Title: Honourable Chairman

Author:  Jerry Alagbaoso

Publisher: Kraft Book, ibadan

Pagination: 56

Year: 2018

Reviewer: Henry Akubuiro

An honour is more honourable when there is honour in it. But that is not always the case, and many of us don’t seem to care. There is, however, somebody who cares: Jerry Alagbaoso. The issue of bastardisation of awards is the major preoccupation of his recently reissued play, Honourable Chairman.

Sixteen years after the first edition of the drama piece was published by International Press, the thematic concern of the playwright has remained a talking point in our national life, echoing its social relevance. The most worrisome of this development is not just that our traditional rulers have been gifting chieftaincy titles to all comers but the corruption of the ivory tower with the bug by conferring honorary doctorate degrees  on the highest bidders.

Alagbaoso, in this play, is worried by this anomaly, especially the involvement of foreign institutions and their African collaborators –the intelligentsia. Among others, the playwright identifies the reason for this mad rush as a makeup for those who left formal school earlier and an attempt by some to paint a picture of upward social and academic mobility.

It is the duty of a writer as the conscience of the nation to intervene when standards seem to be compromised. This committed role is fulfilled by Alagbaoso in this play. It is a work of comedy, typical of the playwright’s oeuvre. As we laugh at the absurdities of the characters that teem this fictional universe, Alagbaoso lampoons the inane in us, reawakening the need to retrace our footsteps from actions that put the academia and society in bad light.

The rot in the academia vis-à-vis the bastardisation of honourary doctorate degrees is driven home with a characterisation that is far and wide. The foreign syndicate is dramatised by the representatives of the nonexistent Elizabethan Institution of London in Ala-saa-mbara State of USA: Messrs Hoodwink Fraud, Borrowed Robes, Nought Shaw and Mrs Highest Bidder.

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Their major accomplice is Dr. Armstrong Best, an ex-lecturer from Nigeria sacked from an American university because of trade union activities. He, thus, finds a lucrative vocation in arranging and coordinating honorary degrees for businessmen and politicians.

He concedes in the first scene of the play why honour has gone to the winds: “I was out of job and could not live up to my domestic responsibilities such as the provision of food. In fact, it was the jobless and hopeless situation that pushed me into this private placement, advertising and selling of honorary degrees so as to keep body and soul together or to make both ends meet” (p.14).

Greed is not always a Nigerian. In the region where the snow falls and the tornado rages intermitently, it is also a given. The foreign collaborators in the play show how greedy they are, too, for, if they aren’t, they won’t buy into Dr Armstrong’s dubious proposition.

The beneficiaries of these sham awards are expected to pay “conferment-logistics-fees” and these awards are conferred not in an American university but in a Nigerian hotel after the American collaborators have arrived the country to facilitate the monkey business.

The semi-literate politician is an easy prey for this kind of honorary racket, because little things made to look bigger delights him. Little wonder, Dr Armstrong choses the 43-year old Honourable Chairman of Wazobia Local Government as one of the targets to swindle. His secretary, after reading the letter communicating the Honourable Chairman’s choice for the award to be held at Ignoramus Hotel, tries to dissuade him from falling victim to the racket, but he doesn’t want to pay heed. Where ignorance is bliss, as we know, it is folly to be wise.

Hear Chief Miracle in flattering English: “All I know is that I am intoxicate by this honour which is landing from abroad after one years of my dignity as honourable and executive chairman of my local government area. From the heart of my bottom, I am satisfied happy….” (p.22).

Fellow politicians, like Alhaji Hassan Shehu, on the day of the conferment, eagerly show solidarity with their colleague, but Prof Thomas Obi, a lecturer in the US who is on vacation, isn’t delighted with what is going on, and questions the existence of the Elizabethan University of London in the USA.

He protests, “This honour appears to be a rip-off or a fraud. I am surprised that a supposedly well informed PhD holder, Dr. Armstrong Best, is behind this mess or lampoon on our collective integrity and intelligence….,” (p.36). His intervention, surprisingly, doesn’t go down well with Chief Miracle Best and his supporters, and the show continues.

As a leading light in this society, Professor Thomas takes the burden  of truncating this anomaly with the assistance of policemen who storm the party chairman’s house where a party is going on to celebrate his honorary degree to make arrests.

He declares afterwards: “… no crime will go unpunished, including false life, fake credentials, impersonation, academic fraud! … otherwise, you would be sending wrong signals to our youths, their future and the society…. Real academic gowns and doctorate degrees should be for fit and proper persons like me who have contributed their quota to society and have been found worthy in character and learning. How can a horrible chairman be honourable?” (p.31).