CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Saheed Bello Apocalyptic Regime and the Death of Indigenous Pluriverse in Ahmed Yerima's Trilogy
The death of the indigenous pluriverse (i.e., a world where diverse worlds and systems coexist) in Ahmed Yerima's Niger-Delta Trilogy – Hard Ground, Little Drops, and Ipomu – can only be understood in relation to the history of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism that are tightly interwoven in the African context. The history of conquest, dehumanization, denaturalization, and decolonization in the South-South region of Nigeria has attracted vast amounts of studies, but the historical process and political philosophy that brought about the exclusion, erasure, annihilation, and/or death of indigenous worlds (i.e., the interconnected social, spiritual, and natural worlds) and systems (i.e., belief and value systems) has not been examined. This study addresses the lacuna by examining the dramatic representation of these interconnected worlds in Ahmed Yerima's trilogy, with the aim of gaining insights into the indigenous pluriverse in the region and speaking to the conditions of modernity and the apocalyptic regime that erased the interaction of the social environment, the spiritual environment, and the natural environment. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s biopolitics of the population vis-à-vis state racism and Wole Soyinka's The Fourth Stage, the study offers a new reading of Yerima's three plays on the Niger Delta to show the historical process and political philosophy that obliterated the indigenous pluriverse in the region.