Kaduna youths get theatre training

Prof. Steve Abah, one of the initiators of the programme said “the training is essentially on transformation education with youths in Kaduna to discuss development issues, especially in the context of violence. The main purpose is to engage them in interrogating issues to reorient their thinking away from violence to a more purposeful engagement across […]

Prof. Steve Abah, one of the initiators of the programme said “the training is essentially on transformation education with youths in Kaduna to discuss development issues, especially in the context of violence. The main purpose is to engage them in interrogating issues to reorient their thinking away from violence to a more purposeful engagement across ethnic and religious divides for the development of their communities. This is the reason we chose Kabala West (predominantly Christian) and Ungwar Muaz’u (mostly Muslim).”

One of the trainees, Abdul Hamisu who spoke on behalf of his colleagues said, “The work first engaged us in examining a variety of issues from violence, democracy, gender and community provisioning. This was followed by building drama on the key issues identified. We did this first in groups in our own communities. Later on, the two groups met and we made one drama together and presented it in the so called ‘enemy communities’.” Prof. Abah said the idea was to make both youths and elders see the commonalities rather than focus on differences between them.

Roseline John said, “the second phase was video training and shooting community stories. At this stage we were guided to make our own videos and showed them to members of our communities. I believe we were able to achieve the set goal because even the Hakimi (district head) and his palace chiefs were in attendance to watch our presentations.”

 The project which has been on for about three months is a collaborative action research project between Professor Abah of the Theatre for Development Centre, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and Dr. Colette Harris of the University of East Anglia with sponsorship from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK.