By Oyeniyi Esan
Yinka Folahan’s _The Kings Must Die: People’s Story_ can be read as a fictional and poetic lens through which one of the most traumatic episodes in Nigeria’s political history is revisited: the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and the political crisis that followed.
Set in the fictional city-state of Ilu Odo and built around the character of Atobatele—a wealthy, populist leader who enjoys the support of the people but is denied the opportunity to exercise their mandate—the play constructs a compelling political allegory about power, legitimacy, betrayal and the manipulation of popular sovereignty.
At the heart of Folahan’s narrative is a disturbing proposition: sometimes, for a new political order to emerge, the old order does not merely have to surrender power; its competing claimants may have to disappear.
It is this idea that makes the play particularly relevant to the Nigerian experience of 1998.
*The Two Kings and the Nigerian Political Crisis*
The metaphor of the “two kings” provides perhaps the most compelling entry point into Folahan’s political imagination.
Read against Nigeria’s history, the first king can be understood as representing the entrenched military establishment, while the second evokes the figure of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, the businessman and politician widely regarded as the presumed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election.
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission itself describes the June 12 election as widely acclaimed as free and fair, noting that it was subsequently annulled and that the electoral commission was dissolved. In 2018, the Federal Government formally recognised June 12 as Democracy Day and posthumously honoured Abiola as the presumed winner of the election.
Abiola therefore occupies a unique place in Nigeria’s democratic history. He was not simply a wealthy politician who lost an election. He became the symbol of a democratic mandate that was never allowed to mature into constitutional power.
Atobatele’s predicament in _The King Must Die: The People's Story_ resonates strongly with this historical reality.
He is a man of considerable resources who enjoys popular affection, yet his relationship with power is determined not by the people who support him but by a ruling structure that possesses the authority to deny their choice.
This is where Folahan’s fictional Ilu Odo becomes more than a theatrical setting. It becomes a metaphor for a society in which the people may possess the numerical strength to determine leadership but lack the institutional power to enforce their decision.
*1998: When Two Political Worlds Collided*
The connection becomes even more striking when the play is considered alongside the events of 1998.
On June 8, 1998, General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s military ruler, died suddenly. Contemporary reports described the cause as an apparent heart attack, while his death was followed almost immediately by the emergence of General Abdulsalami Abubakar as head of state.
Abacha's death transformed the political landscape.
For years, Abiola had remained in detention after declaring his claim to the presidency based on the June 12 election. With Abacha gone, expectations rose that the new military administration would release him and move the country towards civilian rule.
Those expectations were not unreasonable. Contemporary reporting described Abiola's release as central to hopes of resolving Nigeria's political crisis, while the new administration subsequently announced a transition programme leading to civilian government.
*Then came July 7.*
Exactly one month after Abacha's death, Abiola fell ill during a meeting in Abuja with Nigerian officials and a visiting United States delegation and died shortly afterwards. The Nigerian government initially described the event as a heart attack, and an international pathology team subsequently concluded that heart disease caused his death.
The circumstances surrounding Abiola's death nevertheless generated enormous suspicion and competing theories. Allegations of poisoning and other forms of foul play have persisted, while later accounts have continued to revisit the circumstances of his final hours.
*That distinction is important.*
There is a difference between saying that Abiola was poisoned and acknowledging that the circumstances of his sudden death generated enduring suspicions. The former is an assertion of established fact; the latter is historically defensible.
It is precisely within this space of uncertainty that Folahan's themes of deception and betrayal acquire their greatest dramatic force.
*Death, Deception and the Politics of Uncertainty*
Folahan's treatment of betrayal can therefore be read alongside the atmosphere of suspicion that surrounded Nigeria's political transition in 1998.
The deaths of Abacha and Abiola occurred within a month of one another and at a moment when the country was attempting to escape years of military rule. Abacha's death removed the principal figure of the existing military order. Abiola's subsequent death removed the man whose democratic claim represented the most powerful alternative political legitimacy.
Historically, however, it would be too strong to conclude that both men were deliberately eliminated as part of a coordinated political conspiracy without evidence establishing such a plot.
What can be said with greater confidence is that their deaths dramatically altered the political possibilities available to Nigeria.
Abacha's death opened the door to a transition. Abiola's death meant that the transition would proceed without the man whose supporters believed he had the strongest claim to the presidency arising from the June 12 election.
In that sense, the phrase “the king must die” becomes less a literal accusation than a powerful political metaphor.
The death of one king ended one form of political obstruction.
The death of the other removed the most potent alternative claimant to democratic legitimacy.
And from the space created by those two tragedies, a new political order emerged.
*“For Clarity”: The Dark Logic of Political Transition*
This is where Folahan's notion of a new king emerging “for clarity” becomes particularly provocative.
The question is not necessarily whether somebody consciously decided that two men had to die.
The more disturbing question is what happens to a political system when the disappearance of powerful rivals suddenly makes a transition easier to manage.
By July 1998, Nigeria had lost the military ruler who had presided over the country's most repressive period since the June 12 annulment and had also lost Abiola, whose political legitimacy remained tied to the election that had been annulled five years earlier.
The result was a political landscape in which the country could move forward without having to resolve the most difficult question of the previous five years: whether Abiola himself should become president.
General Abdulsalami Abubakar's administration subsequently accelerated the transition programme, with May 29, 1999 established as the handover date.
The transition eventually produced the Fourth Republic and the election of General Olusegun Obasanjo as president in 1999.
From a critical perspective, therefore, Folahan's “new king” can be interpreted not simply as an individual ruler but as a symbol of a political settlement that emerged after the two strongest competing figures of the previous crisis had disappeared.
*Atobatele as the Dream Deferred*
Atobatele is perhaps most powerful as a symbol of the “dream deferred.”
Like Abiola in the historical reading, he represents the paradox of popular legitimacy without institutional power.
He possesses wealth. He possesses influence. He possesses the affection of the masses. Most importantly, he appears to possess a mandate.
Yet none of these guarantees him political power.
The ruling council retains the machinery through which legitimacy can be denied, manipulated or redefined.
This is one of the most enduring lessons of the June 12 experience.
Democracy is not merely the act of voting. It is the ability of institutions to respect the outcome of voting.
An election can be conducted peacefully and enthusiastically, yet the democratic process remains incomplete if the political establishment retains the power to disregard the people's choice.
That is why Atobatele's tragedy transcends the fictional boundaries of Ilu Odo.
He becomes a representation of the citizen whose political will is acknowledged only when it is convenient for those who control the state.
*The People as Citizens or Subjects?*
Folahan's deeper question is therefore not simply: Who becomes king?
It is: Who has the right to decide who becomes king?
That distinction is central to understanding the political philosophy embedded in the play.
When leadership is determined by an elite council rather than by popular sovereignty, the people may possess the appearance of political participation while remaining subjects of decisions made elsewhere.
The tragedy of Ilu Odo consequently reflects a broader African political problem using Nigeria as a point of symbolism: the persistence of political systems in which elections, constitutions and institutions exist, but the ultimate distribution of power remains heavily dependent on elite interests.
In this real sense, _The Kings Must Die: People's Story_ is not merely a story about the death of rulers. It is a story about transition—and possible rebirth—of political legitimacy.
*The 1999 Settlement and the Question of Continuity*
The emergence of the 1999 civilian government should therefore not be dismissed as meaningless or entirely illegitimate. It represented an important departure from military rule and the beginning of Nigeria's longest uninterrupted period of civilian government.
But Folahan's allegory encourages us to ask a more uncomfortable question: Did the return to civilian rule necessarily mean that the political culture responsible for the June 12 crisis had disappeared?
*That question remains relevant* .
A political transition can change the occupants of government without completely transforming the structures through which political power is acquired and exercised.
The “new king” may therefore be genuinely new while still inheriting some of the political architecture of the old kingdom.
This is perhaps the most enduring strength of Folahan's political allegory because he finds his voice deep into the historical configuration of the Nigerian society.
*Conclusion*
_The Kings Must Die: People’s Story_ offers an imaginative framework for reconsidering Nigeria's troubled journey from military authoritarianism to democratic government.
Through Ilu Odo and the character of Atobatele, Yinka Folahan creates a fictional world in which popular legitimacy confronts an entrenched ruling establishment. Read against the history of June 12 and the extraordinary events of 1998, the play acquires another layer of meaning.
Abacha represented the coercive power of the military state. Abiola represented the unresolved democratic mandate of June 12. Their deaths, occurring just one month apart, radically transformed the political possibilities of the country, even though the circumstances surrounding those deaths should not be converted into unproven assertions of conspiracy.
The power of Folahan's work lies precisely in its refusal to make the political question comfortable.
Who controls power?
Who determines legitimacy?
What happens when the people choose a king but the council chooses another?
And when the old kings disappear, does a genuinely new kingdom emerge—or merely a new occupant of the throne?
Those questions make The King Must Die more than a political drama. They make it a meditation on Nigeria's unfinished democratic journey.
Atobatele may belong to Ilu Odo, but his dilemma belongs to Nigeria.
And perhaps that is Folahan's most unsettling message: the death of a king does not necessarily mean the death of the system that produced him. Sometimes, the throne survives its occupant.
*The Performance*
It is important to note that, The Kings Must Die—staged for World Theatre Day at the Lagos Theatre, Igando in collaboration with the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture was under the direction of popular Tolu Fagbure.
With Tolu Fagbure’s directing skills are defined by political metaphor, sharp ensemble pacing, and high-stakes dramatic tension.Because the text by Yinka Folahan deals with military regents, stolen mandates, and the cyclical collapse of tyrannical rule, Fagbure relies on specific directorial strategies to translate this heavy political commentary onto the stage. Lastly, the diction of the play is outrightly simple, making the style of the language to belong to the language of the common people. The writer employs simplicity of language as a bid to connote the thematic concerns of the peoples' voice.
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