Part of review forum on “Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman.”
The name “Biyi Bandele” may evoke different things to different commentators across the world but most literary and film critics will agree that this name conjures up serial storytelling as well as the delicate “arts” of “excavating,” scripting, and screening Nigeria rich history. The Yoruba name also conjures up the filmic adaptation of some of Nigeria’s most evocative historical literature. In effect, the writer, film-director, and theater creator—who bore this name and died on August 7, 2022 in Lagos at the age of 54—has, before his demise, illustrated his brilliance and fine hand, through the adaptation of various classic books authored by some of Nigeria’s most acclaimed novelists and dramatists (notably Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), many of which are historical literature. In 2007, for instance, he released his coming-of-age war novel Burma Boy, which taps into some serious historical events: the war experiences of his father and his father’s friends in the town of Burma. The novel reveals Bandele as a storyteller who is fond of exploring the human interest angle to Nigerian stories and who always proffers a journalistic and poetic take on historical issues. Similarly, Bandele’s 2013 adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun further establishes his obsession with the screening of Nigeria history. Bandele’s version of Half of a Yellow Sun actually shows his historian gaze and his nose for good research. This obviously accounts for scenic details and clarity of actors’ conversation in his film(s). It therefore appears that Bandele’s 2022 adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman into a largely Yoruba-speaking movie titled Elesin Oba, is simply indexical of his sustained penchant for the reinterpretation and representation of his country of origin’s history.
As a historical film, Elesin Oba is based on Soyinka’s 1975 play titled Death and the King’s Horseman. This play in turn feeds on some real life events that happened in the Yoruba city of Oyo, in 1946, when Nigeria was still a British colony. That year, a Yoruba king had died and his horseman (Elesin Olori) was obligated by the Oyo people’s tradition to commit ritual suicide. This ritual act was to enable the horseman not only to go and serve his king in the afterlife but also to protect the sovereignty of the next realm. Given that suicide was illegal under the British colonial law, the British District Officer of the time arrested Elesin, thereby preventing an age old traditional practice. This incident led to a serious conflict between endogenous cultural beliefs and the Western values introduced or imposed through colonialism in Yoruba land. The incident has also inspired a handful of literary and cinematic works, notably Duro Ladipo’s Oba Waja (1967), Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), Klaus Stephan’s Taiwo Shango (1985), and Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba (2022).
In his author’s note to Death and the King’s Horseman, Soyinka clearly confirms his propensity for re-presenting and re-interpreting Nigerian history. He writes that his play (Death) is based on the 1946 Oyo events mentioned above and that, “the changes … made are in matters of detail, sequence and of course characterisation. The action has also been set back two or three years to while the war was still on, for minor reasons of dramaturgy.” Similarly, Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba is strongly reminiscent of the Oyo 1946 historical events, not only through its excessive faithfulness to its source material but also through its depiction of costumes and sceneries that are strongly reminiscent of colonial Yoruba land. For instance, the costumes worn by Elesin (played by Odunlade Adekola) and other characters in the film aptly convey the historical and cultural context of the film’s narrative. In addition to this, Bandele’s film—like Soyinka’s Death—foregrounds questions around colonial authorities’ resistance to some presumed barbaric Nigerian cultures. The evocation of these questions is intrinsically done through Elesin’s failure to perform the suicide ritual, partly due to the muscled intervention of Simon Pilkings (played by Mark Elderkin), the British District Colonial Officer.
Pilkings’s hostility to ritual suicide in Elesin Oba—as seen in the proscription of the morbid cultural practice and the arrest and jailing of Elesin—calls to mind the popular myth of the Whiteman’s Burden as well as the British colonial administration’s multifaceted efforts towards arresting what they considered barbaric and repugnant cultures in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. The colonial officer’s hostility evokes a salient aspect of colonialism in Nigeria as a whole. Actually, history has it that British colonialism led to the proscription, mitigation, and/or eradication of many traditional practices—notably the killing of twins, human sacrifice, and ritualistic cannibalism among others—considered repugnant by the colonial administration. In tandem with this, Pilkings’s prohibitive policies against ritual suicide in Elesin Oba could be seen as an index of this perceived British “civilisational” ambition in Nigeria.
In his author’s note to Death, Soyinka hastens to negate readings that associate Pilkings’s repressive acts against ritual suicide with a clash of culture. The dramatist contends that “the Colonial Factor [in Death] is an incident, a catalytic incident merely. The confrontation in the play is largely metaphysical, contained in the human vehicle which is Elesin and the universe of the Yoruba mind.” The same reading could be applied in an analysis of Elesin Oba. However, although not the main theme in Elesin Oba, this Colonial Factor draws the viewer’s attention to the impact of colonialism on traditional beliefs in Nigeria.
