Narrative of governance crisis in Nigeria: Allegory of resource curse and “Emergence” in Tunde Kelani’s Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò

Abstract

From the resource curse perspective, this article investigated how Tunde Kelani’s twin-movies, Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò, explored the vulnerability of leaders in natural-resource dependent state to corrupt practices, leading ultimately to governance crisis. Textual and mythical representations in the movies are critically analysed to explain the significance of tackling governance crises during the leadership-making process. Significantly, the article investigated the historical revisionism contained in the films as a predictive imagination of how the future (political-economy) will remain bleak in the face of the continued maladministration of the resources in Nigeria. Focusing on the socio-economic and political malaise that has continued to play out since the discovery of crude oil at Oloibiri community in Nigeria by mid-1950s, the article sought to unravel what Tunde Kelani’s allegorical postulations in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò reveal about leadership experiences of states depending solely on natural resources income. It explained how the absence of shared goal and dearth of mass mobilization strategies, which were successfully deployed in the films for denouncing despotism and yokes of elitism, are lacking in the present-day Nigeria. The insulations against irresponsible public administration, which the leadership-making process in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò rigidly built into the leadership-making process in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwo, arguably, showcase the consequences of unscrupulous choices emanating from gamed electoral system inherent in the modern liberal democracies. In doing so, the study showed how the conjoined films are a unique art that figuratively lends itself to explanations of leadership challenges arising from natural resource endowments.

Keywords:

• governance crisis in Nigeria
• Saworoide
• allegory of resource curse
• African culture
• African literature

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Focusing on the socio-economic and political discontent that has continued to play out since the discovery of crude oil in Nigeria by mid-1950s, the article explores the allegorical postulations in Tunde Kelani’s Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò to explain the leadership experiences of states depending solely on natural resources income.

1. Introduction

As colonialism lost its lustres, like an abandoned infant, and African states sprouted in quick succession, the language of engagement for and simple-mindedness in the politicisation of African art dominated literary discourses, among others (Wästberg, 1968). Thus, in the wake of Africa’s momentous 1960’s, some of Africa’s bright minds, Obiajunwa Wali, Chinua Achebe, and Wole Soyinka, respectively published The dead end of African literature (1962), English and the African writer (1965), The writer in an African State (1967) in the Transition magazine, a profound intellectual debate forum founded in Kampala, Uganda in 1959 (Reckord et al., 1997). The quintessential writers, soon to distinguish themselves as masters of the rolls in African fiction and reality genre, severally and jointly lamented the dearth of African (political) identity in most works of art emanating in the then Africa. To recalibrate the war of words, especially the polemical exchanges between Wali and Achebe on whether or not a work of art written in English is African literature, is undoubtedly a Herculean task that is nonetheless beyond the scope of this article. The material fact undoubtedly anchored in the missives is that African art cries for staple connections that are truly African. In 1967, Wole Soyinka wrote, “African writer had” suffered disillusionment from vindicating “the political moment of his society” (Soyinka, 1997, p. 352). Earlier in 1965, Chinua Achebe had equally pointed out the helplessness of African artists amidst a “world language that history has forced down [Africans] throats” (Achebe, 1997, p. 346). Obiajunwa Wali, the critic that threw the gauntlet in 1963, expressed the ordeals more stoically. For Wali, African literature, as it were, “lacks any blood and stamina, and has no means of self- enrichment … and has no chance of advancing African literature and culture” (Wali, 1997, pp. 332–333).

Thus, transliterating the seeming convergent “lamentations” of the writers would reveal that a common denominator that needed adjustment in African art, following the momentous 1960s, was the disconnect from the reality on the ground. As Chinua Achebe pointed out in 1965.

“After the elimination of white rule is complete, the single most important fact in Africa in the second half of the twentieth century will be the rise of individual nation-states. I believe that African literature will follow the same pattern”. (Reckord et al., 1997, p. 343)

While this article will not account for the wide gap and development in African literature since the 1960s, a modest attempt at showcasing how much of the issues got addressed in contemporary works of art is engaged. There have been the refocusing of African literature, though modest, as many would see it, from foreign language domination that Obiajunwa Wali lamented in 1962 while simultaneously reckoning with Chinua Achebe’s admonitions of the fruitlessness, if not helplessness, in an attempt to “abolish the language of the erstwhile colonial powers and still retain the facility for mutual communication” among “hundreds of autonomous communities”. One of such contemporary attempts undoubtedly played out in the movies series, Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò, produced by Tunde Kelani in 1999 and 2002, respectively. As subsequent analysis would show, the movies keyed into the adopted definition of African literature as “creative writing in which an African setting is authentically handled or to which experiences originating in Africa are integral” (Wästberg, 1968). The hails of the movies are its oxymoronic bearing on the cruel strain of politics on the people, which, as Bamgbose (2019) pointed out, portrays African post-colonial poems as the image of colonial experiences; and, in the words of Kalu and Falola (2019, p. 1), are a reflection of the “daunting challenges in the socio-political and economic” phenomenon in African states and inherited exploitative tendency of the colonial days.

In recent time, therefore, a fictional representation of political phenomenon in performing arts is not novel around the world and not in the least in Africa. As Tegel (2006) puts it, cinematographers had long battled with the Herculean task of separating style from content in the form of art and politics. A few, if any, have been successful as “the two cannot be kept separate” (Tegel, 2006, p. 185). Beyond Africa, the human race has deployed figurative arts to express abhorrence to inordinate ambitions, criminality, bad rule, larceny, illegal ascendancy to power, political upheavals, lousy leadership, and followership, and illegitimacy, among other social vices (Cheref, 2017; Herhuth, 2014; Mayne, 1976). Cheref (2017, p. 395) glowingly reported an Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s La Battaile l’Algier as “quite relevant to Middle Eastern politics and world peace” and so downright and carefully produced that the film “literally” became the global counterinsurgent training tools against global “political and religious insurgency”. Hume (2010) also wrote that David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart lends itself to more of “political content”, influenced profoundly by political dialogue like “modernism, postmodernism … capitalism”, than the concreteness or amateurishness of art for which they are celebrated. In the same vein, AMC’s The Walking Dead, though presented as a genre of science fiction, the television series nevertheless connects effectively to the “debate between tyrannical and democratic philosophies of political and moral governance” (Wright, 2017, p. 148).

Moreover, acceptance of and endearment to good governance have also found expression in literary appreciations of the audio-visual genre along with expressions of various kinds of emotional attachments like love, hate, faith belief, and the like ensembles (Boron, 2019; Lash, 2019; Mayne, 1976; P. Wilson, 1997). Writing on the political importance of online audio-visual as a medium for radical politics, Askanius (2012, p. 16) argued that online video media like YouTube provides a remarkable platform of an emerging method for restructuring the terrain of politics and “exhibits the changing modes of political engagement in contemporary liberal democracies”. In his epic book titled Culture and democracy in Serbia and Bulgaria: How idea shape publics, Dawson (2016) argued that video contents could reveal the state of the mind of a people while simultaneously signifying their “political standpoints”. As the author rightly stated, “video clips with political content, often posted with humorous or satirical intent” are a means for the public outcry against misrule and political socialisation in Serbia and Bulgaria (p. 113).

The representation of the social realities in literary works also resonates in Africa. Brozgal (2013) wrote of the scorching allegory of religious tolerance in 1966 Tunisia in Férid Boughedir’s 1996 Un Été à La Goulette movie. The genre was particularly common in the colonial and nationalisms periods, and the building up to freedom and immediate aftermath of political independence. During the apartheid era in South Africa, Africans presented many plays, writings, and works of arts from Africa and the diaspora towards freeing the South African people from the oppressive, tyrant regimes. Additionally, the periods of the transatlantic slave era have documented representations of political scenarios in songs, fine arts, writings and plays by writers, artist, playwrights, and singers (Adejumo, 2007). The writer further stated that post-colonial period that ushered in the modern liberal democratic dispensations, notably utilised visual arts to express political discontents.

No doubt, literary authors have provided the much-needed sociological respites to raise the hopes and aspirations of the people. In most works, however, the idea of emancipation from poverty, oppression, exploitation, and misrule have dominated the reels and writings of the sort. In the colonial era to be precise, substantial efforts were directed, as writers are united, at exposing and documenting malicious political intentions and economic manipulations ongoing in the colonies. At that time, the literary appreciation appeared limited to mainly the use of personal memoirs, fictions, and folklores for political advocacy and condemnation of colonial rule in the newly independent states. In a classic essay titled Images of colonialism in the text of two African female poets, Bamgbose (2019) detailed how early African poems revealed imagined the “anti-colonial ideological sentiments produced” about the shocking waves of “anguish and loss (psychological, spiritual, historical, and material) that colonialism caused in Africa”. Hayford’s (1911)Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race and Emancipation and Azikwe’s (1937) Renascent Africa, for example, were both voices of anger and messages of hope against colonialism and its oppressive policies (Shepperson, 1960; Ugonna, 1977). The language of engagement was mostly nationalistic by intent and purpose (Agovi, 1990). The post-colonial era witnessed literary works that focussed on the activities of the post-independent leaders who appeared to adopt the modus operandi of governance of the colonial periods (Olaiya, 2016). The writings and the audio-visual works continued in the emancipatory and critique manner apart from showcasing the uniqueness of African culture and tradition (Ugonna, 1977). Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died, a leitmotif piece of prison notes, detailed the decadence of and rots in high places in post-colonial Nigeria. Wole Soyinka observed, “[t]he artist has always functioned in African society as the recorder of mores and experience of his society and as the voice of vision in his own time” (as cited in Hayden, 1975, p. 542). However, the post-colonial periods witnessed numerous productions of drama and theatre play in comparison to colonial periods. As Agovi (1990) revealed, the colonial policies depicting African cultures as inferior and needing to be shaped or assimilated are responsible for the delay in mainstreaming African indigenous drama development.

The ingredients of the works complemented the struggle for change from the abyss for which African societies have been plunged into by colonial rule and its post-colonial offshoots. The exchanges in the poems by Mabel Segun A second Olympus and its Rejoinder by John Ekwere attest to the undoing that African trudged through from both colonial officials and the indigenous “inheritors” of powers after independences. Egudu (1975, p. 439) tagged this as double sorrows—those unleashed by haughty colonisers and “those [African] countries which now call themselves independent have to grapple with—sorrows generated by their own men, or otherwise by the ghost of colonialism”.

Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò uniquely showcased the possibility of the emergence of African societies from impoverished conditions to that of greatness and good governance. Some writings on the nostalgic pre-colonial greatness of African societies became reconstructed into stage-acted plays and liberation stories began to appear in reels. The torrential development of the film industries in the fashion of the American Nollywood further expanded the scope of the widespread influences of discourses on socio-political and governance challenges, societal values, and cultural ethos. Nigeria’s Nollywood and Ghana’s Ghallywood are perhaps the leading examples of the revolutionary production of films in the form of home video. Mostly, the period also made the production of films in local languages possible, thereby making films available to a broader audience (Alawode & Sunday, 2014).

It is possible to discern that the productions are attempts by playwrights to join issues with the “emergence” development discourse. The idea of “emergence” as a political discourse gained prominence in the 1980s to describe the change in political fortunes of nations mainly from negative occurrences to positive ones. However, the concept of “emergence” dated by to over a century ago (Sellars & Meehl, 1956) or perhaps in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Hodgson, 2000). Quoting Professor Pepper (1926), Sellars and Meehl (1956, p. 239) defined “emergence” as signifying “a kind of change … a cumulative change … in which certain characteristics supervene upon other characteristics” to reflect the occurrence of an epiphenomenal shift in a state of being. In the African works of art, however, “emergence” integrated a more emotional tune. The productions were significant in the “emergence” stories as most of them reflected the stories of cultural attraction and greatness of Africa’s past generations. Also, some films reflected on native wisdom that African societies utilised to govern the traditional societies, which could have assisted in schooling the so-called “new age” in traditional African values. Mostly, detailing the leadership process that culminated in the governance crisis, whether negative or otherwise, has not been well represented in arts.

The literature on curtailing the festering governance crisis in Africa often does not pay enough attention to myths and literary works of arts, including those emanating from audio-visual materials. However, some of the crises of governance in Africa have remained impervious to contemporary approaches born in the West and implemented in affected areas across the continent (Adeleke, 2004; Osaghae, 2000; Zartman, 2000). In the search for traditional wisdom or explanation, extant literature exists, for the most part, on literary and cinematic devices as responses to the anxieties of contemporary life on the continent. The most critical and contemporary, perhaps, is Adeoti’s (2014) Nigerian Video Films in Yoruba where he explicated the enhancing contributions of cinematography towards societal values, economic survivals, and cosmic harmony. Other notable works include Pius’s (2014) critical analysis of the literary and thematic features of Manu Joseph’s “The Illicit Happiness of Other People” and Chakraborty’s (2014) investigation of Kenyan nationalism, ethnicity, and gender issues in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s play The Black Hermit.

Other notable studies are Meyer’s (2010) work on the register of spiritual representations on videos; Akinyemi’s (2007) analysis of folkloric materials as instruments for raising social consciousness among the citizenry; Okome’s (2007) evocations of the videos as the voice and education of the urban dwellers; Adamu’s (2007); and Larkin’s (2000) discourses of Hausa videos as avenues for gender and generational advocacy within the norms of Islam and Hausa culture. Others include McCall’s (2004) reading of vigilante films as a popular demand for justice; Adesokan’s (2009) discussion of the response of “Nollywood” to the transformation of Nigeria’s social structure through the aesthetic possibilities enabled by video and digital technologies; and Haynes (2006) political critique in Nigerian video films. Ultimately, none of these studies focused on the all-important challenges associated with resource endowment and leadership crisis currently ravaging Africa. Also, the movies’ combined effect, where the first showcased failure of governance, and the other “emergence” from critical socio-political conditions in terms of post-military rule, has hardly attracted commensurate focus. At best, the existing works by Haynes (2006), Adesokan (2009), and Adeoti (2009) have combined either of Saworoide or Agogo-Èèwò with other movies of the political genre. Nevertheless, the original ideologue of failure of governance from resource dependence and the herald of hope that the twin movies represent cries for scholarly attention.

This study, therefore, mainly builds on the existing articles on home video as a framework for deepening citizens’ participation in the process of democratization and development and a medium for social reorganisation, cultural affirmations. However, while these works delved into the political genre in Nigerian home videos and the effect on the socio-political entity of the absolutist disposition in African rulers, this study is more in-depth and pungent by interrogating what Tunde Kelani’s series of epic movies, Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwọ, reveal about the root causes of the characterization of politics and dearth of development-driven leadership in a resource-rich state such as Nigeria. Thus, the study investigated and critically analysed the aesthetic constituents and communicative devices in Kelani’s Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwọ vis-à-vis leadership challenges emanating from resource endowments. In particular, it explored the leadership process and composition in Jogbo, an eloquent metaphor for Nigeria’s presidential system with the attendant crisis of resource-money misappropriation and leadership crisis. In the movies, Jogbo represented a monarchical community representing Yoruba part of Nigeria parodied after a modern state or supranational bodies. By exploring the adaptability of Kelani’s allegories to contemporary leadership crises in Nigeria, the work is made significant by its provision of a socio-linguistic analysis and hypothesis about functions of audio-visual materials in representing realities of daily existence in Africa’s resource-dependent states.

2. Research questions and methods

Based on the screens of Saworoide and Agogo Èèwò, depicted to represent the political environment of the Nigerian State, the study interrogated several questions. They include, but are not limited to:

• How do the muted and executed processes of “emergence” in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò appropriate the Nigerian situation of failure of governance and resource curse?

• To what extent does the staging of “emergence” represent the herald of hope from the resource-dependent crisis and expected liberation of Nigerians from patrimonial elitism?

• In what ways do beliefs and cooperation of the masses assist in the outcome of “emergence” in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò?

• How is the leadership process in the films represents departure from or convergence of Nigeria’s real political stage?

• What insights of the “emergence” do the movies hold for discourses on the political economy of people’s lives in Nigeria?

The study utilised both primary and secondary data. Primary data included elicitation of information about artistic constituents, cinematic devices, proverbs, myths, rituals, and other intrinsic literary values in the movies. The data were analysed using the qualitative methods of socio-linguistic analysis and proverb/myth interpretation. The literary values extracted from the films were analysed thematically, focusing on the films’ philosophical expositions about leadership crisis and corruptive tendencies in the advent of resource endowments, as well as the eventual “emergence” from the shackles of governance challenges.

This article hinges hugely on the allegorical narrative of the political situation of Nigeria from a work of art. As Richardson rightly pointed out:

“Since the time of Aristotle, narrative … has had a pronounced mimetic bias. Fictional works are largely treated as if they were life-like reproductions of human beings and human actions and could be analyzed according to real-world notions of consistency, probability, individual and group psychology, and correspondences with accepted beliefs about the world”. (quoted in Moosavinia & Baji, 2018, p. 2)

Allegorical work of art is somewhat rampant, even from the medieval times (Asay, 2013; Knapp, 2015) through to postmodern and contemporary eras (Cichosz, 2017; Dovey, 1988; Rosenbrück, 2016). As Brljak (2017, p. 697) argued, “the so-called middle ages were certainly the ages of allegory”. In “The allegory of love: A study in medieval tradition, Lewis (1958, p. 44) wrote of the “history of allegorical method” of social representation in a work of art as traceable to “classical antiquity”. For Lewis (1958), “allegory, in some sense, belongs not to medieval man but to man, or even to mind, in general” (p. 44). Though much more rampant in political appreciations, allegory has also been adopted to address many functional purposes like religion (Brozgal, 2013; Dimitriu, 2014; Khan, 2017; Knapp, 2014; Phair, 2010; Scalia, 2016; Shohat, 2006) to satire, raise rhetoric, promote, and suppress ideological systems (Hile, 2017; Milford & Rowland, 2012; Virtue, 2013; Xu, 2018); for “legal ownership and use” as contained in Chaucer’s Melibee (Taylor, 2009); Crime fictions and other moral suasions (Rolls et al., 2016); culture, gender, race, and ethnicity (Achinger, 2013; Gilfedder, 2016; Kaarst-Brown, 2017; R. C. Smith, 1949); and not in the least for pure appreciation of literary values, language, and cognitive figuration (Harris & Tolmie, 2011; Monelle, 1997; Rolls et al., 2016).

Writing about The Wire, a seasonal film that was aired of television from 2002 to 2008, Herbert (2012, p. 191) averred that the film is “an allegorical meta-narrative” of the undoing that showcased “the fabrications of a police officer and the self-serving lies of a reporter”. In other words, the film was meticulously produced to allegorise the pressing need for social reform. The author submitted that The Wire represented “much more than a TV show” that it was: it “engages in analysis, an argument” about the decadence of the society (p. 191). The multidimensionality of allegory is brought out in Věra Chytilová’s Calamity where Ptáček, 2019, p. 55) argued that aside from the “actual social and political crisis” addressed therein, “the title of the film … ’calamity’ produces three [allegorical] meanings” with more relevance to politics than art. It contains “a natural phenomenon, a social (and implicitly political) situation and an existential crisis” (Ptáček, 2019, p. 55). In all, literary appreciation called “allegory” for addressing social vices and politics, among others is not particularly novel in the literature.

3. Contextual settings of allegorical statehood in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò

A consensus appears to exist among the theorists about films as depictions or perceptions of the inventors. Among others, both Gilles Deleuze and André Bazin were accomplished film theorists of the mid-twentieth century who respectively wrote that films are “an idealistic phenomenon” (Totaro, 2003) and “not derivatives of experiences in the ‘real’ world” (Rushton, 2011, p. 126). Except for historical or biographical documentaries that strive to present the narrative of events as reasonably accurate as possible; therefore, the cognitive missives of movie productions are primarily to entertain or fill the void of fantasy. Ordinarily, movies are seldom produced to inform the audience in the form of television or radio news. In a few instances, some movies are admixtures of dramatisation of factual events and invented scenes for clarifications or more emphasis on the former. Writers have, however, submitted that the essence of classic movies is not in the reality of the events but in the creativity of lessons in speaking to realities. In The Reality of Film: Theories of filmic reality published in 2011, Richard Rushton argued that movies have no business reproducing or representing realities; the important thing is a movie’s creativity to illustrate realities. In his movie, Saworoide (1999), and its sequel Agogo-Èèwò (2002), Tunde Kelani creatively deployed Yoruba oral traditions to allegorise the persisting leadership challenges posed by attendant consequences of monolithic oil revenue in Nigeria. Set in fictional Jogbo community to arguably represent a sovereign state of the modern liberal democracy, Kelani made a parody of the rentier status of the Nigerian economy. In other words, the movies captured and drew lessons on the extent to which the dominant oil revenue in Nigeria was successively responsible for the festering corruption and leadership crisis. To accomplish this, he deployed the sly characterization of Oba Lapite, the paramount ruler, and his colluding chiefs to showcase the rot in high places in Nigeria. Since a playwright is a tactician who works in predetermined mode and sequence (Adejumo, 2007), Kelani subjectively cast his plots in historical parallelism and his settings as a one-community and all-inclusive “Yoru- typical” community with a closed political economy and oligarchic politics in the modern-day liberal sense. The contextual setting of Kelani’s works in the two movies captured the assertion of Professor Akinwumi Isola in the excellent article titled Features of contemporary Yoruba novels “that the writer who is interested in people, places, and things is imitating or, at least, extrapolating from what he takes to be the real world” (Isola, 1986, p. 58).

Casting the language of the play in standard Yoruba language with cutting-edge English subtitles, Kelani reached into the political attitude arguably prevalent in Nigeria and generally found to be encountering fundamental political condescending (Adebanwi, 2017; Joseph, 1999; Obadare & Adebanwi, 2010), and approaching state failure (Collier, 2008; Maier, 2000; Soyinka, 1996). The movies genially and firmly storied a political conversation with a larger audience than any other works of its time (Haynes, 2007 as cited in Balogun, 2018, p. 54) using proverbial devices (Ayodabo, 2016); adaptation of poetic devices to unravel memory (Balogun, 2018); “agenda of transformation” and emergence from a crisis (Onikoyi, 2016, p. 242). The movies are a blend of traditional Yoruba folklore with modern political sensibilities in a scorching allegory of how natural resources could disorient and thwart governance towards autocracy, neo-patrimonialism, and corrupt practices in the highest places. Akin to the present-day presidentialism and “ad populum” kind of governments, the plot of the story (the reader will note that both movies are one story) is set in a typical pre-colonial Yoruba community, metaphoric Jogbo, where ascendancy to the position of paramount rulership is rigidly systematic and procedural, and painstakingly mystical: of which the aim is to install servant-–leader royalty and prevent despotism and corruption.

The first movie Saworoide is a parable of the drum. The drum is sounded with decided sophistry characteristic of Yoruba storytelling in which a proverb foretells the plot and incites expectations simultaneously. In Saworoide, the talking drum preceded and complemented the role of the storyteller to foretell the story like a parable and then interpreted literally and literarily. The story in Saworoide commenced with a calculated prologue that depicts the pact between the paramount ruler (Oba) and his chiefs on the one hand and the community’s people’s right to good governance and development agenda on the other. There are casts in the play showing public abhorrence and mechanised institutions against self-service leadership, corruption, and autocracy. Saworoide was correctly packed with native wisdom, to elicit the danger inherent in leadership anchored on strong personality, rather than a strong institution. Strong institution refers to the act of strengthening and concentrating authorities on the office by itself, as opposed to making the office formidable by the officer occupying it. Thus, irrespective of the incumbent personality occupying an office, an institution in this sense will be keen to wield the authorities reposed in it (Olaiya, 2015; W. Wilson, 1887). The kingship of Jogbo is made secure in this context. The king is a servant–leader occupying the kingship in trust for the people of the community.

The second, Agogo-Èèwò, which ended with deliberative epilogue, is the denouement. Here, the complexities of the sequence of events on leadership crisis—the complications and the implications—were finally resolved. In Agogo-Èèwọ, the process of emergence from corrupt society and bad leadership was portrayed as a direct consequence of resource curse and its associated effects. As subsequently explained in this work, the resource curse refers to the negative socio-economic and political consequences attributed to overdependence on natural resource explorations. Undoubtedly, the plot in the story is well crafted, and the dialogue is rich and nuanced with recognizable education of the reality of poverty amidst plenty of resources in Africa. Focusing on resource curse and its attendant leadership challenges, this essay thus explores the creative ability in the Kelani’s reels to interrogate the leadership crisis attributable to resource endowments.

The main thrust of this article is, therefore, to explore the literary values in the missives of Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò at the level of allegorism and orality to explain the impacts of resource curse argument in African leadership crises. As a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the verbal, allegory communicates its message employing symbolic figures, actions, or symbolic representation. The onus is thus to discuss the different language of engagement, proverbs, songs, metaphysics, music, spectacle, and riddles in the movies. This work attempts to explore this within the matrix of Yoruba oral configurations vis-à-vis its explanation of the adverse impacts of natural resources on the leadership crisis in Africa. The idea is to deduce that the metaphor of Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò could represent a traditional governance strategy against wastages, official corruption, and authoritarianism in Nigeria.

The folksongs and riddles are well woven into the fabric of the story and two elders in the community, Baba Opalanba in Saworoide and Iya in Agogo- Èèwọ, are made the mediums for the conveyance of truth and acceptable cultural practices, much like in the tradition of the Griots, which is peculiar to West African storytelling (Keller, 2009). Being official storytellers in their respective traditional communities, the Griots (who are usually elders, historians, advisors, praise-singers, and sometimes jesters) have emerged as father-figures in West-African storytelling. Scholars have likened the Griots to the human compendium in the knowledge of past heroism and villainies of the community (Caesar, 2010; Hale, 1994, 1998; Keller, 2009; Okoh, 2018). The music rappers¹ have been tagged the modern Griots (Tang, 2012). Alluding extensively to Boadu (1985), Hume (2010, p. 24) and Humes (2016) submitted that “the primary obligation and responsibility of the Griot were to serve the society” selflessly and commitment “to the art and moral, social, and cultural enrichment of the people”. As Baba Opalamba and Iya respectively displayed in the movies, especially the former, pecuniary or material gain, though accepted if offered, is not a primary concern to the Griots. Arguably, Saworoide and Agogo Èèwò contain a broad spectrum of cultural experiences ingeniously woven together to express the uniqueness of African societies, the glorious and lost traditional institutionalisation of virtues and sanctity of the leadership process. In both movies, many figural interpretations are alluded to for selfless leadership and uncompromising followership meanings.

Moreover, there are several wisdom-transfer scenes and play-songs from adults onto the children preparatory to assumption leadership by the latter. The narrative action is brought to greater focus with missive comments of old persons specifically targeted at the youth as tomorrow’s leaders. There are experiences of wireless communications within the framework of ritualistic emblem and expressions of cants and talking-drum messages, as unimpeachable as the present-day communication system. There is also a certain nostalgic feeling evoked in the portrayal of the almost forgotten assisted letter-writing tradition in the pre-telecoms African societies with all its humour and peculiar drama. Existing studies on Nigerian video films in Yoruba have centred on the historical and sociological contexts of Yoruba films. Furthermore, most of the studies on the literary and cinematic values of these classic works of Kelani”s have been side-comment analysis of the wanton lawlessness in the movies and the political instability cum social decay occasioned by misrule. The present work differs, qualitatively, in that it seeks to unravel what Kelani’s movies reveal about the discovery of natural resource endowment (timber) and leadership process in a state.

4. The resource curse argument

The leadership crisis alluded to in Saworoide, and Agogo Èèwò smacks of the theoretical framework called “Resource curse” argument. “Resource curse” refers to strong recurrent tendencies of adverse socio-economic and political conditions, and poverty prevalence in most resource-rich states as against the considerable performances of countries without such “benefits” (Niño & Le Billon, 2014). Since the mid-1980s, many studies have presented evidence to suggest that natural resource abundance, or at least an abundance of particular natural resources, leads to leadership crisis and is, in this sense, a curse rather than a blessing.

In the early 50s, some development economists, especially those associated with the staple theory of growth, suggested that natural resource-abundance would help the underdeveloped states to overcome their capital shortfalls and provide revenues for their governments to provide public goods and eschew poverty. However, Oyefusi (2007) argued that since the 90s, a great deal of research had established a link between resource-abundance and myriad political and socio-economic problems. Natural resource-abundance has been associated with slow growth, greater inequality, and poverty for a more substantial majority of a country’s population, corruption of political institutions, and more fundamentally, an increased risk of civil conflict (Olaiya, 2015).

In the 18th Century, A. Smith (1776, p. 262) argued that the proportion of unearned funds available in a country “necessarily determines the general character of the inhabitants as to industry or idleness”. He maintained that untold wealth is susceptible to creating “inferior ranks of people”, as well as a nation whose people are “in general idle, dissolute, and poor” (A. Smith, 1776, p. 262). In 1936, John Maynard Keynes, while arguing for mercantilist economists, corroborated this opinion that the extreme poverty of many Eastern nations—who were believed to have more gold and silver than any other countries in the world—could be explained by the simple fact that treasure was prone to hoarding and highly susceptible to be “suffered to stagnate in the Princes’ Coffers” (Keynes, 1936). Stevens (2003, p. 49), also quoting Jean Bodin, a 16th-century French philosopher, commented: “Men of fat and fertile soil are most commonly effeminate and cowards; whereas paradoxically a barren country makes men temperate by necessity, and by consequence careful, vigilant and industrious”. Moore (2001) argued that natural resources could corrupt leaders’ mind, detach them from people’s yearnings and made them impervious to deliver responsible and responsive governance. Rosser (2006) argued that resource-abundant countries often lead policy elites becoming myopic, slothful, and over-exuberant. Fabulous natural resource wealth could also impede political change and entrench regimes (Auty, 2001). Ross (2001) found that oil and democracy do not generally mix by promoting authoritarianism.

A corollary to the authoritarianism tendency in resource dependency is that it also provides a fertile environment for military rule. A. Smith (1776) found that oil revenue could lead to wanton militarism and total disregard for citizens’ plights. Collier et al. (2003) linked natural resources and civil war to corrupt practices of greedy leaders. Franke et al. (22007007), also found that resource abundance, as well as resource dependence positively, correlates with both the risk and the duration of violent conflict. Karl (1997) opined that the high income that natural resource usually produces also helps to exacerbate power abuse and hampers institutional development.

Two significant revelations emerged from these authors. On the one hand, resource curse, dating back to a couple of centuries ago and still relevant to the contemporary period, is a political-economy concept for explaining the travails of overdependence on mineral resources. As such, the concept appears to provide insight into the reasons why a resource-dependent state like Nigeria could be experiencing a peculiarly violent and neo-patrimonial politics (Olaiya, 2016). The concept perhaps gave credence or provided the template for what Adebanwi (2017, p. 81) called “perennial savagery”. On the other hand, the concept may have lent credence to the “lacuna of leadership” and the two-prong leadership syndrome that Ekeh (1975) referred to as “Two Publics”. Ekeh’s (1975) dichotomy, though hinged on colonialism, nevertheless helped to explain the lack of commitment to the state project from the leaders. The concept arguably shows that the dislocation that appears to exist between leadership and citizens in Nigeria could be a result of the fact that, as an oil-rich state, the leadership lackeys have cumulatively bred a polity and social formation that Adebanwi (2017) described while quoting Drinot (2011), as “projects of rule [that] are often largely enacted against the population”. Rather than occasion progress, the petro-economy catapulted Nigeria into a rentier economy and one that subjected the state to utter “foreign dependence … instead of the promised ‘progress’ from Nigeria’s oil boom” (Lincoln, 2010, p. 86).

In critical giant strides of literary critique, Kelani’s movies showcased the above arguments about the repercussions of natural resources on the governance of a state and more. The manifestations in critical real-time politics of Nigeria are well represented in scenes of “Saworoide” depicting natural-resource-induced villainy in leadership, violent politics, and gamed electoral processes. The build-up to the “emergence” from the governance challenges is also well represented in the plot and scenes of “Agogo Èèwò”. Nonetheless, the movies added significant insight into the governance crisis discourse by showcasing that the process from which the leaders emerge is intrinsically a significant factor that accounts for the significant run-up to the crisis of governance in Nigeria. Nevertheless, the movies also anchored into submissions of authors on the need to diversify from over-dependence on resource income to avoid a rentier economy. While we tend to agree Wang and Xu (2018) that popular regimes might reduce resource curse in rentier states, diversifying from extractive sector broad tax regimes of the real sectors of the economy (Olaiya, 2011) suggests a more enduring solution to governance crisis. The denouement to the movies, primarily performed in Agogo Èèwò, placed more emphasis on leadership-making process, which might, in turn, serve as a panacea for governance crisis.

5. Analysis and discussions

Analysing the allegory of resource curse as a prelude to governance crisis in this article is categorized under three themes, “The Pact”, “The Governance”, and “The Emergence”. For the themes, ten dialogues and excerpts from the plays are brought out to empirically drive the discussions. The aim is to showcase the imagination and performance of change in the two movies and the parallels they convey to explain the actual leadership situation in Nigeria. The first and the second themes are performed mainly in Saworoide as a direct representation to an offshoot of the parable of the drum. The third theme is espoused mainly in the second movie, Agogo-Èèwò, in the form of a denouement. The plots of the movies are arguably a typification of Kelani’s picture of the actual governance revelations following the discovery of crude oil at Oloibiri (Niger Delta Region) and its subsequent exploration in commercial quantities. The author composed of the discovery and exploration of crude oil in actual Nigeria’s sense as of timbers in Saworoide. By substituting oil with timber, the author may seem to have avoided the technicalities of exploration of the former in a home video of present-day Nigeria. Actors who are presented as non-natives of Jogbo allegorised the Nigerian crude oil exploration multinational companies, which are mostly in the hand of foreign companies and expatriates. The attendant environmental hazards and wastages in timber exploration that are performed excellently in Saworoide, in critical terms, are a clear intention of the author to draw attention to the same reality in oil exploration in Nigeria. In the same vein, the movies performed a mystic representation of the lamentations of Wole Soyinka’s Epilogue “Death of an Activist” to his epic book entitled The Open Sore a Continent published the Oxford University Press in 1996. In that book, Soyinka (1996, p. 147) detailed how an oil state can quickly breed a “degenerate dictator”. The Nobel Laureate narrated how protests against environmental despoliation by nine activists, led by Ken Saro Wiwa, resulted in their extra-judicial murder by hanging. The scenes in Saworoide that showed the arrests of activists for protesting against wanton deforestation and, in particular, the murder of Adebomi a potential co-contestant to the chieftaincy stool of Onijogbo are by no means conscious parallelism for the political occurrences and stark realities of the Nigeria state.

In Agogo-Èèwò, the author moved from reality to expectations. Much of the representations are meant to showcase how the endpoint of the process of emergence could possibly emerge within the purview of the understanding and portrayals of the author of the movies. They imagined and represented what the conceptions of Kelani are—of good governance or manifestations of leadership failure in the event of change for good or perpetuation of the present situation, respectively. The essence appears to represent that the leaders are constrained by the possible sounding of Agogo-Èèwò, i.e. Taboo gong, from embarking on actions that could lead to public shame and have a physical fatality on their personal lives. With keenly delivered allegory of hindsight and forecast in Agogo-Èèwò therefore, Kelani deployed similarities between the performance of emergence in the movies and his expectations of the governance crisis in Nigeria. To drive this home, he literarily presented actors and performances of emergence in a movies dénouement that typify expectations from Nigerian politicians, policymakers, NGOs, and the civil societies.

5.1. The pact, the governance and the emergence

5.1.1. The pact

Saworoide “is a story of the pact between an ancient community, tagged Jogbo, and the kings that ruled over it” (Saworoide, 1999). In real-time democratisation process, the pact could be likened to the constitution-making process that usually precedes a new democratic dispensation. Such constitution-making must be autochthonous to the society, reflect popular participation and devoid of foreign influence or any internal imposition (Abioye, 2011). As alluded to earlier, rethinking the Nigerian governance crisis from the allegory of the resource curse is presented in this paper from three themes: The Pact, The Governance and The Emergence. The allegory of the pact is presented in the making of the rules and administering of the oath as the essential and single most crucial element of leadership (kingship) making in a typical Yoruba community. The prologue orator gave the pact as a dying declaration from the Baba (founding father) in reminiscence of today’s state-making as thus:

Table

Dialogue 1: Monologue of the founding father
Adehun kan yio ma wa	There will be a pact
Laarin jogbo ati awon oba to ba nje	Between the people of jogbo and their kings

The prologue orator subsequently echoed the elaborate concrete ingredients of the pact and the mode of execution of the necessary components.

The Pact represents the compulsory promissory notes, much like the modern constitutionalism tradition, that the leaders make with the oracles before their installations and for which they are incapacitated from acting contrary to, even if they later intend doing so. The Pact binds Onijogbo (paramount ruler of Jogbo) with the positive growth and development of the community throughout the lifetime and reign of Onijogbo. In Professor Akinwumi Isola’s words, “[t]he Yoruba believes in the talismanic efficacy of charms, in magic and in the power of some supernatural forces” (Isola, 1986, p. 60). In Saworoide, the necessary components of the pact are Ade-Ide (brass crown), Iya-Ilu (traditional drum), Saworo (drum decoration or gong) Gbere (incision of skin with razor blades to draw blood), and Ibura (traditional oath of office). The personalities are Onijogbo (The King), Ayangalu (drummer), and Baba-Awo (Chief Priest). The elements are interconnected with the personalities to insure the community against misrule, lack of accountability, tyranny, and autocratic rule.

5.1.2. The governance

The governance is cast in the movies in historical revisionism of the actual representation in the Nigerian polity, primarily as it affects the executive branch of government. The movies presented a paramount ruler (Onijogbo) whose power and authorities alludes critically in both quantitative and qualitative enormity to that of the powers constitutionally entrenched in the Nigerian presidency. There are also the Chiefs, who also carried duties allotted to them by and hold offices at the pleasure of the paramount ruler (The President). In particular, the movies revealed to viewers that the chief executive (The President in the Nigerian sense) is ably assisted in the administration of the office, and can also contribute to their successes or otherwise. Nevertheless, the significance of leadership making process for preventing corruption and wastages was brought to fore in the movies. The performances adumbrated in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò revealed the subversion of the systemic fabrics of the leadership of the community to a proclivity for acquiring private estates. It generated, in Obadare and Adebanwi’s aptly worded quote from Watts (2003) “the twin evil of authoritarian governmentality” as a direct consequence of “petro-capitalism” that Nigerian state had to grapple with (Obadare & Adebanwi, 2010, p. 3).

In no small manner, the mnemonics of pervasive rentier attitude pervasive in Jogbo showcased in many scenes, two of which are of crucial importance to this discourse. During the final ritual rites for king-making that crucially guarantees leadership commitment to communal development agenda, a trilogue transpired between Baba Amawomaro (Chief priest and installer of Kings), King-elect (Lapite), and Ayangalu (Chief drummer) thus:

Table

Dialogue 2: Official installation of the King-Elect
BABA AMAWOMARO (Chief Priest):
Nisisiyi, ibura lokan, ko mon wi ti nba ti nwi o	Now, it’s time for oath-taking, say after me.
LAPITE (King-Elect):
E duro die na baba, ewo ni ti gbogbo ilu, ada, omi efun ka’le wonyi?	Wait a minute Sir. Why the drum, cutlass, te’eko water, whitish materials scattered here?
BABA AMAWOMARO (Chief Priest):
Gbogbo re loso mon adehun ipile to’so Jogbo ro	They’re all connected to the primordial covenants and origin of our community Jogbo
BABA AMAWOMARO (Chief Priest):
Okun to yi ti nbe ninu ado ide, ohun lo so ade-ide po monsaworoide. Ohun na lo so Ayangalu po mon gbogbo won	The strong string in this bronze container binds the Crown with Saworoide and all with
Ayangalu (the drummer)
BABA AMAWOMARO (Chief Priest):
Okun kan yi naa lo ma so iwo oba tuntun mon gbogbo won	The same will bind you as a new king with all.
Tooba ti bura, timo si sin o ni gbere, emi gege bi eleri laarin gbogbo yin …	Once you take an oath and I give you incision as a witness among all of you …
LAPITE (King-Elect):
Baba Amawo, ema yora yin lenu rara, emi o ni bura kankan	Old man, do not worry. I will not take any oath or incision
AYANGALU (Chief Drummer):
Èèwò!	Taboo!
BABA AMAWOMARO (Chief Priest):
Aagbo rue ri! Èèwò ni, O lewu!	Strange and dangerous taboo!
AYANGALU (Chief Drummer):
Oro tii soni di oba gan niyi!	This ritual completes the king-making process!
LAPITE (King-Elect) draws a pistol to warn the duo to remain silent forever:
Mo lemi o se … ema fokun tio daa somi mon asa ero eyin	I will not do it … do not bind me with an archaic, diabolical tradition

Similarly, two conversations took place between the foreign consultants managing the timber resources for the community and the high chiefs that bespeak the rot in high places. The initial event took place at the precincts of the palace and, a sequel, at the office of resource (timber) managers who are foreign expatriates and the Chiefs as thus:

Table

Dialogue 3: Palace precincts
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Ha ha, eyin da! (ee se) Ee si ke simi mon!	Hey, just a minute! You did not even bother to see me again.
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Bawo le tiwa soro ohun si lodo kabiesi	So how did the discussion go with kabiesi?
EXPATRIATE 1 (unnamed):
Oro ti yanju ara e	Discussion was smooth and matters resolved.
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Bii bawo?	Meaning what?
EXPATRIATE 1 (unnamed):
Kabiesi ti sobi ton lo (awa si fe bee)	The king was straightforward, and it is okay by us.
Ko sofin mon, eto si ti de	The law has been discarded, and everything is settled.
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Awa nko, awa Ijoye	What about us, the Chiefs
EXPATRIATE I (unnamed):
Ijoye? Kabiesi o’daruko Ijoye kankan f’awa	Chiefs? There was no mention of Chiefs.
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Awa la’ma sun’mara ilu! Awa gangan mon n’ilu	But we are the closest to the masses! We are the ambassador plenipotentiary of the masses.
EXPATRIATE II (Lagbayi)
A nsoro oba-alase, eyin nsoro ilu	We are here talking of the King, and you’re referring to mere masses.
Ko buru, ele wa riwa ni ile wa sha	Anyway, you may wish to see us at our office.

Table

Dialogue 4: Office of the resource (timber) expatriates
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Lagbayi … se efe sa awa ijoye ti ni?	Lagbayi … are we (Chiefs) being sidelined?
EXPATRIATE II (Lagbayi):
Kabiesi yin lee bi n’ibeere yen o	Your king is in the best position to answer
Eniyan melo lofe wa gb’owo gedu lowo wa	Just how many groups do we bribe
Aja a wa, eran a wa, opolo a wa, olongbo abereke	The dogs want their cut, the goats, the toads,
kangiri na a wa, won a s’agbada yegere, fila gogoro, won a maa gbe’we abosi kiri	even the ugly-cheeked cats, with flabby dress, tall caps peddling dubious documents
CHIEF SERIKI:
Lagbayi!! Eetiri, otife waa’bu tele ni?	Lagbayi!! Have you planned to insult us?
EXPATRIATE II (Lagbayi):
Kii se’ebu o! ooto oro omo iya isokuso ni o!	No! It is just that truth is bitter.
CHIEF BALOGUN:
Ema gbagbe pe bi oro ba de’le, awa ta le ba’won (Chiefs) onile soro niyi!	Do not forget, when the chips are down we are the only capable hands to calm the landowners
EXPATRIATE II (Lagbayi):
Oloye, kekere ni gbogbo iwonyen bayi o! awa funra wa ti nba won s’oro	Chief, that is insignificant now. We are in direct contact with them, and the needful is done
Ati ran omo ina s’ina

The above excerpts from scenes of Saworoide depict the rentier status of the Nigeria governance. The idea, as could be deciphered above, is the fixated attention given to the proceeds of the natural resources, leading to rot in high places, among others. The excerpts also reveal how the resources veered the direction of governance in Jogbo away from the corporate interest of the community and how all government actors and their agents shortchange the masses. For the King and the Chiefs, the important thing is the personal, pecuniary, and material gains: while collective interests are sidelined continuously. For the appointed resource managers, who are foreign expatriates, every allusion to the development agenda in Jogbo, in ways representative of the Nigerian oil exploration and its wealth management is always and patently disregarded and circumvented. In many respect, the movies captured what scholars on governance studies have found about the Nigerian oil state (Adebanwi, 2017; Joseph, 1999; Obadare & Adebanwi, 2010). Evidence that democratic states have more definite tendencies to improve on the welfare of the citizens continually than autocratic regimes (Charron & Lapuente, 2009; Gjerløw et al., 2018) also featured prominently in the movies.

Besides, the fundamentals of dictatorial attitudes and sequence of manipulations of constitutional provisions by political leaders that historically culminated in violent overthrow by military regimes reflected in Saworoide. Even though Ademoyega’s Why we struck: The story of the first Nigeria Coup and the rejoinder by Mainasara’s (1982)The five majors: Why they struck gave a seemingly conflicting motivations for the termination of Nigeria’s first democratic dispensation within six years, their submissions arguably justified the advent. There is no doubt that misrule of the political class defined the advent of the first Nigerian military coup in 1966. Ademoyega (1981, p. 192) argued that the coup was a significant achievement because it “jerked the nation [Nigeria] out of its political slumber and naivete”. The author submitted that it was wrong for the political leaders to have abused the constitution and embarked on the arbitrary rule. He further wrote of the governance crisis: “it was the dramatic end of the regime of deceit, bad faith, ambivalence, misdirection, and misrulership. Ironsi’s regime was a colossal failure” (Ademoyega, 1981, p. 165). In Saworoide, the civil disobedience to the King’s haughtiness and disregard for the pact and primordial conventions were quelled in manners akin to today’s authoritarianism. In Jogbo, even though the military class assisted the King in subduing the civil protests and demonstration, they debated amongst themselves about, and indeed executed, a coup. The head of the military, Lagata, held this conversation with his close protégé, Kanjuko, in the army thus:

Table

Dialogue 5: Army base, Jogbo community
LAGATA:	Mori pe o nife ilu yi lokan gan	I know you genuinely love this community
	Bawo lose r’ilu wayi si?	Are things well with the governance?
KANJUKO:	Oga, arun oju ni Awa laarin opo, anjowon	Boss, it is self-evident that things are amiss We are suffering despite our rich endowments …
LAGATA:	Se kowa ye kase nkankan si?	Don’t you realise it is high time we intervened?
KANJUKO:	Osupa le, enio gun	If the moon is misplaced, what can anyone do
LAGATA:	Owa rope owo enikan oto, Owo to daadaa!	So you think no one can correct it?
	Ohun owo mio to mafi gogo fa	What about the use of force?

The above conversation leaves no one in doubt about the defining factors that led to the overthrow of King Lapite, bearing striking similitude with Wang and Xu (2018) submission that autocratic regimes are often susceptible to violent overthrow.

5.1.3. The emergence

The notion of emergence, as a significant part of most African movies in which storytelling are imaginatively created to serve either as deterrence to evildoers or rewards for virtues, is brought to fore in Soworoide and Agogo-Èèwò. The spouse emerging from an abusive marriage, the student finally emerging from a period of scholarly mediocrity, the former house-help emerging from a life of poverty and hardship, the community finally freeing itself from the oppressive tyrant and the poor society attaining the heights of wealth all embody the idea of the shedding of shackles to achieve better states of being. The indication of emergence was beginning to crystalise early in Saworoide when Lagata, the head of the military faction that toppled King Lapite in a coup d’état, died mysteriously because the drum was sounded into his ears. Lagata’s death remained a mirage to all and sundry, including the Chiefs who had ensured that the traditional drum (Saworoide) and the drummer (Lagata) had been decimated. The drum had been seized and the drummer imprisoned. Unbeknownst to the Chiefs, the real Saworoide had been safely taken away while the son of the drummer had been prepared with necessary ritualistic mystics to perform the drumming customs. The Scene goes thus:

Table

Dialogue 6: Palace precinct
CHIEF SERIKI:	Saworoide	The mystery drum
CHIEF BALOGUN:	nibo niwon ti ri?	Where did they get it?
CHIEF SERIKI:	Tan luu?	Who is the drummer?
CHIEF BALOGUN:	Ayangalu nbe l’ewon!	Isn’t Ayangalu in prison?!

Two significant events later manifested as emergence in the movies. On the one hand, the movies presented the consequences of bad faith of governance on the leaders. The movies presented the idea that a leader who attempts to subvert the rigid process of governance for selfish and corrupt purposes may face ghastly consequences. Such least-expected backlash was presented in the Saworoide when the king (Onijogbo) refused to allow necessary rituals of kingship making from being cast on him. On the other hand, the movies allegorised that the chiefs, which are comparable to Nigeria’s executive cabinet members, could also answer for the consequences of their negative attitude in the governance of a state. The emergence is performed like denouement in drama when in Agogo-Èèwò the second-layer of leadership (the chiefs) were made for dancing to the taboo gong to their peril. The emergence is the expectations and consequences of the political actors in Kelani’s construction. In essence, the movies presented an allegory of the emergence of a community eventually liberating itself from drab politics and oppressive leaders. Primarily, the central thesis, as represented for the three rubrics aforementioned are presented as follows:

5.2. The masses and governance system in Saworoide and Agogo Èèwò

Unlike most classic films of its kind, Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò differ in the characterisation of the masses as governance agents. While most home videos often characterise the masses as hooligans, killers, mercenaries, and dispatchers of violence and destabilisation (Alawode & Sunday, 2014), the duo of Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò films presented the masses as real instruments for growth and progress. The films accurately presented the masses as organised and mostly cooperative, and purposeful in calling the leaders to question or order. In a scene, the people gathered at the palace of Onijogbo, the paramount ruler, to protest misrule, wastages, and festering corrupt practices in the community. This significantly differs from most representation of able-bodied men and women in most films as active agents on the political arena and ready tools for political brigandage. For the most parts, the youth, among others, are depicted significantly as thugs, killers, villains, prostitutes among other undesirable characters who are involved in different kinds of undesirable practices and vicious acts.

The usual negative characterization of the masses in these other home videos, as revealed in Alawode and Sunday (2014), reflects the real-time general description of politics as being an unscrupulous venture where youth wings of political parties have “become a kind of pseudonym for foot soldiers or political thugs” (Olaiya, 2014, p. 9). This peculiar characterization of contrary denominations for the masses was not the case in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò. The masses were ably defined as broad-spectrum members of the civil society such as the youth organisations, artisans, farmers, traders, and other organised groups at the grassroots. In the films, the masses were presented as organised, dynamic and cooperative in tactics, changing situations and implementations of the projects at hand. Also, the movies presented the masses as the vanguards of the people, unlike in most other films where the masses are presented as vandals. The films portrayed the elites, on the other hand, as villains who collude among themselves to plunder the resources. Moreover, the elites in the films found no easy tools in the youth and masses to destabilise society much, unlike what obtains in most other films. Betrayal of corporate purpose among the masses was an exception rather than the rule.

5.3. Leadership process in Jogbo community

Jogbo is a monarchical “Yoru-typical” community² that Kelani parodied after a modern state or supranational bodies, mainly as it concerns today’s state-run³, regional, and continental resourceful economy. In Saworoide, the crux of the matter is the prevention of the enthronement of kings with selfish motives rather than community-development agendas. In other words, the process is to pilot in kings whose focus will be nothing short of the development of the community even if it comes at the king’s expense. The process for installing kings in the Jogbo community is grounded in a historical pact between the ancient Jogbo and the king-elect. There are ancestral rituals to be initiated by the Chief Priest, Baba Amawomaro, and the Chief Drummer, Ayangalu. The leadership process is complete only when the king-elect takes the oath of office and receives the incisions (Gbere) to be administered by the Chief Priest. The incision ties the king with the ancestral pact, along with Ayangalu and the ancestral drum (Dundun). The ancestral drum, therefore, regulates the proclivity of the king from attempting to enrich himself in disregard to a typical Onijogbo or planning to be wealthy like his counterparts elsewhere. Both the drum and the Brass Crown (Ade ide) connect Saworoide (brass container) and are tied to the drum’s circumference.

In Saworoide, the Griot (Baba Opalanba) warned that “Onijogbo nisin’lu; Ilu isin onijogbo. Onijogbo kan osi le lowo bi oba ibomiran” (The king serves the community; the community does not serve the king. No king of Jogbo can be rich like kings do elsewhere). These mystical prepositions about Onijogbo kingship as depicted in the movie may seem to contrast with the original notion of royalty in a typical Yoruba community. Royalty, in a typical Yoruba traditional setting, is clad in wealthy living, reverence, and great honour. However, a life of affluence must neither come at the expense of community development nor from impoverishing the subjects. Thus, the idea depicted in Saworoide that no Onijogbo must aspire to live large at others’ expense is ideally in line with the typical Yoruba community. The elder-statesperson warned the go-getter kingmaker (Balogun) at the inception of the film to discourage Prince Lapite from vying for the kingship of Jogbo because Onijogbo kan ki l’owo bi oba ibo mii (A Jogbo King cannot be enriched like kings elsewhere). This reveals the general atmosphere in Nigeria’s political life in which leaders are believed to aspire for political life to enrich themselves.

There is no doubt that the natural resources identified in Jogbo, Timber, and furniture woods marred the established leadership process that in turn, led to widespread corrupt practices by the king and the chiefs. The king-elect refused to take the oath and to be lacerated during the performance of the kingship rite of passage, thereby making himself accountable only to himself. He drew out a shotgun with which he successfully scared the Chief Priest and Chief Drummer to submission. By this alone, the king avoided an essential tool of accountability that could have prevented the pervasive larceny in the public space of Jogbo. Linking the idea about the king’s refusal to real-time politics in Nigeria might be somewhat unrelated. This is more so because all elected (and sometimes appointed) holders of office from the three branches of government in Nigeria are made to pass through a compulsory oath-taking procedure before resuming. However, since the motive for refusal is to use the instrumentalities of the kingship for personal enrichment, it stands to reason that it bears a striking resemblance to the pervasive corruption in Nigerian political space.

6. Governance and accountability in Jogbo

The expectation that anyone invested with power is immune from abusing it is not considered in Saworoide during the crucial process of installing leaders. Thus, several inhibitions, apart from the pact between the king and the community, are enacted to forestall all possible circumstances to guarantee good governance and accountability. For instance, usurpers are barred from taking over the governance of Jogbo and constructively fenced from attaining the position of Onijogbo. The Crown, which could adequately represent the modern-day mantle of office, cannot be hijacked without lethal consequences to the person of the hijacker. The idea is that anyone who wears the Crown without passing through the proper rite of passage for Onijogbo will immediately die of a migraine.

Also, the Crown must not be taken out of the palace for consecutive 15 days. This appears to be a measure put in place to ensure the commitment of the king to the pact. In Saworoide, the king enlisted the service of the military men to help recover the Crown that the masses had, at one time, seized and taken to an unknown location. Meanwhile, the military successfully recovered the Crown from the protesting masses. However, the head of the military, Lagata, immediately executed a coup, killed Lapite, and took over the government of the community. This appears to epitomise the political situation in Nigeria with her records of military coups. The main reason for military intervention in Nigeria, according to authors (Emenyeonu, 1997; George et al., 2012), are mainly the inordinate ambition to rule due to the attractive economic benefits and resource management.

Finally, it could be discerned that when the critical mass of citizens is fed up with the political process, the process of “emergence” will become easy. The films lend credence to the festering leadership crisis in Nigeria in which the actions of the privileged citizens and particular interest dictate the exercise of power in high places. However, the experiences showcased in the films reveal the importance of participation of the masses in changing the political situation as an essential complement to leaders who are also bent on ending “business as usual”. There is, therefore, no denying the fact that the screen lessons from the films reveal that learning and practicing active citizenship is key to overcoming governance crisis in Nigeria.

7. The tradition of the griot and admonitions for good governance

Kelani’s Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò extensively deployed the traditions of the griot to canvass for institutions of good governance. The griots are the traditional raconteurs and chroniclers of historical facts (Akoma, 2007; Pizzolato, 2014). Since the griots are seldom queried in their admonitions, they could be likened to modern policy advisers whom opinions remain persuasive, yet authoritative, in guiding the de facto policymakers. In Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò, Baba Opalanba and Iya personified the griots, respectively. Throughout the epic plays, both personages reminded the audience of the futility of an arbitrary rule or corrupt practices by rulers without definitive consequences. With nostalgic vocal undulating and native sensibilities that bespeak a typical griot, Baba Opalanba and Iya delivered the reminiscence of good governance as laid down in the mystics and old rules that are contingent upon a ruler of Jogbo community. In this regards, good governance would be strictly defined as selfless leadership. To the extent that leaders conduct the affairs of the state in line with established procedures is seen here as epitomizing the World Banks definition of good governance. Good governance, by UN’s standard, involves citizens’ participation and consensus opinion, responsiveness, efficiency and social inclusiveness of government actions, and adherence to the rule of law and absence of corrupt practices (Banerji, 2012; Kaufmann et al., 2010).

In the plays, Kelani’s deliberative gesture of good governance and the role of the griots as the raconteur and bearers of historical facts are conveyed with decided purpose by emphasizing the consequences, and perhaps futility, of conducting the affairs of the community in abeyance with established traditions. The idea of good governance is encapsulated in ire gbogbo (good tidings), which the prologue orator prayed for thus:

Table

Dialogue 7: Prologue orator
Ire gbogbo	Oh, good tidings
O ma Jogbo wa o	Kindly find you way into Jogbo
Ire gbogbo	Oh, good tidings

The conversation that established the admonitions for good governance, between Chief Balogun and Baba Opalanba (the griot) is conveyed thus:

Table

Dialogue 8: Griot’s admonitions
Eni toba fe jaye	If anyone desires flamboyant trappings of office
K’omo je Onijogbo	Such person should never aspire to rule
Onijogbo ni sinlu	The ruler strains to serve the community
Ilu i’s’onijogbo	And not vice versa
Onijogbo kan o sile lowo bi oba t’ode oni	No ruler can enrich himself as contemporary

The authority of the griot as the established bearer of historical facts also reflects in the same conversation thus:

Table

Dialogue 9: Griot’s authority as the chronicler of history
CHIEF BALOGUN:	Kilode, wonfi sewon ni Why, is it a curse?
BABA OPALANBA:	Ah! Be j’oloye jube lo Even as Chiefs
Awon asiri kan nbe	There are many mysteries
Teyin o le ri	Unknown to you.
Ola ise tiwa	I unravelled the mysteries as a witty raconteur
Ati ojo ori wa	And the benefit of age
Ati si sunmo awon agba	And closeness to the elders
Omi ta fida Jogbo Nun	That’s the underlining tenet of Jogbo.
Ko lee ye o	You can not understand
(Griot’s melodious soliloquy)
Kole yewon, koi yewon	They don’t understand, they haven’t
Koi yewon, yio yewon lola.	They wouldn’t, perhaps tomorrow.

8. Conclusion: Nigeria’s governance crisis and “Emergence” in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwò

This paper utilised the resource curse perspective to investigate how Tunde Kelani’s movies, Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwọ, explored literary works of art to showcase the vulnerability of leaders in natural-resource dependent states. The movies were engaged to rethink the festering governance crisis in Nigeria, most notably as it concerns corrupt and other sharp practices. The study critically utilised the textual and mythical representations in the movies to explain the importance of tackling governance crises through the leadership-making process. Three themes were espoused in the paper, The Pact, The Governance and The Emergence, to re-examine Nigeria’s recurrent governance crisis. The text moves from identifying The Pact between an intended leader as the precautionary tactics that would later prevent reckless actions in the community and foster the emergence of a new era. The governance was identified as a typical Yoruba monarchical system of government, with a paramount ruler and his cabinet. The emergence was identified as the era of emancipation and liberation in which virtues are rewarded, and vices are visited with dire consequences.

The study significantly explored the historical revisionism contained in the films as a predictive imagination of how the future (political-economy) will remain bleak in the face of unsustainable mishandling of the past and present resources in Nigeria. Focusing on the socio-economic and political malaise that has continued to play out since the discovery of crude oil at Oloibiri community in the present-day Niger Delta region of Nigeria by mid-1950s, the article sought to unravel what Tunde Kelani’s allegorical postulations in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwọ reveal about leadership experiences of states depending solely on natural resources income. The work explained how the absence of shared goal and dearth of mass mobilization strategies, which were successfully deployed in the films for denouncing despotism and yokes of elitism is lacking in present-day Nigeria. The insulations from irresponsible public administration that is rigidly built into the leadership-making process in Saworoide and Agogo-Èèwọ are meant to showcase the futility of post-installation accountability and consequences of wrong choices emanating from the gamed electoral system of the modern liberal democracies. In doing so, the study showed how Tunde Kelani’s conjoined films are a unique art that figuratively lends itself to explanations of leadership challenges arising from resource endowments.

The triumph of positive forces over the negative one; the liberation of the people from bondage to an emancipated state of affairs; The elevation of a poorly governed society into a better managed one; the shift from an autocratic regime to one of liberalism and egalitarianism; and attainment of preferred rulers into positions of trust are all embodied in Agogo-Èèwò. The resource curse argument reared its ugly head once again in Agogo-Èèwò. However, the impact of the resource continued to mar the process of installing acceptable leaders in the community. Despite the death of the military usurper, (Lagata), the hope of the people to install Prince Arese, whose father (Adebomi) was brutally assassinated to eliminate contest during the defunct Lapite era, was temporarily lost. Hope was understandably high that the young, and presumably dynamic, man would be installed as the next Onijogbo to set the community on the path of greatness once again. However, some deep-rooted and influential stakeholders in the community installed Adebosipo to keep tabs on the resource revenue. Adebosipo’s resilience to ensure that people’s interest was served and his rejection of backhand deals collided with his chief ’s interests.

There is no doubt that these kinds of power plays are strikingly similar to specific events in Nigerian politics. As Wang and Xu (2018) pointed out, democratic practices are robust predictors of development and a significant disincentive to military overthrowing of democratic regimes. In 1979, 1993, 1999, the military and political elites colluded to install President Shehu Shagari, President Ernest Shonekan and President Olusegun Obasanjo, respectively, against the popular wishes of the people (Emenyeonu, 1997; Human Rights Watch, 2007). As represented in the films and applicable in Nigerian society, the effects of the resources on the governance of the community include political violence, criminality, state-organised assassination, and annihilation of opposition, elitism, and patrimonial politics. Also reflected in the films and pertinent in Nigerian democratic practices are trumped-up charges for arresting whistle-blowers, double standards in the allocation of wealth and responsibilities, among others.

In Agogo-Èèwò, the “emergence” was eventually made possible by the revival of the oath of Agogo-Èèwò (taboo gong) to be administered on the chiefs. Tagged the “day of judgement” by Baba Opalanba to mean the dawn of a new era where all evils, oppression, and fraudulent activities shall cease in earnest. All the corrupt chiefs eventually died at the sounding of the taboo gong, not only in repercussions for the past adverse behaviour but also as indicative of their intent not to desist from corrupt practices.

Filmography

Saworoide. Directed by Tunde Kelani, Produced by Tunde Kelani, Scripted by Akinwumi Isola, 1999

Agogo-Èèwò. Directed by Tunde Kelani, Produced by Tunde Kelani, Scripted by Akinwumi Isola, 2002

Oleku 1 and 2. Directed by Tunde Kelani, Produced by Tunde Kelani, Scripted by Akinwumi Isola, 1997

Ti Oluwa ni Ile. Directed by Tunde Kelani, Produced by Tunde Kelani, Scripted by Kareem Adepoju, 1993, 1994

Koseegbe. Directed by Tunde Kelani, Produced by Tunde Kelani, Scripted by Akinwumi Isola, 1995

Additional information

Funding

The author received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Taiwo A. Olaiya

Taiwo A. Olaiya (Esq.) is multidisciplinary. He successfully bagged degrees in Demography & Social Statistics, Laws, and Public Administration from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria where he is currently a senior faculty member affiliated to the Department of Public Administration. His specialisation includes African studies, comparative political governance, policy analysis, financial management, and research methods.

Notes

1. The term “Griot” was a coinage of the French colonialist upon arriving at African coasts and discovering the settled relevance of storytellers in public administrative domains (Humes, 2016). The definition of Griots as keepers of the history of culture (Keller, 2009), “taking the knowledge of the people and passing it down” (Caesar, 2010, p. 6), however, suits the context of this paper. The storyteller, Baba Opalanba, whose name indeed suggests that successors must be cautious, played the role of custodian of the culture and history of Jogbo and linking the past with the present.

2. In a typical Yoruba community, Kings are installed rather than elected or appointed. In a way, the installation combines the two processes of both election by the kingmakers and appointment by the oracles but contains much more in terms of ritualised oath-taking.

3. Adebosipo became the king after the Death of the villainous King Lapite.