Department of English and Literature, University of Benin, Adopts _The Great Delusion_ for Study, ANA 2025 First Prize for Drama

By Charles Odibechi Nwajei

We are pleased to announce that _The Great Delusion_ has been adopted for study by the Department of English and Literature at the University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.

We extend our sincere appreciation to the Department and the University of Benin for their unrelenting commitment to intellectual solvency, critical inquiry, and rigorous engagement with contemporary African thoughts. Such institutional openness to an ANA-First Prize debut play (2025) remains vital to the future of scholarship and creative production across the continent and its global diaspora.

The Great Delusion
The Great Delusion by Majekodunmi Oseriemen Ebhohon is a theatrical tragedy and socio-political satire formulated within the frameworks of ‘Afrocession’ and ‘Episteresurrecism’, assessed by Professor G.G. Darah as a “major contribution to the literature of diaspora civilization.” The drama explores a distinct thematic architecture:

The Afrocession framework

A dramatisation of the global, coordinated withdrawal of the Black race from the structures of Western hegemony. It posits the return to the ancestral homeland as a final, decisive response to centuries of systemic exploitation.

The collapse of parasitic civilization

The play dramatises the terminal decline of a global order that, having built its advancement upon the unacknowledged scientific and manual labour of Black Africans, finds itself intellectually and structurally insolvent upon their departure.

Episteresurrecism

A shift from contesting historical erasure to the active restoration of African sovereignty, centering the consequences of a world suddenly deprived of the Black ingenuity that anchored its foundations.

Distinctions and recognition

The play is the winner of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Drama (2025) and was an official selection at the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) 2025, organized by the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA).

Published by Ofuname Waves Publishers, the work features a foreword by Dr. Vibert Issa White, Professor of History, University of Central Florida, and a critical review by Professor G.G. Darah, eminent scholar of Oral Literature, Folklore, and Cultural Studies.

We are honoured by this adoption and grateful for the confidence placed in the work by an institution committed to sustained intellectual rigour.

Nwajei, Chairman, Institute of Episteresurrecist Arts (IEA)
episteresurrecism@yahoo.com