Corruption In Africa: Fifteen Plays

By Iyorwuese Hagher

The book is a collection of fifteen plays written by Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, Africa’s most politically exposed playwright. This rare collection offers a penetrating insight of corruption and politics in Africa well as the global injustices that plagued the world in the last quarter of the 20th century and in contemporary times. Hagher’s unique narrative style is richly inspired by his academic career as Professor of theater and drama and his practical work as actor and director as well as his engagement with the traditional Tiv Kwagh-hir theater. Hagher is master of satire, humor and unending endings. The plays are masterpieces of Hagher’s workshop experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Aug 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9780761869382

Book preview

Corruption in Africa

Fifteen Plays

Iyorwuese Hagher

Hamilton Books

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Copyright © 2017 by Hamilton Books

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Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940771

ISBN: 978-0-7618-6937-5 (pbk : alk. paper)—ISBN: 978-0-7618-6938-2 (electronic)

The Plays in this collection are works of fiction and do not refer to anybody dead or alive. Permission for performance may be obtained from the author or through his agents; [e-mail].

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To the Youth of the World, that they may see a different World

from the one we live in,

riven by greed, ignorance and hate

Foreword

Redemption, Reconciliation and Healing.

Iyorwuese Hagher’s Collected Plays

Drama and politics are welcome bed-fellows and politics gives my drama an urgent voice as agent of change—Hagher.

With a history of acquaintance and intimate friendship of over four-and-a half-decades, it can only be an honour to be asked to do a short Foreword to a lifetime of creative and performative productivity by this scholar-dramatist- politician of a most inimitable profile—Iyorwuese Hagher. Let me flesh this a bit at both the risk of overstatement and understatement, depending on who knows the details and who does not. Since our undergraduate days at the Department of English of the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria from the wee years of the seventies, I have been privileged to experience very intimate moments with this multi-faceted man of letters and politics—as students, as performers, as writers, as scholars and as cultural activists. Even during his days as a Minister under the dreaded Sani Abacha, when I was one of the fairly fierce columnists of the anti-Abacha ‘school’ our friendship refused to be diminished—quite curiously. His Personal Assistant and drama critic, Professor Saint Gbilekaa, would certainly recall his instruction to fetch me from my hotel in Abuja and ‘guide’ me all the way to Makurdi for a three day ‘discursive-rest’ during the Harmattan of 1996.I say this to express the quality of a resilient friendship that has lasted for at least four decades, even as we took our different paths in life, which kept criss-crossing, on account of our common calling in the arts—the dramatic and performing arts. I know that there are closer, more obvious friends of his and I therefore do not cite these instances as a justification for my choice as the writer of a Foreword to this collection of plays written over 41 years—1974-2015—and written in the throes of other engagements as a university professor, theatre director, senator, minister, ambassador and an enduring partisan politician. I think that this reveals a great asset of Iyorwuese—a largeness of heart and gracefulness, which, given his boundless power of humour/provocation of laughter, could easily be mistaken for cavalier or even light-headedness, unless you know the man intimately and are familiar with his unimaginable exploits—versatile creativity, profound scholarship and dogged political engagement. I dare say that among us members of his generation, he is perhaps the only one who stands tall in multiple careerisms, and who made it to the very top in every one—as scholar/intellectual, as theatre practitioner and as politician!

There are two critical inspirational sources (may be more) of Hagher’s indomitable career multiplex—formal schooling and indigenous Tiv upbringing in the traditional arts. The Ahmadu Bello University Zaria—his ‘triple Alma Mater’ as he aptly describes it, a global intellectual community where ideas and ideologies of the bourgeois and radical veins collide, especially in the Faculty of Arts—provided the veritable nexus. The Tiv Kwagh-hir totalist performance tradition supplies the framework, formal web and social context of his oeuvre.

Hagher cut his teeth as an actor, director, researcher and scholar at the ABU in the active popular theatrical provenance that was rooted in the Ahmadu Bello Performing Arts Company and the formal theatre curriculum and practice with lucky mentors like Michael Etherton, Andrew Horn, Rex Moser and the ‘immersion with the traditional performance techniques which became a crucial foreboding of the raging Kwagh-hir cultural art form, back home. The evolvement of his theatre aesthetics, which he adjudged ‘a unique theatrical form’ and a ‘blend of dance, mime, music, song, and story-telling’, must be traced to this dual heritage. He was nurtured by schooling and by practice. His service as the pioneer Chairman of the Benue State Council for Arts and Culture (1977) brought him next to the skin of the indigenous Tiv performance tradition upon which he divested his research energies, ‘among the poorest of the poor’ which ‘etched’ his consciousness as a ‘combative instinct’ for engagement in a robust theatre tradition that is firmly rooted in social transformation and community struggle against hegemonic predation. As he declared in the Preface to this work, which I consider as Hagher’s dramatic Manifesto/ Credo, the Kwagh-hir is a dynamic performance culture, ‘where song, dance, puppetry and storytelling theatre were (are) overtly political campaigns’. This was the inspirational source of his now lifetime engagement in local and national politics as well as the Muse of his creative productivity as playwright and theatre practitioner. There is therefore a sense in which his development as a scholar, theatre artist and politician, found its umbilical source in the cultural subsoil of the Kwagh-hir. To understand this fully, we must pore over his seminal study of The Tiv Kwagh-hir (1980), who’s aesthetic and ideological imperatives have been well articulated by a foremost Kwagh-hir scholar, Edith Enem when he analyzed the political and national dynamics of that indigenous, ethnically based art form as an anvil of historical mass struggle of the Tiv people. This establishes for us the fount of Hagher's creative Muse from a cultural art that transposes into a political art/activism.

The critical points to note, as I see it, as we engage this collection of Hagher’s Magnus opus’ of fifteen plays, are his instructive perception of theatre as; a) an agent of transformation, with its pores in the communal and social membrane through political poetics and pact of intimacy with the communal ethos; b) a tenuous artistic aversion to pre-history, ancestral myths and metaphysics in preference for the age of science and technology through the Humanities; and c) a creative departure from the notion of art/ theatre as a documentary—a mere reflection- to one of refraction and social reconstruction.

If we find a contradiction in Hagher’s palace of art as constructed in these plays—and I agree that there is a basis for contestation here—it is because of his passionately expressed aversion (he calls it abhorrence) for the indigenous pantheons as represented by the ‘juju priests and witch-doctors" and an embrace of another pantheon acolyte—through Calvinism, the Protestant theological system of John Calvin, a Lutheran doctrine that avidly justifies faith and predestination. It will be most interesting, as we read these fifteen interconnected and organically linked plays of social and political commitment to discover or not, the fluid flow and interplay of traditions—Christian and African doctrines in the notion of destiny and conformism in the struggle for authentic humanity as artistic platforms of engagement.

I invite you to enjoy, as I have done, this assemblage of creative idioms and ideas from Hagher’s’ forge—especially their passionate concerns with the issues of social redemption, reconciliation and recuperation. You may have discovered that I have not paid particular attention to the essential preoccupations—thematic or technical, ideological or aesthetical—of the fifteen plays collected in this volume. I have not delved into the very fascinating probing and investigations into the social conditions, leadership parameters, both dynamic and dysfunctional which have been the major bane and triumph of the society that Hagher x-rays with avid passion and commitment in his plays, centering on the essence of social rebirth, and social regeneration. This is deliberate in an age in which postmodernists and deconstructionists are priding creative engagements on the notion of author-less-ness—a simple notion of the death of the author. Without subscribing to such notions, I find that Hagher’s art is so palpable, so simple in its profundity, that evaluative pontification and interpretation on meaning generation should be left to the reader, who I am convinced, will enjoy every bit of this highly interconnected and organic works of creation.

Olu Obafemi, PhD, FNAL.

Preface

The plays in this volume speak for themselves. Yet I must somehow yield to the temptation to introduce the mission of these plays. I do not seek to do the job of the critic nor seek to argue with them about the meanings of or the artistic merits or demerits of the plays. I merely seek to contextualise myself, sketch a portfolio and map the gradients of the artistic journey that has taken me forty one years. This journey into theater’s vast creative jungle, is situated within contexts in which I found myself as; actor and director in a performing arts company, university teacher and researcher and finally political activist and diplomat. These careers with diverse lifestyles, were homogenised by the theater as a unifier, leveller and lover. My life became a theatre laboratory from where not just the contexts and contents but also the forms of these plays have manifested in my decades of play writing from1974-2015.

The Ahmadu Bello University, my triple Alma Mater, was the base of my dramatic infusion. It was a fertile soil and a talent discovery centre. In early 1970’s, A.B.U, as it was fondly called, catered for a global community of intellectuals from all over the world. In Africa, the university hosted students and faculty from other African nations, that were experiencing political turmoil like; South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia. Globalization and Pan-Africanism were the air we breathed as students. My enthusiasm for drama extended beyond the formal curriculum. I enjoyed practical sessions with the Zaria players a semi-professional multi-racial cultural and performing ensemble. We tried several dramatic forms. I acted in several plays including starring in the lead role of Aladdin in the Opera Aladdin in the underground directed by Omte de Achebe. We had departmental productions of the plays of Wole Soyinka, Henshaw, Ama Ata Aidoo, Sarif Easmon and others. We improvised folklore and in 1973, I wrote my first play, He laughs last The play won the Drama Prize of North Central State Festival of Arts and Culture. After graduating in English in 1974 my bias in creative writing and acting chose for me a research assistantship at the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies of the University, within the Faculty of Arts Complex in 1975. This Faculty was for over a decade; the centre for mainstream intellectual marxism in Nigeria, and ideological battles were waged with gusto. These battles often spilt into the nation’s political platform then firmly in the hands of the military that ruled Nigeria for thirty years. Several members of the faculty like me, served in government and attempted to whitle down the horrendous propensities of military dictatorship. A few crossed over as democratic politicians and fewer remained democrats, intellectuals and idealists. As dramatist, writer, politician and university teacher, I was thrust with the responsibility of playing these multiplex roles.

My academic mentor Prof. Michael Etherton, who pioneered Popular Theater in Nigeria, headed the drama section of the English Department. It was while working with the Ahmadu Bello University Performing Arts Company as actor, director, researcher and teaching drama in the English department, that I became exposed to and immersed in traditional indigenous performing styles of Nigeria, especially of the Tiv people and their Kwagh-hir theater.

We evolved, at ABU, with my colleagues; Ziky Kofoworola, Yakubu Nasidi, Andrew Horn, Duro Oni and Peter Badejo, a unique theatrical form – a blend of dance, mime, music, song and storytelling. It was Nigeria’s artistist renaissance period and we toured the state capitals in Nigeria, drawing large audiences and ovations alongside other popular repertory groups like; Duro Ladipo, Hubert Ogunde and Moses Olaiya. We strongly held our theater as the logical successor to these groups since our repertory performance FADAKARWA, tantalized audiences with the combined menu of traditional and contemporary themes and styles. As lead actor, I bore the cross over role as Udoji dan Zomo. Udoji signifying modernity, contemporary and sophistication while; son of, dan Zomo, the hare; signified the traditional trickster in Hausa, Tiv and other communities.

We toured the world, representing Africa at the World Youth Orchestra Festival in Aberdeen, Scotland and performed at the prestigious Saddlers Wells stage in London and on the Streets of St. Andrews in the U.K., in the summer of 1976.

The second play, Swem Karagbe was written and directed by me in 1977, immediately after World Festival of Black Arts FESTAC 77. It was staged on the 3rd of December 1977 at the Institute of Administration of the Ahmadu Bello University, Kongo, Zaria, by the University Performing Arts Company for the university convocation of that year and drew several hundreds of spectators across Nigeria and abroad.

In the same year, 1977, I was called upon to start the Benue State Art Council as founding Chairman. Benue State is the home of Tiv, Idoma, Igedde, Agatu and Etulo. The state is culturally endowed in dance, masquerade, puppetry and storytelling arts.

I started my research on the Tiv Kwagh-hir in the same year 1977. This involvement in theatre research among the poorest of the poor and in a dynamic culture like the Tiv where; song, dance, puppetry and storytelling were (are) overtly political campaigns, sucked me into the frontline of Nigerian politics. Instigated by the artists, I ran for and won the Benue East Constituency seat as Federal Senator in 1983. Like the migrating Kwagh-hir performers, my performing stages became more and more on the political arena of Nigeria. Drama and politics are welcome bedfellows and politics gave my drama a new urgent voice as agent of change, fighting for what I believed was a better life and a better leadership for the people of Nigeria. A military coup soon ended my senatorial career and I returned back to the University of Jos to teach drama. The political crises in Nigeria dragged me back to politics, first to draft a new constitution in 1994-95, and later as minister and ambassador. But I kept writing.

The plays in this volume aptly capture the painful tension I have felt in my life as dramatist and political activist. I have since that time been trapped in the limnal world, expressing the unease between the idealism of art and the reality of politics in Nigeria whose sad face is that of a richly endowed nation impoverishing her people through mismanagement, corruption, injustice, and poor leadership.

Living among the poor over the years has deeply etched in my consciousness a combative instinct. I don’t look at art or life with clinical detachment. I am in the pit of struggle with the poor and the downtrodden men, women and children. This is why, torn between amusement or illumination, I have striven towards illumination. I have tried to throw beams of light on stupidity, corruption, exploitation and lack of love expressed in antisocial behaviour, violence, terror and poverty.

Poverty is dramatic! It is a tragedy defined by extremities and a comedy defined by want that opens the imagination when darkness falls on an empty stomach and sleep slips into nightmares. Poverty doesn’t happen it is caused by human factors and the environmental conditions. And bad leadership is one industry that never fails to produce poverty.

The poor are faced with daily decisions that threaten existence. They are forced to a sense of community, in order to survive by sharing. In their daily toil, the poor are the repositories of our basic human character, having been shorn of all masks and pretences of affirmation and dignity which prosperity adorns us with. This is why the poor also smile and even laugh, when they should be crying. These ordinary poor, weak and downtrodden are the citizens and heroes of my plays. They are my people. They are me.

I write plays to change people’s mind, and discomfit and shock them so that we can together change our world! Behind this commitment is the accommodation of my world-view in a form influenced largely by my involvement in the Tiv-Kwagh-hir, but also by my ascetic Christian upbringing by the Dutch Reformed Church Mission in Tivland. I was born on a Christian mission outpost at Mkar. My parents were local missionaries. I was bred a Calvinist. My plays abhor traditional African Juju or gods that are celebrated by other dramatists in Africa and have dominated Nigeria’s Nollywood Films with the so called African magic. When others invoke vengeful forces and powers that leave mankind no ability to survive except to sink into cyclical damnation, my plays teach reconciliation, redemption and healing from conflict. I acknowledge the presence of God in creation and his grace that makes life such a beautiful thing because of the hope I see in the face of even the most horrendous tragedies.

The director of my plays would be confronted with the need to continuously stylize action and dialogue with; dance, mime and décor, as metaphor and sub-textual meaning. My performing stages; the Ahmadu Bello University Studio Theatre; the University of Jos Open Air Theatre; the Benue State Arts Theatre, and my Leadership Theatre in Jos; are the performing stages for which these plays where conceived and written and where they have been performed. The words, directions, and happenings in these plays have inhabited these spaces. The characters of my plays which I acquire from real happenings around me have grown, lingered and lived with me in my consciousness; and many times, forced themselves to migrate with me from one play to the other. These have been my loyal platoon bridging the gap between the eternal and the topical narratives; as we hoped to march against imperilled freedom everywhere.

In seeking to change my world through these plays, I have been deeply inspired by the Kwagh-hir theatre. The Kwagh-hir form is a stringing together of happenings that break down to self contained episodes, fully self containing, yet extending in meaning by expanding and incorporating other happenings. Thus a Kwagh-hir event could last for five minutes, few hours, a whole night, or extend to a weeklong performance. This is why my plays are structured in happenings like the loosely strung beads on the waists of the Kwagh-hir dancing girls.

The Kwagh-hir is a change agent in Tiv society. It teaches that the art must be a change agent for a better world order, where human responsibility devolves on each of us to service of our communities; to be each other’s keepers, so that the equilibrium in nature between the human-animal and spirit word is maintained.

I seek openness with my society in a poetics of intimacy and commitment in my writing to influence my society to be more sensitive, productive and developed, both in the moral and material wellbeing. I uphold love over fear and selfishness, so that the welfare of the ordinary people can recover from past abrasions of indifference to resume centre place in the artistic agenda.

I write for the contemporary generation and the materials for my drama, without apologies, could be found on the pages of newspapers! I believe that contemporary drama should manage, against whatever odds, to remain contemporary.

The priests of the ancient gods and the kings and queens had their dramatists who crafted sacred rituals, processions, dances and narratives. The dramatists guaranteed the survival of or sanctioned those societies. Today, contemporary Africa’s promise for greatness is arrested by intolerable poverty, corruption and ignorance; extremities which the dramatist must consider, in their form and content, if authenticity is germane to art. The Juju priests and Witchdoctors must now give way to technology and science, since their promises to Africa have been failed promises! While the Juju priests and Witchdoctors still reign and their prophesies largely control a significant territory in African academe and polity, my mission is to declare these as false prophets who have held Africa down for too long! I find it abbhorent that mainstream drama in Africa is still moored to this false consciousness. The dramatist’s duty I believe is to birth an alternative consciousness even if it shocks, discomfits and annoys the status quo.

I do not intend here to castigate African Playwrights who have continued to be Juju priests and Witchdoctors for lack of artistic merit. I would be lying. They write beautiful plays indeed and derive their dramatic theory and justification from the premise that theater evolved from ritual, and therefore drama and theater should borrow from the veracity of ritual. My training as a Kwagh-hir artist contests this. The Kwagh-hir theater does not originate from ritual, (in the religious sense) but from mytho-logical-theatricality of Tiv storytelling. Unlike ritual performances the addressee of the Kwagh-hir is not divine. Ritualistic drama is restricted in its formalized, pre-established affects; while the narrative roots of the Kwagh-hir in mythos and logos affords diversity of expression. The shocking and repulsive reality is that the Juju Priest, and Witchdoctor Playwrights, are metonymic enforcers of ethnic imperialism; subordinating drama to ethnicity and ethnic missionary activism.

Further more, the encoding of antiquated ritual symbols in drama is a conscious romanticization of the past and glee to inhabit it. By nature, rituals are historical; they are established for efficacy in the divine sphere, where the audience are supplicants. The theater’s efficacy is in the joint creation of meaning by the director, actor and spectator. Mainstream dramaturgy in Africa is enforced by this false consciousness that good plays ought to be home made rituals or be splashed with a liberal dose of ritual. This dramaturgy is enforced with sectarian zeal and inquisitional rigor. Swem Karagbe was my timid and half hearted attempt to enrol in this practice of theater as ritual when my Kwagh-hir roots blocked my ears from the siren calls of this promiscuous labyrinth where mainstream contemporary plays of Africa have fallen prey. I therefore do not consider my plays as mainstream.

If contemporary dramatists cannot be contemporary and must go into pre-history to re-enter a dialogue that was concluded years ago, then who will speak of this generation? Who will lift a fist against the gods of modern-day materialism who nullify those with presence but no voice to express themselves about the threat to their existence? Who will show this generation the roadmap to strategic answers that guarantee its march to progress?

Attempts have been made in the past, by well meaning drama critics to classify me as a documentarist dramatist; a literary genre that seeks to situate my plays as a documentary of national and continental history. This is to say that I mirror society! I denounce this and hope that this is not the effect I have achieved in my readers and the spectators of my plays in production. To mirror society is to uncritically reproduce its warts, lessions, fisturas, corruptions and murders and to give sanction to these abnormalities. My intent is to do the opposite; I seek to shock and correct society and tear it away from the mirror, from self-admiration of its murderous propensities and narcissism. I have attempted in all my plays, a fidelity to my Kwagh-hir style of drama to present happenings that capture the grotesque and bizarre as cause and effect and to examine the mediation of human impulses on these events.

Finally, the plays in this volume express my encounter with the national, continental and global narratives on challenges that faced leadership in the 20th and 21st centuries. I enter the discussion as a participant exploring the recurrent failure of leadership in the world and its metastasis in chaos, corruption, poverty, collapse and death. My intervention, I hope will trigger newer and bigger encounters from other playwrights as the world inexorably marches on its 21st century journey.

Drama remains, for me, a most rewarding, transcendental and energizing experience to shock, to rebel and to freely express disgust and in the process hope to create change!

Iyorwuese Hagher

Dayton Ohio. Jan. 2017

Mulkin Matasa

Introduction

It was like a scene from a horror movie. Armed men in the dead of the night invaded the village. Shots were fired into the air to cause commotion. Harmless villagers who were asleep ran helter-skelter and in the ensuing confusion they were felled one after the other. By the time the invaders were through 18 innocent men, women and children were dead. The Nation, Tuesday Feb.15, 2011.

The above quotation from a Nigerian Newspaper about the communal violence in the country filled me with revulsion. I had been away from Nigeria for seven years. I was not revulsed that the horrific events were now a daily diet for the newspapers, radio and television. I was shocked and repulsed that horror; corruption, abuse of power, death, and terror did not evoke anger nor re-action. Instead it evoked passivity, lassitude and amnesia. That day, Mulkin Matasa, a play about the inevitable revolution in Africa asserted itself as an obligatory topic.

Mulkin Matasa does not literary document the carnage and pogrom that took place on 14th February 2011, when the Fulani nomads invaded a Tiv farming community in Benue State of Nigeria and killed the innocents. Rather the play sets out to examine the inter play of the psychosis of deprivation and depravity. We live in a pernicious world where the ordinary has become the bizarre and grotesque. It is a dramatic world that has benumbed drama. In much of contemporary Africa, rich in natural resources, there are conflicts. These conflicts escalate because there is a new scramble for resources in a tripartite battlefield between the indigenous people, the national elite in power and the most advanced nations of the world. These advanced nations flood these vulnerable communities with weapons of annihilation. Communal conflicts in Africa are no longer resolved by elders meetings, nor by a Government at the centre equipped with the skills of governance to stem the carnage. The play is therefore an attempt to situate the unrelenting pogroms against the innocent, in the political space dominated by crooks and bandits, who have elevated banditry to statecraft and whose extremities are more bizarre and dramatic than the theatre can cope.

Mulkin Matasa draws its inspiration from the myths and discomforts of collective shouts that benumb articulation. The senseless killings and destruction present the grotesque and fantastic beyond human comprehension. Yet these times also drive a momentum of a bizarre carnival and rhythm that entrances victims into gross human cruelty and stupidity. This play attempts in the Kwagh-hir style to present an inconvenient truth about social under currents that have infected and benumbed intellection, the national narrative and discourse. I have attempted to look at the rising conflicts as neither religious nor ethnic but rather as manufactured conflicts that have arisen due to collapse of civil society, the upsurge of corruption and bad governance. This leads to state collapse, which is rabidly contested, yet the state is unable to deal with environmental stressors facing the ordinary people, as the elite insulate themselves in walled, gated, and barb wired premises sharing their corrupt loot of the nation’s resources.

A nation tottering and hanging on the cliff must summon its reserve of energy reposed in the youth. The youth must urgently disengage from the myths of religion and the myth of ethnicity that stigmatize the other so as to render him or her odious and to be pitilessly victimized. The youth must become self-aware and step away from being held hostage to hatred and the legitimization of the worst prejudices and paranoia which feed corruption, bad governance and chaos. They must find their voices from the gutters of lassitude into which they lie entranced, immobilized and wallowing in self-pity. Mulkin Matasa is an attempt to be the wake up call!

Mulkin Matasa’s revolution calls on the national reserves of patriotic youth to redeem their right to once again dream big dreams and to spring up to actualize common vocabulary of humanity which shared historical memory has bequeathed to us from the rest of the world’s great civilizations. This is the time we have waited for, a time to act and stop complaining. The character, Commandante Kwamande in the play, provides both alienation and activism to show how the poor, the weak, and vulnerable can find strength, despite the unrelenting mental torture, infected on them daily by an insensitive leadership engrossed in its banalities as expressed in Mulkin Matasa where the nation gathers to honour a pet dog- a symbol of frivolities the national elite squanders the wealth of the nation on.

While the reality of the cruelties and absurdities of the African leadership challenges drama and the theatre, the playwright must nonetheless rise up and establish a space where human anxieties, insecurities, doubts and impulses can be explored in the face of violence, intolerance, injustice and indifference. This is my mission in Mulkin Matasa. The theme of revolution provides for me a laboratory to explore the meaning of leadership. Africa is rich in resources but Africa’s biggest challenge is the leaders to harness these resources for the prosperity of all the citizens. Mulkin Matasa explores how Leadership is defined and interpreted by the actors in the play, who choose their destinies in accordance with their interpretation of the leader’s role. The corruption, the thefts, the condoning of fraud and the subversion of judicial process signify behaviours unfitting of humans. But the leaders in Mulkin Matasa are blind as they are deaf. In the play, we have tried to show through the actions of the deposed president and his wife that the actions and speeches of the leaders constitute verbal and physical violence.

As I ponder the recent events of the Arab spring and the response of Mulkin Matasa, I believe there is a zeitgeist at work in Africa. A revolutionary wind is blowing across the rest of Africa south of the Sahara, which can no longer be ignored. There is an extremity in the life of the African politician and elite, which is truly dramatic. The dramatist can barely keep pace with the swirls and turns of these events where; corruptions, violence, human rights abuses, mismanagement, fraud, torture, rape and terror are terrifying realities. Nonetheless, the dramatist as public intellectual must deal with and hold the torch of truth to the insouciant face of power. The revolution in Mulkin Matasa, is a warning that a terrific and frightening fate, awaits all of us in Africa, if we are unable to rise to the true calling of leadership. Just like the followers have seen no sleep as a result of bad leadership, the leadership faces a similar fate, as violence and death, have become in a profound and dangerous way the prevailing motif of our lives.

Finally, while I acknowledge all the characters from my other plays, like Hassana Diakite from Mulkin Mata, Dr. Ndu from Lamp of Peace, and Prof. Himna from Comrade and Voltage who have migrated into Mulkin Matasa, I must confess I am terrified and outraged at the outcome. A violent revolution is not necessary, when through knowledge and accommodation a mental revolution is required. It is this mental revolution that Mulkin Matasa advocates. It is the reason the play itself refuses to end with a verdict.

Mulkin Matasa was first produced by the theater and film arts department of the university of jos on the 18th and 19th november 2014 with the following cast.

NEWSCASTERS

CNN

Mabel Nwachuckwu

Patience K. Sabo

ATV

Mercy Bonom David

Chamun Bakzak

Prof. Himna

Patrick Nicodemus Adai

COMMANDANTE

Augustine Gilbert Gotau

Queen Bem Elizabeth

EX-PRESIDENT

Babatunde David Toyosi

Philip Daniel Oniel

EX- FIRST LADY

Ene Aladi Abba

Bridget Aibangbee Oghogho

TOR CHEMBE

Michael Unom Turan

ARDO DANJUMA

Atsen Barnabas Markus

Tongnan Victor Gimba

COURT CLERK

Bernjuliet Mnguember

Noroh Hannatu Davou

SINGLE FOOT

O’tega Agadagba

Tapchin Dadah

HASSANA DIAKITE

Ogechukwu Ezumezu

Seraph Tohomdet

PROF. NDU

Onah Elizabeth

Uzoma Ugoji Kelechi

Play was directed by Ellison Domkap and assisted by Mundi Mwansat with Prof. Tor Iorapuu as artistic director

Characters

Newscasters

Prof. Himna

Commander Kwamande

Ex-president Ningim Ningima

Ex- first lady Amaka Ningima

Tor Chembe

Ardo Danjuma

Court Clerk

Singlefoot

Hassana Diakite

Prof. Ndu

Dancers

Time is present time.

Happening One

Opening Glee

The box office opens with a celebration of life.

There is a bubbling of youthful vigor in song and dance.

Two ethnic groups; the crop farmers and cattle herders are presented in contrasting costumes right from the box office entrance, by the ushers.

Lights come up on stage with Swange music playing along side Kalangu and Goge music. The flute and gida lock together to produce an eerie lingering melody. On stage, a short dance drama skit of young beautiful herd- girls, selling milk and cheese from their traditional calabashes, to men on the farm. There is conviviality as these farmers and young girls happily and playfully dance.

The dance sequence changes and it is the crop farming-girls who sell roasted yams to herdsmen who also dance together. Suddenly there are sounds of gunshots followed by a stampede off stage. A lone creature in military combat dress emerges on stage. In his right hand is held an assault rifle and on his left hand is a book. His face is covered with a sky-mask, leaving out his mouth and eyes. The eyes are; piercing, defiant, inexorably calm and commanding. His mouth is tense, terse and severe. The lone masked figure freezes with his arms close to his side in attention poise as the national anthem of Africa is played. Lights slowly fade out, to a spotlight on two large television screens on stage side by side facing the audience:

NEWSCASTER: (appears on the TV screen to the left of stage) This is CNN your leading global News network. Here is breaking news. The President of the United States-- has strongly condemned the over throw of the Democratic government of Africa in a revolution which has come to a climax today with the announcement of the take over of Addis. The President warned the revolutionary council headed by Commandante Kwamande, not to shed innocent blood. He demanded that the deposed president of Africa, his cabinet and members of the ruling party being held under house arrest at the State House in Addis, be treated with dignity. The deposed President, Dr Ningim Nigima has been accused of immense corruption and constitutional breaches. The U.S. President demanded that the Revolutionary Government should follow the due process of law in a proper impartial trial. In the studio is Professor Himna the famous African historian at Harvard University. Sir what is your take on the events in Addis today?

PROF HIMNA: (Replacing newscaster on screen) Thank you, I see today’s take over of the Presidential. Palace and the collapse of the ruling party as inevitable. This revolution is the culmination point of a collective national anger. It is the explosive tipping-point of pent up frustration and unrealized promises of a regime that is unable to guarantee the protection of lives and property and which wallows in corruption. It remains to be seen which trajectory the new leader will take. The masked Commandante is said to be the son of the late General Khassan. It is believed he studied in the U.S. but was radicalized under Commandante Marcos of Chiapas in Mexico and is inspired by events of the Arab spring. The revolution is massively popular and this could be the turning point for Africa

NEWSCASTER: Thank you Prof.

PROF HIMNA: Thank you Christina

NEWSCASTER: The United States Supreme Court today has once again postponed the ruling on the registration of the All Gays Party, the AGP… (Lights sharply fade off on this television screen and fade up on the other TV screen on the opposite side of the stage.)

NEWSCASTER: Good evening, this is African Television; my name is Moji Mogaji, I’m your newscaster. The People’s Revolutionary Council swore in the new leader of Africa, Commandante Kwamande this morning. Her Excellency the Commandante, who is now the Commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Forces of Africa, will now address the nation (a figure in ski-mask comes on TV)

COMMANDANTE: Fellow compatriots, to-day’s date will go down in the history of the world, as the day our beloved country Africa was totally delivered from oppression. It is your day, members of the revolutionary council for waging a courageous struggle against a corrupt, inept, and bankrupt regime, which was heavily protected by a lavishly financed army and security services. It is our day the long-suffering people of Africa. Our revolution is heir to all the revolutions of the world: the British Revolution in 1688, the American Revolution of 1788, the French of 1799, the Haitian in 17th Century, the Mexican in 1901, the Chinese of 1949, the Cuban of 1959, the Iranian of 1979, and Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria of recent memory. We are indebted to all these courageous men and women who gave their lives to causes; who united under common goals and principles to bring lasting changes to their countries. We stand here to proclaim a new Revolutionary African Government, which became inevitable, because, the people Africa entrusted with power, were no better than bandits. Our revolution seeks to immediately, speedily and irrevocably bring our country to its true greatness by ending the pathetic culture of endemic corruption. The Revolutionary Government is compiling charges of corruption against members of the past administration, and members of the All Choppers party, the (ACP) as well as their collaborators the unscrupulous business men, both local and international, who oiled the wheels of corruption. They will face trial. All those who served with integrity have no reason to be afraid. We shall be just, thorough and decisive. The following decrees have become necessary to move the nation forward. Decree No.1: All those found guilty of amassing ill-gotten wealth and abuse of office through corrupt acts will face the death penalty. Decree No.2: Ethnicity is abrogated. No African shall be identified by ethnicity, (the so called tribes) All citizens are conferred with the right to settle anywhere in Africa and the government is committed to protect all law abiding citizens and guarantee them life, liberty and pursuit of happiness wherever they live or work in Africa! Decree No.3: Free Education and Free Health are to be provided from today to all citizens. Tuition From elementary school to Ph.D. shall be free. No university shall demand for fees as the Revolutionary Government’s savings and prudence shall sufficiently fund all tiers of Education. Decree No.4: A new Sovereign Revolutionary Constitution will come into effect in the next six months. This sovereign constitution will be a product of our collective yearnings and aspirations and will be written by the best minds representing all regions of Africa. It will be the peoples constitution and not an elite constitution. Decree No.5: A ban of frivolity and frivolous celebrations and pastimes in government must be enforced. All birthdays, wedding-anniversaries and public chieftaincy titles of public officers, their spouses, and children are hereby banned: I wish to place on record my gratitude for your confidence in my leadership. This revolution is not about me; it is about us; it is not the will of a single person but our collective liberation, because everyone’s liberation is tied to the others. We all must march to the mountaintop of freedom, where we all have a voice. I shall symbolize this by wearing my mask in all public functions as my resolve to remain a symbol of our collectivity and my anonymity. Fellow compatriots, God save Africa Good morning (saluting) Aluta continua.

NEWSCASTER: Meanwhile, reports reaching us from the State House indicate that; The president, ministers and members of the National Assembly have continued to be held under house arrest at the banquet hall of the State House where they were celebrating the 7th birthday of the First-Dog, Bingo a pedigree mongrel and pet of the deposed president. Africa Television shall keep you abreast of all the momentous events taking place in this revolutionary time.

(Lights fade out on Television screen, end of happening.)

Happening Two

Lights come up on: A Bunker in the State House in Addis

The bunker has sparse furniture: a Radio, a Television, a Refrigerator, a Microwave, and an electric fan. Amaka the country’s former First lady, festooned in gold and diamond jewelry that cover her neck, hands and feet, is sitting on the two- seated love sofa in quiet contemplation, while her husband the deposed ex-president, Ningima paces up and down the bunker; too angry to be sad, and too sad to be angry. He tries to summon dignity to overcome the state of utter confusion and bewilderment.

PRESIDENT: This country is finished Amaka.

FIRST LADY: Ningim, I don’t understand. But please don’t call me Amaka

PRESIDENT: I see, my wife I love your attitude.

FIRST LADY: Whatever has happened, don’t forget I am first Lady. It is a title I have earned for the rest of my life.

PRESIDENT: The security deceived me that all was okay

FIRST LADY: And here we are locked down here in a hole like Saddam Hussein.

PRESIDENT: Don’t worry we have a strong voice at the U. N. this charade cannot last!

FIRST LADY: Ungrateful people; after all you did for them. When they complained they had no industries you opened the ports and imported all their needs. They had no lights you brought generators. And when their roads were death traps you allowed the importation of private Jets so they could fly instead, since armed robbers had made their SUVs unsafe in the pot-holed infested roads.

PRESIDENT: Such is life. I kept telling you that members of my cabinet were traitors. You didn’t believe me then. Nobody believed me. The papers said I was alarmist; that I was crying wolf…and indeed I was crying wolf… when the wolf came, there was no one to stop it.

FIRST LADY: What is happening?

PRESIDENT: Revolution!

FIRST LADY: Revolution? What is revolution?

PRESIDENT: This country is lost

FIRST LADY: What is Revolution Ningim?

PRESIDENT: Overthrow of Legitimate authority by illegitimate means

FIRST LADY: Ah, so you were right! You suspected a major’s coup was coming

PRESIDENT: This is not a coup. A coup? No it is impossible, the military has been the chief consumer of the fat of this country. The Military top brass is too fat and too comfortable.

FIRST LADY: So what happened?

PRESIDENT: Organized criminals, religious-bigots, bandits, tribal irredentists, useless-unemployed-lay-abouts, cattle rustlers, under-performing contractors, radical-lecturers and failing students fuelled by the opposition, led by a clown, have taken over the country…. This country is lost.

FIRST LADY: They are confused

PRESIDENT: Confused and lost. When a people have lost their collective mind, they give insane loyalty to any mad man or woman. This so called Commandante who talks about corruption… It was the money that her father stole, from Government treasury, which educated her in Harvard and Princeton and Yale.

FIRST LADY: Is she a woman? I hear she is on drugs

PRESIDENT: One security report said so. We will see! When the United States leads the coalition of liberation she will have nowhere to hide. Even a lone drone will shoot him down. By next week all of this will be over. Please don’t worry yourself. I have good connections.

FIRST LADY: Stop boasting Ningim. See where your boasts have landed us.

PRESIDENT: I am not boasting. I am telling you I am too good for this useless country.