Bringing MKO Abiola Home

By Sam Omatseye

The play, Kashimawo, succeeds as a revival of interest in one of the icons of our democracy. Many expressed nostalgias about the enigma of Moshood Abiola, Kashimawo being his middle name. If only as a reminder of the times and the tortured era of military gestapo and the heroics of the times, I applaud Joseph Edgar for producing it and Professor Rasaki Ojo, who wrote and directed it at the Muson Centre during the Easter weekend.

For me, the play fails in mythicising a man whose story is myth enough. Portraying him as a fruit of Osun goddess is apocrypha. Abiola as a child survived after many died. As he told it himself, his parents expected him to die. Never in his life did his parents or Abiola say he was born of a shrine, and that his coming impoverished his father. He came from a poor family. He, a great dancer and singer in spite of his stutter, performed daily on the streets to secure balls of eba for the family. That was good enough material for a drama.

Presenting him as going to heaven in the hour of June 12 struggle minimizes his right to claim his mandate, as though God preferred having him to giving us democracy. That implies God prefers death to justice. The clever part of the tale is making Abiola rattle Death, who shows uncharacteristic sympathy for the hero. It makes Abiola larger than life enough to equal death, if not larger than death. That, I think, may have been further explored.

The acting, though, was classy. Actor Biodun Abey’s Abiola was particularly sunny, even though the author provides him a one-dimensional hero whose romantic peccadillos are barely hinted. Portraying his source of wealth might have put his personal sacrifices and heroics in more nuanced human contexts.

-The Nation