The play is titled Tafawa Balewa Golden Voice of Africa. Written by Ola Awakan and directed by Denja Abdullahi, it was staged at Terra Kulture, Lagos, two weeks ago. In collaboration with the National Troupe of Nigeria, led by Kaltume Bulama Gana, the stage play highlights Balewa, the first Prime Minister of Nigeria, taking into consideration his early life, education and foray into politics. Balewa developed a peculiar voice that made him exceptionally outstanding in his public speeches, hence Golden Voice of Africa. Edozie Udeze watched the play.
It is a stage play titled Tafawa Balewa – Golden Voice of Africa. It was staged in Lagos recently. Written by Ola Awakan, a journalist and playwright, the idea of adapting the play to stage was to demonstrate the place of the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in the history of Nigeria. Long before the play was brought to Lagos, it was staged in Abuja to a bigger audience who applauded the importance of the drama and the role Balewa played in the decolonization and emancipation of Africa.
The story opened in retrospect. The stage suddenly opened with Balewa and a white lady, a princess of the British kingdom mounting the stage. Suddenly, the new Nigerian anthem begins to play. It is a sign that Nigeria is about to be given her freedom from England. The union jack is lowered, while the Nigerian green-white-green flag takes the upperhand. As Balewa stands erect on stage adorned in overflowing white attire with white cap, so also the British princess, the stage turns agog. The voice booms. Nigeria is today granted her freedom. It is now a sovereign nation, a nation that is free to be called an independent nation.
The Nigerian flag, fresh and untainted is raised higher than ever, as Balewa takes over the mantle. He is gentle, he is meticulous, wearing a bright smile that defines hope and expectation. While he stands on the stage bestriding the new era that is about to commence, the princess looks askance, somewhat at the union jack as it flows downwards towards mother earth. Then the new Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa intones in his usual efficacious and characteristic voice, “today marks a new dawn in the history of our nation, Nigeria. We have to contend with unity in diversity. Peace will help us to build this new nation called Nigeria as we move forward. Today, we look forward to that peace that will usher in prosperity. It is a new dawn indeed. It is therefore with great joy and honour that I announce to you all that it is our independence. From today, this hour, Nigeria ceases to be an appendage of any foreign nation. Our freedom starts today as Britain hands off and gives us what is ours to manage and administer”.
As he speaks, heralding in his legendary voice that used to pierce the surface of the earth, many excited Nigerians cheered, chorused, cried, clapped and jubilated. Voices of hope boomed from all corners as the stage suddenly assumes a hyper action. People stroll in from all corners to join in the joyous moods. This excites the crowd the more. Women begin to sing praises in honour of Balewa and those who fought to sustain Nigeria while she was explored, exploited and destroyed by Britain.
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Balewa looks like a colossus in his frail but elegant poise. He looks left and right and focuses more on the people. He has no prepared paper or speech from which he reads his address. But he is smart, articulate about it, no doubt, because he has a voice that has no comparison, hence the Golden Voice of Africa. “I will give all my service and time to Nigeria. Nigeria is a nation where all of us have the chance to contribute to make it richer and bigger”, he says as the stage suddenly comes alive with dances and songs. The celebration is now full blown. Varieties of songs laced in local songs and praises and dances take over the arena. Then Balewa exits the stage.
Dressed in local costumes and regalia, excited artistes and other Nigerians begin to display their level of happiness. Not only that the excitement is high, immediately Nigerian flag is finally hoisted on a higher platform, it flows higher with those bright colours of richness, hope and abundance. The play immediately witnesses three artistes representing Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa engaging in an argument about the direction Nigeria has to take to douse the angers of the past and move forward trying to manage our differences. This argument started soon after independence and each tribe as represented on stage tears at the heart of the matter. Incidentally, the differences along the line of mistrust and doubts were not resolved before the mantle was handed over to Balewa, and indeed to Nigerian leaders.
As the play comes into total view, the lights move on to the early life of Balewa in his locality in Bauchi. Having been raised almost exclusively by his mother, the young Balewa grew up with plenty of ideals of how to better a society. His immediate society of Bauchi first, then he began to associate with some young boys of same worldview in his locality. Unfortunately that sterner discipline of a father, Balewa’s father, as it were, was not seen in the picture. There was no father figure in the play to see how a father’s discipline shapes the life of a son.
And so his mother takes over his early life education. With a little discipline and pampering here and there, Balewa grows up to fall in love with education. Bauchi and its environs thus became his primary focus and attention. Soon the local authorities noticeD his propensity to knowledge, his zeal to indulge other boys in his avowed love to carve a new role for the people of his own generation. The outlook is to propel a new Nigerian society where the status quo can be made useless. The new boys in town must work to bring in new and fresh and workable ideas for Nigeria. Those were his thinking along with his group of idealistic friends when the native authorities discovered him.
In school, Balewa is studious. He is almost a loner, taking his lessons more seriously. This delights his mother, who pumps more money, more time into his education. It must be noted that as a young boy, Balewa was gifted with this wonderful golden voice. Once he observed that it was a rare gift, he started to perfect it. On stage, in school, in social gatherings, he uses it to attract people to himself. Soon, his voice becomes his foremost selling point. A booming voice that sends his words far into space, he also develops his elocution far above what Britain itself could contend with. Even then, his voice sounds like the voice of an oracle, that the colonial masters did not understand how a mere school teacher could sound so British, so resounding in his speech. So, he suddenly becomes an enigma, a man with an impeccable voice that stirs a soul. Indeed, he is the golden voice of Africa.
Balewa is primarily a family man. First and foremost as he keeps repeating, “I am first a family man. I love my family, first before I love the larger society”. This is his mantra. But on stage, when he finally takes over Nigeria, that mantra haunted him. Nigeria suddenly becomes more than a family for him to manage. It is observed from the stage that that narrow-mindedness of family before nation did not depart from him. Or he did not try to disengage himself from that attachment. Thus that goes to demonstrate why the bigger Nigerian project suddenly becomes too big for him to manage.
As the Bauchi local authorities picked him from the school where he taught to national limelight, Balewa immediately enlarged his political horizon to include friendship with people like the late Aminu Kano and others to champion the emancipation of the North and later the whole of Nigeria. Thus the play takes on a large coverage as more dancers, singers and drummers take on the message through dances and songs. Initially Balewa’s attention was to liberate Bauchi from the clutches of backwardness. His dream was local and abridged. But with the promptings of the Bauchi Native Authority, his horizon rose a bit higher to include parts of the North. The play limits him somewhat in order not to announce some of the loopholes in the preparation towards a bigger responsibility as Nigeria’s PM.
To make it stick, Husayn Zaguru that plays the role of Balewa on stage is classical. His role is clear and he represents Balewa as he fits fully into the character. He is tall, frail looking, black, and impeccable in his stage carriage. Apart from the absence of the remarkable facial mark on Balewa’s face, Zaguru who is a thorough-bred actor and seasoned artiste, who takes on the role with joyous aplomb. This was why the management of the National Troupe of Nigeria came in handy to collaborate with Awakan to take the play to different places. In her speech, the Artistic Director of the National Troupe of Nigeria in the person of Hajia Kaltume Bulama Gana said, “this is the time to show the place of some prominent Nigerians in the annals of the nation’s history. Balewa came at a time Nigeria needed him to move Nigeria forward. This play is a typical representation of what leaders need to do to advance their society. As the foremost dance troupe of Nigeria and a foremost cultural ambassadors of Nigeria, it is proper that we become a part of this wonderful play”, Bulama said through one of her directors, Oni.
Bulama loves theatre. She does all she can at the slightest opportunity to promote Nigeria’s cultural ideals. Her involvement in the promotion of stage plays and dances that touch on Nigeria’s unity has come to show how stage plays can be used to advance unity and cohesion. Bulama has done well in this regard. However, according to Awakan, the play has been staged in Abuja, the nation’s capital to show that Balewa was a former Prime Minister, indeed the first. He hopes also to take the play to Bauchi very soon. It is the home state of the Balewas and the play will also help to remind them about the role he played for the freedom of Nigeria. Awakan however acknowledged the fact that some deeper aspects of the play were left out for the sake of orderliness in the society.
As Balewa was looking on helplessly the operation wetie in Ibadan commenced. In the midst of this, lives were lost, chaos took over. In the meantime, corruption took over the surface of Nigeria. Then, the soldiers struck. That ends the play on that resounding note. With the booming of gun shots outside the presidential palace, the curtains were drawn on the First Republic. Thus a new era began in Nigeria and that is we are today. Some prominent people turned up to watch the play. Among them were Mr. Sam Omatseye of The Nation Newspapers, Lagos, Saidu Yusuf of Arewa in Agege, Lagos. Omatseye in his remarks noted that it was good to watch a play by Ola Awakan. He commended him for the way he treated the subject and made it a pleasant play on stage. “What he has done is part of history, a subject most students encountered in school. All these happened in the 1960s and we have some of those aspects of history replicated today on stage.
