Creation of Historical Satire through History and Psyche in a Nigerian Play

This study investigates how Ahmed Yerima, a Nigerian playwright demonstrates a change from the traditional norms and forms of playwriting. He engages in a new idea like interrogating existing history, creating fictional characters from historical heroes through the portrayal of characters' psyches at the expense of historical situations and predicament. Existing literary scholarly engagements on satire have drawn inspiration and source from either Horatian or Juvenalian satire but the playwright under this study exhibits a style that has a departure from the traditional sources of satire. This study therefore, examines Yerima dramaturgy in creating historical satire through history and human psyches in order to show the distinction between reality and illusion and to privilege human mind above the prevailing societal realities. Our primary text or data shall be Igatibi, a play with historical affinity with Nigeria's people, it will undergo a critical textual analysis which will be influenced by postcolonialism and psychoanalysis as theoretical framework. The essence of postcolonial is to distinguish reality from bigotry and hypocrisy, while psychoanalysis helps to investigates characters' unconscious motives and behaviours. It is discovered that the bigotry, crudity, hypocrisy and sycophancy that are aspects of Nigerian socio-political atmosphere are exposed. Thus, a new stylistic technique for satire has evolved complementing both Horatian and Juvenalian satires.