Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Arts  

Battle for the arts in Soyinka’s enchanted forest

“This experience for me is pretty surreal. We are sitting in the midst of real forest and we’re having intellectual discourse and we’re seeing a lot of drama… I will talk about it for many years to come.”

A scene form the play

“This experience for me is pretty surreal. We are sitting in the midst of real forest and we’re having intellectual discourse and we’re seeing a lot of drama… I will talk about it for many years to come.” So Sola Salako said about the Ijegba Forest Amphitheatre, nestled in a lush valley near Professor Wole Soyinka’s countryside home in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

It was the evening of July 14, 2016, and we were there for the seventh Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE), the finale of a programme of events celebrating the Nobel Laureate’s 82nd birthday.

The stage set, designed by Z-Mirage Multimedia, was a fluid arrangement of giant set-pieces, the standout of which was a monolith that spelled out the word, C.O.R.R.U.P.T.I.O.N. The stage stretched back into the wooded hillside facing the audience. Forming part of this tableau were scores of masquerades and other costumed characters who danced or idled theatrically away in the animated backdrop. It was reminiscent of D.O. Fagunwa’s ‘Forest of a Thousand Daemons’, as translated into English by Soyinka.

The opening performance by the Ogun State Cultural Troupe, was followed by irreverent comedy and biting political satire served up by students of the University of Ibadan, directed by Dr. Tunde Awosanmi. Their dramatic sketches, ‘Riceee’ and ‘Etike Revo Wetin’ – referenced contemporary corruption, as well as Soyinka and Tunji Oyelana’s 1980s’ parody of the Shagari administration’s ‘Ethical Revolution’.

The advocacy forum then commenced, chaired by Prof. Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka. Jahman Anikulapo of the Culture Advocates Caucus, said of the theme, ‘Corruption, A Battle for the Arts’: “We are trying to extrapolate on how the arts can be a tangible intervention in the battle against corruption. We believe the arts as an interventionist agency has a role to play.”

Guest of Honour, Prof. Femi Osofisan who marked his own 70th birthday recently, said, “Celebrating the legacy of Wole Soyinka takes many forms and I am glad that I am part of that legacy. Some of us started writing because of him, because he inspired us to play the part, in a kind of advocacy for social justice, for humanity, for humane values and so on.”

Osofisan led the audience in singing a Yoruba folksong about Ijapa (tortoise), as a take-off point on corruption. “Corruption nowadays is interpreted as if it’s just a monetary thing – the amount of money stolen all over the place. But, that’s not how it starts. Corruption is a moral thing, a moral burden, a moral absence, which takes off from very small things… the moral lapses that we all have, and then goes on to the big things,” he said.

The playwright advocated for a return to core values, saying, “It’s important that the children should know that there was a time in this country when it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t like this and we believe it cannot go on. It’s a battle, and that’s where the Arts come in.” He added that, through his play, ‘Once Upon Four Robbers’, “I’ve tried to explain that this moral lapse also has economic implications. People who are hungry will inevitably steal, because they want to survive… The kind of economy we run is such that everybody is forced to steal; if you’re not stealing with the gun, you’re stealing with the pen, and it’s all over the place.” Calling for a restructuring of the system, he told students in the audience, “I wish you young ones a better future than we have had. I hope you will at least learn something, and this country will change.”

First keynoter, Tunde Fagbenle, started by saying, “Let’s be clear about one thing from the onset: the arts have been mired in corruption as the rest of society it reflects and parodies. So, this is not only about how the arts can join the battle against corruption in the country, but equally how the arts can confront corruption within itself.”

Noting that “the arts are thus not immune to the corruption that bedevils the country,” he flayed disreputable practices in the performing arts and the media. He noted that the situation has not always been this dire, recalling the late dramatist Hubert Ogunde’s plays and songs – especially ‘Yoruba Ronu’ – excoriating the old Western Region government; Soyinka’s holding up of a radio station in 1965 to protest against the same administration; and various episodes of the media fighting bad governments to a standstill in Nigeria.

“It is therefore clear that the arts have a leading role to play, not only in the battle against corruption, but more importantly, against corruptive influences in society. We must recognize and engage art in its activism capacity. We must be mindful of what messages we send, not only to the impressionable minds of children, but also to the generality of the masses.

“We must seek to be positive role models; we must stop the glorification of those who have corruptly enriched themselves in our midst; we must stop calling them onto high tables; we must stop hailing them,” Fagbenle said.

He finished by rendering a number on his harmonica, but not before declaring, “And to be sure, stealing is corruption, o jare.”

The masquerades turned into time-keepers by the tail end of Fagbenle’s segment, coming forward to stage a sit-in in front of the speaker – an indication that his time was up. The second keynoter, Prof. Ojewuyi, took the cue to jocularly advertise his own kinship with the egungun (masquerade) tradition, as evident in his surname.

Ojewuyi discussed Soyinka’s ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’, first performed 40 years ago, in 1976, “as a template for our examination of the ordered nature of corruption.” In an address focusing on the role of women in the play, he linked political corruption to spiritual corruption.

“We have not tapped from the pot of those women who actually embody our spiritual well-being. We live in a country where we ignore our women, and therefore, we are led into a spiritual abyss – and that’s the core of this play. So, the lack of compass in our spiritual life is affecting the political misdirection and corruption that we are facing,” he concluded.

A panel discussion on ‘Corruption and its Impact on Women’ followed, moderated by Sola Salako, President of the Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON). Discussants were: Hafsat Abiola-Costello, Founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND); media practitioner Rose Moses; and journalist and broadcaster Kadaria Ahmed.

Recalling an encounter with Soyinka and his spartan wardrobe at Harvard 24 years ago, Abiola-Costello said, “That experience taught me a lot about corruption – six black shirt and six black trousers – you should see my own wardrobe!”

Agreeing with Ojewuyi about the spiritual dimension of corruption, she called for a change of mindset. “It’s not just the leaders, it’s all of us,” she said. “Each of us has a beast inside that we have to learn to control. If you feed it whatever it wants, you will wake up one day and you will not recognize yourself in the mirror.”

Kadaria Ahmed, meanwhile, argued that corruption is best tackled from the top down. “Without the grand corruption, you will not have the small corruption… If you don’t take care of the Big Fish, you cannot take care of the small ones,” she said.

Dissecting Soyinka’s ritual drama earlier, Ojewuyi had cautioned against the tendency to overlook the “political and radical seed” in artistic works. “Rituals are not performed in a vacuum. Ritual is a vehicle for an action, for something radical to happen, something different from what had been,” he said.

Event organisers rose to the challenge, and staged an explosive ritual cleansing to rid the land of corruption. Curses rained down on corruptive elements of society in highly charged song and dance. Fireworks exploded overhead as master choreographer Peter Badejo invoked the judgement of Ogun (Yoruba god of iron) and Sango (god of thunder) on the corrupt. It was as exciting as it was at unsettling, especially as this was a forest, at night.

And in a masterstroke, the giant monolith of corruption was suddenly engulfed in flames. As it burned, President Buhari’s words, about the need to “kill corruption”, came to mind. For that is exactly what they did, symbolically, in Ijegba Forest.

0 Comments