OH, ME! REVIEW AND APPRAISAL

Title: OH, ME!

Author: Nafisah Ahmad Sulaiman

Publisher: Informat publishers

Reviewer: Muhammad Kabir Yusuf (El- Hamdani)

Email: mkyhamdani@yahoo.com, mkyhamdani@gmail.com

E. E. Sule believed that "Women writers in Nigeria have been accused of exploring feministic themes excessively at the expense of literary aesthetics". At the individual level, none of the Nigerian women writers from Zaynab Alkali to Chimamanda escaped the accusation of the literary critics of being feminist. Now that this new title OH, ME! came our way, are we to expect the arrival of yet another feminist into the community of the Nigerian literary works? The answer to this question seemed negative. For what we are encountered with, within the covers of this new title is more than a feministic theme. It is a general survey of life with multifaceted strata.At best, the play written by Nafisah is more than an attempt to produce a literary masterpiece, but also to redefine the moral burden attached to literary works. The purpose of literary work is depicted within the context of social correctness of Nafisah's masterpiece which re- awakens our consciousness about what a literary work should be. It is my submission therefore, that OH, ME! is not an announcement of the arrival of yet another feminist writer but a point of departure from the traditional trend of women's writing to a more lively and non feminist oriented writing. It is against this background that the reviewer of this play intends to critically examine the plot, the themes, the characterization and the diction of the play. This is an attempt to establish the extent to which all these elements of the play rhyme with the progressive nature of the work.

PLOT:

Oh, Me! told the story of university students and how they live their lives on campus. Adamma; who always wanted to feel among, prostitutes and was infected by the dreadful HIV virus. Larai a well brought up girl meets a nice guy who not only shares true love with her, but also pays the price and suffered in the hands of a jealous mob. Aminu killer faces his fate in the rehabilitation home which resulted from his drug addiction and silver spoon upbringing. Musa, Obi and Chima faced the wrath of the university authority for their involvement in cultism and other anti- social activities. Unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet which draws its plot from the history of Denmark, Nafisah draws hers not from the history but from the material realities of the Nigerian society. Though completely fictitious, the plot of Oh, Me! fit so much into the material realities of the society that the story can be well situated in one of the universities of Nigeria. Contrary to the postulation of Vicky Sylvester; "That many Nigerian women writers… begin their literary careers by rewriting their lives", what we find in Oh, Me! is not the author's biographical account, but an eloquent exegesis of the society existing in a state of poverty. The story is so beautifully told and so objectively distanced from the personality of the writer in the sense that the readers may some times fail to understand which part of the characters' dialogue represents the author's own opinion.

THEME:

Many writers are betrayed by their themes that they are easily classified by critics. Women writers are especially classified as feminist with reference to the theme of their works. When asked about it, Maria Ajima one of the Nigerian women writers could not but justify the flaw by arguing that "…the woman cannot run away from her being a woman; she has to write about those things she is most familiar with. Some people say that women like to write about children, about pots and pans. If the woman finds herself in those things, then she doesn't have to be ashamed to write about them." But here is a woman, of course not running away from her being a woman, writing about poverty, about drug abuse, about the struggles between evil and good, about prostitution, about cultism and about other anti- social themes all within the boundaries of the university. The seriousness therefore in the theme of Oh, Me! reveals that gender is not the determining factor of whether the writer is a feminist or not as seemed to be postulated by Ajima. An ordinary minded reader may assume that drug abuse, prostitution and cultism are the central themes of the play. But an in-depth examination will reveal that the above are not more than the sub themes. The central theme, this review opined, is poverty and wealth squandering. All other themes resulted directly or indirectly from these two factors. Adamma's prostitution and Musa's cultism were resulted from their financial incapacity to take care of their burning needs, while Aminu's drug addiction is resulted from the extravagant wealth spent on him by his parents.

CHARACTERISATION:
Even though very little did we know about the physical features and the age of the characters, we are made to believe that we are dealing with young men and women between the ages of twenty to probably thirty. The elaborate and well polished dialogue assigned to each character is suggestive of the psychological independence of the characters from the author. The dialogue is so independent that none of the characters could be said to have consistently represented the author's own opinion. In scene four for example, Jay- Jay refers to Juliet as an idiot, while Prince argues that she is not, but just loose. It is difficult in this kind of conversation to determine who between the two parties represents the authors own opinion. This in effect gives an independent life to the play and subjected it to wider interpretation from readers, reviewers and critics.

DICTION:

A number of critics express concern over the inability of the new generation of Nigerian writers to express them selves in a mature literary language; a language that manifest itself through imagery and idiomatic expressions. Their language in the words of Egya; "wallows in watery diction that makes it blandly un-poetic". This cannot be completely true and applicable to all the new generation writers. Egya himself agrees that Maik Nwosu is an exception to this rule, Dul Johnson agrees too. With the advent of Oh, Me! we have another exception to that general rule. Nafisah's diction in Oh, Me! is in conformity with the audience she has in mind. The youth being her audience would enjoy reading her short and straight to the point sentences. Prescriptive as she is, Nafisah needs the kind of language she used in the play in order to achieve her aim of passing the information to the youths to disassociate themselves from unwholesome acts that constitutes part of the themes of the play.

CONCLUSSION:

This book is short! Its worth doesn't lie in its length but in the power of information it presents. The coherent way in which the elements of the play are put together have eloquently expressed the message of the literary work. The cover page illustration has beautifully summarized the whole idea.