By Rex Odoemenam

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want… Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic….”

– Oscar Wilde

In defining ourselves in a world wherein  faced with defacing forces of obliteration and fierce historic distortions and alterations and twistings to sustain the image of why evil against a people is necessary, it is important to write our stories and give account of ourselves with our fiercely attacked dignity shaped as they should and as they have always originally been. Cultural and historical figures and stories are not just stories therefore but function in the proper placement of a peoples’ collective esteem.  And that is why Yamtarawala, the Warrior King is a very important historical and cultural piece of evidence by every grip of the imagination. To be amazed by this almost entirely previously unwritten but bold character is to be amazed by how much of us is yet not told, and others shrouded in curiously mystifying distortions as is the objective of those in whose interest it is for our past to be seen as only a representation of gloom and darkness and backwardness from which redeeming savagery, evils and decapitations were necessary thresholds without which their gracious light may never upon our path shine.

The story revolves around a central eponymous character, Yamtarawala, also known as Yamtar, with Yamtarawala translating to Yamtar the great one – or something in that likeness. The story begins from before his birth, with the circumstances surrounding his birth, unknown to him and beyond his control. His mother, a few weeks pregnant captured queen, meets the favour of the captor king who marries her as second wife being childless from his first marriage. Although a closely guarded secret even unknown to the king himself, the son from the alien pregnancy stands to be king upon the death of the reigning king, but the opposition of palace guards aware of the secret prompts the kingmakers to consult a marabout who declares the second and younger son Umar rightful son and heir to the throne through the help and clarity of a revered marabout. The protagonist Abdullahi, later to be known as Yamtarawala, angry and feeling unjustly treated flees the kingdom of Ngazargamu, the capital of Kanem-Bornu Empire, on a conquest mission to found the  Biu Kingdom south of Borno State in present-day Nigeria. It is this conquest venture and empire seeking and successful execution that this story dramatises, a difficult feat to theatrically achieve successfully.

The central thrust of the drama revolves around the inevitable thrope of female characters who catalyse the events and as well as crystalise them into multiple gradual graceful resolutions one after the other. If one argues for the gullibility of the female princesses of Mandaragrau, Miringa ( Kwatam-Gambo), Diwar (and Jaina her maid ), one then looks back logically to see that it was the queen mother, Yamtarawala’s mother, who artfully hid her pregnancy albeit for a reason, and made a complete fool of the king and indeed his kingdom that set the whole place ablaze in the first place. So the playwright employed  the cathartic purging of a sickness through the venom of the poison. For indeed none other may have been as effective as the redeeming path the sacrificials of the princesses offered.  To, therefore, bandy misogyny for easy labeling and dismissal and to suggest any difference in result ( perhaps format ) of the maraboutal DNA verification and the raging war on modern techniques of DNA verification in the face of the tragedy of pervasive paternity untruths of present-day, and the action and reaction of the queen in the light of present day DNAs of many a ‘princesses’ is to totally misjudge the playwright and condemn the artist for daring to speak truth to ostrich playing.

Straightway therefore, the first merit of this piece of creative art is its cultural and historical redeeming importance and purpose and any failings in this recognition is a total flop. The import of history is the wealth that comes forth in this cultural and historical drama. The Bansuwe dance, the Waksha Washa and Mwar Mwari dances. Allusion to historical locations, names, places, historical figures and tracing of myths and origins around people’s legends is a fascination that this drama holds. From Limbur, Gujba, Mandaragrau, Miringa, Gur, Buratai, Diwar, river Gongola, Kopchi to the Mandara Mountains, the 109 page drama is a historical and cultural well researched literary toast.

One major strength of this drama is the unmistakable soundness of stage techniques with special attention paid to performative theatricals. Dramatization of historicised War, Conquest, Migration and Conflict on stage is not an easy theatrical feat but the playwright handled it without any hint of clumsiness. One very effective technique utilized is the narrator who stood in the theatrical gap as the on-stage omni storyteller through whom insights are given into the directions of the drama and the characters. The weight of the undramatised historical aspects of the drama rests squarely on the playwright’s effective use of the omni-narrator who, with ease, bridged time and space for both reader and audience.

Language and characterization are usually a template upon which character strength is examined, for it is often through the words of the characters that their actions and personalities are X-rayed. Many times characters are redeemed through their words and many actions confusing to the reader or audience find meaning through the insight of the words of the characters giving reasons for their inner motivations. An absent heightened language use could have done more for the characters given that they are nobles and royalties, but, again, the period of empire founding and migration and wars are very difficult times and rarely times of finesse and gaiety, making the simplified language option of the playwright fitting for his purpose. In fact, the language should be rustic, crude, raw, brazen with attention paid to perhaps only warrior and survival spirit. Which is why I assume that the most common words of the eponymous protagonist -Yamtarawala-were ‘… our struggle… freedom…history…’ (p.25) were deliberate. Where simplicity took the place of heightened language, excellent theatricals and dramatization made up fully for the effective realization of the characters and their objectives.

Here, too, the playwright didn’t embark on elaborate multiple characters to dwell on but chose strategic characters to navigate into, while working his way clinically through a drama with epic  dimensions and characters worthy of epic deeds.

In conclusion, I do feel that part 6 of the drama is in itself an unnecessary affix to the Yamtarawala conquest story. I think it is deserving of its own independent exploration as a separate story entirely since stories about and around historical and mythical figures can be told and retold in varying ways and this in itself is no flaw in relation to the drama piece, Yamtarawala, the Warrior King, especially as this part enabled the playwright to achieve awe and mystique for the character of Yamtarawala who really can’t be said to have died nor was truly vanquished by anyone.

•Rex E. Odoemenam is a poet, author and Founder, Confluence of Future Arts, CFA, Abuja.

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