Metaphoric Diagnosis and Aesculapian Comorbidity of Nigeria in Iwu Jeff’s Verdict of The Gods

Abstract

There have been brief reviews of Jeff’s Verdict of the Gods online, since its publication in 2020, but there is a vast dearth of critical exegesis of the text. Among the four blurbs on the back page of the dramatic text, only one makes cursory remark about it as a reflection of the Nigerian problems. Beyond such casual reference, this study foregrounds metaphoric diagnosis and aesculapian comorbidity of the plagues threatening the wellbeing of Nigeria and her unity in the text. This gives the play dual interpretative mode – literal and metaphoric – just like Albert Camus’ The Plague and Tony Marinho’s The Epidemic. Like the precursory novels, Verdict of the Gods presents the scenario of a community gone awkward, one in which the gods of healing are irked, when the community is plagued by disease and death, because of the blood of innocent citizens shed by the venal and rapacious leaders. The use of Igbo setting, proverbial witticism and lexes provide a profound proof that the play caricatures, in a satiric form, the contemporary Nigerian sociopolitical scene, using the Greco-Roman medical practice. Jeff cautions Nigeria, that the blood of innocent people killed, or those who die, as a result of the actions or inactions of the leaders is the reason the society may not “see progress” (p.73). The solution to the problems is patriotism and atonement of sins by the rulers and their accomplices.