AFRICAN DRAMA FRANK OGODO OGBECHE: Harvest Of Corruption Justify the title of the play?

Answer Details

Frank Ogodo Ogbeche's Harvest of Corruption is aptly titled, for the play dramatises a society in which corruption has been sown so widely that its bitter "harvest", exposure, disgrace and punishment, is finally reaped. The title captures both the pervasiveness of corruption and the idea that wrongdoing eventually yields destructive consequences.

Corruption as the seed sown throughout the play

• Corruption saturates every level of the society of Jabu. Public officials, the police, the judiciary and business people are all shown trading in bribery, abuse of office and moral decay.
• Chief Ade Amaka, the corrupt Commissioner for Health, embodies this: he abuses his position, engages in drug trafficking and sexual immorality, and uses wealth and influence to escape accountability.

The many forms of corruption

• Political corruption. Amaka secures and abuses public office for private gain.
• Bribery and perverted justice. Officials such as the police officer Inspector and the corrupt figures in authority take bribes; attempts are made to buy the courts.
• Drug trafficking and immorality. Amaka's involvement in hard drugs and his exploitation of young women, including the tragic case of Aloho, show moral rot.
• Abuse of the vulnerable. The innocent are used and discarded, as when Aloho is seduced, exploited and destroyed.

The harvest: consequences reaped

• The metaphor of harvest implies that what is sown must be reaped. After much wrongdoing, justice finally catches up with the offenders.
• Aloho pays with her life for her entanglement in Amaka's corrupt world, while the exposure and prosecution of Amaka and his accomplices show corruption bearing its destructive fruit.
• The eventual triumph of justice, through the efforts of upright characters like Ogeyi and the honest arm of the law, delivers the "harvest" of retribution.

Conclusion. The title is fully justified. The play depicts a society that has cultivated corruption in every institution, and it traces the inevitable harvest of that corruption in ruin, death and eventual punishment. Harvest of Corruption thus warns that a nation which sows corruption will surely reap its bitter consequences.