Obari Gomba’s Grit and the Politics of Vendetta

On 9th April, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, produced Obari Gomba’s Grit directed by Maduabuchi Cosmas.

Obari Gomba’s Grit is a creative force to reckon with. Reading the script provides an immersive experience, making the reader another character in the play. Gomba also understands psychology well, and this helps in his characterisation. The reader is not just presented with beautiful sentences and thought-provoking proverbs always released by Pa Nyimenu but also with a state of affairs that require deep thinking and unravelling, what the critic Nzube Nlebedim refers to as “layers and layers of grit.” Little wonder it won the country’s most prestigious prize for Literature.

Gomba’s Grit won the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2023 and was published the same year. Before the publication, the playwright notes, the play had been “presented to a select audience at the Ken Saro-Wiwa English House of the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.” With the buzz that came with the award, Grit was subsequently staged on 17th December, 2023, at Plantinum Theatre, Azny Place, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

This month, April, students of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, produced the play as a part of their Advanced Play Production and Directing course. The play was directed by Maduabuchi Cosmas, with supervision by Dr. Chinenye Amonyeze, and Richard Umezinwa.

Obari Gomba’s Text

The story is about the two sons of Pa Nyimenu, Oyesllo and Okote, trapped by enemies in a politics of vendetta. Like Nmade, Oyesllo’s wife points out, the brothers are drowning in a politics whose waters are not stirred by them and they seem not to notice. While the Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA) offers Oyesllo their party ticket as their flag bearer on a platter of gold, the United Progressive Party fiercely courts the younger brother, Okote, who intends to run as an independent candidate. This creates the illusion of having their own candidate, Ralph Yasuo step down for him, and posturing as his protective agents in crisis we would later learn, they fomented, in an evil collaboration with the leaders of the DPA.

Ironically, it is is Bambo, the constituency head of the DPA, who says “the pursuit of public good do not unite people as easily as evil does.” For the unknowing listener, like Oyesllo himself, Bambo is nothing but an honest man who says the truth as it is, without knowing that the politician simply found an untruthful way of telling him the truth.

The truth of the matter is that leaders of the DPA and UPP are a team working to eliminate the two brothers, both broken by the death of their mother at the hands of the DPA thugs and by their days in the military. This is what baffles Okote the most – the fact that his elder brother would dine with the same people who killed their mother. He wonders how Oyesllo doesn’t understand that the ticket offered to him does not come on a platter of gold but on their mother’s gravestone.

For Oyesllo though, Okote simply cries more than the bereaved, for all that he cares, Okote who is an adopted son cannot love their mother more than he does. After all, after the death of their mother, it was he, Oyesllo, who went after the thug who killed their mother and killed the man, while Okote was busy mourning. As far as Oyesllo is concerned, he has paid his debt to the dead and is now ready to swim the shark-infested ocean of politics with the sharks of DPA. Politics, for Oyesllo, is s way to reclaim his manhood, his shot at rehabilitation after a war injury that led to his dismissal.

Okote’s involvement in politics has a nobler intent to it. He simply wants to bring good governance to his people. While not a biological son of his father and late mother, he seems to be the one with their activist mindset. Their mother died fighting for the market women’s right while their father led the clandestine activist group, Grit Club, later disbanded as the members grew old. For Okote, the sacrifice of his mother cannot go in vain.

While the vacant post of the chairman of the People’s Council presents the brothers with different reasons to go into politics, for the trio of Bambo, Matefi and Townse, aided by the District Police Officer (DPO), it is opportunity to drag the family into a political fiasco and sing their final requiem. Matefi took over the leadership of the women of Sonofa from the brothers’ mother and hopes to settle her personal grudge with the family by preventing Oyesllo from marrying her daughter;  Bambo the leader of the DPA wants to get back to Pa Nyimenu, upon whose testimony Bambo’s uncle was convicted of murder while Townse of UPP, who has no personal grudge against the family, acknowledges that allowing any of the brothers win—and they have the popularity afforded to them by their parents activism to do so—means he would lose both power and profit and that he cannot afford. The brothers are just puppets set against each other.

Grit and the Question of (Political) Ancestry

Grit dramatises a lot of ills in Nigeria, for Nigeria and Sonofa where it is set bears no difference at all. One of such ills is that of God-fatherism in politics, shown in the conversations Okote has with the leaders of UPP, where the latter tries to convince him against running as an independent candidate. Townse counsels Okote thus: “Do not be naive. A political orphan cannot win the election; a political orphan is a political idiot.” The political orphan is the man who wants to reject the “moral baggage” of a political party, and run as an independent candidate. It doesn’t matter, Townse implies, if this man has the support of the people. He simply does not have the structure needed to utilise this support.

Oyesllo supports this notion when Okote offers to step down for him if he agrees to run as an independent candidate as opposed to against a candidate of the same DPA that killed their mother. Oyesllo simply reminds Okote that he, Oyesllo, is running to win, not to “scratch his itch.” Implying that the independent candidate—and independence here means more than just not belonging to a party,but bowing to no godfathers and bringing an independent mind to governance too—has no chance of winning an election in Sonofa. You are free to replace Sonofa with Nigeria.

One is right to ask what structures Townse refers to. The DPA provides some examples. The existence of the DPA thugs, led by White-Eye and the havoc such a thug can be used to wreak on opponents is one such structure. The UPP’s hobnobbing with the police that makes it possible for them to be able to release Okote when arrested, a task his activist father and his lawyer had failed at, is another of such a structure. In essence, it is a structure of corruption and manipulation.

There is though another aspect of the play that is beyond the ills of politics that is only muted twice in the play. Maybe, this is also why Maduabuchi Cosmas missed it too in his direction (I had actually looked forward to how he will be able to interpret it in his production). That is the question of ancestry. We already know that Okote is Pa Nyimenu’s and his late wife’s adopted son. But what of Oyesllo? What of Pa Nyimenu himself? Do they really belong to Sonofa, the land they have sacrificed a lot to bring sanity to?

This doubt is first raised when Pa Nyimenu cautions Oyesllo, who has the habit of bringing up Okote’s status as an adopted son to discredit Okote’s stance thus: “You have to be careful when you dig the past because there are bodies in shallow graves everywhere.” Matefi solidifies this doubt when she says of the brothers, “They are not even true sons of the soil. Where are the graves of their ancestors? And if any, how old are those graves?” It is instructive that both Pa Nyimenu and Matefi invoke graves in their statements. I have a theory: the family of Pa Nyimenu migrated to Sonofa, therefore making them, in that manner, adopted members of the community. For Oyesllo to question Okote’s status as a full member of Pa Nyimenu’s family will be tantamount to questioning the whole family’s citizenship of Sonofa. I would have loved to see this theory confirmed or challenged on stage. Sadly, it is something the director didn’t touch.

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka Production

In the two hour production of Grit Maduabuchi Cosmas presents a creative reinterpretation of the play. His is not a production that sticks to the script; he takes the liberty to cut off and add scenes and the storyline is not untouched.

Maduabuchi Cosmas directed the University of Nigeria, Nsukka’s production of Obari Gomba’s Grit.

In the script we learn of how Oyesllo’s (Orok Jephthah Honey) mother died through the words of his wife, Nmade played by Amadi Chioma Favour, who was a witness, in Maduabuchi’s production this action is brought to the stage. In fact, it is the opening scene. The chaos is well depicted, with the shouts and smokes and sounds of confusion and fighting. In the performance the thug slit her throat while in the script she was shot. In the script we learn of Oyesllo’s killing of that particular thug from Matefi (Eze Faith Amarachi), but in the production he appears in his military uniform tracking and stalking the murderer before shooting him.

The director seems to take to heart Oyesllo’s rebuke of Okote (Nfiaji Anaya Charles), “I retired as a war hero, you resigned because of mental illness,” as we do not see on stage, from the beginning to the end of the play, anything that would suggest that Okote was in the military just like Oyesllo. Even the gun Okote gave Bulu, his girlfriend, never made it to the stage. We only have words to tell us about Okote, both as a soldier and as a medical doctor.

By the end of the play, it is clear that the director does indeed have his bias towards Oyesllo, who he makes the hero of the play (as against Pa Nyimenu who is the hero in the script). In the production, it is Oyesllo and not Pa Nyimenu (Odunwankpa Emmanuel) and his reassembled Grit Club who discovere the plot to eliminate him and his brother. In fact, the director wants the audience to know that Oyesllo has always known about the plot since White-Eye, leader of the DPA thugs, was his friend in the Army and now acts like a kind of spy for him. Pa Nyimenu and his Grit Club were therefore reduced to being the ones to grant permission for Oyesllo and his young followers to do with the schemers as they want, a proper retirement of the old men.

Questions may be raised on the logic of Oyesllo knowing about this plot, and still allowing himself, and his unknowing brother to be exposed to all the risks clashing political parties. There is a loophole here though, which is well exploited by the director. The fact that White-Eye, the leader of the DPA thugs, always makes sure that such clashes end only in minor injuries might indeed be a sort of agreement they reached so as to make the hunters not know that they are being hunted.

The director, I suppose, got this his idea of what he referred to as “reversed retribution,” from Okote’s encounter with Oyesllo earlier in the play. There, Okote had questioned Oyesllo as to the rationale behind his association with the family’s enemies for political purposes, and when Okote was unconvinced with his reason of wanting to regain his manhood, Oyesllo said, “Let us try another angle. Consider this a noble cause to blend with those political pigs, topple them, recreate the system, and give people-oriented governance to our constituents.” For Okote, this is nothing but an afterthought of Oyesllo’s even though Oyesllo maintains that to be his main plot. There is nothing in the script to suggest that this was not an afterthought as Okote believes, but the director here takes creative liberty to make that the main plot of Oyesllo’s political career.

This redemption of Oyesllo may be informed by the director’s belief that when Nigerian citizens look upon the political rulers as the source and summit of their problems, they may be looking at the wrong directions as this visible rulers may just be “instruments [used] by unknown corrupt elites,” an insight he said was deepened as he took upon the role of directing Grit. This redemption was done to a modest success.

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka Production Wins and Missed Opportunities 

It is puzzling why in his production, the gender of Yasuo (Obasi Chiamaka Esther) who was a man in the script was changed to a woman. I suspect that the director wants to present the picture of a strong woman in the play. The success of that is what is nonexistent though. The picture of the strong woman we already have in Pa Nyimenu’s wife, and even in Matefi, even though Matefi’s strength is employed to an evil end. Presenting Yasuo as a woman in fact aids in the depreciation of women in Sonofa. It means that apart from the late women leader, every other woman in the play is either a lamenting partner, like Nmade or Bulu (Orintunsin Ajidaikeoluwa), a gullible follower like the women following Matefi, or an evil schemer like Matefi and Yasuo themselves. If the idea was to give women more participation in the play, then the director actually had the opportunity of fully developing the character of Bulu, an opportunity he let slip through his hand.

Beyond the story though, Maduabuchi Cosmas’ Grit was a technical failure. The production is mired by a visible lack of research. The District Police Officer, Kakwa (Smoke Sunday) for example wears the rank of a sergeant, which when one considers that Sonofa is Nigeria in all but name, is not possible. An officer of such a low rank as that of a sergeant can never be the District Police Officer. The DPO, played by Amoke Sunday forgets himself and mistakenly refers to another character as the DPO. As if that was not enough, at the police station the policeman brings out Okote who is under custody and leaves him with his visitor. Alone. What prevents them from escaping, one wonders.

The Sound Manager, Ikpo Christian Osaka, seems to not know that when a gun is fired, and there is no silencer attached to the gun, a gunshot is heard. In all the scenes where there were gunshots, we only see whoever is wielding the weapon cork and conclude that the gun has been fired when we see the target fall to the ground. In cases where there were no targets, like when Oyesllo fires into the air to scare the women gathered in their family compound, the audience must have to interpret the movements of his hand to denote the action. No sound is heard of the corking; no sound of the firing.

The makeup artists (led by Eze Kosisochukwu Sandra) joins in this unnecessarily tasking of the audience’s imagination by never having blood or any implication of it on stage. Even when Pa Nyimenu’s wife’s throat is  slit in the full glare of the audience. The makeup artists also failed to show us that the members of the Grit Club are old men as they claim. Save for the application of white powder on their hair to give them grey hairs, nothing else presents these men as old. This is made worse by Pa Panti (Emeka Kingsley Onyedikachi) and Pa Baatom (Okafor Kingsley) who in their acting never present as old men.

In a similar manner, the costume group, led by Ugwu Amarachi Marycynthia, presented us with members of the Grit Club, who supposedly operate clandestinely and covertly, wearing a uniform that bears their club names, in public. What then is covert about their operation? Let’s not even mention that from behind the stage, we could see the smoke-emitting machine and the hand operating it, clearly from the audience.

Odunwankpa Emmanuel, with his rendition, saved the night. He fully embodied the character of Pa Nyimenu and while the makeup artists failed to make him look like an old man, his presence on stage is that of an old man who is blessed with wisdom having seen a lot in his days as an activist. Obasi Sopuruchi in a similar man also portrayed Bambo as a “big man,” the sort referred to by Matefi—the sort of big man that sends the small men to die in his battle.

The orchestra and the chorus also electrified the theatre making the long scene changes not felt by the audience.

There are a lot of lessons for the budding theatre makers  at the university of Nigeria Nsukka to take away from the production and Maduabuchi Cosmas’ staging of Obari Gomba’s Grit is a commendable attempt especially in its presentation of an alternative interpretation of the play in its redemption of Oyesllo.

 

This article appeared in The African Theatre Magazine on April 26, 2024, and has been reposted with permission. To read the original article, please click here.