The Ozidi Saga; Play by J.P. Clark, a revenge tragedy based on an Ijaw myth about treachery and vengeance. Ozidi being a festival play and plucked from mythology, brims with African performance elements such as mime, music, dance/poetry and ritual. But behind the facade of myth, Ozidi packs a potent number of relevant socio-political comments…
Jimi Solanke; Children’s storyteller, also an acclaimed actor, teacher, and poet . Born July, 1942, the versatile artist with a warm personality also veered into such business as owning a club and quite often, when the situation allows, his talent as a composer, musician and spokesman have been demonstrated. Jimi Solanke is known to many…
Mabel Segun; Novelist, one of Nigeria’s first generation writers. Mabel Segun is the author of My Father’s Daughter, The First Corn, Olu and The Broken Statue, Youth Day Parade, The Twins and The Tree Spirits, and Sorry, No Vacancy[i]. Her last work before her comeback in 2010 was in 1998. And before that, she had…
Shamsudeen Amain; Nigerian Professor of Theatre, and Drama touted as the Shakespeare of Northern Drama being the first from his region. Amain is a bilingual playwright and dramatist, using the Idoma and English Languages. He is also a university administrator, rising from different ranks till his appointment as Vice-Chancellor, University of Ilorin. Amain graduated from…
Wale Adenuga; Nigerian cartoonist and comedy show producer. Adenuga created Papa Ajasco and other characters of his skits in the first four years he was running his entertainment company as a one-man business. While an undergraduate, Adenuga became the chief cartoonist of the most popular campus magazine called Viper. Later he developed this vocation into…
John Pepper Clark; Nigerian folklorist, poet, essayist and playwright who draws on his graphic experience to empower the poetry, the songs and, indeed, the grandest engagements of his Ijaw people. He is described in biography by Femi Osofisan as the main animating force of African poetry. Clark’s vocation as a poet commenced with Juuenillla, part…
Ken Saro-Wiwa; Nigerian Environmentalist and author. Ken Saro-Wiwa was the President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP an organisation founded to defend the environmental and human rights of Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. Oil of commercial quantity was found in Ogoniland in 1958, but it also created political problems, environmental…
Samuel Chinedum Ukala; playwright, poet and writer. Born 1949 in Delta State, Ukala is a professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at the Edo state University, Ekpoma. He is a theoretician in “Folkism”, a dramatic theory for which he is credited as the originator, floklorism being performance apparatus of traditional ‘theatre which aims at recreating…
Jacob Sogboyega Odulate, known as ‘The Blessed Jacob’, inventor and essayist, was born 1884 in Ikorodu. As a pharmacist of informal learning and a man of quick wit, Odulate soon achieved fame for the medicine, Alabukun, which he manufactured. As a fourteen year old, he had left his father’s polygamous house at Ikorodu for Abeokuta…