Baba Segi’s Household Is Finally Coming to the Big Screen This December

Lola Shoneyin’s 2010 novel has already lived several lives. It became a stage play that earned a five-star review from The Guardian. Now, sixteen years after it first landed on shelves, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is making the leap to cinema, and the wait looks like it was worth it.

EbonyLife Films, the film arm of Mo Abudu’s EbonyLife Group, has wrapped production on the adaptation and locked in a nationwide Nigerian release date of December 4, 2026, with an international rollout to follow. It’s a significant moment for the studio too. This marks EbonyLife’s return to theatrical cinema after seven years spent largely on streaming projects, and its first big-screen outing in five years.

The story, if you need reminding

Set in a household in Ibadan, the novel follows Baba Segi, a wealthy and thoroughly self-assured patriarch who believes he has his three-wife, seven-child home firmly under control. That control starts to crack the moment he takes a fourth wife, Bolanle, a university-educated young woman whose arrival unsettles the compound’s fragile order and sets off a slow unraveling of secrets the first three wives have spent years protecting.

Who’s behind it

The film is directed by Daniel Oriahi, known for Sylvia and The Weekend, from a screenplay by Adze Ugah, with Lola Shoneyin herself involved to help preserve the novel’s wit and social bite on screen. It’s a genuinely continental production, uniting EbonyLife with Genesis Group, Nile Media Entertainment Group, and Silverbird Group, among other partners, in what Nile Group’s Moses Babatope has called a project whose scale of collaboration is without precedent.

Notably, the filmmakers chose to lean into the story’s roots rather than sand them down. Abudu has said the decision to tell the film predominantly in Yoruba was central to keeping it authentic.

The cast

Odunlade Adekola leads as Baba Segi, playing a man as loud and certain on the surface as he is fragile underneath. He’s joined by Iyabo Ojo as Iya Segi, the sharp, authority-commanding first wife; Mercy Aigbe as Iya Tope, the compound’s quiet peacemaker; Bimbo Ademoye as Iya Femi, the cunning and ambitious third wife; and Omowunmi Dada as Bolanle, the outsider whose entrance topples the household’s balance. The wider ensemble includes Shaffy Bello, Bisola Aiyeola, Lateef Adedimeji, Kunle Remi, Tina Mba, Daniel Etim Effiong, Nancy Isime, and Mike Ezuruonye, among others.

Where it’s premiering first

Before it hits Nigerian cinemas, the film will get its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it has been selected for the Centrepiece program. Abudu has described the TIFF selection as an honour for the project.

Why it matters

For a story that has already made the journey from page to stage, watching it complete the arc to screen feels like a full-circle moment, not just for Shoneyin’s novel, but for the wider ecosystem of African literary IP finding its way to global audiences. With four major African media companies behind it and a Yoruba-forward creative approach, this adaptation looks less like a cautious retelling and more like a statement about how African stories can travel without losing their accent.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives arrives in Nigerian cinemas on December 4, 2026.