A historical play of an outstanding artistry

A review of Henry Akubuiro’s’ Yamtarawala, the Warrior King’ nominated for the 2023 Nigeria Prize for Literature by HILARY NJOEGBU.

HENRY Akubuiro has devoted almost two decades to literary journalism and promoting Nigerian literature. He first shook the literary landscape by publishing his debut novel, ‘Prodigals in Paradise’, which he uses to paint the tapestry of wanton poverty in Nigeria. The book garnered considerable acclaim in 2016. He has also experimented with the short story genre, but only a little was to be heard about the short stories.

While it was about the time critics concluded that Akubuiro should concentrate on his literary promotion as a journalist instead of diving into the creative scene where he lacked the oxygen to survive, he took the literary audience by storm with the publication of his ‘Yamtarawala, the Warrior King’, a play which, out of more than 140 others, has made it to the final three in the 2023 NLNG Prize for Literature. As we speak, Akubuiro’s ‘Yamtarawala’ stands every chance to clinch the most coveted and revered literature Prize in Africa.

‘Yamtarawala, the Warrior King’ is a breathtaking suspense-filled historical play that dramatises the thrilling, untold/forgotten story of the Biu people of the former Kanem Borno empire. The play pointedly focuses on the rise and fall of Mai Yamtarawala, who, through carefully crafted internal conflict of doubt surrounding his paternity, Prince Abdullahi, as he then was, the supposedly rightful heir to the throne of Ngazargamu, is denied his late father’s throne. Frustration and the quest to fulfil his destiny propelled Prince Abdullahi to enlist seventy-two loyal men and embark on a long empire-conquering journey to establish the mighty Biu empire in the Borno State of today. Using the intrigues of love, the tragic hero, Prince Yamtarawala, conquers many villages and foils the charms of even stronger villages like the Miringa and Diwar people, famed for using juju in warfare. However, and typically of African tragedy, the hubris to remain eternally invincible and the quest to conquer even his own family, King Yamtarawala bows to the cold hands of death.

At a time when people are clamouring that history as a subject be brought back to secondary school, Akubuiro leads the course by throwing off the coat of journalism and putting on the armour of a history teacher to remind us of who we were during the 9th to 16th centuries. The amount of information in this dramatic piece—names of historical figures, historical places and figures in the Kanem empire—whets the reader’s appetite for historical records of the Kanem Borno empire.

The Biu Emirate, the main setting of the historical novel, is in Borno State, in the northeastern part of Nigeria, the infamous headquarters of Boko Haram. A mention of Biu or Borno State sends cold, fearful chills down the spine of many. Borno State has been in the news for over a decade for all the wrong reasons—bloodletting and insurgency.

What Akubuiro has done in his theatrical effort is to model the travelling character, Yamtarawala, by crossing River Niger and many other states up to Biu Emirate to exhume the never told history of Borno people. By doing so, Akubuiro reverses the ugly story about the Kanem Borno people and puts them on the podium for a better reason. Akubuiro’s effort in ‘Yamtarawala’ not only announces the people to the literary audience but also helps to allay the fears of Borno people and puts them on the national landscape for other creatives to explore.

What makes ‘Yamtarawala, the Warrior King’ such a page-turner is not only the topicality of the themes it explores, such as bravery, paternity issues, African belief, betrayal, and dynamism of history, amongst others, but also its manner of rendition. The finesse with which Akubuiro handles the language and sprinkles Arabic vocabulary foregrounds the play as a core northern play. A careful reading shows a lush and deluge display of mastering the culture of the people. One who does not know the playwright personally will conclude that he is from the north or a devout Muslim. Also, Akubuiro’s use of very long dialogues by the narrator makes it easy to read and accessible to all learners, with very few regressions associated with the drama genre.

Although the motif majorly revolves around war and empire conquering, Akubuiro’s purpose or largest interest is to use theatrical violence to preach peace to Northeastern Nigeria paradoxically bedevilled by insurgency to give peace a chance. He achieves this by deftly converting all the war scenes into a mere narration or mime—depicted through stage direction. What Akubuiro implies is that violence should not have a place on our stage. Akubuiro intentionally condemns any form of theatre of war we see in Northern Nigeria by avoiding the dramatisation of a single drop of blood on stage.

The play runs like a very straight line, a plot that supports its historical motif, but going back in time or showing how King Umar rules the people of Ngazargamu would have added more beautiful complexity and reality to the play. Even when Mai Yamtarawala says, “Yau ma tara wal (one day, we will meet again)”, no mention or show is made of the Ngazargamu people after Prince Yamtarawala left his ancestral home; they never saw again.

However, ‘Yamtarawala, the Warrior King’ is a work of outstanding artistry. Through a simple but tight plot, near-human character creation, palpitating suspense, clear prosaic dialogue with the effulgence of Arabic spicing, infusion of song, dance, gap-filling narrator, chorus, and other dramatic devices, ‘Yamtarawala, the Warrior King’ ascends the hall of fame and stands shoulder to shoulder with other historical masterpieces like ‘Attahiru’ and ‘Iredi War’ by Ahmed Yerima and Sam Ukala respectively. With ‘Yamtarawala’ on that exalted literary podium, it recommends itself to all lovers of African literature. It forewarns Nigerian writers and critics that Akubuiro’s free dive into the creative scene is not to take part but to take over.