Nigeria Content Online

The play, ‘Who is
Afraid of Wole Soyinka?’, with a generous dose of humour and
exaggeration, sought to bring to recall, the dark, turbulent times
following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections;
and the subsequent assumption of power by General Sanni Abacha, after a
coup d’état to overthrow the interim government of Chief Ernest
Shonekan.

A day before June
27 at Terra Kulture in Victoria Island, Lagos, Theatre @Terra producer,
Wole Oguntokun, had at a BookJam event objected to Abraham Oshoko’s
statement, accusing Nigerians of sweeping issues under the carpet.
Oguntokun cited the works of several Nigerian writers, intended solely
at keeping issues firmly in the consciousness of the Nigerian populace.

It was, therefore
no surprise that with ‘Who’s Afraid of Wole Soyinka?’ Oguntokun
achieved just that. The note of reflective reminiscence was palpable
among the members of the audience, who were reminded profoundly of the
situation which the country had years ago emerged from: the black
goggled General, who bared to all, the ambition of enthroning himself
as the ‘life ruler’ over Nigeria.

Oguntokun dedicated
the performance to the memory of late Kudirat Abiola, whose daughter,
Hafsat, was in the audience. The play was preceded by a short humorous
sketch, which depicted the vacuous and narcissistic attitude of a
number of Nigeria’s political office holders.

Loose Cannon

Enter Daniel Loose
Cannon, played by Sola Iwaotan. Loose Cannon opens the scene as a poor
US immigrant who begs, with relatively little success, on the streets
of New York. Rather than return home with the shame of failure,
however, he prefers to keep eking a meagre living in this manner, as he
ponders “How can I go home? They’ll ask what I made of myself,”
illustrating how entrapped many Nigerians in Diaspora might be; unable
to return home with no evident success. Loose Cannon’s audience in the
play, however, somewhat unsympathetically, respond, “You’ll say you got
an LLB BL, bose lo lose bo (you came back just as you left).”

The next scene,
most surprisingly, has Loose Cannon back in Nigeria, now planning the
political campaign of the incumbent dictator, who is embroiled in a
plot to succeed himself. Loose Cannon, heading an organisation, BLADDER
(Body of Love Asking for Democratic Determination and Reform) solicits
the support of musicians, jounalists, traditional rulers, and an
effete, senile politician, in the person of Lukwu Merije, a
not-so-subtle indication of a real individual, one might guess.

Daniel Loose
Cannon, back as the fast talking upwardly mobile youth, quickly makes
an effort to organise the ‘stroll in September’, also an obvious
portrayal of the ‘two million man march in March’ planned by Daniel
Kanu on the platform of YEAA (Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha); or
Youth Earnestly Ask for Him (YEAH), as in Oguntokun’s play.

Anachronistic distortion

The play chronicles
the activities and state of affairs, which culminate in the death of
the dictator just after he has garnered political support in and
outside the country. The only clog in the political ambition of the
General or ‘Oga’ as he is called in the play, is his one nemesis – the
Nobel laureate Soyinka, the merest mention of whose name reduces the
general to screaming fits of terror.

Oguntokun, in a
brief departure from the familiar historical plot, incorporates a new
millennium perspective, as the general, in anticipation of his
successful transition from military head to a civilian ruler, is
courted by Barrack Obama, David Cameron, and Nicholas Sarkozy, among
other present-day world leaders – an effort, which resulted in a
slightly anachronistic distortion in a plot for which all other
inferences had been historical.

The most impressive
performances of the play, undoubtedly, were recorded through the
characters of Oga and his sidekick, Tafa, played by Kenneth Uphopho and
Precious Anyanwu respectively. The two actors exuded comfortableness in
their characters; and had their acts, along with their Northern
accents, down pat.

Incorporated
between the play’s acts was a slideshow of images associated with the
struggle for democracy. Photographs of democracy icons such as MKO and
Kudirat Abiola, accompanied by images of destruction and strife, were
projected while ‘Se na like dis’ by Wande Coal played in the background.

Felled by an apple

The play ends,
predictably of course, with the death of the general to the elation of
the populace, who rejoiced at how “Common apple kill Oga”; and the
disappointment of mercenaries such as Misty the musician, who had been
promised political appointments.

Also noticeable was
the ambivalence of Lukwu Merije, who had, in the course of the plot,
never made a positive input in the realisation of Oga’s ambition.
Instead, he was a prophet of doom, who repeatedly communicated the
impossibility of the General’s ambition with statements like, “I’ll see
you when you get there… if you ever get there.”

Though the play
should have ended on a jubilant note, with the country’s emergence from
the unyielding grasp of the dictator who had plundered its coffers and
persecuted its populace. It instead employed a mournful anticlimax, “In
the cycle of life, strange beings sometimes come to power… pray
earnestly that a new dawn breaks over our land” – which no doubt is
inspired by the current state of affairs of Nigeria, a country which
has still not managed to wade through the murky waters of bad
leadership.

Bogeyman Kongi

Little, however, is
seen or heard (by way of characterisation) of the Nobel Laureate, whose
name encourages an interest in the play, as Soyinka is employed,
instead as an invisible bogeyman, who though embodying the only check
for the excesses of the dictator, is kept well out of sight.

The play
incorporates an insight into the Nigerian culture by way of music,
dance, slang, and language. Also worthy of mention is the attention to
costume and props, as the actors’ attires, save Lukwu Merije’s,
enhanced charaterisation. The theatre acoustics and voice projection of
artists also worked together quite remarkably.

The staging, though
laudable, would have been even more commendable if it lost some of the
exaggeration of speech and action, contained in the scenes, and
substituted those with more historical fact or imaginative fiction.

International
theatre actor, O.T Fagbenle, who was in the audience, extolled the play
as a good chronicle of Nigeria’s history, but remarked on the seeming
unnecessary length of some scenes. In his words, “I think that each
scene should move the plot forward, and if I find my thoughts drifting
away from the performance before me, then a scene isn’t doing that; and
ultimately, can be cut from the play.”

‘Who Is Afraid of
Wole Soyinka?’ was part of the ongoing fourth annual season of plays on
the Nobel laureate to mark his birthday.