Conveners: Dr Peter Brooke and Dr Rachel Taylor
Speaker: Dr. Obari Gomba, TORCH Global South Visiting Professor, University of Oxford
Abstract
This research examines and analyses the depiction of intra-regional conflicts in selected historical plays that are set in the colonial era of Nigeria’s resource-rich Niger Delta region. The plays in focus are Miesoinuma Minima’s King Jaja or the Tragedy of a Nationalist and Odum Egege, Ola Rotimi’s Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, and Ahmed Yerima’s The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen. The plays depict two regional centres of power and their extensive control. Rather than situate the texts in the context of Nigeria’s Pre-Independence nationalism against British rule, attention is given to intra-regional otherness and its resultant conflicts. Beyond the capacity of Colonial Britain to divide-and-rule its spheres of control, how do the plays show the tendencies, motivations, tensions, dichotomies, and disharmonies between/amongst the ethnic nationalities of the region? The plays indicate that the fractious region undermined itself even in the face of Britain’s ruthless hegemony.
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