Category: Literature


  • Mojola Agbebi is the native name of the poet and advocate of Ethiopianism, who was born April 10, 1860 as David Brown Vincent in Ilesha. Mojola repudiated his European name in 1894, the year he was ordained as a Baptist minister in Liberia. He frequently used his pulpit to deliver anticolonial sermons, which was also…

    read more

  • Oba Koso is one of Duro Ladipo’s most important plays, also the best-known work in the repertory of Yoruba operatic tradition. It was with this play that Ladipo marked the first anniversary of the Oshogbo Mbari Mbayo Club. The play, published in Three plays by Duro Ladipo in 1964, was translated by Ulli Beier. Oba…

    read more

  • Oba Moro is a play by Duro Ladipo, built on desire for continuity. “Let us abandon this place of refuge,” cried the Yoruba refugees in this play derived from Samuel Johnson’s History of the Yorubas, ‘let us build our glorious city, Oyo Ajaka.” The play, was first performed on 17 March 1962, on the occasion…

    read more

  • Oba Waja is a play by Duro Ladipo, based on an incident that unsettled the ancient city of Oyo in 1946, when a British civil servant prevented the sacrificial suicide of a town chief, Elesin, who was ritually prepared to obey custom and follow his late king to the grave. This third play by Ladipo,…

    read more

  • Mythopraxis, which is the practice of myth, according to patterns residing in the collective consciousness of a group of people is an inherent tendency in human beings. This inclination has been identified in important first generation post-independence politicians of Western Nigeria. Awolowo, for example, was thoroughly delighted by the expressed belief that the statue of Oduduwa…

    read more

  • Hezekiah Oladapo Davies was a leading Nigerian nationalist, born in Lagos on 5 April 1905 to “Spiritual Moses”, who was one of the founders of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church. Hezekiah was educated in Wesley School, Olowogbowo, Methodist Boys High School and Kings’ College. He studied Economics under the tutelage of Harold Laski, the British…

    read more

  • Moremi was an important historical figure, wife of one of the ancient heroes of post-Oduduwa times, possibly Oranyan. Moremi is today reckoned as a Yoruba legend due to acclaimed moves she made to end the acts of terrorism that threatened the town of Ile-Ife. As a beautiful woman, Moremi tactically took the risk of allowing herself…

    read more

  • The Scimitar-horned Oryx, Oryx dammah, which formerly existed in northern Nigeria and indeed throughout the Sahel, is an antelope species of the Oryx genus, which has long and curved horn. A few physiological peculiarities such as its ability to delay perspiration till it reach a temperature of 46.5 °C or kidney ability to minimize urine…

    read more

  • Palm Wine Drinkard is the first person narrative novel by Amos Tutuola, published in 1952 in London by Faber & Faber. The author, who sparsely showed any ambitions for his own craft, had penned the book within a few days in 1946. The novel recounted the mythological tale of a drunken man, who follows his…

    read more

  • Oba Moro is a play by Duro Ladipo, built on desire for continuity. “Let us abandon this place of refuge,” cried the Yoruba refugees in this play derived from Samuel Johnson’s History of the Yorubas, ‘let us build our glorious city, Oyo Ajaka.” The play, was first performed on 17 March 1962, on the occasion of…

    read more