When Ethics is Afraid of the Truth: Framing and Counter Framing of Yoruba Omoluabi Character Discourse in Ojoniyi’s Memoir Plays

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we argue that many societies in Nigeria arguably pay lip service to their avowed ethics and moralities in the face of uncomfortable truth. Drawing on the personal experience of the blackmail of Bode Ojoniyi in Osun State University to cover the crimes of the manipulation of more than 93 results of the 2013/14 graduating students of the Department of English and International Studies and the compromise of the members of the Directorate of State Security Service, we undertake a critical rethinking of how the Management of the University and the individuals that are involved in the crimes struggle to renegotiate clear ethical positions of the Yoruba communal Omoluabi morality to protect crime, criminals and criminality. In the process, we reengage the notions/ideals of resistance, counter-resistance, Omoluabi, neo-Omoluabiism, absurdism, neo-absurdism, ego-inversion, ego-mutilation, ego-repositioning, cultural conditioning, and counter-cultural conditioning, within the praxis of dialectical-text-consciousness (2012) to argue that most Nigerians – as represented in the individuals involved in the Uniosun crimes and criminality – practise, as in the title of this paper, such societal ethics and moralities that are afraid of the truth. We build our arguments around the analysis of Ojoniyi’s three memoir plays – For the Love of Sisyphus, A Dance of Beasts, and One Blackmail Too Many – and the critical essays he has written on the experience. We conclude that for ethics to embrace the truth/truthfulness, individuals must be willing, like Sisyphus, to be defiant against the hegemonies – the gods – who often seek to manipulate the truth.

Keywords: Neo-Omoluabiism, neo-absurdism, ego-inversion, ego-mutilation, ego-repositioning, cultural conditioning