Six years after the curtain fell on Alibaba Seriously Late Night Show, which drew over 50 million viewers during its NTA run in 2018, Atunyota Alleluia Akporobomeriere, popularly known as Alibaba, has stepped back onto the set with renewed fire and purpose. With nearly four decades of navigating Nigeria’s entertainment landscape, he understands its nuances, its possibilities, and its pitfalls better than most.
And if anyone can revive late-night television in Nigeria, it’s the man who built his career on reading audiences, adapting to moments, and creating content that resonates across generations. As the widely acknowledged king of comedy, he laid the groundwork that transformed stand-up from borrowed nightclub slots and theatrical ensembles into a standalone profession that now mints millionaires and global entertainers.
But his impact cannot be fully grasped without understanding what came before him. By the 1950s, the first generation of vocational humor performers had already emerged: Moses Olaiya (Baba Sala), Usman Baba Pategi (Samanja), James Iroha (Giringory), Chika Okpala (Zebrudaya), Sunday Omobolanle (Papi Luwe), Afolabi Afolayan (Jagua), Kayode Olaiya (Aderupoko), and Papa Lolo (Ayo Ogunshina). These pioneers commanded impressive followings well into the 1990s, using theatre performances as launching pads for their craft.
The business of comedy evolved further in the 1970s through radio programs like the popular Mazi Mperempe on Radio Nigeria and broadcasts on the old Anambra State Television in Enugu. But it remained largely ensemble-based, physical, and theatrical; performers needed troupes, costumes, and elaborate setups. “Baba Sala with a big clock around his neck, padded bum-bum, oversized glasses; Papi Luwe with a troupe; Zebrudaya with Ovularia and Jegede Sokoya.
They needed teams to perform,” Alibaba recalls. The idea that one person could stand alone with just a microphone and hold an audience for an hour seemed implausible to event organizers at the time. But with his consistent proof of concept and unbroken track record, Alibaba made stand-up comedy a viable profession in the mainstream entertainment economy. That transformation didn’t happen by accident; it took countless personal sacrifices.
In this conversation with The Nollywood Reporter, Alibaba breaks down the return of Alibaba Seriously Late Night Show, the birth and meteoric rise of Nigerian stand-up, four decades of building an industry from scratch, and what legacy truly means to him now.
The Return of Alibaba Seriously: Reinventing Late-Night Television
When Alibaba looks back at the man who hosted the last episode of the Alibaba Seriously Late Night Show on NTA in 2018, and at the man stepping back onto the set now, he sees a vastly different landscape. The political climate has shifted, the demand for information has intensified and, crucially, the audience has evolved.
Six years ago, most Nigerians wanted to watch the news and go straight to bed. The idea that late-night viewing could be genuinely entertaining seemed foreign to many. Then in 2020, COVID-19 changed everything. “The lockdown period changed that culture,” Alibaba explains. “Now, people take early naps, wake up, binge shows, and go back to sleep. Binge-watching wasn’t common then; now it’s normal.”
Beyond altering the viewing habits, the pandemic fundamentally restructured how Nigerians engage with entertainment. On Friday and Saturday, especially, people catch up on everything they’ve missed during the week, usually between 7 p.m. and midnight. The numbers tell the story: analytics show viewership dips on Sundays as people prepare for the work week, but spikes dramatically on Fridays and Saturdays.
This cultural shift has directly informed the show’s strategy. While American late-night shows run Monday through Friday, Alibaba understands that in Nigeria, where most people still work traditional 9-to-5 jobs, the real time for relaxation is the weekend. The show now runs Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, capturing audiences when they’re most receptive.
But perhaps the most significant change isn’t just when people watch, but also what they’re willing to watch and where they watch it. The rise of skits, new media, and the proliferation of smartphones has created an audience far more open to the kind of content Alibaba produces. Night-time viewing today is fragmented across cable TV, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, terrestrial TV, and social media platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. Some people can spend two hours straight scrolling through TikTok, then switch to recording shows on their decoder, catching up on Zee World, or streaming YouTube. The consumption is voracious and simultaneous.
“Late-night TV hasn’t died,” Alibaba insists. “People are simply scattered across multiple platforms. What they need is a convergence point. A place where everything comes together.” That’s precisely what the Alibaba Seriously Late-night show aims to be: a curated gathering of everything that happened during the week—news, trends, stories—presented in one accessible place.
The impact is measurable. DStv called the production team directly after noticing a spike in viewership on the channel, tracing it back to Alibaba Seriously. More people are renewing their subscriptions because of the show, and the ripple effect creates what Alibaba calls “accidental viewers”: people who tune in and stay on the station, so they don’t miss the show and, in the process, discover other programs.
But beyond the numbers, there’s another crucial difference between the NTA run and this new iteration: creative freedom. According to Alibaba, while the first run achieved a lot, surprising viewers that NTA, the government’s mouthpiece, could host a show where guests shared unhindered opinions, there were still limitations. As a government station, the team remained cautious, not wanting to offend certain sensibilities.
But AIT has changed that equation entirely. “We can be open to all ideas and push our creativity without restrictions,” Alibaba says. “Things we couldn’t say on NTA, we can say here. We can even critique people who are friends of the station. That freedom makes the creativity on this new run almost limitless.”
The audience Alibaba is speaking to today is not the same audience he had six years ago on NTA, and that difference has fundamentally influenced his presentation style and the kind of content the show creates now.
From Rejection to Revolution: The Making of a Pioneer
Alibaba’s journey into comedy wasn’t planned; it was, as he puts it, borrowing from El-Rufai’s tell-all memoir, an accident. He was meant to study law but, as fate would have it, moved from the wig lawyers wear to the wit comedians use. Still, during his time in school, around the SAP riots of 1989, something shifted.
Even before that, back at Emado in Ekpoma, the signs were already there. He had what people casually called a “funny bone.” In the buttery, when students gathered to watch movies, his running commentary transformed the viewing experience. Soon, people began inviting him over specifically for that commentary. And he became, in a strange but telling way, a professional heckler.
The breakthrough came in 1987 when Percy Okojie called him to ‘perform’ at an event, initially just to sit in the crowd and heckle. But when the striptease performer that day was nearly harassed offstage and stopped her show halfway, Alibaba was pulled in as a stop-gap. He pacified the audience, went backstage, convinced her to return and finish her set, and then kept running the show. From that moment on, whenever there was a show at school, he was called to anchor or co-anchor.
But the path from university performances to a professional career as a comedian was paved with rejection and hardship. When he approached Niteshift, the number one nightclub for upwardly mobile people and top executives in Nigeria at the time, the owner, Ken Calebs Olumese told him flatly: “If I want a comedian, I will go and get Eddie Murphy.” It was a brutal dismissal, but two DJs at the club, Kunle KSA Stewart and Damola, encouraged him not to give up.
In truth, if acceptance was the first major challenge, the remuneration was the second. People simply didn’t think comedians needed to be paid. Then there was accommodation. His mother’s younger sister, who had invited him to stay at her place in 1004 Housing Estate, threw him out. He stayed at Bar Beach for a while, then with a guy named Sylvester at Yaba Tech before being thrown out again. Eventually, he stayed with a man called Ajaloko. The instability was crushing.
Alibaba makes the point even clearer: “Any creative needs a safe space to marinate ideas and prepare content,” he tells me. “When you don’t have accommodation, proper meals, or peace of mind, it becomes challenging to function.”
Even when he finally secured platforms to perform, the battles continued. This was during military rule, and NTA, the leading television platform, was government-owned and tightly controlled what could be aired. Platforms for comedians were scarce. People also expected him to perform with multiple people because of the impressions left by Papiluwe, Baba Sala, and others.
Family sentiment added another layer of difficulty. His father didn’t think comedy was a viable career and disowned him while he was still in university. Surmounting these obstacles required absolute conviction that he could succeed, and that perseverance ultimately helped others who came after him.
Thanks to Eddie Lawani, who had seen him perform, Alibaba moved to Lagos and started appearing everywhere: Klass Nite Club, Lord’s Night Club, Peak Night Club, Jabita, Niteshift. Shina Peters would let him do 10 to 20 minutes. Wasiu Ayinde at Laparias in Maryland gave him slots. Later, Lagbaja opened up Motherland from midnight till about 1 a.m., giving comedians an hour to practice their craft.
What set Alibaba apart wasn’t just the jokes, but his ability to adapt. “If you invited me to entertain factory workers at Nestlé, I would speak their language,” he explains. “If it was a bank boardroom, I would elevate the jokes. A UNILAG crowd got a different kind of intelligence.”
That ability to micromanage audiences became a template for other comedians to learn from. Before Alibaba and his generation, comedy was physical and ensemble-based. They came with nothing but a microphone and could hold an audience for an hour. They were, as he describes it, “plug-and-play entertainers.”
He began hosting free events, showing up uninvited at conferences advertised in newspapers. “I would see a conference in the newspaper and just show up: ‘Can I do five minutes?’” he recalls. “I started going into AGMs, sitting through their meetings, and performing à la carte, joking about the topics they had discussed. It was spontaneous, relatable, and they loved it.”
From there, he moved into the corridors of power, performing for figures such as Raji Rasaki and Tunde Ogbeha. The military loved laughter. Officers’ messes, government houses, corporate gigs, private parties, birthdays, everywhere he performed became a platform for the next opportunity.
His biggest breakthrough came with President Obasanjo. “He accepted me into his administration, not as staff, but as the official entertainer,” Alibaba says. “When states saw that the president endorsed comedy, they followed. That took comedy nationwide.”
The impact rippled beyond just booking opportunities. “As I started succeeding and gaining recognition, including performing in corridors of power, other parents began seeing comedy as a viable career,” he notes. “People who previously wanted their sons and daughters to study medicine or law started asking me to mentor their children, seeing the financial and professional potential in the craft.”
Being Funny Is Serious Business
In 1995, fresh off completing his Satzenbrau Bar Tour, Alibaba made a move that would become legendary in Nigerian entertainment history. Satzenbrau, a new drink entering the market, had hired him for a nationwide bar tour, moving from one bar to another across the entire country. The tour took him everywhere: the North, the South, the East, Osogbo in Osun State, and several other places.
“That tour earned me my first ₦1.6 million, which was enormous money in 1995, considering that many people didn’t even make that amount in two or three years,” he recalls. “When people heard I was paid that much, it became clear that comedy could actually be serious business. And for me, it confirmed there was far more I could push for in my career. I started reading more books, preparing myself, and the rest is history.”
But there was a practical problem: people could never reach him unless they physically ran into him at an event. After shows, they would tell him, “We’ve been trying to reach you; we didn’t know who to talk to.” This was before mobile phones became common, and getting a phone line at the time was extremely expensive. Around that time, Disc Engineering introduced pagers, so Alibaba got one and was assigned a phone number. But he still had to figure out how people would even see the number. That’s when the billboard idea was born.
He put up three 48-sheet billboards across Lagos. One was at the spot where the Civic Centre now stands. Another was along the old Ikoyi route, just before the turn into Osborne Towers, beside the big tank. The third was in Marina, directly facing the Lagos State Governor’s House. All three carried the same message: “Being funny is serious business,” followed by his pager number.
The billboards were expensive—between ₦130,000 and ₦250,000 each—but he could afford them because he was already earning good money. And they worked. People started sending pager messages, and he would go to a phone booth to return their calls. “That was the first break, because for the first time, I became truly reachable and got many gigs,” he says.
But did the billboards shape his career? “Not exactly,” Alibaba reflects. “They amplified it. It was like a musician who already has great songs before MTV Base plays their videos; MTV Base doesn’t shape the career, it amplifies it. Or a footballer who already has talent before entering the Premier League; the league simply gives them a bigger stage. By the time those billboards went up, I had already put in the work and earned my stripes. The billboards simply pushed everything much further.”
The billboard moment crystallized something important: Alibaba understood that building a career in comedy goes beyond just being funny on stage. It was about accessibility, visibility, branding, and creating pathways for people to hire you. The phrase “Being funny is serious business” was a mission statement and a declaration that comedy deserved to be taken as seriously as any other profession.
By 2012, he delivered a landmark performance, cracking jokes for six hours nonstop without repeating a single line. But even then, he told me he had already accumulated nearly two decades’ worth of material. He had created so many jokes over the years that they had begun to take on lives of their own: what he calls “mother jokes,” original pieces that eventually birthed spin-offs. People would hear a joke, cut it up, reshape it, and it would become another joke entirely. His material was being used everywhere, and he never felt the need to claim ownership publicly.
The real motivation for the six-hour performance, though, was generational. A decade gives birth to a new audience, and by that time, two whole generations had emerged who had never seen him perform. Some had heard the jokes but didn’t know he was the originator. By 2027, he will have spent forty years in comedy and, as he notes with biblical reference, “a Pharaoh would arise who didn’t know Joseph.” He wanted to remind both old and new audiences where much of the comedy they enjoyed originally came from.
And honestly, he believes he could have gone even longer, not to set a Guinness World Record, but because he had that much material and experience to draw from. “The real lesson behind my performance is for younger comedians,” Alibaba says, “to know that being a comedian isn’t about having four or five solid sets and calling yourself a professional. You must build a repertoire deep enough to sustain you for hours if needed. That’s what the six hours were really about, showing the depth required for true mastery.”
Legacy in Motion: Building Beyond Himself
When Alibaba looks around and sees the comedians he mentored doing exceptionally well, it gives him genuine joy. “People once said comedians would never amount to anything,” he says. “Today, comedians are living in Banana Island. Some bankers who have worked for 10, 20, even 30 years cannot afford that. Some comedians own houses and own estates; some comedians’ families live overseas, and some comedians are driving the same luxury cars that bank MDs drive.”
The evolution of the comedians in Nigeria reminds him that he proved his doubters wrong, and that many of them have gone on to prove their own doubters wrong as well.
Ayo Makun, popularly known as A.Y, a Nigerian actor and comedian, is one of those success stories. “Alibaba laid the foundation of modern Nigerian comedy,” A.Y tells The Nollywood Reporter. “He professionalized the craft, raised its standards, and built platforms that nurtured generations of comedians. His legacy is not just in his jokes, but in the sustainable industry and global respect he created for Nigerian comedy. Personally, I call him the King of kings of comedy.”
For A.Y the impact was deeply personal. “Alibaba played a major role in shaping my journey,” he says. “He believed in me very early, gave me platforms when visibility mattered most, and constantly pushed me towards professionalism and structure. Through his mentorship, I learnt how to build a brand beyond the stage, engage corporate Nigeria, create my own platforms like AY Live, and think long-term about legacy. His guidance helped me evolve from a young comedian into an entrepreneur and industry builder and, for that, I remain grateful till eternity.”
Jahman Anikulapo, a veteran culture archivist, former arts editor of The Guardian, and former Editor of The Guardian on Sunday, offers a broader cultural assessment. “I can say Alibaba is the Olusina of the comedy kingdom,” he shares. “The game-changer, who gave stand-up comedy its new character of intellectual resourcefulness and enterprise.”
Part of Alibaba’s legacy is to show that comedy in Nigeria can be a real, respectable profession, one where a comedian can walk into a room and confidently say, “My fee is ₦10 million,” and actually get it. And that, he notes, is already happening. But legacy, for Alibaba, extends beyond individual success stories.
He is pushing for purpose-built comedy clubs, not borrowed spaces inside bars or restaurants, but actual venues explicitly designed for comedy, just as there are purpose-built restaurants for food. That structure deepens the industry and creates sustainable platforms for performers to hone their craft and build audiences.
He also envisions a future where comedians can become so professional, almost chartered in their conduct and craft, that merely being a comedian makes you a viable brand ambassador, where endorsements come easily, and doing just two or three shows a year is enough to live comfortably.
Ultimately, for him, legacy goes beyond his personal accomplishments. It’s about what he made possible for others: the industry he built, the standards he set, and proving that being funny is, indeed, serious business. And as he steps back on the set of Alibaba Seriously Late Night Show, that legacy continues to evolve, reaching new audiences and setting new standards for what Nigerian entertainment can achieve.