NOLLYWOOD

As a child, you might watch your mother, perfectly dressed, handbag in hand, and ask, "Mummy, are you going out?" In other cultures, a parent might crouch, smile, and answer gently, "Yes, my love, I am." A Nigerian mother, however, would sooner swallow nails than speak so plainly. She'd snap, "No, can't you see I'm going to bed?" even as she fuss­es with her jewellery on the way out. By the time she laughs and tells you where she is really headed, the lesson is already clear: humour is a mother tongue. Comedy, like the forces that shape us-politics, religion, language, culture, and that inimitable Nigerian sarcasm-is stitched into us from birth.

It is the same instinct that animates our popular cul­ture: the knowing side-eye in a Nollywood close-up, the exaggerated pause before a punchline. It is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Giannis Antetokounmpo, David Oyelowo. (It is also, regrettably, Donald Trump threatening us with Defcon 1, stale Nigerian-prince scam jokes, and those caricatures that bear little resemblance to us.) The chaos, charm, and irrepressible comedy of our cinema carries our stories. Nollywood does more than depict Nigerians; it laughs with us, weeps with us, and occasionally collapses into its own melodrama. However extravagant the moment, however spectacular the fall, the story remains unmistak­ably ours.
On the way to the set ofLOVE's short-a playful, styl­ised Nollywood twist on The Devit Wears Prada-Lagos unfurled itself through the cab's dusty windscreen as a smorgasbord of motion. A police officer in an orange reflec-tive jacket dancing through his traffic commands. Cars inching forward in reluctant rhythms. Heat rising off the asphalt like breath. As Lagos evoked the slapstick energy of Charles Inojie's 2003 Police Recruit-the city itself performing a kind of acci­dental comedy-it led me to ponder the evolution of Nigerian comedy.

"I had funny mannerisms from the time I was a child," 55-year-old Inojie tells me over the phone, his voice thick with sleep. "The way I spoke could make people laugh without effort; it came naturally. Once you got your hands on a script, alongside some of the biggest names in comedy back then, you studied it-you became one with the character."

With hundreds of film and television appearances since the '00s ("Every role was a role of a lifetime"), plus a long-running stint on the sitcom Thejohnsons (2012-24), it's almost unbelievable that Inojie once intended to become a lawyer. It was only after he sought the counsel of the prominent writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and aban­doned the legal path for theatre, that he honed the improvisation, timing, and delivery that now define his craft. But Inojie, like many of his peers, did not emerge from a vacuum. Nigerian comedy has always had forebears.

The foundations had been laid long before Nollywood's modern era came to define come-die storytelling. From the 1940s onwards, travel­ling theatre-led by icons such as Chief Hubert Ogunde, Moses Olaiya (known on stage as Baba Sala), Isola Ogunsola (performing as Dr I Show Pepper), Adebayo Salami (stage name Oga Bello), and later Samuel Olaoluwa Olasehinde (aka Samuel Ajirebi)-had already carved out a comic identity rooted in Yoruba satire, improvisation, and absurd­ity. This stage work predated Nollywood's cameras but popularised the rhythms, archetypes, and come­dic instincts that the new millennium would refine for the screen.

Long before streaming budgets or glitzy pre­mieres, the home-entertainment era built its identity on characters audiences recognised instantly. The comedy canon of '00s Nollywood spoke fluently the language of everyday life, unapologetically poking fun at its absurdities. In 2003 alone, as Police Recruit skewered police corruption, Baby Police exposed the ease with which fake officers wielded power, and Osuofia in London unravelled the fantasy of sudden diaspora wealth. Girls Cot and Pretty Liars proved quotable long after their release dates (in 2006 and 2014, respectively), and doubled as critiques of aspi­ration, transactional relationships, and performative fake lives. Meanwhile, films such as 2008's Beyonce & Rihanna and BlackBerry Babes, from 2011, lam­pooned the theatrics of status, pop-culture imita-tion, and the anxiety of being seen in an increasingly globalised media landscape. With figures like Nkem Owoh, Sam Loco Efe, Inojie, and iconic duo Osita Iheme and Chinedu Ikedieze, a new comedic tra­dition was forged, blending satire with silliness and reminding audiences that laughter was sometimes the only way to survive the ludicrousness of daily life.

For Ikedieze, comedy was never a calculated pursuit but, as with Inojie, simply instinctive. "It was just a thing born out of passion-being myself. I love to laugh and be happy," he tells me from his family home in Owerri, his voice fatigued by trav­el and the exhaustion of long days on set. "It was tough in the beginning, but because it was some­thing I loved doing, it became easier." Ikedieze­who played Inojie's son in Thejohnsons-reflects on how far the form has travelled since those early years. Skit-makers, he notes, have "memefied" the lingo and mannerisms of vintage films, carving out their own niches even as familiar slapstick reappears; however much the industry evolves, the patterns remain unchanged-the old wine finding its way into new skin.

What gave these films their lasting legacy was the understanding that comedy was never merely diversion; it laid bare society like an X-ray-gro­tesque enough to amuse, piercing enough to wound. Viewed from living-room floors, with cousins andneighbours pressed close before the inevitable power cut, and no phones or TikTok to fracture attention, the comedies cloaked hard truths in laughter. The humour softened the daily grind, transformed irri­tation into shared experiences, and offered a fleeting reprieve. In a country scarred by civil war, military coups, and corruption, the appetite for laughter was urgent, even necessary for survival.

As the home-entertainment market collapsed and Nollywood shifted toward glossy romances and thrillers, this chaos and charm was pushed to the margins-but comedy didn't disappear. It migrat­ed, waiting for a new home in the digital age, in the hands of a new generation of skit-makers, Instagram comedians, and online storytellers ready to carry the tradition forward.
Where theatre and stand-up were once the estab­lished pipelines to Nollywood comedy-paths well trodden by Okey Bakassi, "Ali Baba" Akpobome, Bright Okpocha aka Basketmouth, Ayo "AY" Makun, and "Bovi" Ugboma-by the 2010s, the landscape had begun to bend. As the south-eastern hold on film production and distribution loosened, and more households gained access to cable and the internet, the walls around traditional comedy began to crumble. The Johnsons was a marker of that shift, but the true pivot came with star Funke Akindele's hit sitcom]en(fa's Diary (2015).

It was here, in the tale of a village girl who moves to Lagos, that old and new collided. The techno­logical surge ripped through Nollywood, distilling the legacies of VHS-era chaos and theatre-honed timing into a medium perfectly attuned to small, portable screens. "The accessibility of the series on You Tube-which allowed for a more national as op­posed to regional watch and audience-might have been instrumental to this shift," says the film critic and writer Seyi Lasisi.

Yet this proved both a gift and a burden. For Nigerians, making light of suffering has always been a form of therapy, a small relief against the ghosts of older wounds and newer pressures born of the 21st century. As humour migrated online, that instinctive, therapeutic irreverence collided with a landscape governed not by local audiences but by algorithms. In this new terrain, survival demanded visibility, and visibility needed speed.
Nigerian comedy now moves at a relentless pace. Instagram skits, You Tube clips, and X-bred story­tellers attempt to outrun virality's short fuse. Jokes are leaner, characters more sharply drawn, formats endlessly adaptable. Isaac Olayiwola, performing as Layi Wasabi, deploys legal-deadpan precision. Chukwuebuka Emmanuel Amuzie's Brain Jotter channels the weary Nigerian everyman. Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Ejekwu, aka Mr Funny, stumbles forward as the hapless optimist. All are unmis­takable heirs to Nollywood's comedic lineage, as satire folds into social commentary, parody brushes against critique, and skits increasingly mature into fully fledged screen roles.
Technology has, inevitably, joined the act. "AI has become a veritable tool for comedy," Ikedieze notes, "making it possible to create the unimag­inable with very little-and reach audiences far beyond our borders." Last year, AI was used to show Nigerian minister Nyesom Wike engaging in a Tai Chi sparring session with a naval officer, and President Tinubu performing Tyla's "Chanel" dance on TikTok. It might be a new medium, but it exhib­its the same impulse to turn politics, public figures, and everyday absurdity into comedy.

Many of today's stars bypassed traditional stu­dios, arriving instead via ring lights, phone tripods, and the algorithm. It's a different kind of appren-ticeship that, as Inojie points out, bears little re­semblance to the landscape he entered. "Many of the new breed crossed over from content creation into comic acting, and when you watch them, you see there's still room for improvement. Either as a comic actor or an actor in general, the place of training cannot be over-emphasised." Nosa Afolabi, better known as Lasisi Elenu, agrees: "In modern Nollywood, we don't have comics that carry their characters like we did in the past. What has sur­vived from Yoruba culture are characters like Baba Latin, Sanyeri, Jelili, Baba Suwe, and, more recent­ly,Jenifa," he notes. Instead, Nollywood has folded comedy into its more epic, wedding-party, and po­litical-drama scripts.

Yet this proved both a gift and a burden. For Nigerians, making light of suffering has always been a form of therapy, a small relief against the ghosts of older wounds and newer pressures born of the 21st century. As humour migrated online, that instinctive, therapeutic irreverence collided with a landscape governed not by local audiences but by algorithms. In this new terrain, survival demanded visibility, and visibility needed speed.
Nigerian comedy now moves at a relentless pace. Instagram skits, You Tube clips, and X-bred story­tellers attempt to outrun virality's short fuse. Jokes are leaner, characters more sharply drawn, formats endlessly adaptable. Isaac Olayiwola, performing as Layi Wasabi, deploys legal-deadpan precision. Chukwuebuka Emmanuel Amuzie's Brain Jotter channels the weary Nigerian everyman. Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Ejekwu, aka Mr Funny, stumbles forward as the hapless optimist. All are unmis­takable heirs to Nollywood's comedic lineage, as satire folds into social commentary, parody brushes against critique, and skits increasingly mature into fully fledged screen roles.
Technology has, inevitably, joined the act. "AI has become a veritable tool for comedy," Ikedieze notes, "making it possible to create the unimag­inable with very little-and reach audiences far beyond our borders." Last year, AI was used to show Nigerian minister Nyesom Wike engaging in a Tai Chi sparring session with a naval officer, and President Tinubu performing Tyla's "Chanel" dance on TikTok. It might be a new medium, but it exhib­its the same impulse to turn politics, public figures, and everyday absurdity into comedy.

Many of today's stars bypassed traditional stu­dios, arriving instead via ring lights, phone tripods, and the algorithm. It's a different kind of appren-ticeship that, as Inojie points out, bears little re­semblance to the landscape he entered. "Many of the new breed crossed over from content creation into comic acting, and when you watch them, you see there's still room for improvement. Either as a comic actor or an actor in general, the place of training cannot be over-emphasised." Nosa Afolabi, better known as Lasisi Elenu, agrees: "In modern Nollywood, we don't have comics that carry their characters like we did in the past. What has sur­vived from Yoruba culture are characters like Baba Latin, Sanyeri, Jelili, Baba Suwe, and, more recent­ly, Jenifa," he notes. Instead, Nollywood has folded comedy into its more epic, wedding-party, and po­litical-drama scripts.

One unintended gift of the digital swell is preservation, a kind of accidental archiving; Inojie, whose old scenes delight new generations on Tik Tok, calls it "an immortalisation of first-generation com­ics". Sisters Tochi and Ebele Anueyiagu use their Instagram account Nolly Babes as a silo of old Nollywood essence, commentary, and je ne sais quoi to demonstrate how fashion, humour, and cinematic aesthetics can function as conservation rather than pastiche. The project is less homage than reclama-tion, treating style and comedy as cultural records. As Tochi Anueyiagu puts it: "Nolly Babes prioritises the pride and essence of Nollywood 's golden era be­cause that moment represents the last time we had a perspective that was entirely our own-visually, sonically, in beauty and in style. We owned it."

As grainy clips returned as memes, forgotten monologues resurfaced as viral sounds, and the slapstick of the 2000s reached millions too young to remember the films themselves, they carried Nollywood's comedic cadence onto the global cir­cuit. Hollywood eventually noticed. The five sea­sons of CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola didn't mere­ly feature Nigerian characters-they fed Nigerian timing, directness, and familial humour into the grammar of an American TV show, quietly reshap­ing mainstream comedy.

By the time I reached the studio, I felt as though I had travelled a comedy timeline. The set buzzed with that peculiar Nigerian blend of urgency and improvisation: a stylist adjusted the high-socie­ty shoulder pads of the talent incarnating Oga Miranda Priestly, while another unfurled her wig and a makeup artist powdered her face, all with the deference her presence demands. Seeing the boom mic humorously creep into the shot was reminis­cent of old Nollywood flicks, as was a lighting tech­nician cracking jokes between takes, the melodic echo of vernacular accents in the air, and the talents switching between elegance and exaggerated comic poses with ease.

Past and present were colliding. The camp of early Nollywood echoed in the bold gestures, while the quickfire humour of the skit era shaped the pace. Even the creative direction felt like a hybrid: classic Hollywood satire filtered through Nigerian flamboyance.

Whether it's Ikedieze breaking through in 2002, a skit-maker satirising elections on Instagram, or LOVE's production turning The Devil Wears Prada into a Nigerian fever dream, the spirit remains the same. Comedy is how we observe ourselves-loudly, shamelessly, and with theatrical honesty that refuses to let hardship dull the punchline.

On set, watching the jokes land between camera flashes and costume changes, I felt the city, the in­dustry, and the art form finally converge. Every ver­sion of Nigerian comedy-past, present, analogue, and digital-was alive in that room. And I wasn't just watching it; I was inside it.

Makeup TOLA BETHEL
Gele stylist TIFE ADEBAYO
Photography assistant DAFE OBORO
Camera assistant CHISOM ONUKWUGHA
Lighting assistant MURITALA ABDULSALAM
Styling assistants CHARLES NDIOMU, TIO HEART, MARIE SOARES
Production FABIA ALABRABA
Production assistant YAZ GBAJABIAMILA
Poster ADAEZE ONYIUKE
Special thanks SAL GBAJAIAMILA

THIS STORY IS TAKEN FROM LOVE S/S 26 ISSUE, NOW AVAILABLE AT KD PRESSE.