Playwright, Dramatist, Broadcaster, and Administrator Non Pareil: The Story of Elder Comish Ekiye
By Munene Wilson, Ace Broadcaster, Writer, Poet, Author; Founder and CEO, Munene Solutions Inc.
There are lives that pass, and there are lives that perform. Elder Comish Ekiye’s did both — but more importantly, it interpreted the age in which it was lived. He did not merely occupy space in time; he gave that time texture, voice, and enduring meaning.
To speak of him is to speak in layered registers. He belonged to that rare intellectual and creative lineage where art is not divorced from governance, where storytelling is not entertainment alone but an instrument of identity, and where administration is not clerical routine but cultural architecture. In him, one found a synthesis that is increasingly endangered in our contemporary moment: the union of imagination, discipline, and institutional foresight.
If the Elizabethan stage found its immortal interpreter in William Shakespeare, and if indigenous African theatre found one of its early national voices in Hubert Ogunde, then the Niger Delta, in its modern cultural awakening, found in Comish Ekiye a figure both catalytic and enduring. Yet parallels, however flattering, do not contain him. He was not an echo of greatness; he was an origin in his own right.
He began where all true dramatists begin — at the intersection of observation and expression. The stage was his first laboratory. There, he explored the tensions of society, the humour of domestic life, the contradictions of culture in transition. But even at that early stage, it was clear that his was not a career that would remain confined within curtains and footlights. He possessed a restless intellectual energy, one that sought wider canvases and deeper impact.
Broadcasting became that wider canvas.
At a time when the airwaves were still finding their cultural direction, he entered not as a mere participant, but as a shaper. He understood, with unusual clarity, that media is not neutral — it either amplifies a people or erodes them. Under his stewardship, broadcasting in his sphere of influence became purposeful. It spoke with clarity. It reflected identity. It resisted triviality. The microphone, in his hands, was not a device; it was a civic instrument.
Yet even that was not enough. Men of his temperament do not simply operate within systems — they build them.
*As an administrator, he brought to bear the sensibilities of a practitioner.* He knew the fragility of creativity and the necessity of structure. He understood that without institutions, talent dissipates; without policy, culture becomes vulnerable. And so he built — quietly, methodically — frameworks that would outlive him, platforms upon which others could stand, speak, and create.
It is in this multiplicity — playwright, dramatist, broadcaster, administrator — that one begins to grasp the essence of the man. Not as a collection of titles, but as a continuum of purpose.
Now, that continuum arrives at its final earthly articulation.
A requiem has been composed — not in words alone, but in form: *nine scenes*, a deliberate return to the grammar of theatre that defined so much of his life. In this, there is both symbolism and symmetry. For what is a life such as his if not a carefully unfolding drama?
Nine scenes — each an intellectual and emotional movement. From the quiet beginnings of a curious mind, through the awakening of artistic consciousness, into the fullness of performance and public engagement; from the authority of voice on air, through the burdens and triumphs of leadership, into the reflective space of legacy; and finally, into that inevitable, solemn transition where the actor exits, but the meaning remains. It is theatre, yes; but it is also philosophy. A meditation on time, contribution, and transcendence.
The programme of his passage unfolds with a dignity befitting the life it honours:
– Tuesday, 12th May 2026: Requiem of Nine Scenes will be staged at the Gabriel Okara Cultural Centre — a fitting sanctuary of art where memory and performance will converge.
– Thursday, 14th May 2026: Tributes will gather at EMIS Events Centre, where voices shaped by his influence and inspired by his example will attempt, however inadequately, to articulate what he meant.
– Saturday, 16th May 2026: Final rites will be observed at the *Government Crafts Development Centre*, as the earth receives a man whose true residence was always in the intangible realm of impact.
But this is not a local event. It cannot be.
For a life that traversed theatre, media, and governance does not belong to a single geography. It belongs to all who understand the power of culture as a binding force, to all who recognize the responsibility embedded in voice, to all who believe that institutions are the memory of a people made visible.
And so, this becomes an invitation — extended beyond family, beyond community, beyond region. It is a call to scholars, artists, broadcasters, administrators, and all custodians of culture: come and witness not merely a burial, but a culmination. Come and observe how a life, when lived with coherence and conviction, becomes its own enduring narrative.
For those of us who came under his influence, the loss is at once personal and intellectual.
I write, therefore, not only as an observer of his legacy, but as one shaped within its orbit. Elder Comish Ekiye did not teach in the conventional sense; he formed. He insisted on rigour where others permitted ease. He demanded clarity where others tolerated vagueness. He elevated broadcasting from routine to responsibility. In his presence, one was compelled to think more deeply, to speak more carefully, to act more deliberately.
He embodied a principle too easily forgotten in our time: that excellence is not accidental; it is cultivated. And those who encountered him were, in varying degrees, compelled into that cultivation.
His passing, therefore, is not merely the end of a life. It is a moment of reckoning. A question posed to all who remain: *What will we do with the standards he set?* Will we preserve them, extend them, or allow them to dissolve into the convenience of mediocrity?
These are not ceremonial questions. They are existential ones — for a culture, for a profession, for a people.
And yet, even in this solemn reflection, there is consolation.
For if it is true, as the ancients held, that art endures beyond the artist, then Elder Comish Ekiye has not departed so much as he has diffused into the structures he built, the voices he shaped, the stories he told, and the standards he insisted upon.
The curtain has fallen on the visible prformance. But the play; his play, continues.
