Ozi Okoli @50 celebrates with book launch, command performance of ‘Restless Night’, June 13th

By Editor

TELEVISION journalist and playwright, Ozi Okoli is set to launch his satirical stage play, Rest Night that uses humour, irony and repetitive dialogue to expose the deepening crisis of armed banditry, insecurity, poor governance, and social disillusionment while also exploring friendship, memory, love, and resilience. Okoli, who recently became bereaved at the passing of his father, Elder Noel Uzochukwu Okoli, will stage a command performance of the play on his birthday amidst cutting of his birthdaycake. The event will take place on June 13, 2026 by 4:30pm at Alliance Francaise (Mike Adenuga Centre), 9 Osborne Road, Ikoyi, Lagos.

Restless Night is a darkly comic and haunting satire that explores how insecurity and armed banditry have transformed everyday life in contemporary Nigeria. Through the sharp, absurd, and often hilarious exchanges of two friends—Sunny and Frayo—the play exposes a society where gunshots interrupt jokes, fear coexists with laughter, and survival depends as much on humour as on hope. As private memories collide with public violence, Restless Night lays bare the cost of failed leadership, institutional decay, and freedom without peace, asking audiences to confront the unsettling normalisation of fear in a nation trapped in a cycle of restless days and sleepless nights.

Okoli, who has done television rounds from Channels TV to TVC and now at Arise TV, has deployed his theatrical skill in crafting this play to address lingering security crisis in Nigeria. Through Restless Night, Okoli argues that Nigeria’s insecurity is not just security failure but a moral and institutional one, and “through comedy and repetition, it shows how citizens live in constant fear, yet still find ways to laugh, love, and hope. The transformation of Sunny and Frayo into police officers suggests that change is possible—but only through integrity, courage, and collective responsibility.”

Restless Night is a gripping satirical drama that follows two friends, Sunny and Frayo, whose ordinary domestic life is shattered by the relentless threat of armed banditry in their community. Through sharp humour, biting dialogue, and moments of raw vulnerability, the play exposes how insecurity, poor governance, and failed institutions invade both public and private spaces, turning laughter into fear and hope into despair. As gunshots punctuate their memories, arguments, and dreams, Restless Night blends comedy with social critique, confronting audiences with a haunting question: how long can a society survive when freedom exists without peace?

Okoli conceived Restless Night as a theatrical meditation on insecurity as a lived, repetitive experience rather than a single catastrophic event. The play unfolds in cycles—of dialogue, memory, fear, and interruption—mirroring the psychological exhaustion of communities trapped in perpetual violence. His approach treats the domestic space shared by Sunny and Frayo not merely as a room, but as a fragile refuge constantly invaded by offstage gunfire, rumours, and political failure.

Comedy, in this production, is not relief but resistance: laughter becomes a survival strategy through which the characters assert humanity in the face of fear. The final transformation of the protagonists into police officers is staged not as triumph but as an ambivalent gesture, raising questions about agency, responsibility, and the limits of institutional redemption. Through the play, Okoli invites the audience to witness how national crises seep into private life, turning ordinary nights into restless ones.

Ozi Okoli