[Guest Post] Renaming Nigeria’s National Theatre: Issues in Law, IP, and Heritage

[Marcel Pemsel]

[Guest Post] Renaming Nigeria’s National Theatre: Issues in Law, IP, and Heritage

Marcel Pemsel Monday, October 20, 2025 - guestpost, Nigeria's National Theatre, public building, renaming, Seun Lari-Williams

The IPKat has received and is pleased to host the following post by Katfriend Seun Lari-Williams (PhD researcher in the Government and Law Research Group in the Faculty of Law, University of Antwerp) on the legal implications of renaming the National Theatre in Nigeria. Here’s what Seun writes:

Renaming Nigeria’s National Theatre: Issues in Law, IP, and Heritage

by Seun Lari-Williams

On Nigeria’s 65th Independence anniversary, the government formally rechristened the National Theatre as the “Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts”.

The announcement, made during the Independence Day celebrations in Lagos, was presented as a patriotic gesture — a tribute to Africa’s first Nobel laureate and a symbol of cultural renewal. It capped years of restoration funded by the Bankers’ Committee and the Central Bank, transforming the once-neglected edifice, itself often described as a cultural heritage site, into a gleaming creative complex. But beyond ceremony, the act invites reflection on Nigeria’s cultural heritage and IP law.

A Pattern of Renaming Controversies

The impulse to rename is not new. In 2022, a former Minister of Information, speaking abroad, announced that the complex would henceforth be known as the Lagos Creative and Entertainment Centre. The announcement provoked an outcry across Nigeria’s arts community, noting that the National Theatre was not merely an address but a piece of collective heritage. Within days, officials clarified that the proposed name referred only to new creative hubs being built around the complex, not the Theatre itself. Yet that short-lived controversy foreshadowed what has now occurred.

A similar episode unfolded in 2012, when then-President Goodluck Jonathan announced the renaming of the University of Lagos as Moshood Abiola University. The move triggered nationwide protests from students, staff, and alumni, who argued that only the National Assembly could amend the University of Lagos Act. Legal commentators, including Chief Afe Babalola SAN, called the action unconstitutional.

The present case follows that familiar pattern. Soyinka’s consent to the use of his name may remove any question of personal rights, but not of principle. As such, the larger question that arises is whether the government may, without legislative amendment, change the name of an institution that exists by statute.

Statutory Identity and Executive Limits

The National Theatre is not merely a building; it is a creature of law. The National Theatre and National Troupe of Nigeria Act (Cap N19, Laws of the Federation 2004) still recognizes the institution by that name and vests its management in a governing board under the Ministry of Information and Culture.

Section 1(2) of the Act provides:

"There shall be established under the general supervision of the Board—
(a) a National Theatre; and
(b) a troupe to be known as the National Troupe of Nigeria. The Act then repeatedly treats “National Theatre” as a named statutory establishment: it provides for a General Manager of the National Theatre, empowers the Board to “monitor and direct the affairs of the National Theatre,” creates a National Theatre Fund, etc."

These provisions show that “National Theatre” is not merely a generic description but a statutory name. The consistent use of the definite article and capitalization across the Act — “the National Theatre” — confirms that Parliament intended to create a specific institution, not just authorize the Board to build any theatre of national scope.

Had the government wished to rename the institution, the proper course would have been through legislation.Under Nigeria’s constitutional framework, only an Act of the National Assembly can alter the name or mandate of a statutory institution. Section 4 (2) of the Constitution vests legislative power exclusively in the Assembly, not in the executive. Thus, only the National Assembly can amend a statute; a presidential declaration carries no legal force here and risks creating administrative confusion over the institution’s true identity.

The IP Dimension of a National Name

In any event, legality is only one layer of the issues arising. A lawful renaming would still carry IP and cultural heritage costs. Indeed, it can disrupt accumulated goodwill, erase heritage value, and fracture the intangible identity that gives a public name its power.

Both regimes create intangible value. In the marketplace, they build goodwill and recognition; in culture, they accumulate meaning. The National Theatre functions as a kind of national trademark, carrying decades of reputation and associative worth. It appears on posters, contracts, and programmes.

Renaming such an institution therefore raises questions familiar to IP lawyers. Who owns the new name “Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts”? Is it registrable as a government trademark? Will the old name still be protected — and how does it relate to the new one? Also, how should the personal name of a famous living writer — a cultural asset in itself — be used by the state without blurring the line between honour and appropriation? And, since the National Theatre and National Troupe of Nigeria were jointly created, does the new name extend by implication to the Troupe as well? Or has it, under the new “Centre” brand, lost its own identity? 

 

Nigeria’s Cultural Heritage law’s blind spot?

Nigeria is a party to the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, which obliges states to protect practices and expressions that convey collective identity. Yet national heritage policy remains largely focused on the tangible — archaeological sites, monuments, museums, while leaving intangible attributes such as names, folklore and festivals, outside formal protection.

This gap allows symbolic alterations to escape the scrutiny that physical modifications would face. Renovating a heritage building would require technical assessments, conservation permits, and expert consultation. Renaming it requires only a microphone.

Cultural heritage and IP are managed as separate worlds, even though both deal with intangible value. The name of a national monument sits at their intersection: part cultural expression, part public brand. Treating it as a matter of mere nomenclature overlooks the legal, moral, and economic ecosystems that such a name sustains.

In cultural heritage law, names are recognized as a form of intangible cultural heritage, part of the living memory that binds a community to its history. To this end, the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) observes that place names are ‘far from being mere labels’ and ‘underpin data collection, analysis, and decision-making’. This echoes what UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage affirms: that cultural identity lives not only in monuments and artefacts, but also in words, practices, and expressions handed down through time.

By that measure, the name “National Theatre” or better still “Nashona Tiyata” (the indigenized version of the name), is not just a title on a façade; it is a cultural asset that has accumulated meaning, reputation, and goodwill over nearly five decades (See studies by Rahimah Ghani and Nor Maznah Husin Peter Jordan, and Sabelo Ndlovu on place names, heritage, and memory). In the same way that a trademark becomes valuable through use and recognition, the name National Theatre has come to signify Nigeria’s artistic ambition and a brand of national creativity crafted during FESTAC ’77 and sustained in the nation’s collective imagination.

Conclusion

Is there a more heritage-sensitive approach — one that preserves National Theatre as the statutory and cultural name, while honouring laureate? Many societies have done precisely this: see, for example, the Olivier, Lyttelton, and Dorfman Theatres — all halls within the UK’s national theatre. Nigeria could have done the same, or even established a new creative complex in Soyinka’s name altogether.

Still, until the law is amended, the edifice in Lagos remains, legally, the National Theatre. Nonetheless, to change that name without care is to devalue accumulated goodwill and treat national memory as replaceable inventory. The real task for Nigeria’s cultural governance is not to repaint heritage but to preserve its meanings, so as to ensure that, in the theatre of national identity, the law still remembers its lines.