<b>MULTIMODAL LITERARY PARADIGM : A SINE QUA NON IN THE 21</b>^{<strong>ST</strong>}<b>CENTURY NIGERIAN LITERARY DOMAIN</b>

“The 21^st Century is a multimodal era and it is therefore beneficial to analyse multimodal artefacts from the period”( Peer, 1993, p.59) . Drawing on this scholarly premise, this paper is an experimental attempt at making and justifying a departure from the primeval literary form extant in our nation to the trend that befits the 21^st Century which is an era of change in all respects. On this basis, our work makes a case for the literary practice of multimodal paradigm in the 21^st Century Nigeria. Every literary text is aimed at communicating meaning, and meaning can be realized even outside printed materials. Therefore, an argument is made in this study in favour of a shift from emphasis on the traditional mode of literary writing to the utilization of technology in the form of audio, visual and audio -visual and other paralinguistic accompaniments so as to realize literary creativity. In justifying the relevance of this literary approach in the present Nigeria, a comparative methodology is adopted while the frame work is premised on Kress (2000, 2010). In conclusion, it is highlighted that now that the Nigerian contemporary society , like others, embraces information technology, including social media, it is time special importance was attached to the nation’s literary tradition and practice. For this reason, it is suggested that a niche for multimodal form of literature in the Nigerian literary domain needs to be carved and seen as a sine qua non.