Drama Creativity and Solution to Human Problems: Niger Delta Crisis Resolution

Abstract

No invention or creativity is absolute or done in a vacuum. Every single creative invention except God‟s, is built on previous existence. Every scientific or literary creator builds on already existing foundation and has a target human problem he desires to solve. Liberation struggles all over the world have proved to be rich source material for creative writers. Maji Maji uprising which gave birth to kinjeketile by Ebrahim Hussein, Mau Mau anti- colonial guerilla movement which gave life to Trials of Dedan Kemathi by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Micere Mugo are uncontroversial paradigms. Here in Nigeria the Niger Delta oil crisis, a historical antecedent rooted in the colonial experience was one of such struggle and is still ongoing. The urgency and the general impetus provoked by the situation are as a result of this fact that Niger Delta is the mainstay of Nigeria‟s major foreign exchange earnings. The struggle for economic and political emancipation has thus not only attracted the world's media but has become the main subject matter of novelists, poets and playwrights. The main thrust of this paper is to prove that dramaturgy in its immediacy is an indispensable tool for crisis resolution from the literary window provided by JP Clark‟s Wives Revolt and Ahmed Yerima's Hard Ground. From the plays, it is glaring that economic dependence, gender equality struggle, deprivation, unemployment, oppression, and marginalization, land, water and air pollution are the main problems that need urgent solution in the area. The paper unveils the playwrights‟ solution as protest, dialogue, economic empowerment of the youth, poverty alleviation as imperatives to conflict resolution but more sternly is Yerima's warning that the world does not listen to young men in head bands with AK47 guns in swamp who are more of guerilla fighters. Yerima rather suggests that the citizens should acquire education to make a meaningful protest. The paper submits that drama is a virile medium through which society can conscientize themselves during struggles by providing attitudes and values which lead to solving human problems.