Towards a True Nigerian Theatre

I did not know very much about the circumstances surrounding the lynching of Deborah Samuel Yakubu in 2022, only that she had been a student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto and had been accused of blasphemy. I remember the mass outrage in the aftermath of the incident, but I also remember how quickly tempers were calmed: in only a matter of days, as is the norm on social media, attention had become diverted to other matters. Quite frankly, I had almost completely forgotten about the incident until one fateful evening, 17 November 2024, at the Wole Soyinka Theatre, University of Ibadan, where Professor Wole Soyinka’s latest play, Canticles of a Pyre Foretold, was being staged. It was the second outing of the play, and I had gone to see it with my friend. Despite the less-than-perfect production (the sound might occasionally be delayed, the lights might go off too soon, and always, you could see the crew milling about the stage at ‘lights out’, moving things around to set the next scene), it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. More than simply telling the story of the lynching, the play, which someone would later describe to me as inflammatory, attempts to present a thesis on religion while simultaneously offering a critique of Islamic excesses, amongst other topics.