Pensioners Plight as Seen through Tunji Ogundimu's Pensioners and Prisoners

This article aims at examining critically pensioners’ predicament through a study of Tunji Ogundimu’s Pensioners and Prisoners. The research work delves into the reality of retirees who solely rely on their pensions and gratuities to survive. It also intends to bring the African States to avoid despising the cry for help of the pensioners who have toiled for their countries for a long time before retiring. Pensioners’ plight as Tunji Ogundimu views it in Pensioners and Prisoners constitutes a great handicap for the wellbeing of the civil servants who retire. The pensioners’ plight may therefore be described as a humanitarian crisis since they suffer a lot and are unable to meet their fundamental needs. Hence the necessity to scrutinise it in order to denounce it for the improvement of the retirees’ living conditions. I have used the qualitative research methodology in this research work, so as to find relevant information or data through documentary research. This methodology has enabled me to collect and analyse data coming from Internet sources, such as E-books and academic articles, and from library sources in order to carry out this research work efficiently. The Marxist critical approach which focuses on class struggle and concentrates on the power of money in literary works is the literary theory applied to this study. This literary theory is appropriate here because two opposed classes – the corrupt (the indelicate civil servants and politicians) and the non-corrupt (the pensioners) – are at stake. The study has found that pensioners are treated as prisoners in the novel under study, which is abnormal. It concludes that pensioners deserve a good treatment by the Nigerian government and by African governments at large.