Political Order and Revolutionary Vision in Select Plays of Femi Osofisan and Effiong Johnson

The select plays of Femi Osofisan, namely The Oriki of a Grasshopper (1986) and Fires Burn and Die Hard (1989), and Effiong Johnson’s The Fight Has Just Begun (2000), and Not without Bones (2000), set aside for critical examination in this paper, characteristically delineate the complicated socio-cultural trajectory of postcolonial state condition. The day-to-day encounters of the mass of society, and the difficult landscape of political and moral corruption, social upheavals, with the recurrent contradictions of widespread poverty in the midst of plenty, worsening state of underdevelopment and disorderly live of society as captured in these plays, converge to drag Nigerian nationhood behind in the comity of fast progressing nations of the world. In the listed plays, corruption, oppression and leadership failure put the people in dire straight, to the extent that the playwrights are compelled to push for revolutionary change. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the strategies by which the two playwrights use their artistry as veritable tool to chart the roadmaps to revolutionary transformation of society. These texts thus embody the daily realities that confront society and the quest for reconstruction and regeneration of a better world. The conclusion of this paper is that through creative activism and well-articulated developmental vision, the two playwrights represent in their texts and performances, the way forward towards realizing a more inclusive and a better world order.

Keywords: Femi Osofisan Effiong Johnson Revolutionary Vision Dramatic Art Postcolonial State

Author

• Etuk, Ime Asuquo
  Department of General Studies
  Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic
  Ikot Osurua, Ikot Ekpene