Dramatising ‘Recession’ and Total ‘Black-out’ in Nigerian Ivory Towers

Abstract

Artistic commitments in Africa, Nigeria in particular, have continued to countenance the various socio-political as well as the economic adversities that have plagued the eclectic spheres within which the human agencies constantly attempt to make a meaning of their existence. Therefore, that the various segments in the Nigerian society have entered pervasive moral recessions is not so unpopular, but the fact that other specific clusters unofficially saddled with the responsibility of reasonableness and conscience pricking have discarded such roles is more worrisome and a little appalling. The foregoing is a given in the placement of academic institutions in Nigeria, just like some others all over the world, which started by occupying the front burner in the annals of good governance, probity, accountability and the entrenchment of the rules of law and respect for human dignity. However, the above is no longer the case in view of the fact that the definite lines demarcating the ivory tower from the recklessness of other societal segments have not just been blurred but eliminated. This portends the long-time onslaught and abandonment suffered in the face of government insensitivity and policy somersaults over the years. It is going by the aforementioned that this paper aims to make a critical reading of Seiza Mike Aliu’s play, Mid-day Blackout (1998), to interrogate, among many other socio-political engagements, how the ivory tower has shifted and drifted from the high echelon of orderliness to the perilous abyss of disorder and anarchy. The paper seeks to argue that negative elements have a surreptitious manner of eroding those that are seen to be good. It also makes a statement about the little success that the various agitations by a select few who have always chosen to stand at variance with the state, hegemonies and their representatives have recorded. However complicated drawing a conclusion is, the paper paradoxically opines that there might be the need to import some form of impetus from without, that is the bankrupt larger world, in order to reinforce the simmering extant iconoclastic embers within the ivory tower. Obviously, a more rigorous intervention is needed to light up the pervasive mid-day black-out.