Dr. Damages

Dr. Damages Show is an African late night satirical television program airing each Saturday on SaharaTV. It started three years ago and is now on its 174th episodes. It averages 34 minutes and episode and is hosted by Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo.

Dr. Damages Show is focused on politics and all the news worth lampooning from headlines across the world. The show opens with a guest introducing Dr. Njakiri Damages. A monologue from Dr. Damages follows. It is delivered in front of a studio audience.

The monologue is structured in a way that its first story comes from New York City where it is produced and then it goes to a story from the wider American scene. From America it takes on the major stories playing on the world stage that week. Then it goes on to pick on African stories and finally zeroes in on Nigeria. The purpose of this format is to present the universality of the malady confronting people all over the world. It also propounds that if other people can find relief in laughing over their problems that Africans can too. “The final stage of democracy is when we are free to laugh at the people who rule us,” Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo says. “Nothing will humanize them more. Obviously, death hasn’t. But I am sure that what death cannot do, mockery will.”