‘We do not want clowning and noisy dancing in a university’: the harrowing experience of establishing a theatre programme in a Nigerian University

My experience as Coordinator and pioneer Head of Unit of Theatre programme at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ebonyi State, Nigeria reveals a scary scenario how colleagues in the academia perceive theatre and performing arts in general. This feeling is what I categorically attribute to the age-long attachment to the pre-colonial disposition to cultural emasculation of Africa’s theatre by the European colonial masters and recently by their African apologists. The theatre arts programme at AE-FUNAI was to be one of the pioneer programmes approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC), from the inception of the University in October 2011. However, some senior academics of the Faculty of Humanities made several attempts to scuttle its emergence. In my contribution, I wish to undertake a narrative research exposition of the challenges I encountered and how I overcame these challenges to establish a thriving and most subscribed theatre programme and course of study at AE-FUNAI in August 2016. I will be drawing my inspiration from Samuel Ravengai’s Afroscenology (2024) of commitment to African spirituality, pursuit of African autonomy and perspective. I will be supporting this academic narrative with the contributions of eyewitness accounts of staff members who volunteered through interviews and shared their personal experiences. From the politico-academic intrigues that followed the establishment of the theatre arts programme at AE-FUNAI, my narrative exposition reveals that Africans, even among the academics, are yet to be fully exorcised of their colonial mentality and attachment. With this hindsight of scepticism from fellow academics about theatre programmes, it is clear that the decolonization of theatre making in Africa is a daunting challenge that requires unfettered commitment to succeed.