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Is Nigerian Comedy Getting Better or Worse?

December 24/January 25Nigeria
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Photo illustration by Ezinne Osueke / THE REPUBLIC. Ref: ItsHelenPaul / INSTAGRAM, Basketmouth / INSTAGRAM, Layi Wasabi / INSTAGRAM, elorasblog / INSTAGRAM 

THE MINISTRY OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS

Is Nigerian Comedy Getting Better or Worse?

In Nigeria’s evolving world of comedy, gauche exaggeration and unearned familiarity are often the defining marks of this generation of comedians, and for better or worse Nigerian comedy has to tell jokes that actually make its audience laugh.
Styrofoam Ban

Photo illustration by Ezinne Osueke / THE REPUBLIC. Ref: ItsHelenPaul / INSTAGRAM, Basketmouth / INSTAGRAM, Layi Wasabi / INSTAGRAM, elorasblog / INSTAGRAM 

THE MINISTRY OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS

Is Nigerian Comedy Getting Better or Worse?

In Nigeria’s evolving world of comedy, gauche exaggeration and unearned familiarity are often the defining marks of this generation of comedians, and for better or worse Nigerian comedy has to tell jokes that actually make its audience laugh.

‘Being funny is serious business,’ read three billboards across Lagos in 1998, sponsored by Atunyota Alleluya Akpobome, commonly known by his stage name, Ali Baba. The comedian was, by then, the biggest figure in his profession and for obvious reasons; appearing on popular shows like Friday Night Live and the Charly Boy Show. From the late 1980s, when he did his first show at the pavilion of Bendel State University (now Ambrose Alli University) in Ekpoma, Delta State, there was no stopping Ali Baba. Suave jokes, high professionalism, a grasp of the workings of national life—he had it all. Today, revered as the ‘King of Comedy’, at least two generations of comedians since the 1990s have testified to Ali Baba’s influence. 

Ali Baba is an important subject for understanding contemporary Nigerian stand-up comedy. A 2013 elaborate report from the National Institute for Cultural Orientation affirms that he ‘dimmed the impressive record of his precursors’ whom they noted to include John Chukwu, Tony St Iyke and Jude Away Away. Another precursor to Ali Baba the report mentioned was the Mazi Mperempe programme of the 1970s and 1980s, which aired on Radio Nigeria and the old Anambra State Television, Enugu.

However, this is not a history of Nigerian comedy—there are papers in service of that. This essay accounts, rather, for the stylistic success of the comedians who came after Ali Baba and whose reign of ubiquity in the 2000s reflected Nigerian culture as few other art forms have since done. This peculiarized history owes much to Nite of a Thousand Laughs, the Opa Williams show which revolutionized the country’s culture of stand-up comedy. Its maiden edition held on 1 October 1995 at the University of Lagos, and even though it wasn’t quite successful, Williams persisted with his idea to showcase comedy on a grand stage. 

When Nite of a Thousand Laughs began to take off later that decade and into the next, it was because Williams had democratized the industry. Talents from across the country got access to an engaged audience, something that was only previously sparingly available. With this exposure came the need for even more craftsmanship, to which the Williams’ branding masterclass, coming later, provided inspiration, even as the most successful of the bunch honed their own distinct styles.

Williams, a principal believer in the idea, showed the comedians under his tutelage how to reflect authority by dressing well. Oftentimes this meant wearing Western outfits such as suits and blazer jackets, jeans and Italian shoes. Imagine fellow comedian, Bright Okpocha, popularly known as Basketmouth in the early 2000s and you get the picture. Basketmouth, like so many of his peers, embraced a multicultural perspective that added colour to their presenting act. By reflecting ease with cosmopolitan ways, their local-ness—primarily through Nigerian Pidgin—was something of an exotic extension of who they were, a fusion of some sort. 

LIFE AFTER ALI BABA

In a recent episode of the Honest Bunch podcast, Ali Baba mentioned that, in the early days of his career, Basketmouth and another comedian, Ayo Makun commonly known as AY lived in the boy’s quarters of his apartment. This sort of mentorship is familiar to anyone who’s orbited informal Nigerian industries; it’s a vague indication of the role Ali Baba played for the comedians who came after him.

On his part, Basketmouth was arguably the most-accomplished comedian of the mid 2000s and the rest of that decade. He was a master of the extended joke and often narrated in English and sometimes expanded in Pidgin, giving the most intimate parts of a joke to the locally popular and widely spoken language. ‘There Are Two Things Involved’, possibly his most popular joke, is however entirely related in English; although the joke’s success comes not from the language but the length and structure. It takes about three minutes to tell, starts with birth and ends with death, the narrative linked by the phrases ‘You are safe’ and ‘There are two things involved.’ Asides continuity, these phrases are excitable reference points for the audience, as one experiences watching the on-stage video. 

In accordance with the everyday nature of his jokes, Basketmouth usually kept a deadpan expression while telling them; too cool to be fazed. He called up a vast selection of Nigerianisms: the social, the sexual, the academic, considerations of class and, most of all, the enfant terrible. The enfant terrible makes up many of Basketmouth’s jokes, and he connected these jokes with unprecedented finesse. When he started hosting international events and shows in the early 2010s, it was quite fitting as he was perceived nationally as the most global-facing comedian around. 

AY, on the other hand, came up mimicking the urbanized grammar of the Pastor Chris Okotie, drawing readily from a religious tradition that was entrenched in the Nigerian consciousness. He also fancied acts and, as he became popular, increasingly utilized the flowing whites of celestial churches into his acts. He would open his shows with elaborate depictions of what were supposed to pass as celestial church services, the white gowns accompanied by a bell, prophecies at the tip of his tongue. 

What AY lacked in observational nuance, he made up for in market awareness—the adult demography of the mid to late 2000s, those who frequented these shows, found him funny. But for me and others of my generation, who were pre-teens at the time and whose interpretations of comedic purpose were beginning to shift to more layered work, sometimes he was funny—most times he wasn’t all that. Seldom was nuance folded into AY’s presentation nor did he introduce a particularly thoughtful angle to the phenomena that were the subjects of his acts. He, however, did consolidate his concert organizing skills and by the 2010s AY Live had become a defining comedy event, platforming rising comedians like his predecessors had done. Other comedians would follow; these shows distributed in VCDs or otherwise shared through growing platforms like Facebook and YouTube, all of this happening just after 2010—the peak era of stand-up comedians.

In the middle of that decade—around 2015—digital comedy saw an upsurge in popularity and stand-up comedy receded into the background. We can attribute the latter’s decline to its exclusivity (one had to attend a show) but, also, it was the fact that social media was redefining what it meant to be a comedian. Those who didn’t want to go through the process of establishing themselves in a hard-won industry were suddenly relieved of that duty; they could create and earn the acclaim while fashioning the tools of delivery around their present capabilities, usually beginning with a mobile phone and a camera.

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MASTERS OF THEIR CRAFT

Let me quickly establish that time doesn’t ascribe masterful status to just anyone. It’s an earned credit. And at the same time when Basketmouth and AY were rocking national and global stages, with the pleased eye of Ali Baba watching them, we also had Francis Agoda, popularly known by his stage name, I Go Dye whose jokes revealed the unpleasant workings of the inner southern Nigerian cities. Warri, most particularly. 

Just about every Nigerian comedian has cracked a joke about that peculiar city in central Delta State, but I Go Dye embodied the place on a deeper level. An indigene of the state, he captured the essence of the accent—as I’ve heard on my frequent travels to the south of Nigeria—and this linguistic base then informed his narrative and narration, his jokes emerging with seamless brilliance. Many of I Go Dye’s early jokes were class considerate. He offered the toughened perspective of the lower class as opposed to those of the middle and higher classes; the manifestations of love across that broad financial spectrum. I Go Dye was a man who knew how to deliver an act. Frequently shouting out the crowd with the call and response ‘Area!’ and ‘Eh!’, he brought the audience along in his acts. He didn’t suffer AY’s penchant for excessiveness and was quite rawer than Basketmouth’s Americanized presentation—I Go Dye’s style was perfect for his material. 

An AY Live event in 2014, Port Harcourt: I Go Dye wears a tartan kilt, which he makes a cringe excuse for, emphasizing how important it is, because of his skirt, that he delivers good jokes. However, his most outstanding bit out of that event is his ‘passpor’ joke whose set stage is at an embassy where I Go Dye observed an American citizen being brutish towards the staff and I Go Dye, carrying a Nigerian passport, had tried to do the same. It is his execution of the mirrored action, the flamboyance of the act and his impeccable vocal control—all these lead the audience into the joke. By the last utterance of the repeated ‘goddamn fucking passpor’, the crowd, now anticipating the refrain, is in stitches—the kind of laughter sustained in the belly. 

Becoming popular circa 2013, in the ranks of I Go Dye and others of his generation, Helen Paul’s start-up as a voice-over artist would influence her comedic style, her childlike voice complementing her own enfant terrible act. Where the jokes of her peers favoured length, Helen’s style was spirited, her jokes shorter. One perceives also the high level of crowd control she possessed, working them by way of nostalgia but also an understanding of how children presented themselves to adults—unalloyed boldness and reservation at the same time. Her narration of a bad academic result—beginning from 5:37 in this clip—highlights a predicament many relate to, but it’s her flair with the act that made Helen Paul quite acclaimed in that decade.

But not many women comedians got their due. For as Helen says in an interview, ‘my male colleagues were being excused for some things said and the same grace was not granted to females in the profession’. However, she, and many other women who came both before and after, would find their unique voices, imprinting their own perspectives in this great tradition.

Of note are Damilola Adekoya and Bose Ogunboye known as Princess and Lepacious Bose respectively, who were important forebears for Helen Paul—especially the latter who, like Helen, utilized a personal characteristic in her comedy. Lepacious Bose was obviously of massive build, hence the irony in her sobriquet. But her jokes weren’t just derivatives of her weight, rather she was cognizant of the generation and audience she told jokes to. Such as this one where she caricatured what was supposed to pass as an Ibadan accent. Dressed in a gown which cast an obvious hue towards the Yoruba culture, Bose’s act was an alignment of content and presentation; an alignment that is essential to every great art form. Coming much later, the Igbo-inflected acts of Chioma Omeruah known as Chigul, speak to this alignment as well; a type of character building, by way of the styles of her predecessors and eventual peers, that was also well-utilized in the industries of film and music in particular.

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Afamefuna Klint Igwemba commonly known as Klint da Drunk, as is becoming indicative of any great act, also donned on a persona: a drunk who spoke sophisticated English; a narrative ploy that prodded at self-righteous inclinations by asking, if a supposedly inebriated and seemingly unbalanced man is the sane one among you all, then who, truly, is of unsound mind? Klint utilized this perspective a lot in his jokes and, more than any of his contemporaries, called to mind an era where jokesters were central to the life of a community. The quintessential Nollywood village clown evokes this era, and it’s no surprise that Klint da Drunk often utilized theatrical skills in his presentations. How he moved about the stage, the infusion of music into his performances—it was like watching Sam Loco on stage. Of all his peers Klint was one of the comedians most attuned to the qualities of storytelling and his comedy bore that mark.

Another great comedian of this period—coming sometime after I Go Dye and Klint, and a peer to Chigul—was Bovi Ugboma. He didn’t have an act per se, and perhaps this was encouraged by comedians such as Basketmouth’s lesser-acclaimed contemporaries like Godwin Komone and Abiodun Olapade known as Gordons and MC Abbey respectively, who didn’t dramatize themselves as much but reflected an urban ease with their city-life stories.

The stylistic shifts between Basketmouth’s generation and the forthcoming one can be tracked by watching the jokes of Bovi, who was a quintessential everyman. Where others wanted to make the eccentric normal, Bovi sought to make the normal eccentric, and for the most part he succeeded. Upon Bovi’s entry the industry could tell that a bold new voice had arrived. He consolidated the strengths of his comedian forebears and distilled them into a measured act whose urban and middle-class outlooks helped move Nigerian comedy from its era of obstinate poverty imagery to more detailed, period-relevant subject matters.

However, the digital influence—in that era of the 2010s—crept closer, looming over Nigerian comedy. Afrobeats was becoming globally-recognized and visual platforms like YouTube and MTV Base dominated the zeitgeist as young people wanted to feel part of that vibrant journey. Before then, the era had been largely defined by Millennials but the growing social media culture quickly brought a crucial shift. By the mid-2010s younger people—the Gen Z—were the new tastemakers. And for better or worse Nigerian comedy had to tell them jokes that actually made them laugh. 

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THE NEW REALITY: DIGITAL COMEDY

You know the video: that of a roadside chef who makes bread and garnished eggs for a customer. The bill runs high and after the chef is done, the customer asks him to cut a bread slice of ten naira. Produced by House of Ajebo, its animated style was an industry breakthrough and circa 2013, when the company was formed, several other animation outfits had sprung up in Nigeria. 

The vehicle for digital comedy to thrive was obvious: social media becoming more prevalent in Nigeria into the 2010s. But besides that, it was the ease of dissemination that helped these videos catch on. More devices with Bluetooth were entering the Nigerian market, with mobile phones—which were becoming more accessible—their biggest carriers, and platforms like YouTube partly offered download services. House of Ajebo founder Emeka Erem corroborated this in a 2023 interview in Business Day: ‘It’s better to [release videos] on YouTube. There is no pressure [because] technology created a disruption. If you had to do it on TV, we probably would have to buy airtime and look for sponsors.’

It was acts like Ajebo and Emmanuel Iwueke, known as CrazeClown that represented this nascent age of digital comedy. But, at some point, it became unnerving to see the CrazeClown and Ade skits become overtly heavy on their reactionary sides. Though CrazeClown and Ade’s peak years in the early 2010s were rather expansive, the surprise slap, which is the series’ trademark, got less surprising and less evocative—even when they played into this predictability in their latter videos. By 2017, most of these early digital comedians were past their optimum popularity. However, due to loyal followership online, mostly on YouTube, they’ve continued to put out content, even though central attention has moved elsewhere, pulled and retained by the same digital machinations, one that operates on a different ideological core and further enshrines the work as ‘content’.

The transition from entertainment to content has been one of the strongest markers of the evolution of Nigerian comedy. Here’s the difference: in the early skits of Port Harcourt-based Mark Angel and Emmanuella, there is a pristine quality to the tone of the videos, one that stayed close to the nuances of Emmanuella’s act as a sharp-witted kid. But, as the years go by, the childlike flamboyance diminishes, and not for the mere fact of the comedienne’s increasing age. Rather it’s the language and heart that have been uprooted, somewhat essentially, from their source—the eccentric motions of a child’s life—lacking particularly interesting ways to showcase her growth into teenagerhood.

Content is king, they say, and over here comedic creators are constantly finding new ways of worship. Because aggressively accumulating followership and its attendant financial and brand rewards are the goal, the art form tends to be distorted under the personal biases of under-developed comedians. The work of comedy as content creation is in the act—the character building of Maraji (Gloria Oloruntobi), the supercilious sting of Taooma (Maryam Apaokagi), the suggestive overexuberance of Macaroni (Adebowale Adebayo), as well as the punching-down skits of Cute Abiola (Abdulgafar Abiola). All these are manifestations of their audience’s interests and talking points. On the level of depiction, the best are quite above average, but when the consideration is translation of comedic art into a deeper, flavoured piece of sociological insight—that’s where the comedy misses the mark.

One sees, in this generation, the ‘ready-made’ humour of the cross-dressing comedians, of which the most popular is Sydney ‘Talker’ Egere. Far from being his only shtick, the actually creative Talker used the shock value of dressing like the Pentecostal-worshipping mothers to bring himself to public consciousness. In the aftermath of the social realities necessitated by the 2020 pandemic, the following years saw even more comedians such as Josh2Funny, Zicsaloma and Jay Boogie, come up using the same shtick. And one can draw a straight line from these ‘trends’ to the misogynistic and homophobic behaviours present in the viewers of such content.

This is not to say that the generation before these comedians were exempt from such failings, but with the advent of social media and comedic art as ‘content’, there has been, according to Dennis Da-ala Mirilla’s 2024 article published in Pulse Nigeria, ‘an explosion of male skit makers cosplaying as women, presenting a kind of false, exaggerated representation of otherwise normal activities many women engage in.’

And gauche exaggeration and unearned familiarity are often the defining marks of this generation of comedians. But the things that are missing, as central tools, are the genuine connections to language and zeitgeist. If the jokes we now consume have little quality beyond what they reveal and are achieved through means of forced amity and exaggeration, it says something about the minds eager to consume this content. It says we’re losing our attention spans (a conversation we’ve been having for a while), but in the peculiar context of Nigerian-ness. The shallow manifestations of today’s comedy, which do not draw profoundly from the wells of social culture or awareness, reveal a devastating fact of the erasure of collective memory—a feature Ali Baba, his peers and the rest of their mentees evoked with originality and vigour, or at least tried to keep in mind. 

Fortunately, the wheels of the same social media that have propagated the rise of stylistically-bereft comedians keep turning, opening up avenues for the entry of more deliberate digital comedians. Muhammed Gilmore’s portraits deserve special mention: with fine execution, the totality of the young Nigerian experience opens up within his skits. Sabinus (Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Ejekwu) also embodies a distinctive style even if his jokes rest on a certain outcome: him being outwitted or in danger. Sabinus’ rise has shone a light on the similarly realist skits of his friends and team members, the trio of Wondertalker, Twizzy and Mr Lyfe, all from the south of Nigeria—offering an alternate vision to the erstwhile hegemony of the Lagos landscape and the larger south-western region. And the south-western region’s biggest scion of the times is Layi Wasabi, whose different acts have prominently featured him as a lawyer and motivational leader of the GNCC class.

Layi’s jokes have been ascribed ‘brilliant’ and it’s clear why. A master of the pun, he distils a deep-seated and incredible measure of cultural references, legalese and trending phrases into his skits, but it is the execution—seamless, quirky—that makes them well-received. Winning the 2024 Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awardd for Best Digital Content Creator, it bodes well for the Nigerian comedy scene—both stand-up and digital—that one of its biggest proponents is also among its most competent. ‘Before skits became a thing, stand-up comedy was my first love back in 2015,’ Layi revealed to OkayAfrica earlier this year in May, citing Basketmouth and Bovi among his favourites. ‘When I’m fully prepared, and when the timing is right, I’ll venture into that market,’ he adds. 

SwitOpe and Big Neekah, who’s a phenomenon on TikTok, have also reflected a depth in their comedy that reveal them as socially-aware skit makers. Modernist in their approach, they uphold the notion that a woman’s daily life, even that of the former first lady, Patience Jonathan, as depicted by Big Neekah, is as interesting as any other comedic portrait out there, and definitely more interesting than the crossdressing skit makers earlier mentioned. SwitOpe’s embodiment of acts have resulted in several memorable skits, but it’s the technique of Big Neekah that has made the strongest mark on popular culture. With the help of costumes and TikTok filters, her re-enactments of voice-overs have given new, albeit comical, depth to the people behind them.

In an undertaking such as this one, it is impossible to cover everybody, and comedy, of course, and what makes a thing funny, is as much cultural as well as personal, but nevertheless, Nigerian comedy must exist separately from the superficial manifestations on social media, and the likes of Big Neekah, Layi Wasabi, Sabinus and others in their cohort embody that idea. Through their insistence on reflecting the unvarnished potential of everyday Nigerian life and characters, they return comedy to its pristine brilliance. Obviously, we can’t pin the overall potential of the Nigerian comedy industry on a handful of people. But with the insistent desire for memory, which is necessitated by fast-changing realities, our comedy must rise beyond the mere presence of itself. It must, with the urgency of any dwindling culture, become more than just jokes. After all, being funny is serious business⎈

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