REMEMBERING OLA ROTIMI (1938 - 2000)

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Isaac Attah Ogezi Death can only make its vain boast, for though his bones are interred, the Storyteller lives on. This aphorism cannot be truer than in the case of the Nigerian playwright, Prof. Ola Rotimi. I studied his play, Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, as one of the recommended texts for the Senior School Certificate Examinations conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in the mid-1990s and could not help but salute the intrepidity of the deposed Oba of the Benin Empire sent on exile to Calabar by the British colonial misadventurists. But Rotimi seemed not yet done with me, for the next year when I enrolled for my Interim Joint Matriculation Board Examinations (IJMBE) with the then School of Preliminary Studies (SPS), Keffi, Nasarawa State, the playwright was there waiting for me, not in person, anyway. His unarguably foremost play, The gods are not to Blame, was on the reading list of IJMBE! Here I met the great character Odewale whose tragic hubris led him inexorably to fulfil the gods' decree of killing his father and marrying his mother. An adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex that completely transplanted the work to Africa as though it sprouted originally from there. With these encounters with the playwright vicariously through his two great plays, you could imagine my excitement when I was told by members of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Plateau State chapter that Ola Rotimi was to grace the association's annual international convention as the Keynote Speaker! I had to see this playwright live at the convention, I vowed to myself. The D-day dawned in the year 1999, and there I was among the entranced largely writers' audience, after trekking from Abuja Hostel of the University of Jos, Jos, Plateau State, along Bauchi Road to Tati Hotel Jos. There I saw the larger than life, diminutive writer who had influenced my life without previously meeting him face to face. There I sat, drinking from the rich keynote speech of one of most influential writers in my life. It was with a blood-curdled heart that I received the shocking news of his death a few months later. Though Rotimi is dead, his works live on. Wole Soyinka is the most celebrated Nigerian writer and playwright, but perhaps the most popular play to Nigerian readers and audiences, both literary enthusiasts and non-literary enthusiasts., is Rotimi's The gods are not to Blame. In the hands of Rotimi, the golden past of African culture is brought alive, sizzling, spiced with grand, proverb-laden speeches, choral singing and dancing. It is total drama, unmatched anywhere in the world. He is to Nigerian theatre what Chinua Achebe is to Nigerian fiction especially those set in the past. His Kurunmi is not so satisfying a play to the present writer in terms of the great traditional speeches of The gods are not to Blame and Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, but these failings appeared ameliorated in the pacy plot, action and movements on the stage. The comic side of him is evident in the timeless and riveting comedy, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. He was to try his hands in theatre of the absurd with Holding Talks and Man Talk, Woman Talk, the latter published posthumously. After over two decades of his passing on to glory, the impact of his writing remains undiminished, and perhaps unsurpassed by playwrights in successive generations. Femi Osofisan may be a worthy successor, prodigiously prolific and versatile, but apart from Women of Owu, has not methinks produced a work of great traditional grandeur as Rotimi's The gods are not to Blame and Ovonramwen Nogbaisi. The multiculturalist playwright, Ahmed Yerima, is also another playwright that makes great strides in drama of the past in Nigerian theatre today traversing different ethnic cultures in Nigeria - in the North, specifically the Hausa-Fulani, we have Attahiru, in the Niger Delta, we have Hard Ground and Little Drops…, to mention but the most prominent. Like Soyinka, Yerima is at home with both the rustic past of our forebears as well as the cosmopolitan life unparalleled. However, where Soyinka remains unmatched in drama is his ability to be at home with both tragedies, for example his greatest tragic play, Death and the King's Horseman as well as satirical plays or comedies like the Jero Plays, A Play of Giants, The Lion and the Jewel, amongst several others. Despite the rich harvest of works by Osofisan, Yerima, Olu Obafemi, Zulu Sofola, Zainabu Jallo, Jude Idada, Friday John Abba, and a host of other twinkling stars on our literary firmament, Rotimi's lean harvest of plays sets the benchmark for the best of our theatre. It is a good thing to be prolific, if you can, but remember that a writer can make himself immortal with a handful of classics like Rotimi. I would rather be the soldier bee that packs its venom into one single sting and dies later, albeit leaving in its wake a writhing victim by the impact of one single sting of death, than be a writer of a hundred books without a single immortal or great work. Time cannot obliterate the impact of Rotimi's contributions to our theatre and the unborn generations to come.

COLLOQUIUM IN HONOUR OF PROF. DUL JOHNSON IN SEPTEMBER, 2023 AT BINGHAM UNIVERSITY, KARU

DANCING TIME OVER FOR GOV. REV. FR. HYACINTH ALIA

One of the breaking news items on most national newspapers this Sunday the 4th June, 2023, was the killing of twenty-five people by unknown gunmen in Benue State, barely four days after the inauguration of the new APC-led government headed by Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia, a man who walked the thorns-strewn path in his party to the state government house. A man whom the good people of the state expect to bring succour after experiencing Egypt-like plagues under the Ortom administration, ranging from non-payment of pensioners, several months of owing public servants to the endless butcheries at the hands of inhuman terrorists. The only good-riddance response to the dark days of Ortom was the massive protest votes APC got during the gubernatorial elections. Interestingly enough, this would not be the first time a Rev. Father would pilot the affairs of this largely agrarian and civil servants' state. Rev. Father Moses Adasu of blessed memory had blazed the trail with resounding success. Little wonder that, armed with these enlivening memories, the choice of another reverend father was not a hard one to make. Unfortunately, unlike the Adasu era, the state, nay, Nigeria as a country was not as divided as it is today, a negative dividend of an eight-year misrule by Buhari. It is in this regard that the people of the state expect that Alia should by now have known the daunting responsibilities before him when he offered himself to serve as the number one man of the state. Apart from the huge arrears of salaries and unpaid pensions, the next fundamental need of the people is security. If Ortom despite signing the Anti-grazing Law was overwhelmed by the killing sprees in the state, the people expect the anointed man-of-God Governor to address this issue squarely. At least, apart from the mundane resources, he has the edge over his predecessor of direct access to divine guidance. His victory dancing steps could elicit some smiles on the pain-wracked faces of a much wronged people, led daily and uncomplaining to the slaughter in countless numbers by their enemies who have sworn their annihilation, but these benign smiles in the midst of suffering will be stillborn if the governor does not wake up to his responsibilities. The dancing time appears to be over for Governor Alia when blood continues to flow unstaunched and unabated under his watch. He has to boot himself awake from this circus show in a land where laughter has long ceased to the enormity of the responsibilities before him and deliver his people like the biblical Moses. It behoves him to think outside the box and lives up to the expectations as the chief security officer of the state. The people of the state too need to support him in this regard, put their heads together with a view to fighting this common enemy that wants to exterminate their existence off the surface of the earth. It is not about inter-party animosity whether APC or PDP or Labor Party, for this tsunami that has come upon the state threatens its very existence. All avenues of solution should not be left unexplored, and at the pains of apostasy even the recourse to the ancestral intervention like the Ombatse cry of the Eggon people of Nasarawa State when they perceived killings verging on the genocidal, should not be out of place. Mr. Rev. Governor, the jollity time is over, as it is not yet Uhuru in the state.