Nigerian Playwrights and the Question of Leadership: A Focus on Some Nigerian Plays

Abstract

Literature, as a discipline, is cross-disciplinary. It cuts across every aspect of human life and has become a means of tackling issues that are beneficial to man as a social being. Nigerian playwrights have utilized this medium to express themselves on the issue of leadership in their societies. The major preoccupation of this paper, therefore, is to explore how Nigerian playwrights, through their works, expose the issue of leadership. Being a qualitative research, the population of this study comprises all Nigerian plays, and with the use of postcolonial theory of literary criticism, three African plays by three Nigerian playwrights deliberately selected to cover, at least, two of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria namely: Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, Emeka Nwabueze’s A Parliament of Vultures, and Dochie Ilechukwu’s All Honourable Men are analysed. Through the exploration of characters and certain incidents in the plays, it is discovered that bad governance, corruption, and greed have become synonymous with leadership in Nigeria. This study advocates for good governance which can explicitly or otherwise bring unity and progress in the country.