When stars gather around a megastar,
illumination becomes the phenomenon. And, the phenomenon tells the story of the
luminary. Sunday Ododo is a cultural icon and an intellectual giant, in fact, a
scholar-artiste who has contributed notably to the growth of scholarship and
creativity in Africa, particularly in the Nigerian theatre and literary
landscapes. His commitment to scholarship has enhanced the academic life of his
generation and has positively impacted on his students and younger academic
colleagues. He stands out as an exemplary intellectual who occupies the
prestigious gulf between the old and the younger generation of scholars. This
marks him as a golden viaduct between these categories of people.
Sunday Enessi Ododo was born on the 21st
of October 1962 at Maiduguri North-East Nigeria. He hails from Okene in Kogi State,
Nigeria. He attended Nurul Islamic Primary School, Okene between 1970 and 1975,
and attended Ihima Community Secondary School for one year, 1975-76, before proceeding
to Fatima Community College, Ekan-Meje, Omu-aran from 1976 to 1980, where he
completed his secondary education. Sunday Ododo as a youngster is propelled by
his academic appetite to obtain his university education at the Universities of
Ilorin and Ibadan where he bagged his B.A (Hons), M.A and PhD degrees, all in Performing
and Theatre Arts between 1986 and 2004.
Sunday Ododo is an accomplished academic
and intellectual. This is a rare feat which he attained not with a sudden
flight but by dint of willpower and hard work. His services to humanity spread
between the town and the gown. His
academic career started in 1993 when he was appointed an Assistant Lecturer in
the Department of Performing Arts, University of Ilorin. He rose through the
academic ranks to attain the colossal acme of a professor at the University of
Maiduguri since 2008.
Sunday Ododo is a member of
learned/professional societies. These include Society of Nigeria Theatre
Artists (SONTA), where he served as an Ex- Officio in 1991 -1993 and since 2009
he has been one of the National Vice Presidents to date. Sunday Ododo is also a
member of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners
(NANTAP) and the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) and Reading
Association of Nigeria (RAN). Ododo served as Secretary-General of the Kwara
State Chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). He was lifted to
the position of National Vice President of ANA in 2009, a position held till
2011. He also functioned as Chief Judge of literary prizes, Association of
Nigerian Authors (ANA), National Body from 2006 to 2009. Ododo is also a member
of several international academic societies. These include: American Studies
Association of Nigeria, (ASAN), and International Federation for Theatre
Research (IFTR), London. He was also appointed for his distinguished standing
into the research Board of Advisors of American Biographical Institute, North
Carolina, USA.
As an academic, Sunday Ododo has
functioned in various capacities in service to the university community. Apart
from such positions as editor of journals at Ilorin, Editorial Advisory Board of the Perfformio,
an on-line journal of the Centre for Performance and Literature, Swannsea,
Metropolitan University and several other editorial works to his credit, he was
Seminar Coordinator, Departmental Academic Adviser, Member Senate of the
University of Ilorin, Member Ceremonials
Committee and Chairman Production
Committee at the University of Ilorin. Ododo was Head of Department of the Performing
Arts, University of Ilorin. He has held sensitive and key positions as Chairman Curriculum Development Committee
for the establishment of a Department of Performing Arts at the University of
Maiduguri in 2007, where he currently serves as Head of Department. Ododo has
also contributed immensely to Post Graduate scholarship. He held the position
of the Post graduate Coordinator, Department of Creative Arts University of
Maiduguri between 2006 and 2008. In 2008 he was also appointed Post-Graduate Coordinator,
Department of the Performing Arts, University of Ilorin.
The erudite scholar has attended over 30
national and international conferences.
His intellectual celebration and deep value for distinguished academic
heroes of Africa, led him to convene the Professor Olu Obafemi International
Conference on African Literature and Theatre. Ododo is a recurrent speaker at a number of national and international
conferences. Between the Universities of Ilorin and Maiduguri,
Ododo has spent over two decades teaching a broad array of courses which have
ranged from design, theatre aesthetics, and musical theatre to dramatic
literature and cultural studies, Arts of the theatre, dramatic theory and
criticism, and several other courses like Human Anatomy and Physiology for the Performing
Arts, directing, acting, workshop productions, theatre management and
administration. Ododo’s critical engagement in theatre scholarship is as
functional as a spider’s web.
Ododo is an accomplished gentleman of
the Arts. He is a poet in the theatre and a multi-talented playwright and
theatre activist of many parts. He has written plays for both the legitimate
stage and the screen. These plays include Illusive
Force (1984) White and Black Battle (1985),
The Revelation, a TV drama (1987) Political Reveries, 1987, a TV drama and
African Man also a TV drama, 1987.
His Return from the Void an Opera has
received encouraging performances between 1995 and 2013. Sunday Ododo’s
creativity also manifests him as a poet; he has written and published a number
of poems. Broken Pitchers (2012) is
his latest poetic offering. Ododo has distinguished himself both as a stage
actor and an artistic director of many productions. He has also carved a niche for
himself along the artistic road sign of techno-cultural aesthetics.
Sunday
Ododo has published books, Peer Reviewed Chapters in books, Peer Reviewed Monographs,
Peer Reviewed papers and a number of pragmatic academic essays in various peer
reviewed national and international journals. He has published essays on a
broad variety of subjects, within the multi-disciplinary discipline of theatre
arts, from technical theatre, theatre management, make up and mask practice,
light and lighting design, semiotics and communications in dance, ritual
studies, poetry, scenographic semiotics to traditional African experimental
performances. A larger chunk of these publications run across the visual trinity:
costume and make up, light and scene design. Interestingly, Ododo in some of
these essays brings to fore feminist dimension and consciousness by advocating
gender participation in technical theatre practice. Besides, Ododo brings his
knowledge of theatre technology and technical theatre to bear on traditional
African theatre with special focus on the masquerade Art and the Eku performance art amongst the Ebira
which is an interface of Techno-cultural aesthetics. Remarkably, Ododo has
published papers in Theatre for Development (TfD), dramatic literature, theatre
management, marketing the performing arts, dance, theatre and computer studies,
theatre practice, approaches to theatre production and children’s theatre. To
be sure, the forte of his published works is anchored on theatre technology and
cultural performance idioms. His essays have been cited in the fields of
literary criticism, performance studies, cultural studies, theatre studies, and
film and video studies. His research interest beside theatre technology is hermeneutics
in the investigation of texts and performance. Together
with his creative works and a corpus of journals and books he has edited, Ododo
has recorded over 70 publications.
The
landmark glory of Ododo’s intellectual and artistic contribution to theatre
arts studies is his Facekuerade Theory,
which has immensely contributed to the world’s measure of performance
aesthetics and theatre technology. The Facekuerade theoretical paradigm is an
original and revolutionary contribution by an African theatre don that adds
value to world theatre scholarship. Facekuerade
has become a word and a formula in theatre parlance; it is a theory and a form
of theatre, a four in one quintessence. This is a theory extracted from the
traditional Ebira-Ekuechi festival
supported by Oloolu of
Ibadan, Jenju of Abeokuta and other prototypes across Africa, which Ododo subjected to dialectical
contemplation to stand. What this means is that there is plenty of artistic
theories yet to be discovered by African scholars from traditional African
festival drama. Ekuechi facekuerade festival of the Ebira of Kogi
State in Nigeria is a mask-less masquerade archetype put to theoretical test by
Ododo, a techno-cultural academic. The hub of the theorising is the “transformation
and doubling essence of mask-less characters conceived and perceived as
masquerades”. Ododo is roundly and resoundingly a theatre bird. He is a
professor of distinction and a true Nigerian academic patriot, a polyglot and a
multi-talented artiste. As a playwright he has made an impact, as a poet he is
celebrated and as a master of technical theatre and theatre technology his
footprints are engraved. He has travelled across the creeks and crannies of the
academe to the deepest dominion of rare scholarship.
In 2011 Ododo published a play Hard
Choice which further brought him to literary limelight as a gifted
playwright by winning the prestigious ANA Drama Prize in 2012. The play is written with a great sense of
cultural nationalism, national unity and more importantly with a thesis
attitude on the modernisation of the Aristotelian tragic variety. Hard
Choice emblematises Ododo as a nationalist who indicts the off-putting and
vindictive romance between ritual and politics, over ambition and their possible
fatal consequence on the jaded masses. Ododo recreates national tragedy from
the perspective of politics, ritual valve and democracy as practiced in Nigeria
and calls for caution. This is a play in which authorial judgment and passions
unite to condemn the excess greed of politicians.
Professor Ododo is a treasured apollonian
pictogram of the literary and theatre rings of Africa; a confluence of
intellectual and artistic merit and a transporter of billowing scholars finding
voices. His cerebral persona and
pedagogical attributes have help to build a fertile tide of intellectuals in Nigerian
academic chateau. He has transmittable determination and dedication to the academe.
His works in drama, poetry and other kinds are pulsating pulses of the human heart in all its complexity. There is
therefore no doubt that Professor Sunday Enessi Ododo has contributed
tremendously to theatre epistemology. He represents a
historical force of fashionable theatre erudition and artistic originality in
Nigerian intellectual and cultural history.
A situation in which theatre scholars
and practitioners naturally declare their support to give immense academic
honour to one of their own is a clear signal of intellectual solidarity,
national literary and academic honour. On the strength of this rich and
engaging contributions to theatre enterprise, ladies and gentlemen, permit me
to present Professor Sunday Enessi Ododo for the highest award of the Society
of Nigeria Theatre Artists- the Fellow of SONTA; FSONTA. Thank you.
Professor
Sunday Enessi Ododo of the University of Maiduguri has emerged
President of the Society of Nigeria Theatre Artists (SONTA), the
umbrella body of Theatre Arts lecturers in Departments of
Theatre/Drama/Cultural/Performing Arts in Nigerian Universities.
ity, Keffi.
Others
members of the newly constituted EXCO are Dr. Suru Damisa (Nasarawa
State University), Financial Secretary; Dr. Mariam Asabe (AAU, Ekpoma),
Treasurer; Dr. Dennis Ameh Akor (Osun State University), Editor of SONTA
Journal; Dr. Rasheed Adeoye (UNILORIN), Events Manager; while Mr.
Sylvanus Dangoji (ABU) retained the post of PRO.
