Lagos, yes, Lagos!… Tackling security through performance

The hustle and bustle of Lagos city life recently came alive on stage for theatre lovers in a play titled, Lagos, Yes, Lagos! Written by Mr. Yemi Ajibade, and performed at Snug Hall of Firewood Restaurant and Bar, Yaba, the play shows the good, the bad and the ugly side of Lagos. It portrays how some inhabitants of the city have chosen the crooked lifestyle, instead of harnessing the many opportunities available for self-advancement.

It opens with Baba Olosha (Prince Agwu), an armed robber kingpin, drilling Mufu Yaro (Chinonso Chukwu), a new recruit, on how to steal without being caught, and shows that pick-pockets, and even big time robbers, pass through some form of tutelage to perfect their acts. To make Yaro submissive and do the job, Baba Olosha promises to take him to Lagos Island, where the big guns live and where the gang could as well make good money from their illegal business.

As the gang progresses in its nefarious activities – making good money and making many city dwellers sorrowful – Yaro keeps on reminding his boss of his promise to take him to Lagos Island. To show how connected he is in the underworld business, Baba Olosha invites Josiah (Chinedu John Ochuo), his able lieutenant, who now lives in Lagos Island. Josiah has been in the business for 15 years and now wants to turn a new leaf, quit crime and do something useful with his life and help society. But Baba Olosha persuades him to lead the last operation before quitting.

He agrees and leads the gang to rob a trader (Awanatu) in Lagos Island market. The operation is successful, but the gang leaves a mark that enables the police to track them to its hideout.

With themes on crime and how to check it, the play, which is easily a campaign tool to sanitise Lagos and rid it of miscreants, shows the complicity of security agencies, especially the police, as accomplices in most criminal activities in the state. Although the long arm of the law catches up with Baba Olosha and his gang members, the play uses Lagos as a metaphor for other states to highlight the need to cooperate with the police and other security agencies, through assisting with useful information, to make society crime-free.

Also, the play calls on the public to be vigilant, sensitive to happenings around them and strangers in their communities. It also draws the attention of the audience to their lifestyles, and warns against flaunting of wealth so as not to attract robbers.

Directed by Ifeanyi Eziukwu, the play, with its timely themes, unveils some upcoming acts in stage performance. Adapted from radio to stage, Lagos, Yes, Lagos! is simple and direct in its message, but it, however, lacks any comic effect that would have further helped the audience absorb its core messages. The few comic attempts, which the director tries to inject, through Yaro, fall flat and dry and do not come off naturally.

Another hiccup is the market scene, which appears scanty and does not represent the typical swarming nature of Lagos Island markets. Here, the director should have done the performance justice by allowing three or more traders to be on the scene with potential buyers loitering around. This should have created real life scenarios and make the audience relate better with the story. A situation where only one person, Awanatu (Grace Abba), is a trader in a market creates a false impression about Lagos.

Though performed in an unusual stage, to be specific, in a restaurant, it should have given the director the opportunity to showcase his ingenuity in set and stage design and lighting. But very little improvisation happened in this direction. Plain and bare, it lacked the facility to depict the low and high times and to tell moods at different times of the day. Also, the costume was the same all through without variation and changes to reflect different occasions. It gives the impression that the cast was merely telling a story instead of acting out their roles.Though a bold step at bringing live performance to the Mainland, Eziukwu needs all the encouragement he can get to enable him grow in his chosen profession.