The Hero in Ola Rotimi’s Play Kurunmi: A Preserver or Destroyer of the Law?

Abstract

The last exploit of Kurunmi, the 19th century Field Marshall of the Yoruba Army had a far-reaching impact on the crumbling Oyo Empire, whose inhabitants were having challenges in settling down in their new homesteads. The setting of the Ola Rotimi‟s dramatic work Kurunmi was an accurate account of the historical event, (Johnson, 1973:331-360), despite the introduction of artistic creativity and polish. The object of this paper is to look at the cause of the conflict, which was essentially the Yoruba law of succession that was changed by the nineteenth-century Alaafin Atiba and his council. The paper addresses the following questions: are the Yoruba customary laws of the era sacrosanct and unchangeable? who is the proper authority capable of promulgating new laws, what are the processes of recourse for an aggrieved person? The paper examines the relationship between Kurunmi and Alaafin Atiba from the combined prisms of literature, law and history in order to determine whether Kurunmi was a preserver of the established law of the land or not.