AFRICAN DRAMA
FEMI OSOFISAN: Women of Owu
Justify the assertion that the people of Owu are the architects of their own destruction.
Explanation
It can be argued that the people of Owu are the architects of their own doom. Their history lends some proof. The plight of Owu has both remote and immediate causes. Prominent among these are the prophesy of the birth of the Prince; the attack on Ife; Owu’s engagement in slavery, the sack of Apomu and the desecration of the Anlugbua shrine by the allied forces.
By prophesy, Prince Dejumo will bring destruction to his own people. The natural thing to do, accordingly to tradition, is to destroy the child at birth. However, Erelu, his mother, he is permitted to live and he does fulfill his destiny.
Regarding the attack on Ife, Owu, full not pride, complacency and greed commits sacrilege. In sacking Ife, Owu sells into slavery her kith and kin and incurs the wrath of the gods. Similarly, the sacking of Apomu market by Owu warriors who take away their women as booty, including the abduction of lyunloye, is Owu’s own doing and undoing, for it gets punished. Again when the Allied forces avenge their dead, they too overreact by pursuing the fugitives to Anlugbua’s shrine, killing the priest and desecrating the shrine. For this they pay a heavy price by being decimated on their way back home. They too are directly responsible for what happens to them.
Owu’s rise and fall can therefore be blamed not on the gods but on the people themselves who do not heed the gods’ instructions and individually and collectively pursue their own interests.