Dimeji Sodeke’s Ooni Luwo: Where Radical Sovereignty Meets Defiance

By  Alimat Yunusa

In Ooni Luwo: One Queen, Two Kings, Dimeji Sodeke engages in a daunting act: that of reinterpreting a historical occurrence in the dramatic form. His intent is not merely to reconstruct and retrace history but rather to make it a vibrant presence, thus bringing a mythology and satire back into play, which can be viewed as a feminist reclaiming of history; in essence, asserting history is not a force to be recalled but one to converse with. Published on 2 June, 2022 by Bablo publishers, Ooni Luwo is an exhilarating book about history and culture. 

Queen Luwo is the titular figure, the power of which begins to upset both the politics and traditions of a kingdom. As a widow ready for remarriage according to tradition, she openly defies these traditions with an adamant declaration that “a queen decides her own remarriage”. The patriarchal system, however, allows very little room for personal liberty: the power she wields as Ooni of Imoleaiye, the reigning queen of the kingdom, does not just influence her private affairs but impacts the survival of the entire kingdom; and since the elders and chiefs advising her believe that a queen without a king poses a great political risk to the kingdom.

This clash between an individual’s freedom to choose and a community’s (or politics’) expectations from her is the foundation of the play. Luwo’s refusal to remarry changes her status from a mere symbol of the state to a political operator whose personal decision could have wider implications (and harm) for her people; for her to be outmaneuvered or exploited. Not only are their bombastic proclamations of “saving the kingdom” debunked but it also reveals, underneath their concerns, their profound dislike for a woman’s power.

This political aspect of the play is reinforced because it is based on the life of Luwo Gbagida who was the only woman Ooni to have ruled Ife. This fact highlights a continuous historical debate in Africa on women’s roles in politics. Contrary to the often repeated statements in colonial accounts, that African traditional states were rigidly patriarchal and completely barred women from participating in politics; various African histories have proven otherwise as we have seen many women rulers and other African communities that recognized women with political power within some of the existing kingdoms and empires. In this play Sodeke not only demythologizes the queen’s image as portrayed in traditional historical records but reclaims her as a woman who wielded significant power and was able to make decisions beyond the limitations of traditional customs.

The most remarkable element fueling this play is the dialoguing. The play echoes the tone and pace of Yoruba folk traditions, its rhetoric. With its many proverbial statements, rituals and figures of speech, dialogues especially within council settings are verbal warfare among the kings and chiefs. Flattery and deference were not only the marks of loyalty but also weapons to hide intentions, the language of the play does not communicate directly but is evasive, circumventing words in an effort to give life, through narrative art and traditions, to the ordinary debates within the traditional palace and the market places.

This mode of storytelling establishes the play’s dramatic effect; it is dialogue filled with the negotiations that were typical of ritualistic processes within a traditional setting, in a form of verbal fight where every statement has the weight of tradition. This shows how well Sodeke is familiar with oral literature and indigenous rhetoric. A significant portion of this play is structured in a way that gives the impression that it was intended to be staged rather than simply read.

However at some points, the play is too ambitious, it becomes marred by very direct, self-explanatory phrases which deprive the audience of the chance to infer through a dialogue of silent actions, for instance, it appears that the characters are forced to clearly and loudly declare who and what the subject of the play is. Even though these expositions make the issue clearer they detract from the punch of good drama.

Regardless of this aspect, the play does more than retell a chapter of African history. Ooni Luwo: One Queen, Two Kings stands out as a deliberate act of defying an ideology, of recreating an African woman ruler not from myth to a recreated reality but to an act of politics; she is neither a despotic figure nor someone out of place but a ruler fighting to maintain her status quo within a patriarchal system.

Through the demonstration of a female monarch whose success, choice and refusal to submit to any external forces forms the nucleus of this drama, the play seeks to correct the misconception that has long held African women captive; that they are marginalized figures and are merely spectators of social dynamics, thereby painting a vivid portrait of African past as containing the multitude of experiences that African women have experienced.

The play’s argumentative framework of sovereignty, traditions and women relations in constant negotiation is what defines its dynamics. Whether these negotiations occur between kings, in families or even in a woman’s decision to chart her own course, Sodeke, using the theatre as a medium to transform a part of the Yoruba historical past into an argument on liberty and authority; have ultimately given voice to the voice that has long been deprived of an account.