Stella Oyedepo, popular playwright and the General Manager of National theatre has passed on.
The 65-year-old playwright died in an accident on Easter Monday on her way to Lagos along Ijebu, Ogun State.
Dr. Oyedepo is a foremost Nigerian playwright, who was appointed as National Theatre’s GM in April 2018. Oyedepo has written over 300 plays over the course of her career as a playwright with 30 published for the public.
Her first play, ‘Our Wife is Not a Woman,’ was written in 1979 and a large number of her plays were commissioned for specific occasions.
The late Oyedepo was an ex-director of the Kwara State Council for Arts and Culture. In 2001, she wrote ‘Brain Has No Gender’ for the Kwara State Ministry of Education for Women-in-Science Programme. One of her highly acclaimed plays is ‘The Greatest Gift,’ which contrasts the life of a family destroyed by the father’s drunkenness with the life of a successful family. The play was written and performed in 1988.
In a report by J. Yeseibo, Oyedepo was described as arguably one of the most visible practitioners of theatre in Nigeria with plays that include ‘Survive,’ ‘We Will,’ ‘The Missing Ingredient,’ ‘The Rebellion of the Bumpy-Chested,’ and ‘Brain has no Gender.’ It was further reported that Oyedepo’s feminism strongly informs her work, which centres around the many ills, perversions, and misplaced social values she perceives in Nigerian society.
Kwara State Governor-elect AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has condoled with Dr Hezekiah Oyedepo over the death of his wife, Stella.
Dr Oyedepo is a prominent leader of the All Progressives Congress in Kwara state
Mallam Abdulrazaq described the death of Stella who was the General Manager of the National Theatre before the demise as one loss too many to the state and Nigeria as a whole.
“We are devastated by the sudden death of this Amazon who had not only served our state meritoriously as executive director of the Kwara State Council for Arts and Culture but was on a national assignment to revive the iconic national theatre, Iganmu,” according to a statement by AbdulRazaq’s media aide, Rafiu Ajakaye.
“The development is sad and devastating but I urge the family to take solace in the eventful life of the deceased who was known for her sterling record as an authority in her field,” according to the statement.
“I pray the Almighty God to repose her soul and comfort the family. My special condolences go to the elder statesman Dr Hezekiah, the widower, who has been at the forefront of the clamour for good governance as his membership of our Transition Committee shows. I also especially commiserate with the children and pray God to grant them the fortitude to bear this huge loss.”