Once Upon an Elephant
Bosede Ademilua-Afolayan · Nigeria · African drama · WAEC set text 2026–2030
Why it is on the list
Nigerian play on sit-tight power, ritual abuse, and the people who finally pull an elephant off the throne.
Setting
A Yoruba palace. King Akinjobi is dying; the succession is being stolen.
The story
- Oba Akinjobi is on his deathbed. Serubawon, priest and plotter, has already been poisoning the king. He means to put Olaniyonu — who will style himself Ajanaku, “the Elephant” — on the throne while the king still breathes.
- Kingmakers are ignored or bought. The Olubori rites are twisted. Ajanaku seizes power and rules by fear: land stolen, mouths shut, Iya Agba (the old king’s wife) humiliated and driven out.
- To stay alive Ajanaku uses the Ijedodo — a ritual that feeds on the blood of a virgin. He rapes Desola, who is preparing to marry Odekunle. Desola is Serubawon’s daughter. She is also, it will turn out, Ajanaku’s half-sister.
- Serubawon is Ajanaku’s real father: he slept with the king’s younger wife, Adebisi, and framed Iya Agba to hide it.
- At the Jobele festival, where Ajanaku means to become immortal, Iya Agba leads the harmed to take their lives back. Desola embraces him and reclaims herself. Odekunle binds him with a charmed cloth. The elephant falls. Serubawon, exposed, kills himself.
Characters
- Ajanaku (Olaniyonu)
- Usurper-king, the elephant of the title. Arrogant, ritually sustained, destroyed by the same medicine that raised him.
- Serubawon
- Priest, kingmaker, secret father, author of the plot. His cleverness ruins his own house.
- Iya Agba
- Wronged senior wife of Akinjobi. Memory, medicine, and the person who knows how to undo the ritual.
- Desola
- Serubawon’s daughter, Odekunle’s bride, victim of Ijedodo, the one who takes her life back.
- Odekunle
- Desola’s betrothed; helps bring Ajanaku down.
- Akinjobi
- The rightful, dying king.
- Delani & Omoyeni
- The other young pair; Ajanaku had claimed Omoyeni’s pregnancy. After his death they can be together.
Themes
- Dictatorship and sit-tight power — the elephant that will not leave the farm.
- Ritual as both community glue and a weapon.
- Patriarchy and the use of women’s bodies in politics.
- Truth coming out of the palace at last; suicide as the coward’s exit.
In the exam
- Learn the two rituals by name: Ijedodo (the rape that feeds him) and Jobele (the festival where he falls). Those names earn marks.
- Serubawon is the better essay character than Ajanaku if the question is on cause, not on the face of tyranny.
- Iya Agba is how the play answers “what can the powerless do?”