The Devil in the Cathedral

The Devil in the Cathedral: A Shadow of Death is a metaphor of lamentation that bemoans the failure of a much looked-up-to leader and that of the led who fail to keep a code of Ten Commandments. This leader Dr. EJANG, who emerges with the rare opportunity which providence gives the minority, squanders it leaving his people not any better than he met them. The play is then a political satire just as it uses the Christian religious parlance to periscope the acts of the individual and the society at large as the cathedral. The irony is that whereas it is Christians that should worship in the cathedral, the people are possessed by the devil himself who rules over their hearts and therefore calls the shots that happen in the universe of discourse of the play to wit, bloodletting, violence, rape, prostitution, political intrigues, betrayal and vendetta. The repercussion is that ¿RABIA, the Niger Delta which should have been benefitted by the facts that it is an oil-producing political sub zone and that it produced the president, is worse off. Events in the play show that neither fact is a point of advantage to the ¿RABIANS. Dr. Godwin UshieDepartment of English Language, Uni-Cal Nigeria.