“Crisis of the Soul”: Religious Trauma and Hypocrisy in Selected Plays of Ahmed Yerima

Abstract

A recurrent theme in the drama of Ahmed Yerima is religion – religious conflict, religious contradictions, hypocrisy, fanaticism, the issues of salvation and conversion. These issues are explored in varying degrees in most of Yerima’s plays. Yerima’s predilection for this issue is not unfounded, bearing in mind his personal experiences as a born-Muslim who attended Christian schools and is married to a Christian. Although this biographical detail is used tangentially in this paper, his personal contradictions find a way of escape in his creative explorations. Our focus is on Yerima’s The Bishop and the Soul, The Limam, Uncle Venyil and Idemili. In the light of the foregoing, this paper interrogates religion and its effects on the characters, how they are able to manage religious pluralism in their lives and live peaceably in the society. Our concern is not just to show what religion can do to man but what man does with religion. What are the various conflicts the characters face in a multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic setting like Nigeria? What are the different strategies adopted by the characters to resolve the various manifestations of fanaticism and hypocrisy identified in the plays? These are some of the questions this paper seeks to answer within the background of the present insecure state in the form of terrorist acts of the radical Islamic sect Boko Haram in Nigeria.