“I generate it in less than two minutes”: How a 300 level UNICAL student is retelling african legends from his phone

In the third episode of Emere, a spirit queen stands in a glowing forest, a calabash raised in each hand. “One holds heaven,” the caption reads. “One holds earth. Let the child choose.” The beautiful scene lasts seconds and an episode took less than two minutes to generate and the 17-year-old behind it made it on his phone in Unical (The University of Calabar).

Francis Chinonso Ikedinobi, from Ora-Eri in Aguata LGA, Anambra State, studies Pure Chemistry at Unical. Since starting XandyCore, a channel on YouTube Shorts and Facebook, he has posted short illustrated episodes of Emere, the Ozidi Saga and, most recently, Sikan and the Leopard Voice. The channel also lists other shorts with titles, Kintu and Nambi and Mbombo.

Folktales have long been passed down orally in Nigeria, often told by elders to children in the evenings, and Ikedinobi says his project is an attempt to carry that habit onto a phone screen. Speaking to Neusroom, he describes the project as a way to retell Nigerian folktales for young people who no longer hear them at home.

How an episode is made

The idea, he said, surprisingly came from the AI app itself. “I was looking for the right content to create, but nothing really clicked until Hark AI gave me the idea of making AI videos.”

The process is short. “I give it instructions, review the result, and post it,” he said. An episode usually takes less than two minutes to generate. “Hark AI handles most of the video creation, while I provide the direction and manage the posting.” The results are polished: painted forests, villages with thatched roofs, captions perfectly timed to narration.

Whose story is it?

This is where Ikedinobi is most direct. Asked how much of the story comes from traditional folklore, he paused, then chuckled a little. The storylines were generated by the app, he revealed. He chose the cultural settings and the name Emere, which came from a friend. “I haven’t verified how much of the story comes from actual traditional folklore,” he said.

Emere tells of a mother, Abeni, who has buried three children and follows her fourth, a “child of heaven,” into the forest to bring her back. The setting is a Yoruba village, and the plot echoes the widely told idea of children who belong to the spirit world.

His choice of settings is also broader than “Calabar culture.” He said he chose it because he was born and raised there, yet the series range across the Ozidi Saga, associated with the Ijaw, a Yoruba village in Emere, and, in Sikan, an Efik legend from Calabar.

The bigger question

His channel sits on a debate that will matter well beyond one teenager’s phone: if an AI writes a legend and paints it, is anything being preserved, or only imitated? The question is sharper for stories that come from living communities and oral tradition.

The gap matters, says Dr Onyinyechi Nwaolikpe, lecturer in Mass Communication, McPherson University. Folktales belong to communities. “ Before you retell a story, you should know where it comes from and who is entitled to tell it. An AI can produce something that looks traditional but has no roots, and viewers may not know the difference.”

Ikedinobi does not claim to have settled it. His choice of settings is also broader than “Calabar culture.” He said he chose it because he was born and raised there, yet the series range across the Ozidi Saga, associated with the Ijaw, a Yoruba village in Emere, and, in Sikan, an Efik legend from Calabar.

What’s next

For now he plans to improve the content and watch how viewers respond. If the current series gains traction, he would like to explore stories from other Nigerian cultures, and hopes to get XandyCore verified on TikTok.

He is also behind UNICALLIFE3D, a simulation game about campus life and how students live. Afree browser game in which players spend eight semesters at the University of Calabar, managing money, study and daily student life.Whether either project finds a bigger audience is still unclear. For now, Ikedinobi says, he is still testing what works.