A Dramatist’s Search for a Sane Society: A Study of Ayò Akinwálé’s This King Must Die

The condemnable excesses of the political class in Africa, particularly Nigeria, have attracted the response of many creative artists, particularly playwrights. As the search for solution continues, Ayo Akinwale provides an interesting dramaturgical perspective that worths interrogating. Consequently, this paper examines Akinwale’s This King Must Die (2001) as a play that seeks to heal Nigerian society of its seeming insanity. With the employment of the Marxist materialist theory, the study discovered that Akinwakle adopts a clinical approach of diagnosis and prescription which reveals that the Nigerian political class is full of impunity of unimaginable magnitude, such as violence and bloodletting, bestiality, and fraud. Akinwale’s use of mythical and histro-political materials to present Nigeria’s movement in transition in the play also pictures the nation’s problem vividly. The paly however presents hope of restoration, though the ancestors are tired of excesses of the political elite. Notwithstanding, in line with the Marxist materialist theory, Akinwale insists that since the nation’s problems are the products of their actions and inactions, the solutions must emanate from a collective action of its people, and ironically, the political class would still be a part of the participants. The paper, therefore, concludes that though the society still need the political class, it has to purge itself of inordinate ambition, greed, and sense of impunity, and align itself with the wishes of the masses so it could justify the mandate given by the people.