Cowboy Snippets: 'He joined a Gang called the "Cowboys" ...'

From a tribute to the actor Wale Ogunyemi (1939-2001)

In Ibadan, Wale was very rascally, he carried over his love for masquerades from his town to Ibadan and he was always following masquerades all over Ibadan.

Wale Ogunyemi started acting plays when he was in Standard One in Agurodo. He played the part of a chorus in the play “Adam and Eve.”

In Ibadan, he joined the Gang called the “Cowboys” and on Easter Mondays they would dress likes Texan cowboys and go to picnics and do all sorts of things that would attract people. They danced and re-enacted scenes they saw in the cinemas. Each time Wale went to see a movie, he would say to himself, “One day I too will become an actor”.

Apart from his activities as a youth and the kind of life he was exposed to by his family, which showed that he had always been involved in everything dramatic in one form or the other; he came into the theatre by accident.

(my emphasis)

Just to help us with the chronology – Ogunyemi attended the University of Ibandan in 1967 to study drama. Therefore, the above paragraph should be referring to the mid- to late-1960s, according to his Wikipedia page.