Royal Patriarchy and Intra-Gender Conspiracy in Africa's Age of Globalization: The Dramatist's Reflections in Ahmed Yerima's Jakadiya

Abstract

The author examines the traumatic fate of the African woman in the patriarchal African royal oligarchy and the conspiracy of women against themselves within this realm, in the play Jakadiya by Ahmed Yerima (2017). The disposition of women in the royal establishment is oppressive. This paper is anchored on the principle of Thomas Carlyles's The Great Man Theory, and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie's Stiwanism, an African variant of the feminist ideology which advocates women's social inclusion in Africa. In Jakadiya, Yerima portrays and laments the objectification of women by the royal patriarchy. The main protagonists are two slave consorts, who are only to satisfy the sexual urge of the monarch, but not allowed any aspirations in life. In Jakadiya, Yerima relates the utter injustice that the patriarchal system in Africa commits against women aided, however, by women against fellow women. The dramatist suggests that Africa cannot progress in the age of globalization with feminine dehumanization and exclusion.