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Many important life lessons from The Error

A child born with a silver spoon is likely to not appreciate all he or she is provided with. This captures the story of Abigail, the protagonist in The Error, a play written by Omolabake Oladeji. Being born with a silver spoon does not always set one off on a path to greatness automatically.

The actions “we take and the decisions we make along the way are what determine what our future will hold”. Apparently harmless decisions do have lifelong impact, especially if not properly handled by the parents. Divided into three acts, comprising five, four and two scenes, respectively, The Error takes us through the decisions and actions taken by Abigail, which leads her inexorably to an undesired future, until something happen.

The play opens in the home of the Baloguns (Mr. and Mrs. Balogun), Abigail’s parents, in the highbrow Banana Island area of Lagos. It is a richly furnished palatial duplex, “painted blue, and with gold-plated windows and door frames.” Despite the affluence, the atmosphere is tense, following Balogun’s meeting with the head of department of a tertiary institution where Abigail, their daughter, is a student.

He breaks the disturbing news to his wife that Abigail has again been involved in examination malpractice. According to him, the HOD told him that Abigail had been involved in two different cases of examination malpractices, and threatened to expel Abigail from school if it is repeated. The distraught father invites Abigail home to have a word with her. But despite subtle threats to stop Abigail from school if she does not change, she is adamant.

Meanwhile, at school, her friend and roommate, Sandra, encourages her to study hard and stop cheating, stressing that she regrets ever cheating and bringing Abigail into it. But Abigail insists she does not need to study hard. For her, she has everything she could ever ask for. She believes that as the only child of her parents she will inherit everything that they have when they pass on. But she was wrong, and finds out rather late. She informs her parents that she is pregnant, thereby compounding the situation. Gabriel Kosoko (Abigail’s fiancé and husband), takes responsibility for the pregnancy.

However, after their marriage and a honeymoon in Dubai, things take a different turn for the worse. First, she had to drop out of school because of the pregnancy; secondly, her parents die in a plane crash. Thirdly, she discovers to her amazement that her father willed all that he had to an orphanage after she dropped out of school.

To compound her problems, Gabriel drives her out of their home when it became obvious that Abigail is not the wife he thought to her be. “For three years that we have been married, have you ever cooked for me?” A question Abigail could not provide answers to. Abigail runs out of the house in tears to her friend, Sandra’s house, to tell her what happened. But Sandra confronts her with the truth, reminding her that she was the cause of her problem. Abigail leaves Sandra’s house with nowhere to go to.

Homeless and poor, Abigail sees people sleeping under Eko Bridge in Lagos, and joins them there. One year later, she eventually gets a job as a cleaner in a primary school. Her encounter with Mrs. Opaleye, the proprietress of the school, brings a ray of hope. In The Error, the playwright, Oladeji, emphasises the importance of hard work, and most importantly, how “the decisions we make along the way could have lifelong impact. As Prof. Ayobami Ojebode, head of department, Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, notes in the Foreword, ‘The Error’ is “a short play with important life lessons. It is hoped that many will read this play and learn from the mistakes of Abigail and her parents.”

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