Representations of Yoruba Political History in Drama and their Implications for Yoruba Nationalism

Abstract

The political history of modern Yoruba society is replete with ancient civil wars that nearly tore apart the entire Yoruba nation. The significance of these wars lies in how their understanding and reinterpretation have influenced and reshaped certain cultural epistemes of Yoruba identity, as represented in cultural products such as drama and film. Playwrights of Yoruba extraction have published a considerable number of dramatic texts on Yoruba political history and civil wars. However, only a few of these playwrights go beyond merely chronicling events as they occurred in the past; most do not attempt to reinterpret these incidents to foster a robust Yoruba national consciousness. This paper, therefore, critiques two dramatic texts—Adebayo Faleti’s Basọ̀run Gáà and Wale Ogunyemi’s Kiriji—because of their relevance to discourses on the quest for internal cohesion within the Yoruba ethnic group. The study finds that the genesis of Yoruba internal crises, which eventually culminated in the civil wars, can be traced to the mismanaged euphoria that followed the Abiodun-Gaa power tussle in the Old Oyo Empire. Kiriji, on the other hand, reveals that the last major Yoruba civil war—the Ekiti-Parapo War—ended only physically at the battlefronts, with little effort made to reconcile the underlying issues that led to the conflict. Although Yoruba playwrights have taken significant steps to document these civil wars, they could make a greater impact by infusing their works with creative reinterpretations of these historical events, thereby contributing to the broader project of Yoruba nationalism.