The panel of judges that awarded this year’s prestigious NLNG-sponsored Nigeria Prize for Literature to the university lecturer, devoted poet and playwright, Obari Gomba, might have been swayed by the emotional accuracy of the language and the contemporary relevance of the subject matter in the play Grit. The soliloquy which sets the mood for this highly discursive play is delivered in the opening scene by one of the central characters known as Pa Nyimenu. He is the patriarch of a family in which a dilemma of tragic misunderstanding is provoked by personal ambition and anti-social political greed. As a result, disenchantment and jealousy become the major emotions deployed in the relationship of his two sons, Oyesllo and Okote, who allow themselves to be seduced by public adulation and political manipulation to become political rivals. This underlying hostility provokes the dramatic conflict that the play’s main arguments are built upon until it is revealed that they have been misled by political provocateurs who are operating as co-conspirators. This revelation unveils the fallacy of the traumatic dilemma of filial treachery which provides the core motivation for the play’s discourse and some of the brilliant rhetorical exchanges that are at the heart of the work. This relationship provides a foundational tale through which the playwright conducts his definitive examination of the reality of political dysfunction in modern African society.
In achieving this, Gomba has exhibited a remarkable talent for using language to build character through the deployment of conversational exchange. This is especially effective in the sections of the play that concern the relationship between two women who are wife and paramour of Pa Nyimenu’s sons. The resolution of the major breach of familial treachery that arises out of the core events narrated in this play is fundamental to the relationships that emanate from the co-habitation of both couples. As a consequence, the women, Nmade (Oyesllo’s wife) and Bulu (Okote’s paramour) emerge as full drawn characters and important protagonists in the intellectual construct of the play. There is hardly any doubt that this aspect of the author’s achievement might have helped to convince the judges that he was worthy of the prize. Gender relevance is an important factor in judging the value and cognate reliability of any contemporary creative work, and on that score this work is overwhelmingly triumphant. In fact, the references made to Oyesllo’s mother, a dead woman, are of such importance that the symbolic focus of feminine martyrdom evolves as a key to the historic imperative of the play. When the final section of Grit restores Pa Nyimenu’s dominance both rhetorically and in terms of narrative relevance, the deference with which he addresses the women suggests that an important part of the message, that the play is meant to deliver, is that of balance and respect in human relationships across genders.
In judging a play from the page rather than from the stage, the judges might have been at a disadvantage in assessing the visual impact of the play and the veracity of its location. However, as we have observed early in this assessment, the main structure and dramatic objective of Grit is its discursive formality. Apart from Gomba’s fluent literacy, the dynamic way in which he deploys popular dialect as an integral element of the overall linguistic expertise that he employs must have impressed the judges. As the play progresses towards its profoundly reflective and somewhat disturbing end, the focus is returned to the moral assumptions and imperatives which are dynamically proclaimed by Pa Nyimenu. Although the action ends in tragic uncertainty for the two sons of the patriarch, his own survival under circumstances of declared revolutionary antipathy is a surprising outcome that turns the play into a cautionary tale in which the reader or the onlooker is being alerted to the resilience and determined existence of GRIT as a quality of life. The judges who chose this play as the winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2023 might have regarded it as a wholesome commentary on Nigeria’s contemporary political circumstance, and if so, they took a very suitable decision.
By Lindsay Barrett
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