“August Meeting” Is A History Lesson Everyone Needs To Learn

Growing up in an Igbo home, one of the things we looked forward to was village meetings, which parents had to attend at least once a month. It afforded us relaxing Sundays free of our bickering parents. With time, we noticed that the women’s wing of the meeting was a lot more serious than the menfolk — they had uniforms which were diligently followed, fines for latecomers and absentees, and most important to us, post-meeting debates that usually kept my mother busy on the phone. But all these monthly meetings could not compare to the August meeting which held once a year. It was a time when select members of the branches abroad travelled home to make decisions with the women in the village on issues concerning the growth of the women’s community.

Scene from the August Meeting play at Lagos Theatre Festival. Photo credit: Ifeoluwa Nihinola

It was, therefore, with glee and excitement that I opted to see the August Meeting play at the 2018 Lagos Theatre Festival. The play — written by Paul Ugbede, produced by Chioma Onyenwe and directed by Kenneth Uphopho — throws more light on the women collective who dared to redefine their future in the aftermath of the 1929 Aba Women’s Riots. In the play, the women of Oloko have gathered to build on the success of the riots. Their leader, Nwanyeruwa, who had been imprisoned, is back and so they have decided to wage a battle, this time not against the white man who they have already defeated, but against their husbands and the laws that keep them under lock and key, treating them like second-class citizens. It takes a widespread rumour to get one woman to speak the truth about her marriage and, eventually, the other women too end up sharing their respective truths.