Wole Balogun, Ado Ekiti
Late renowned playwright and drama lecturer, Prof. Ola Rotimi, will, on March 25 and 26, resurrect on the stage of the Department of Theatre and Media Arts (TMA) of the Federal University Oye Ekiti in Ekiti State.
Postgraduate students of the Department of Theatre and Media Studies, Federal University of Oye Ekiti, (FUOYE), including masters, post graduate diploma classes and doctoral candidates, are set to reenact late Ola Rotimi’s play, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, for the university community during the first matriculation ceremony of the School of Post Graduate Studies of the university.
The play, a political satire, ridicules the folly of unscrupulous politicians with inordinate ambitions who dabble into the murky terrain of politics and end up messing up themselves.
Prof. Rasaki Ojo Bakare, the first Professor of Dance in Africa and former Artistic Director of Abuja Carnival, now Dean, School of Postgraduated Studies, Federal University Oye Ekiti, who also founded the Department of Theatre and Media Arts, explained why the play was being performed, “The post graduate students of the department feel it will be appropriate for them to entertain their colleagues in other depatrtments with a performance, so they chose Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband has Gone Mad Again, which is a high comedy.
“I am aware that the performance is ready, as they have been rehearsing for some time. I consider it a good one coming from them, feeling that the matriculation should not go without them bringing their colleagues for entertainment in the theatre to enjoy the performance.”
He revealed that FUOYE’s School of Postgraduate Studies took off in October, 2017, and was inspired by the need to get the university to offer postgraduate education so as to utilise its huge manpower to the maximum level.
“FUOYE’ PG School was inspired to ensure maximum utilisation of its man power. The university has many professors and academics as staff members, and you don’t really feel fulfilled as a senior academic without you engaging at teaching at the postgraduate level. This university has really gone far ahead of all universities that existed same time with it in terms of personnel, infrastructure, acquisition of teaching facilities and availability of laboratories, academic staff and non-academic staff. By October 2017, we thought that the university was ripe for teaching at the postgraduate level. That was what led to the university senate to take the decision to start the school,” he said.
He also spoke on the maiden edition of the PG School’s matriculation ceremony, “The matriculation ceremony is just a brief event to make our students legal and bonafide students of the university. It is when you are matriculated and have a matriculation number that you become a legal student. Post graduate students will adorn their academic gowns, listen to one or two lecture speeches, take the matriculation oaths and sign the forms and get their matriculation numbers.
“Because this is our first matriculation ceremony in FUOYE, so we should really celebrate it. It signifies that the university is maturing. We will be having as guests bigwigs, traditional rulers, some of the deans of post graduate studies across the country, some VIPS, leaders of thought, university administrators and some national figures, among others