Our land, our struggle, our dream: a poststructuralist reading of Niger Delta conflict rhetoric in Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground

Abstract

This article examines aspects of Nigeria’s Niger Delta conflict through a close reading of Ahmed Yerima’s play, Hard Ground, which explores and exploits the endemic unreliability and slipperiness of meaning as a way of understanding the conflict. The article analyses some of the vexed issues that come to the fore in the conflict between ethnic identities/loyalties and national interest which forms the background to the play. The article is informed by the poststructuralist approach to literature, showing how such an approach can be useful for bringing to the surface political tensions in a text. In so doing, it attempts a stylistic analysis of certain schemes and tropes in the play, demonstrating how these sometimes justify and at other times attempt to regulate the conflict of identities. Hence, the deconstructive reading of the text attempts to unpack fragmentations of meaning in the conflict rhetoric to reveal the commodification of language as site of struggle in the Niger Delta conflict. The study further shows the place of drama as a useful tool for addressing pressing sociopolitical issues that touch on leadership question, responsive governance and enduring conflict resolution strategies.