Veteran Yoruba Nollywood actor, Chief Lere Paimo, popularly known as “Eda,” has disputed recent narratives on social media naming Pete Edochie as the first actor in Nigeria, insisting that the country’s theatre history predates both of them by decades.
Paimo made the remarks during an interview with fellow actor and filmmaker Kunle Afod, where he expressed surprise at what he described as “different narratives flying on social media” about the origins of Nigerian acting.
“I started acting professionally in 1958 and I wasn’t even the first actor then. I met Pa Hubert Ogunde already acting far before me,” Paimo said.
He questioned the basis of claims elevating Edochie, who began acting in 1962, above earlier practitioners.
“If I started acting in 1958 and Pete Edochie started acting in 1962, how is he my senior and what does he mean that he’s the first actor in Nigeria?” he asked.
The 85-year-old actor pointed to the pioneering work of the late Pa Hubert Ogunde, founder of the Ogunde Theatre Company, as proof that professional theatre in Nigeria began much earlier.
“Meanwhile we had people like late Pa Hubert Ogunde that had started acting since the 1940s,” Paimo noted.
Paimo said the spread of inaccurate information online shows the urgent need to properly record the history of Nigerian theatre and film.
“At this point we need to document all these, our history down so people wouldn’t be given false information online,” he added.
Pa Hubert Ogunde is widely credited as a foundational figure in Nigerian travelling theatre and indigenous film, beginning his stage career in the 1940s. Lere Paimo joined professional theatre in the late 1950s and became a household name through Yoruba stage plays and later Nollywood films. Pete Edochie, a veteran of English-language Nigerian television and film, began his acting career in 1962 with the Eastern Nigerian Broadcasting Service.
The interview has since sparked fresh conversations online about preserving oral histories of Nigeria’s early actors, playwrights, and theatre groups before more first-generation practitioners pass on.
