By HENRY AKUBUIRO
THE afterglow was as enchanting as when the spirit of Independence itself was enkindled just the day before. Careworn faces suddenly ignited with mirth. Intermittently, screams of delight and dread rent the air. Emotions purged by century old injustice struggled to gain composer at the end of the performance. Segun Olujobi’s Maafa struck a deal with many hearts at the end of it all.
Directed by Makinde Adeniran, the play, Maafa featured a 28-man cast with seven drummers. Staged by the National Troupe of Nigeria, in con- junction with independent artistes, Maafa, which tells the story of a godlike warrior, Osusu, as recounted by his own son (the Narrator), echoes the story of man’s inhumanity, untold truth, liberation and change.
Sold into slavery with his pregnant wife, and son, through the deception of his own people, the warlord, Osusu, soon discovers that his destiny lies in uniting the warring ethnic groups of his nation to achieve their much await- ed freedom. However, the task seems impossible; especially when the different groups are fail to see who the real enemy is. Enacted in the best tradition of total theatre, the performance was realised with a surfeit of music rooted in African tradition and high pace sequences. The first scene begins with a dancing flourish, ushering in the Narrator with his back turned againt the audience and his face glued to the wall. “I saw it all,” his baritone voice begins the narrative.
The Narrator expresses worry that Africans are given to fighting one another, yet when their leaders get to the United Nations, they deny the obvious. It is taken for granted that the western world enslaved Africans; however,
the Narrator doesn’t dispense with the truth –that the Africans facilitated the slavery: “The whites invaded our land, but we gave them the key.”
The first introduction of the western world in Maafa is the coming of the white Slave Master to Africa. Using lucre as a tool for barter, he is able to convince the African King to arrange a group of slaves for him. Unfortunately, black African slave drivers, working in concert with the Slave Master, brutalised the chained black slaves as they match them forward to slavery, flogging relentlessly and shouting, “Apes Obey!”
As far as the white lord is concerned, the manacled blacks are like mere toys on his hand, which explained why he thundered at them: “I bought you; I bought your identity.” He, thus, force- fully grabs the wife of one of the en- slaved Africans, raping her to his like. The husband’s effort to protest the ill treatment meted to his wife sees the
enraged white man almost strangling him to death. The melancholic song of the slaves from their customary abode of a cage is a reminder of the failed at- tempt to muffle the distressed African voices by the western establishments.
The protagonist in Maala, a man of valour, Osusu, fought war after war for the king, and was victorious. The king, in honour, handed him his one and only daughter for marriage, recounts the Narrator. But, one day, “the elders ganged up against Osusu, and the King sold his best warrior into slavery”. This sums the African tragedy.
In the Afro macro world depicted in the drama, bickering is a constant among the blacks fighting over trifles, as the slave drivers flog to separate them. Peace isn’t a given to these Africans.
Unlike the Slave Master, his wife is filled with kindness. She is eager to teach them English language to enhance their communication skills with the outside world. She goes the extra mile to teach the Africans how to sing western songs. The Slave Ma- ser is unimpressed. He, rather, “commandeered” one of the dancing black women with a covetous built.
Responding to the accusation of raping a black girl, the swashbuckling Slave Master tells his wife, she, too, is guilty, as he had seen him dancing suggestively with Osusu, “a dirty, black, slave boy.” He subsequently ties her to a stake.
Revenge is in the air. The husband of the previously assaulted black woman, seeing the white man’s wife defenseless at a stake, decides to seek a pound of flesh from her over what her husband did to his wife earlier. But Osusu won’t take any of that. “She is innocent,” he thundered, for the poor woman was not instrumental to the former’s wife’s ordeal.
The Slave Master, like the biblical Task Master, is personification of atrocities. In a move to humiliate the warrior, he compels Osusu to lick his feet and, afterwards, the floor. To save his life, the African warrior capitulated in a show of shame. The survive the menacing white man, he has to throw fame to the dogs.
In another show of bravado, the Slave Master mistreats another black woman in the presence of her husband, beating her repeatedly, and Ademowura gives up the ghost to add to the litany of woes trailing the black slaves.
As the crisis in the drama hot up, the slaves break down the cage, and break loose from captivity. Their ultimate aim is to overrun their common adversary. But it results in disastrous consequences. Repulsed by the black minions of the Slave Master, all the slaves are routed to a man.
However, with his body riddled with bullets and seemingly defying death, Osusu musters strength, grabs the gun of one of the Slave Master’s men and kills them all, dying after- wards a man of valour.
The Narrator reminds the audience that the war isn’t between black white, but between bad and good. The need for national rebirth echoes at the end of the narrative as the Narrator echoed excitedly: “I believe in a new world. I believe in a new nation. Arise!” The song of the risen silenced cast soon become infectious as the curtail falls.
This performance, however, isn’t without criticisms. First, the wife of the white Slave Master looks more African than white. Again, the ease with which the black slaves learn the English alphabets and songs is so rapid that it constitutes an illogical sequential dramatisation. There ought to be a gradual movement from the state of a tyro to linguistic maturity. But that doesn’t detract from the grandiose of the performance.
Former Artistic Director of the National Troupe of Nigeria, Prof. Ahmed Yerimah, described the performance as a fabulous play, declaring, “I think it is ready for the Broadway.”
Earlier in his introductory remarks, the Artistic Director of the National Troupe of Nigeria, Mr. Akin Olaju- won, asserted that, though the economic situation in Nigeria might be bleak now, the future looked brighter for the country, describing the play as a reflection of what transpired in the country’s history in the colonial days.
The Production Coordinator, Mrs Josephine Igberaese, informed that it took only ten days for the performance to be enacted. Looking at the dexterity brought on stage, it looked almost unbelievable. In Nigerian theatre, the unbelievable is made to look believable. That is sheer magic.