Film review
WAKE THE FLIES, WAKE THE ANTS AND WAKE THE LIONS
Jeff Godwin Doki Ph. D
Thousands of people that thonged the Aliyu Akwe Doma in-door theater, at the University of Jos, on Friday June 20, 2025, with the old notion that Drama is usually an illusion of reality, were rudely shocked to discover that in modern drama, the illusion of reality has grown to include not just the shape of an action, the events and characters but also the details of everyday life.
This of course means that modern theater and film ranges widely and explores multiple realities, some of them comic and some tragically painful. No where is this trend illustrated with more completeness than in the new documentary film Wake the Flies (2025) produced by Lena Truper, a German and directed by Longgul Makpring Dakwom, a Nigerian and lecturer with the Department of Theater and Film Arts University of Jos, respectively. Wake the Flies is set in the city of Jos Plateau state, Nigeria, with its inimitable scenic beauty, its elemental silences, the grandeur of bleak mountain spaces that at sunset are shadowed by magnificent blues, amethystine grays and jagged rocky features, all of these contours adding color and glamor to the props of Wake the Flies.
As a matter of fact, Plateau State is known, both home and abroad, as the ‘Home of Peace and Tourism’. Two reasons could account for this sobriquet: the first is the abundant tourism potentials in Plateau state. The second is because of the peaceful co-existence among the culturally and religious diverse people that inhabit Plateau state. But as the action of Wake the Flies begins, it is a huge irony of some sorts that criminal violent confrontation among religious identity groups, has become second nature to a once peaceful and breath-taking region. For theater-goers the opening and subsequent events in Wake the Flies could only be explained in terms of pathos and perhaps catharsis. But it is very clear to the audience that pathos dominates the plot of the film. As a parenthetical remark, Pathos in theatrical parlance, simply means a destructive or painful act such as death on stage, paroxysms of pain, woundings and all that sort of thing.
Apparently, Wake the Flies feeds the spectator’s hunger for the tragic. The episodes and incidents are rife with horror, sorrow, tears and blood. The scenes are brutal, gruesome horrid and harrowing with men, women and children re-enacting from their rustic memory their collective griefs and agonies. It is a tragic story not just of Jos city but an entire nation on a precipice, a nation of vampires where cannibalism has become enthroned as a god.And it is quite clear that the film’s preoccupation with communal violence has larger religious and economic dimensions.
At the same time, the documentary film is deeply rooted in the Historical process. It is to the credit of Truper and Dakwom that two reputable Historians: Prof. Monday Mwangvat and Prof. Sati Fwatshak are part of the narrative providing perceptible and illuminating historical insights. For example, there is historical evidence that three major ethnic groups on the plateau: namely Berom, Anaguta and Afizere, who were converted to Christianity by the Europeans, had inhabited Jos city prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the early part of the twentieth century. Historically again, there is evidence that the Hausa who were dominantly Muslims arrived Jos city for mining activities in the early 1920s. We may concede that two groups have emerged here: the indigene and the settler. The good news, however, is that since the 1920s both the indigene and the settler have co-existed peacefully until 1991 when General Ibrahim Babangida the military leader created Jos North Local Government Area.
The political control of the newly-created Jos North Local Government Area became a major source of conflict in Jos city pitching the indigenous ethnic groups and the Hausas against each other in a bitter rivalry. What began as a contest for political power became immersed in ethnicity and religion, two instruments in the hands of the ruling elite as they struggle for supremacy. Violent crisis in Jos city, therefore, first began in 1994, and it laid the foundation for subsequent conflicts in 2001,2002, 2008, 2010 and up to the present. The list of the conflicts in Jos Plateau state is as long as a railway line and needless to say that it has brought on its trail deaths and untold hardship.
The plot of Wake the Flies derives largely from these events and it is for these reasons that the film has a profound effect on the spectator: we are made to come face-to -face with the dangers of conflict: it typically retards economic development, it destroys existing infrastructure, it devastates natural environments, displaces huge numbers of people who become homeless and desperate refugees, and most sadly, it creates long lasting and psychological wounds. Wake the Flies conveys this message frontally, starkly and rudely.
The other thing about the premiere of Wake the Flies which could not be missed even by the most indifferent spectator was the key note address delivered by Prof. Dakas C.J. Dakas (SAN). An erudite, soft-spoken scholar with a reputable legal status, Dakas identified the problems and he asked fundamental questions as well. Dakas left the spectators pondering with the suggestion that evil triumph because good people do nothing, violent conflicts occur again and again because the causes of violence has not been investigated, the culprits have never been prosecuted, our institutions are weak and there is bad leadership.
As a matter of fact, it is bad leadership that breeds corruption, election rigging, communal crisis, mistrust, tribalism and other train of ills.So, what next? It is the duty of the ruled, the led, the poor, the ants who are the majority in society to ask questions, to hold their leaders accountable. In Nigeria, as in other parts of the world, our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous battle between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those forces determined to dismantle it. It is these two forces that are in conflict every day and everywhere. They are with us in schools, in offices, at the market, in the churches/ mosques, in the theater and even in our homes.
In simple terms, there are two classes in society: the rich and the poor, the ruler and the ruled, the ants and the Lions those who pull and those who are meant to do the pulling. The ants are little creatures but when they come together, they can lift a big animal like a Lion. The ants can wake the Lion from its slumber and if the Lion refuse to wake up, the ants can torment the Lion with frightening nightmares every day and night.It would be appropriate to conclude that Wake the Flies is a tale of the entire universe. It is a metaphor of the intensity of violence in the present century. The wider dimension is that the international environment of the 21st century is not only violent, frightening but also unpredictable and dangerous. By all conceivable standards, the presence and intensity of conflict in the present century has been remarkably high, the geographical area involved has been considerable and the number of persons affected by conflict has been truly significant. From Dakwom’s home place Jos, to Truper’s Germany, ethnic, communal, religious, secessionist conflicts and even violent protests have shaped the international environment. Wake the Flies is an exhortation for all of us to devise new ways and more effective strategies for peace. The producer and Director are urging society to shun violence, to drive away flies from the numerous corpses that litter our streets as a result of violent conflict. But we can do this more effectively through shared responsibilities, by waking not only the flies but also by waking the ants and the Lions as well. With Wake the Flies, Dakwom’s creative seed has germinated and it is hoped that it will soon bloom and flower.
Jeff Godwin Doki is a writer, Peace Researcher, and a Professor of Comparative Literature with the University of Jos, Nigeria.
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