Nollywood and the Image of Nigeria in the Global Village
(Written in 2006 for an African American magazine)
We all know that action speaks louder than word and seeing is believing. And nobody can deny this fact of life.
The history of the film industry in Nigeria did not start with the emergence of Nollywood as the Nigerian movies have been dubbed by the rest of the world and now celebrated as the third largest film industry in the world after American Hollywood and Indian Bollywood.
“The world has continued to marvel at how Nigerians "manufacture" and "fabricate" scores of movies in a week. It is reported that but for India, Nigeria produces more movies in quantitative terms than any other country in the world.”
~~ Tayo Aderinokun, Managing Director, Guaranty Trust Bank
Glover Memorial Hall was the venue of the first film to be shown in Nigeria in August, 1903 and this was done by the ruling colonial office of the British Empire that went on to show primarily educational clips, features and documentary reports of the royal trips to Nigeria and other colonies, English football matches, Westminster Parliamentary debates and other films of little or no value to the culture of Nigeria. And the cinema houses that soon showed up all over the popular cities in Nigeria from Lagos to Ibadan to Kano also showed Western films and later Indian films. But it is important to note that "Sanders of the River" by Edgar Rice Buroughs made in 1935 had some unique parts shot in Nigeria. The film featured the first world class Nigerian actor Orlando Martins (1899 – 1985) and was the first film to put the motion picture image of Nigeria on the map of the world.
Then Nigerian filmmakers such as Adamu Halilu, Mallam Brendan Shehu, Dr. Ola Balogun, Chief Eddie Ugbomah, the late Chief Hubert Ogunde and Francis Oladele produced classic films on celluloid since 1968 and Nigerian films were also competing among the foreign ones in the cinemas until the Indigenization Decree of 1972 transferred the ownership of over 300 cinema houses in the country from their foreign proprietors to Nigerians who did not have the expertise and capital to run them successfully and the economic depression of the late 1980s and the mass importation of Video Cassette Players worsened the situation as cinema houses lost the patronage of cinema goers who now preferred to buy the cheaper pirated films in video cassettes and watch them in the safer and more comfortable privacy of their homes. The popularity of home videos also affected the stage performances of plays by Nigerian playwrights as the numbers of people going to the theatres and town halls to watch live plays began to reduce. As the saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention, the challenges of survival for Nigerian theatre arts practitioners prompted them to dare the production of their plays in home videos. The Yorubas who were always the pioneers of the popular street theatre were also the pioneers of the home movies industry with “Aje Ni Iya Mi” by the late Isola Ogunsola who employed an Ibo man Nnebue of Nek Video Links to produce the video. And Nnebue seeing the great opportunity went on to produce the best selling “Living in Bondage 1 and 2” in 1992 before others joined the bandwagon. And now Nigerian movies have taken over TV screens all over Africa from Anglophone countries to the Francophone countries and over 20 million people watch Nigerian movies of which over 15 million are within Nigeria and the rest among the over 7 million Nigerians living in different parts of the world and most of them are in America, Western Europe, Asia and Australia. We are now living witnesses of the emergence of the phenomenon called Nollywood.
Over 50 movie titles are released weekly in Nollywood and attracting the attention of the rest of the world and Nollywood has become the picture of the Nigerian culture in the eyes of the world. Therefore, we must address the importance, relevance and significance of Nollywood as the image of Nigeria. As Dr. Odia Ofeimum stated in “In Defence of the Films We Have Made” in his keynote address at the second National Film Festival, 27 November 2003 and I quote:
“Powered by its home-grown sense which has been the source of its viability, it was primed to travel and to breach porous borders. Nigerians travel a lot and their video films have been traveling with them. Due to the surprise of self-recognition in our stories or the manner in which Nigerians tell them, other people have connected with the video films. So it was not enough to overcome the Nigerian market place. Through saturation marketing, Nigerian home-video mania crossed the borders even beyond the necessities of trade. Once the barn-storm-rating of the video camera overtook the cinema house, and by-passed its camp-following of foreign dominated distribution networks, it began to turn into a super-asset in a makeshift revolution that only those who are thoroughly impervious to social promptings have been able to ignore. The rest of the world may not have wanted to pay attention.”
(http://www.westafricareview.
Therefore, I believe the next stage of the sustainable development of the Nigerian film industry is the management of the aesthetics and ethics of the Art and Craft to portray a positive image of Nigeria to the rest of the world.
The desperation for quick profits and short-cuts to fame has made both the majority of Nigerian filmmakers and their domineering marketers to disregard the international standards of filmmaking as they rush to make over 50 movies weekly and careless about the content and context of the script and the craft. Thus making Nigerian movies to be known more for the quantity than the quality and millions of viewers have complained about the horrors of juju, lawlessness and bribery and corruption of the Nigerian public officials and others shown in most of the movies. Millions of foreigners have been shown the images of gawky Nigerian police officers collecting bribes at police check-points and engaged in other sharp practices and these negative images have only worsened the bad image of the Nigerian Police and of Nigeria as one of the most corrupt countries in the wrong. And this is the irony of the popularity of Nollywood. Because, as at present Nollywood is like a trailer overloaded with goods on the express way being driven by a desperate man without a driver's license and the others on the vehicle are struggling to correct the driver or even take over the steering from him. So, people are gasping and moping in awe and fear at the daredevil stunts of the vehicle and praying it does not crash. But is this the true picture of Nigeria?
No!
We must tell the true stories of Nigeria to the rest of the world.
The stories of our great heroes and heroines or “sheros” like Queen Amina, Emotan, Moremi, Madam Tinubu and the contemporary role models such as Dr. Dora Akunyili, Hajia Sambo and others.
Nollywood has become synonymous with the ingenuity of the smart Nigerian as Nigerians never give up in their pursuit of their goals to catch up with the leaders in whatever field of human enterprise they are interested in all over the world. But Nollywood should not ape Hollywood or Bollywood. Nollywood should be the mirror of Nigeria from the past to the present and the future. Therefore, Nollywood actors and actresses should not be competing to master who can fake the American Yankee accent or Cockney accent and should not be apes of Hollywood or Bollywood stars.
Nollywood should be proudly Nigerian, heart and soul.
Nigerian filmmakers should work in cooperation and support and pool their resources together to make Nigerian films that should be as good as any of the best films in the world. We should no longer be ridiculed for the common B-rated movies flooding the home videos rental shops and corners of the streets. We have had enough of the same rehashed stories with the same plots and badly produced too. We have had enough quantity without quality. Because, we must do our homework before we can produce excellent films that we can show at the Cannes and qualify to be nominated for the Oscars and not turned down again for poor standards.
We have a vehicle for the global village and we have already succeeded in impressing the rest of the world. So, we can now decide what our vehicle should convey and show to the whole world.
The world should see the hardworking Nigerian widow, who is the mother of six children as she wakes up at 4 am in Lagos and leaves for the far away Mile 12 market to trade and earn the means of livelihood.
Why?
She is doing it for the upbringing of her fatherless children she must send to school and pay their school fees, buy school uniform and textbooks and feed and clothe them and pay their medical bills whenever they fall ill.
The world should see the honest to God Nigerian police officers as they work day and night and they shun all temptations of bribes.
The world should see the hard working Nigerian labourers toiling daily to make ends meet.
The world should see the diligent Nigerian pupils walking miles to go to school and later to the farms, streams, and back to their.homes to do the chores.
The world should see the work-in-progress of proud Nigerians at work and at home doing their best in cooperation and support for the government in the nation building of a new Nigeria in the leadership of Africa in the comity of nations in the new millennium.
These are the true illustrations that our movies should portray and show to the rest of the world and let us be proud of Nigeria.
- By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
Novemeber 5, 2006.
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