heroines through whom he restructures our visions. This article attempts to investigate Gimba’s works using Neo-humanistic theory in evaluating his inclusion of religion and the techniques used conspicuously in the novels, Witnesses to Tears and Sacred Apples. This scholarly work equally argues that the writer’s creativity in religion can best be appreciated through an analytical study of the novel. Key words: Islamic Society and Religion, Neo-Humanist Theory, African Literature, Manichaeism, Alienation, Holy Qur’an, Post-colonial, Gimba INTRODUCTION As a prolifc and profcient writer, Gimba had within the span of a decade taken he Nigerian Literary scene by sur- prise with the following titles: Trail of Sacrifce (1985), Witnesses To Tears (1986), Innocent Victims (1988), Sunset for a Mandarin (1991), Sacred Apples (1997), Footprints (1998), a collection of essays Once Upon A Reed (1999), a collection of poetry, Inner Rumblings (2000). He is a writ- er who is interested in the world and the people around him, particularly in the intrigues and intricacies of the civ- il service and the bureaucracy. His works revolve around morality, encoding sympathy for the innocent characters who are usually persecuted and unfairly treated by the sys- tem. Gimba’s works are intensely concerned with decency, Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.1p.61 proper use and control of power and the creation of an egal- itarian society. However, the emergence of Abubakar Gimba in the mid-eighties was to further expand the scope of the novel in English in Northern Nigeria beyond the point of Tahir’s The Last Imam. Beyond the concern with the people’s contact with Islam and their ensuing attempts at adjustments, Gimba explores the many vagaries of human experience. The signif- icance of Gimba’s works lies in the way that he locates his motifs strictly within the bureaucratic structures of post-co- lonial Nigeria from where he takes a panoramic view of the entire society. Religion, a system of faith based on the existence of God, has remained a subject-matter of the Nigerian novel since International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au ARTICLE INFO Article history Received: October 29, 2019 Accepted: December 09, 2019 Published: January 31, 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Advance access: January 2020 Conficts of interest: None Funding: None