A Retrospective Showcase Of Nigeria In The Midnight Hotel

THE challenges facing Nigeria as a country were brought to the fore during the Easter period in a play titled The Midnight Hotel. Written by Femi Osofisan and presented by Thespian Family Theatre, the play satirically depicts the various social ills ranging from bad leadership and followership and treats them as they affect the country right from independence period to present-day democratic era.

It opens with the chief waiter, Chief Jimoh, welcoming guests to the hotel, and telling them never to limit their requests, as the facility, can provide the best of pimps across the globe.

Thus using the hotel as a personification of Nigeria, the waiter warns any potential client, especially those not from the African continent, to be courageous and expect anything — the good, the bad and the ugly.

It recalls how change in government, underhandedness and fraudulent practices in government have made the proprietors partition the original three-room hotel to a 12-room facility, and then to 19 and eventually to 36 rooms, including the proprietor’s office, just to meet the demands of its increasing clients.

The waiter maintains that Nigeria is like the Biblical Canaan, which flows with milk and honey, especially with a lot of petrol-naira to throw around. Then enters a married lady, Awero, a Member of Parliament, who brings her husband’s friend, Pastor Suuru, a popular cleric, to bonk her at the hotel before she could approve his contract.

Even when the cleric is against the condemnable act, the lady presses him to do it, saying it is the order of the day in the parliament. She says it is called ‘sampling’ and every member of the house has to sample a contractor to approve his or her contract. While both are trying to conceal their illicit act, as they do not want anybody to know, Alatishe, a failed headmaster and politician, comes in with his under-aged female children.

He is running from his debtors and his opponents who are now in power. By happenstance, he meets Awero and explains his plight to her and asks his daughters to keep her company. But Awero is uncomfortable with the situation; she does not want anybody to know that she is in the hotel, least of all that she is with another man, a popular pastor at that to have fun.

The parliamentarian is upset and wants Alatishe and her children to leave her. As they are leaving Awero’s room, they meet the pastor at the corridor.
Surprised, the cleric cooks up some funny tales as reasons for his being there. However, the room allocated to Alatishe and her daughters is the room given to the landlord of the hotel, who had come to assess his facility and to upgrade it. The landlord goes out, but by the time he returns the room has mistakenly been given to the Alatishes.

The man comes in to find strangers sleeping in their white nighties, with the room in darkness. He lights the candle and the girls awake; he panics and thinks ghosts have entered the house, and runs for safety.

The ensuring confusion attracts everyone in the hotel to the lounge, except for the soldiers, who are upstairs drinking. At the lounge, the landlord sees his wife, Awero and Suuru, his pastor friend and Alatishe. He tries to find out why they are there, but the pastor plays smart. He comes up with a story that raises any bad blood and suspicion.

There is temporary reunion for the group, but Alatishe daughters are not so lucky, as the soldiers they are running from defile them. In using the stage as a veritable medium to correct the decay of society, The Midnight Hotel employs humour, music, dance, sarcasm, iconographies, proverbs, witticism and metaphor to give a panoramic view of Nigeria.

It highlights themes of corruption, bad leadership, child abuse, mythicism, profiteering and military impunity. The play systematically uses the protagonist as an architype in Nigeria’s socio-political scene.

It shows how the security agents, who are maintained with the taxpayers’ money and assigned the duties of protecting the citizens, turn round to demean the very people they are paid to protect. In a nutshell, The Midnight Hotel tells the harrowing story of how Nigeria’s security operatives connive with criminals to do evil.

The play also gives a knock on religious leaders, who are expected to live above board, but who, for the love of money and the lust of the flesh, have sold their respect and soul to mislead people to do evil.

They have left their primary assignment of feeding the sheep in their care to do otherwise. Recognising the family as a unit of society, the play calls on parents, government and other stakeholders in child upbringing to take their duties seriously and give proper care to the young ones. It advocates that children should be brought up in a sound and healthy environment.

It harps on the need for good morals. Directed by Israel Eboh, the play serves to set agenda, especially with the change of government. However, despite the casts’ excellent role interpretation, the play should have been spiced up with some of the latest highlife music to reflect current situation.

Although the director tried to do this with the introduction of Permanent Voters card (PVC), which is new, he should have done more, especially as most of the people in the audience were young people, who do not relate with the old school music offered. The dances were appropriate and captivating. In fact, they made the play colourful.