1 NIGERIAN LITERATURE OF FRENCH EXPRESSION Ifeoma Onyemelukwe Department of French Faculty of Arts Ahmadu Bello University Zaria – Nigeria Creative writing of French expression must have been conceived by a number of people as a mirage regardless of the fact that Ola Balogun, the first Nigerian writer of French expression had his drama Shango published by P. J. Oswald in Paris in 1968. This is only six years after the introduction of French into the Nigerian school curriculum. Furthermore, Anthony Biakolo published his novel L’étonnante enfance d’Inotan in 1980; he wrote it towards the end of his doctoral work in France. Mokwenye (1999) divulged his skepticism about the prospects of Nigerian creative writing of French expression. What informed his pessimism in 1999 was its thin corpus apart from restricted readership and unwillingness of Nigerian publishers to publish such materials of doubtful marketability. Permit me here to define the term Nigerian writers of French expression. The concept “Nigerian writers of French expression” refers to citizens of Nigeria domiciled in Nigeria or partly outside Nigeria, who use French as medium of expression in their creative writings (poems, dramas, novels, short stories etc.), about Nigerians’ life and experiences, primarily for Nigerians and by extension, for others in the international community.. Nigerian literature of French expression presents to the global community the cultural and national consciousness of Nigeria, hence its importance. Take, for example, Biakolo’s L’étonnante enfance d’Inotan and Onyemelukwe’s Uwaoma et le beau monde, apart from exposing to the world Urhobo and Igbo cultures respectively, their authors seem to propose in the novels interethnic solidarity as a means to achieve peaceful co- existence and progress in the society.