Playwright Wale Ogunyemi was born in Igbajo in the West of Nigeria. Ogunyemi became a drama student at Ibadan University in on a one-year professional course. At the same time he was appointed to Ibadan's Institute of African Studies as a research assistant and transcriber, and he stayed with the institute throughout his career, increasingly devoting himself to Yoruba studies. From 1970s onwards Ogunyemi began writing for the stage with plays ranging from popular domestic comedies to reworkings of Yoruba myth and history.