Description

EGO: ...How can oil that brings peace and progress in other lands bring only pain and punishment to us? When we had no oil, we were happier and at peace. When those long-nosed spirits from who-knows-where sniffed out oil on our land, we thought we had been blessed, but how wrong we were. May God save us from this curse! CHIEF EZIOKWU: It is not oil that is the problem; it is the greed of the human heart. What the oil brings can go round and all will be happy, but a few want to enjoy the goodies alone, that's the crux of the matter. 3RD YOUTH: Until all the leeches in our land are lynched, we will neither know peace nor progress in this land! A curiously compact and taut dramatization of the failure of both leadership and followership in resolving the recurring conundrum of governance and development, in the Niger Delta, that has national and international ramifications. This is not just a play. This could be a signpost to securing future world peace? Chief Akpan and his fellow leeches (chiefs) have collaborated with the powerful oil company to subvert the will of the community for development. They elected for greed and self-enrichment at the expense of communal poverty, penury and regression. Chief Eziokwu has been murdered by arsonists for standing up and bearing the light of truth. The youths have been bought over as a result of ignorance, hunger and greed. Now, two very determined and unrelenting forces fight for the soul of the land in the Dance of the Delta.