Nigeria’s open sore in Soyinka’s Aba Alapata showcase

Icon at 80: Nigeria’s open sore in Soyinka’s Aba Alapata showcased

      BY ICON AT 80: NIGERIA’S OPEN SORE IN SOYINKA’S ABA ALAPATA SHOWCASED ON JULY 24, 2014 

The unenviable state and fate of the Nigerian na­tion was again theatri­cally laid bare in Aba Alapata, Prof. Wole Soyinka’s latest play staged at the Arts Theatre, University of Ibadan to commemorate the literary gi­ant’s 80th birthday on Sunday, July 13, 2014.

The production, put up by Ora­cles Repertory Theatre Company in collaboration with the Associa­tion of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Oyo State chapter, is a dynamic, satirical comedy of errors that brought out the open wound of the nation in so many tropes and symbolisms, depicting the rape and “butchering” of the nation, struggles for power-sharing, mis-governance, the evil of godfather­ism and the insensitivity of the political elite towards the toiling masses among others.

It was a fitting tribute to the Nobel Laureate and renowned rights activist, whose life has been intermeshed with the nation’s since about independence and testifies to what engages his mind as a committed artist at this time.

The drama, acted by a 40-man cast and crew and directed by Yemi Akintokun, revolves round the central character, Alaba, an old retired butcher, who personi­fies the godfather from whom all manners of people including politicians come for advice and dispensing of favours.

From his perch on a hilly rock, Alaba, has an overarching view and say on governance, and who gets what in the polity, as every­body including the governor, sena­tors, contractors must buy parts of his cow and even the end product, ‘Suya’, which he shares, according to his whim and caprice, for them to remain in reckoning. It is the narrative of the plague of retired generals, who, although appar­ently retired, still remote-control affairs in the national life. They are the ones who cut the cow (Nigeria) into pieces and share the cadaver amongst themselves and their cronies, ruling and call­ing the shots from their various domains or constituencies.

The incessant struggle for pow­er amongst this class manifests in three Army Generals’ quest to take over a quarry mine (oil bloc) ostensibly located at Aba Alapata, which, according to Yoruba trans­lation, means “a village on the rock”.

However, the troops of one of the daring Army bosses through a series of comedy of errors mistook Alaba’s village, which also bears the name Aba Alapata, albeit with a different meaning (i.e. The Butcher’s Village) for their destination. The mistake was set in motion by the signboard announcing Alaba’s domain, which the playwright creatively used to confuse the semantics by a nebulous play on the accent on the words. On the orders of their mili­tary chief, who pointed out their apparent mistake, the soldiers advanced elsewhere, leaving the old butcher at his perch.

The anti-climax came, when the itself -corrupt and conniving council of traditional chiefs in the territory, who had pronounced a series of fines on the retired butch­er over indeterminable crimes, reverses the ruling on Alaba, for apparently having helped to put the invading soldiers to flight.

The play also explores sub-themes such as the muzzling of freedom of speech, fallen standard of education, complicity of some critical segments of the society, notably students and labour union leaders; cruelty of the govern­ing class and the dismal conse­quences of official ineptitude on governance which ensure that the “rulers” and their protégés work hard to, in Alaba’s and his friend, Teacher’s self-indicting confession: “achieve nothing and transform nothing”.

Like every good work of art, the play tends to blur the lines between illusion and reality in that it highlights events and characters that are easily identifiable in Nige­ria’s contemporaneous history.

Spiced with sonorous and the­matically relevant songs and beats supplied by a live band which oc­cupies the right wing of the stage, the drama parades good acting by accomplished thespians such as Seni Pinheiro (Alaba); Tunde Oladeji (Teacher); Toyin Abiodun (Danielebo, the governor); and Niyi Owolabi (Prospector/Gen­eral) as well as promising actors/actresses including Ikechukwu Iwebunua (Major), Basirat More­nike Jinadu (Daughter/woman) and Omolara Soretire (mother).

Mention must be made of Pin­heiro’s and Iwebunua’s exception­ally comic acting and lines, which sent the audience at the command performance intermittently reeling with bouts of laughter.

Among the memorable laugh lines of the evening was when the old butcher, who had initially condemned a young man accused by his wife and mother-in-law of philandering rescinded his judgment when satisfied that the external lover is “respectable”. Out of indignation, he command­ed the young man to bring the woman outside under his roof to prove he was a true African man, a pronouncement that made the distraught wife, who brought the case, to faint on the spot.

Another was the scene in which a child sweeping Alaba’s grounds, an apparently innocent daily chore, which coincided with the visit of the governor, scared him and his aide, having obvi­ously mistaken the small boy for a gnome, because his face was besmeared with red paint. The governor fled and abandoned his own diabolical attempt at wrest­ing the secret power ostensibly in Alaba’s possession through incantations.

The foolishness of the badly frightened governor was revealed when the child, in reply to a query by Alaba, who came in later, said he had the paint rubbed on his face at a carnival he participated in school.

All the actions took place against a simple set construction representing a rock on which Alaba, the protagonist, sat, sipping palm wine from a calabash as well as a backdrop of the Nigeria’s green-white-green flag.

Save for the flamboyant and expensive agbada and sokoto understandably worn by the governor, the costuming was subdued, with all the other char­acters wearing common dresses that identified them by their professions and social status. The Director, Akintokun, explained that this was deliberate, because the play was not out to celebrate the many flaws it mirrored. “There is absolutely nothing to celebrate in the message of the play and so, putting up loud costumes will be celebrating stupidity”, he rational­ized.

The rapacious Army General/Prospector and his soldiers were, however, dressed in mufti, rather than military uniforms. Again, Akintokun said this was equally deliberate to illustrate how the culprits under censure had pen­etrated civil life in order to cover the illegality of their detrimental presence and actions in the polity.

Aba Alapata, which is a mish mash of dialogue in English and Yoruba , the playwright’s native linguistic pool, is a delight to watch as successfully interpreted by Oracles Repertory and surely deserves being taken on tour, if the company could find sponsors to overcome lack of funds, which it’s Artistic Director, Akintokun, said was a big challenge in staging it.

“It was tough putting up the play, because of lack of funds. We only took it as a challenge and sacrifice to honour a men­tor, because that is the only thing those of us who graduated in the 80s and met his footprints in the Department of Theatre Arts where he started his journey, can do to honour him”, he said.