Benequista, Nicholas

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The village chief is trying to look calm, but it’s obvious 
that he’s nervous.
‘What has happened to the money?’ the two men, 
still standing, ask. 
‘It’s in a bank,’ he offers feebly as an explanation, 
which gets the audience snickering. 
The members of the audience find the theatrical 
performance darkly humorous because they recognise 
the deception. In the oil-producing region of the Niger 
River Delta, even the once revered traditional leaders 
have been corrupted, leaving the communities adrift.
Researchers from the Theatre for Development Centre 
(TFDC) at Ahmadu Bello University used participatory 
theatre as a methodology for encouraging discussion 
among communities of the Niger Delta on the 
breakdown in accountability of local and state leaders 
to citizens. Most research on accountability in Nigeria 
has looked at the high-ranking actors – the governors 
and oil company executives. This research, by contrast, 
looked at problems through the eyes of the community 
members, by transforming them into scriptwriters 
and actors.
The process of winning community cooperation in 
the theatrical performances began the same way in 
each community, by following an old tradition. 
Researchers would visit a community elder with a 
bottle of schnapps, kola nuts and some money, perhaps 
200 naira, under the nuts to ‘wedge’ them in place. 
After the elders listened, they would often begin with 
a similar lament. The youth in the community simply 
do not listen any more. They used to listen to stories 
after dinner about society and morality, but now all 
that interests them is easy money.
Or perhaps they just need new stories. The drama above, 
performed in Sanubi, Delta State, was entitled ‘Unfulfilled 
Promises’ and addressed issues from the denial of rights 
though to collusion, corruption and violence.
In the drama, oil is found on the farm of one of the 
community members. The chief tries to deny the 
landowner his compensation money on the grounds 
that his forefathers were slaves, evoking a controversial 
stipulation in the Nigerian Constitution distinguishing 
between the rights of ‘indigenes’ and ‘settlers’. The 
situation is inflamed when contractors hired by the 
oil company Royal Dutch Shell rip up several farms 
in the community to lay pipes. The performance ends 
with local thugs beating back protesters who are 
chanting ‘Shell o! Emo! Emo!’ (Shell o! It is war! 
It is war!).
The dramas in every community were distinct, but 
each demonstrated how the corruption resulting from 
oil production is interwoven with inter-community 
and even inter-family divisions. When cooperation 
and solidarity arise, powerful actors can easily exploit 
different cleavages – gender, religion, ethnicity. 
Increasingly though, and with the aid of such tools as 
community theatre, community members are beginning 
to recognise their shared plight.
The burden and blessing of oil
Large-scale oil production in Nigeria began in 1958. 
Now among the world’s top ten oil-exporting countries, 
Nigeria relies on oil for more than 80 per cent of its 
government revenue. Most of that production is through 
joint ventures with foreign companies, the largest of 
which (with Royal Dutch Shell and ELF Petroleum 
Nigeria) accounts for about half of the country’s total 
crude output. Oil revenues in 2008 earned the country 
an average of US$2.2 billion every month.
This abundance of resources is commonly considered 
more of a burden than a blessing for Nigeria. The 
‘resource curse’ is attributed to the undermining of 
accountability at every level in the country, earning 
Nigeria the dubious distinction as one of the top twenty 
most corrupt countries in the world, according to the 
2008 World Bank Governance Indicators.
—
Getting to the Bottom of 
the Story with Theatre for 
Development
Citizenship DRC Case Study Series
—
Backed by Popular Demand: Citizen Actions for Accountability05
In addition, oil production has been associated in Nigeria 
with allegations of human rights abuses and 
environmental devastation in the Niger Delta, which 
refers to both the immediate area where the River Niger 
splinters into tributaries and empties into the Atlantic 
Ocean and to some of the contiguous states where oil 
is found. The Scotland-sized area, criss-crossed by 
marsh and creeks, is home to 31 million people from 
more than a dozen distinct ethnic groups and is also 
the site of the country’s most important oil fields. 
In spite of its oil wealth, the region has inadequate 
infrastructure and high unemployment rates, in part 
because pollution from the oil industry has diminished 
forest activities and fishing. Residents of the delta states 
have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water, 
and eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins. 
Global scrutiny of the region intensified following the 
execution, ordered by a military tribunal in 1995, of 
activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who had led a non-violent 
campaign against environmental degradation caused 
by Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational oil 
companies in his native Ogoniland. 
Since then, many other groups have emerged 
from the region to demand a more equitable share 
of the bounty; women’s and youth organisations 
have become highly mobilised. These groups protest, 
negotiate with government on behalf of the 
communities and monitor the award of contracts 
and the employment of workers in the oil sector, 
functioning as watchdogs and pressure groups. 
Yet the struggle for accountability is also rife with 
its own accountability challenges; groups that set 
out to broadly defend the rights of the communities 
have ended up pursuing shorter-term gains, and 
some members of these groups, especially young 
men, have increasingly turned to violence.
Since 2006, rebel groups led by the Movement for 
the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, have 
resorted to kidnapping oil workers and sabotaging 
oil facilities. These groups claim they want to 
win a greater allocation of the oil wealth for their 
impoverished people, but some of their members 
have become armed bandits, using political grievances 
as a guise for personal enrichment, or have formed 
gangs committed only to the interests of their village. 
The result is that the people of the Niger Delta are 
frustrated and angry, feeling excluded from the 
benefits of the natural resources in their region, and 
yet at the same time unable to rely on many of the 
actors that would ordinarily be trusted with defending 
their rights. It is in this context that the TFDC has 
been employing its unique use of drama. 
The democratic nature of drama
Performance art is an especially effective tool for carrying 
out research that aims to raise consciousness, foster 
local knowledge and spark social action because it opens 
a space for dialogue that practically anyone, regardless 
of background, can enter. Drama does not discriminate 
against the illiterate, and allows people to express their
views in their own unique language and manner. In the 
circumstances of fear and distrust that predominate in 
the Niger Delta, drama brings other benefits. Its ability 
to dismiss itself as fiction, and to deliver fun to the 
gathered crowd, also makes it a safer way to discuss 
the accountability failures facing their community.
In the Niger Delta, The Theatre for Development 
Centre – with years of experience in this methodology 
– sent facilitators into eight communities (four in 
Bayelsa State and four in Delta State) in the Niger 
Delta region. The facilitators worked with liaisons in 
each community who were well known and respected 
among their neighbours. The facilitators in turn 
selected key participants – teachers, community 
group leaders and other influential figures – who 
were trained over three days on how to create a 
30-minute theatrical performance. Over the course 
of the three-day training, the participants explored 
the issues of accountability through the creation of 
the performance. Finally, the entire community was 
invited to watch, followed by a discussion that 
produced a community plan for action. 
Something taken, something left behind
The use of theatre as a research methodology was 
successful in garnering new insights into the nature 
of accountability in the Nigeria Delta, including on:
•	 how a lack of accountability in formal governance 	
structures can fracture the trust and solidarity 		
that protects communities from outside 			
manipulation, even corrupting the very institutions 	
that claim to seek solutions; and 
•	 how these fractures sow conflict and violence	
in a vicious cycle that further impoverishes 	
the community. 
While revealing these insights to researchers and 
practitioners, theatre is also a powerful tool for raising 
local consciousness and spurring positive action. 
The research process is democratised by theatre in 
three ways. 
•	 It creates a space in which people can speak and 	
bring issues forward for discussion.
•	 It allows them to make suggestions about what 		
is to be done. 
•	 It challenges power relations within the 			
community, creating a space in which to question 	
roles and hierarchies within the community. 
In contexts of violence or human rights abuses, 
researchers may feel an extraordinary obligation to leave 
something useful behind. Theatre for development is one 
such methodology for understanding complex problems, 
while at once providing a tool for overcoming them. The 
links between the performance and the action afterwards 
are multiple: the performance has identified gaps and 
established a basis for further dialogue, eventually leading 
to a congruence of concern between community members 
and possibly a common agenda. The will to act, however, 
can only be fostered in the long term through the social 
organising that invariably must occur before and after 
the final curtain call.
Authors:
—
Oga Steve Abah
The Theatre for 
Development Centre
The Octopus 
Faculty of Arts
Ahmadu Bello University
Zaria, Nigeria
ogaabah@yahoo.com
—
Jenks Zakari Okwori
The Theatre for 
Development Centre
The Octopus 
Faculty of Arts
Ahmadu Bello University
Zaria, Nigeria
drjenks123@yahoo.com
— 
References:
—
Geographies of Citizenship 
in Nigeria by Oga Steve 
Abah, Wusasa, Zaria: 
Tamaza Publishing, 2003.
—
‘Oil and accountability 
issues in the Niger Delta’ 
by Oga Steve Abah and 
Jenks Zakari Okwori, in 
Rights, Resources and the 
Politics of Accountability, 
edited by Peter Newell and 
Joanna WheelerLondon: 
Zed Books, 2006.
— 
Editor:
—
Nicholas Benequista


Getting to the Bottom of the Story with Theatre for Development

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/20.500.12413/12579/1/benequista_2009_getting.pdf

Getting to the Bottom of the Story with Theatre for Development

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