Lola Shoneyin’s novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives tells the story of Baba Segi—an imposing man in physical stature as well as economic standing—his first three wives, the delicious and tragic secrets that bind them, and how those secrets unravel with the arrival of an outsider: his fourth wife, Bolanle. 

Published in 2010, the novel has been adapted for the screen sixteen years later. The film had its European premiere at the BFI London Film Festival ahead of its release in Nigerian cinemas on 4 December 2026. 

Shalom Esene speaks to Oriahi about translating interiority from page to screen, balancing satire and tragedy, and Nollywood’s inheritance of melodrama, which he traces to a theatrical tradition of self-expression and tempers with restraint. 

This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

ARA: When you approached The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, what was it about the novel that you wanted to portray on the screen? Did the process of adapting it shift your understanding of any of its characters or their motivations? 

DO: Like most people, I experienced the book years before, as a reader. But when you’re given a big responsibility for an adaptation, there’s a different approach. First, I read the book again, several times, to reacquaint myself with the story. Finally, I read it as a filmmaker. I liked the dark humour, the family drama. But now it was more about how the women had defined their agency within a patriarchal system. It was survival through silence and secrets, and I felt that was very profound.  Another thing that really struck a chord was that it felt like a coming-of-age story. Bolanle comes into this household with a perception of herself, and during the course of trying to fit into this new patriarchal system that she wants to be part of, ironically, she’s becoming. She uncovers why she sees herself in a particular light. And at the end, she accepts who she is and becomes emancipated. 

When you read [the novel], it’s a very first-person, very descriptive story. We see Baba Segi’s journey, we see Iya Segi’s. We go into the minds of these people and we understand how they perceive the world and why they make the decisions they make. But we didn’t want to villainise anybody. Even Baba Segi, with his patriarchal mindset, with his very rigid approach to life, still has a humanness about him, which I felt we needed to portray. It’s not an “us versus them” narrative. It’s just people who were put in this system trying to survive because that’s the only way they can have an identity in society. I felt that was very interesting to show. 

ARA: It’s also interesting because there’s a lot to balance there. The story moves between satire and tragedy, polygamy and female solidarity, the traditional obsession with virility and women’s agency within a patriarchal system. How did you approach balancing these competing elements without allowing one to overshadow the others? 

DO: Film has a different rhythm compared to literature. A book can go into characters’ heads and thoughts for pages, but a camera does all that explanation in one frame: how you block the characters, the kind of costumes they wear, even the way you structure the dialogue, so that it doesn’t become overly caricature-ish or melodramatic. I’m Nigerian and I grew up watching a lot of foreign films, but at the same time I’m very aware of the dynamics and aesthetics of Nollywood. I’ve come to understand that as a Nigerian filmmaker, I have to make films that are relatable to the Nigerian experience, that Nigerians can identify with. There’s melodrama in the way we make our films. You can trace that history to the fact that we come from a very theatrical expression of self in the art form. 

ARA: We’re a very dramatic people. 

DO: And then we were influenced by telenovelas, which are more exposition than true dialogue and expression and visual conception. So for me it became, how do you find that balance? 

I know you’ve read the book. So you know there are some major scenes that are impossible not to include in the film. You layer those events and those sequences to fit into the structure of your story, because at the end of the day you have a limited timeframe. You have two hours. So how many things can you fit in while still keeping the story intact? And the story is about Bolanle’s journey. As much as the story focuses on all these women’s lives, our main character is Bolanle. Her story is the core, and that shapes what you keep and which encounters are most important. 

ARA: I loved how you touched on character interiority; how a book can have pages and pages of interiority but you don't have that luxury on the screen. In a previous interview about The Weekend, you talked about asking your actors to exercise restraint so they wouldn’t give away what the characters knew. In The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, where secrets drive the story but the audience also needs to understand the inner lives of the wives, how did you decide what to reveal through their performances? What are some of the artistic choices that you made? 

DO: We tried to honour the book, which already gave us a rhythm and a structure to play with. I’m a guy who really works with restraint. We were working with dark humour, which can be easily misinterpreted as comedy, especially in the Nigerian space. So I tried as much as possible to keep my actors contained while still staying relevant to the characters that they were playing. The book clearly defines their characteristics, but you don’t want to go overboard into caricature. For instance, Iya Segi has the grunting thing she does, where she’s always clearing her throat in the book. But in the film we only did that like twice. So you keep some things, you keep some elements. And I was working with very amazing actors, so they were very cool to go with the perspective I’d constructed for the characters. I try to always maintain a balance of some sort.

ARA: Last question. What do you want an international audience to take away from a Nigerian film, and what do you want preserved when a story deeply rooted in our social and cultural context travels beyond it? 

DO: One thing is how we regard family in this part [of the world]. If you watch my films, they’re concerned with family dynamics. It’s something I really gravitate to in my stories. We’re communal in mindset. People make decisions for themselves, but at the end of the day, we work better as a family unit. I always want to keep that. You might say, “Oh, but this film doesn’t necessarily make that argument. It’s very chaotic—you have so many wives and children.” But even within that chaos, there’s a kind of rhythm.