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When you think of Eko Hotel, you probably think of five-star hospitality, world-class cuisine, and a home for Nigeria’s biggest concerts and comedy shows. But tucked away behind the scenes, in a glass-panelled office buzzing with activity, a cultural revolution is quietly taking shape. And at its helm is a woman whose heart beats unapologetically for the stage.
The Director of Sales and Marketing at Eko Hotel, Dr Iyadunni Gbadebo, is not simply managing arguably Nigeria’s most iconic hotel space, she’s also reimagining what it can mean for the arts. Her conversation with ARISE News held in her office as she typed away at her computer, was an energetic exchange.
Gbadebo spoke with an infectious enthusiasm, her hands moving expressively as she painted vivid pictures of her ideas for the future. It was clear that this vision was more than just professional for her—it was personal, and it’s a dream she is passionately pursuing with the hotel as her platform.
A thespian at heart, Gbadebo is guiding Eko Hotel into bold, new creative territory; Broadway-style African theatre that doesn’t just entertain, but interpretes culture and identity.
‘Tropical Christmas Wonderland’ held annually in December has been the platform for this leap into uncharted territory. “You know that the theatre elements of Tropical Christmas Wonderland, which is a project that we do every December, has become one of the main highlights of that whole season,” she said as her eyes lit up with excitement. “And it was born to create a different kind of entertainment for people to explore, especially one that they go and pay a pretty penny for abroad, to localise it and to create an internationally competitive comparison to what people go and watch abroad.”
That idea birthed ‘The Jewel’, a futuristic reimagination of Wole Soyinka’s ‘The Lion and the Jewel’ and Ola Rotimi’s ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again’. Gbadebo refers to it as a “shocker” to the system, a deliberate artistic gamble meant to jolt audiences into new ways of thinking.
“I’m looking for something that makes what everybody knows, extra special. That shocker was what we were looking to achieve; something shockingly different from what you have seen on Nigeria’s stage,” she said, her hand slicing through the air in a visual demonstration.
“Secondly, we also were very intentional about making sure that we start thinking Nigerian literature, because as a theatre student, I studied a lot of European theatre. If you look at how Europe does plays on their literature, they always find creative ways to reinvent the wheel, to make it look like it’s bigger than it is. Even your icons, your European and American icons, see how they take the story of their lives and they just put it on stage, and make it just look larger than life. You can almost relate to the person.”
More Than a Venue, A Cultural Engine
Eko Hotel has long been a landmark venue for Nigeria’s biggest stars. Its Convention Centre is often a marker of success. “As you know, with Eko Hotel, we’re the hub and the platform, we’re the melting point for these kinds of entertainment. With music, you cannot talk about what music is today without mentioning the Convention Centre and how that was the platform where a lot of the internationally renowned Nigerian music artists started. You cannot talk about comedy show and not talk about Eko Hotel,” Gbadebo said with pride.
“How you know that a comedian has arrived is when he’s able to pull up his show on Eko Hotel’s Convention Centre stage. So again, we remain that platform and that hub for the creative economy to boom and to thrive. But we have moved in the last seven years away from just providing the space; in the last seven years, we have been the curators of those experiences.”
For Gbadebo, theatre is a “legacy pot,” where stories live forever. “We wanted to bring in some new, fresh forms of entertainment and theatre is a legacy pot. If you even think about the fact that in today’s Nigeria, a lot of the history – however you want to see it, whether it’s your literature, your playwriters, the kinds of books that we read as children – have far lost its relevance in today’s academic space. All of that is Nigeria and Africa’s culture just going down the drain,” she expressed.
“Again, theatre is your consolidator. It is your platform for bringing all of that back to the forefront. And if you notice our style and most of what we do, a lot of it is Broadway style. A lot of it has musical to it. A lot of it is bringing back the memories of our literature. That’s exactly what ‘The Jewel’ is.
“’The Jewel’ was inspired by Wole Soyinka’s ‘Lion and The Jewel’ and Ola Rotimi’s ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again.’ Now, to take those two beautiful plays written by two global playwrights and create a futuristic version of those plays musically is genius, if you ask me. And that’s what Eko Hotel brings to the table. We throw the sparkle to everything that otherwise doesn’t really have life. We birth life and we speak life into it.”
Resurrection of African Greats
At the heart of Gbadebo’s work is a mission to resurrect Nigeria’s literary and cultural giants, not for nostalgia, but to use their legacy as a foundation for the future.
She said, “I don’t know if you have seen Fela on Broadway or Bob Marley. I don’t know if you’ve seen The Bodyguard…Whitney Houston. These are icons that they have now taken the story of their lives and put it on stage. If you reincarnate their stories live, you bring the people closer to the personalities, even many years after them.
“We need to get to the point where we need to take the people that gave Nigeria the oomph that it has today. We cannot forget about them, we can’t. We need to find ways of bringing them back, and bringing them back to people’s consciousness. I remember I read a book about that, just clever ways to just bring people back because if you forget where you’re coming from, there’s no way you’re landing where you hope to reach. There’s no way. So, I think that to do justice to the legacy of Africa and Africans who have shaped the African narrative, it is important to start documenting and preserving all that they have worked for, and theatre is always a perfect way to do that.”
‘The Jewel’ is a prime example of this. In the play, technology blends seamlessly with tradition. Voodoo priestesses communicate through digital touchscreens. Characters grapple with ancestral knowledge while reaching into the future. Gbadebo emphasises that these plays are rooted in what she calls Afro-futurism, an imaginative movement that seeks to create a vision of Africa that is not only about the past but about what’s to come.
“So the choice of a futuristic rendition of ‘The Jewel’ was to set a place and a time where theatre at Eko Hotel is set apart from the rest,” she says, her hands painting the air with every word.
“Maybe we can now start using voodoo and babalawo for things that are positive and futuristic. Maybe these guys can also get digital, you know? We just want you to dream into the possibilities of what the future can hold for Africa. And that, to me, is the height of creativity.”
From Lagos to the World
Gbadebo’s vision is expansive, but grounded in a fierce belief that Lagos, and Nigeria at large, is more than ready to take its rightful place on the global cultural stage. “Theatre at Eko Hotel has come to stay,” she declares firmly, her eyes filled with purpose. “Every December, expect a new broadway-style theatre production. There would usually be two shows every December. Going forward from this year, we would take those plays and put them back on the stage at Easter and in the summer in preparation for two new shows yet again in December.”
She wants the world to know that Eko Hotel is not just a place for conferences or a quick getaway. She wants it to become synonymous with Nigerian theatre.
Gbadebo envisions a future where Lagos doesn’t just compete with other global cities, it leads. “Lagos is a mega city. I did my doctorate on its smart city status, and I can tell you, this city is ready for anything. The culture, the commerce, the creativity here…Lagos can compete with any global city.”
With that, she draws inspiration from the everyday richness of Nigerian culture. From the Ojude Oba festival’s vibrant celebrations to the elegance of Egbaliganza, Gbadebo sees inspiration in every detail. “When you look around, you realise that with creative people, there’s no limit to what can be done,” she says, smiling. “Anything is possible.”
The Final Act? Only the Beginning
For Gbadebo, theatre is not a side project or an afterthought, it’s a revolution and one of the ways to keep people “glued to Eko Hotel.”
And as the conversation winds down, she turns back to her system, tapping away at her keyboard as she reflects on the future. With every performance at Eko Hotel, every story told through the magic of theatre, it becomes clearer: This is just the beginning. And the dream of reimagining Nigeria through Broadway-style theatre? It’s well on its way to becoming a reality.
Melissa Enoch
Photos/Video: Faridah Abdulkadiri
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