The Gbenga Adeboye Vs Ali Baba Comedy Godfather Debate will happen with Funke Akindele and Nollywood

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
5 min readDec 24, 2024

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I find it quite fascinating how many Nigerians, even ones that I like and respect, can never quite argue anything related to their culture objectively. Just look at their names and you can immediately tell what side of an argument they’ll choose.

I was looking at a thread on the Gbenga Adeboye vs Ali Baba godfather of comedy debate and almost everyone with a Yoruba name was carving out an angle to make Adeboye into the godfather. News flash, people: there are only two people who can claim to be the godfather of Nigerian comedy and one of them is named Ali Baba. The other one is Opa Williams.

Opa Williams doesn’t show up in these arguments because he was never quite a comedian; he was the hand behind a lot of the hands you saw. But you can’t say he was influential on stage because he was hardly there.

I sympathise with Adeboye, though. If his strain of comedy blew nationally the way the Warri brand of comedy did, he’ll have a major claim to the title. Unfortunately, that never happened. If I didn’t live in Lagos in the 1990s and had some access to the city’s media in later years, I’m not sure I’d know Adeboye’s work or name. Meanwhile, I grew up in the Lokoja, Kogi state in the 2000s and Ali Baba was there with me. I’m pretty sure there are people who have never left the north who would affect a South-south accent if you mention the word comedy to them.

Which brings me to something the American novelist James Salter kinda said: there’s no greatness without being widely read. Truth is: there is no godfather of comedy if your comedy isn’t widely imitated. Back then, I recall how Yoruba people were tickled by Adeboye’s comedy, which you could hear over loudspeakers across the South-west. Looking back, it seems quite obvious that that kind of comedy had an expiry date. There was just always something quaint and less than urbane about Adeboye’s work.

It is not Adeboye’s fault that he died before he could take advantage of technology but Ali Baba had the same constraints. The man isn’t GenZ or anything. He just happened to make better use of a technology that we all had access to: language. In delivering jokes in the one language that binds us all, Ali Baba reached us all. He also presented a suave image.

So, what this argument is really about is this: Who is Nigeria’s first truly modern standup comedian? If your answer is Gbenga Adeboye, then you probably believe Tinubu is Nigeria’s greatest president ever. At which stage, nobody should take you seriously.

None of this is about Adeboye’s quality as a comedian. As I said, I recall people cracking up at his jokes. But then again, I think South African pop music and Ghanaian pop music are technically superior to Nigerian pop music. But there is no argument that whatever we make here in Nigeria has been a lot more influential across the continent and abroad, even if we have been known to steal from both countries for many decades now.

What we are arguing about when we argue about influence is really who presents as the most modern. And, unfortunately, that can mostly be interpreted as who has used the tools of colonialism in the most effective ways. South Africa and Ghana use their language quite a bit in their music; Nigerian artists use a lot of English in theirs. I was part of a music-awarding jury recently and it was quite the struggle to find names of popular South African songs using Google. That is not a problem anyone would have with Davido or even Omah Lay. You see Asake, a Yoruba maestro, naming a song Active and working out a path that is clearly intended to avoid Olamide’s great local champion fate. Modernity and sophistication points westward. Grieve about it but don’t ignore it.

South-south Nigeria always had this edge because a peculiar English was always part of the culture. Ali Baba benefitted from it. Adeboye benefitted from the largeness of his ethnic group and probably didn’t see the financial need to go beyond it. Or maybe he just didn’t have it in him. Ali Baba then added a corporate finesse that EVERYBODY has copied after him because they know that is how you get invited to the big events with big money. Nobody in Zenith Bank is inviting Beautiful Nubia or Ambassador Nowamagbe as headline act for an event they want to outclass their banking rivals’ event. Point one standup comedian who still deploys Adeboye’s methods today and is popular outside of his village, please.

There are parallels to this in the movie business. Funke Akindele is going to sweep the cinemas once again with her new film and we’ll celebrate her. In 15 years, though, it would be silly to prop her up as the most influential filmmaker of her time. Sure, there’ll be those who want her box office numbers but a lot more would want to use the urbane methods currently being developed by filmmakers like Jade Osiberu, Kayode Kasum, etc. The more artful aspirants would go for Obasi, Gyang, Oriahi, Edosio, Makama etc.

Even as I write this, the most influential film from mainstream Nollywood in recent times isn’t any of the Funke Akindele blockbusters. It is Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys. Before that it was Wedding Party. Off the mainstream, it used to be Confusion Na Wa. These are all films that look, sound, and feel like they do not belong to one ethnic group the way that Adeboye’s comedy did.

But, of course, the people arguing Adeboye’s status are not really arguing about his place in the pantheon. The smart ones know inside that he has a smaller chair than Ali Baba’s. What they are arguing for is the primacy of their own experience. When they see anyone say Ali Baba is superior, they feel like something important to their childhood and maybe even their childhood itself is being belittled. It is the same thing that happens in the Beyonce vs Taylor Swift argument and the Beyonce vs Michael Jackson debate. The first is racial, the latter is generational. Both are emotional arguments. You can argue TS and Bey [TS is the bigger star; Bey is more influential] but nobody will ever be as famous as MJ was.

Minus tribal alliances, what we have with Adeboye and Ali Baba is as clear. More professionals in the field wanted to be Ali Baba a lot more than they wanted to be (or even knew) Adeboye. That, my people, is influence. Everything else is needless noise.

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Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

Written by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

Nigeria’s most acclaimed writer-reviewer.

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