It has been 40 years since the Nigerian theatre colossus Chief Duro Ladipo died in his prime. But his wife and children, financed by the Lagos State Government marked the anniversary with a command performance of Ajagun Nla (the Great Warrior) at the National Theatre in Lagos, Nigeria.
Ajagun Nla is one of the unpublished and unproduced (perhaps too, unfinished) plays written by late Duro Ladipo. It was acted by a cast of 87 including some of Duro Ladipo’s children.
Ajagun Nla was directed by Nigeria’s first professor of dance – Prof. Bakare Ojo Rasaki who camped for rehearsals with his cast of 87 in Osogbo, late Ladipo’s home town, ahead of the command performances which began in Lagos, moved to Ibadan, Oyo State, and rounded off in Osogbo, Osun State.
Ajagun Nla ran through a simple plot laced with grand betrayal meshed in a web of lies and distrust. It told a story of how battles are won or lost on the bed of naivete and the walkway of deceitSet in the historic old Oyo empire, Ajagun Nla opened on stage with Fulani herdsmen invading Oyo and killing indigenes – an allusion to current agitation in Nigeria.
The Alaafin of Oyo then summoned the empire’s strongest warrior, Ajagun Nla and commanded him to rout the Fulani herdsmen.
To carry out the king’s order, Ajagun Nla summoned his warlords; Olugbon, Aresa and Onikoyi. With these four herding their soldiers against the invaders, the Fulani herdsmen knew they were doomed.
Rather than scamper or surrender, they bribed a Yoruba man handsomely to betray his fatherland by sowing discord among the warlords. The mole did just that.
Ajagun Nla lost his warlords to betrayal and death. He was alone; his ranks broken, his arsenal emptied and his will to fight heavily dissipated. The performance lasted two hours. It was captivating till the end.
At the end, the message was: No house or people divided can stand, let alone win a war (against poverty, injustice, inequality, neocolonialism, insurgency, terrorism and corruption as in Nigeria’s present dilemma).
The cast and crew camped at the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding, Osogbo.
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