By Henry Akubuiro
Sipping Coffee with My Boss, Jerry Alagbaoso, 2023, pp. 80
Jerry Alagbaoso is one of the most consistent playwrights in Nigeria with over a dozen plays. Using comedy as a tool for satire, Alagbaoso’s plays pay witness to socio-political issues in the society, inviting the reader to laugh and cry on our shortcomings and draw conclusions on how to move the society forward.
Some of Alagbaoso’s plays are set in schools. The playwright believes that, if you right the wrongs in the citadel of learning, the wider society would be better for it, because everybody would go back to the society to make a change.
In making comedy a literary forte, the author wants a drama that can entertain and pillory at the same time.
Very few Nigerian playwrights can compete with Alagbaoso on this. He doesn’t just make the readers laugh but also makes them go away with important life’s lessons in between bouts of laughter.
A university is supposed to mould the character and knowledge of students, researchers and everybody on campus. In Sipping Coffee with my Boss, Alagbaoso has taken it upon himself to mould the character of the lecturers and administrators by showcasing their failures for them to sink in. Alagbaoso uses his plays as a mirror to reflect humanity and its many faces.
Sipping Coffee… , as a satire on the university system in Nigeria, re-examines the lives of the gatekeepers in the school and their unbecoming conducts that contradict their essence, alongside those of the students with similar blemishes.
However, the playwright would like the reader not to limit his understanding of the play to a box. He says: “…In a way, it appears to be a metaphor for individuals or groups’ methods of complaints, blackmails, gossips, character assassinations, eye-service, and sanctimonious tendencies, especially among some workers or employees and employers” (p.7). So the author is lampooning both the Ivory tower and establishments in general, for what obtains in the former resonates in the latter.
Set in Forefront University, Alagbaoso creates an imaginary setting similar to what exists in reality with all the intrigues, snares and repercussions.
The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Jerry Lawson, is one of the major characters in the play driving the plot. From his living room, we can see what his family setup looks like. The excitement and expectations that came with the appointment of the new vice chancellor of the university raise the bar that something different is about to happen in the university community.
The homage by many to the new VC’s office gives away the pretentious lifestyles. Currying favours is what many employees are good at here.
Dr Kaysee Lawson, wife of the new VC, reports to the husband: “These three lecturers (she points to the three of them) with me here are my only friends… Now, according to my friends, Prof. Job harrasses female students a lot and does not mark their scripts until they buy his plagiarised books or see him outside the campus for sorting and physiology effects. He is said to have changed his date of birth.
At times, he collects money from gullible admission seekers and parents through a representative for the admission of their children or even to pass their children and wards in examinations. He, at times, adjusts students’ results for fees or for other things…” (p 27).
In his maiden meeting with the teaching staff and administrators, the VC points out the prevalent anomalies in the university involving them, which they denied. “I don’t issue fake receipts to students and I have never embezzled money that belongs to Forefront University,” denies the Bursar. Lecturer 8 also denies: “I can never change my death of birth and records.”
Despite the denials, the play unearths many unbecoming conducts in the university involving many in low and high places. Sipping Coffee with My Boss is recommended for universities, especially matriculation students, to understand the university community and its intrigues better.