A Word For Obidients

By Mohammed Adamu

PREAMBLE
The night before the ‘Inauguration’, (05/28/23), I found, in my desolate store room, some roache-eaten copy of Bode Sowande’s play, ‘The Night Before’.

And I started reading and found I couldn’t stop, until I had traveled some 37 years back to my Alma mater, to find the truth of the 60’s R&B group ‘Temptations’ saying, that the age of chivalry is actually gone, and that we are now in the age of errantry and blissful ignorance.

In my Part three, back in 1985, while reading English at the then University of Sokoto (UniSok), now Uthman DanFodio University, I was privileged to have acted (in a Convocation Drama), the role of a major character (Dabira) using this very copy of Sowande’s play.

By the way the play was staged as part of events and activities marking that year’s graduation ceremony.

‘THE NIGHT BEFORE’
The Play tells the story of six University of Ibadan, UI graduating students reunited on-campus on the eve of Convocation (hence the title, ‘The Night Before’).

They have organized a party and at which they variously reminisce on memorable events of their campus lives, chief of which was a historic ‘students protest’ which had tragically led to the death of one of them.

And nearly as tragic too, but in matters of love, would be what would happen to me (in my character as Dabira), that night, as I would lose my on-campus girlfriend, beautiful ‘Ibilola’, (played by a classmate of mine, Ronke Kuku), as the sudden exposé of her secret affair with ‘Onita’ would hit me so unbearably hard, I would even burn my academic gown!

In the Hamletian style of ‘play-within-a-play’, Sowande’s ‘The Night Before’ has us, namely the six graduating students, cheerfully before a make-shift bornfire, recalling the past by dramatically play-acting each of them them.

At the beginning we are the irate, ‘protesting’ students chanting “Zebra Power”, and “We Protest!” (even though ‘Nibidi’ says “We did not know what we were protesting about”); and soon we become the ‘riot police’, shooting and tear-gassing, before we come to the tragic sands-tossing, point in the “ashes to ashes” scene, where we are burying one of our own.

TRADITION
Traditionally at UniSok, the Convocation Drama was staged twice, in two consecutive days preceding and succeeding the day of the Convocation: the first, staged the night before for the pleasure of students, and the second, in the evening after Convocation, for the invited dignitaries to unwind before their departure the day after.

This was my second role in a Convocation Drama, the first being the previous year when I was only able to grab a role as part of a protesting crowd in Ola Rotimi’s award winning play, ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again’ (a laugh at a polygamous retired Major, seeking political power, who cannot even rule his wives.

And so, now playing a major role in ‘The Night Before’, the privilege was not just in featuring in a Convocation Drama, or in playing a leading role thereof or both, it was now more about performing in a hall before the University’s dignitàtems of top ‘Government functionaries’, Emirs, Obas, Obi’s and Chiefs.

The creamest of the ‘cream de la creme’ of that audience was the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, then Chancellor of the University, where one of his heirs too, was proudly in attendance. At the Play’s climax I (as Dabira), would be barely eyeball to eyeball with the seated King, as I faced the audience to deliver the closing lines of the play before burning my gown.

THEATRICS
But the irony of it also was that when we first staged the play for students the previous day, my beautiful one-on-campus girlfriend (Ibilola) and I had also opened the play with nearly one minute of on-stage, passionately romantic cuddling, to the tumultuous, almost roof-rending screams of excited students calling for encore!

And now on the second staging, before the Alaafin and others, I was wondering ‘how do I pull the cuddling scene?’ Or rather what would be the reaction of the dignitàtems especially of Emirs, Obas, Obi’s and Chiefs? I knew they would definitely not scream in approval, let alone call for an encore, but I wondered: could they call for a ‘Cut! Cut!!…..Cuuuut!!!’?

Guess what? They did neither. But they mumbled and they giggled; and some, at the back, even guffawed! And If I saw it very well, the Alaafin himself smiled, wryly! I would not know the meaning of that wry smile until a decade later after I had wedded!

And when I lost my cheating girlfriend in the closing scene of the play and had to burn my academic gown, they were surprisingly empathetic; and had even hummed a chorus of “Ooooo!”

EPILOGUE
I lost the jewel. But I won the audience! Obidients, chin-up! Be Gallant. Move on!

dankande2@gmail.com