No Time! Nollywood has produced a movie on General Buhari and President Jonathan (Photo)

I know you all saw this coming. I saw the “vision” clearly and I knew it will happen soon. Alas! So, a Nollywood ‘filmmaker’ decided to shoot a movie on President Goodluck Jonathan and President-Elect, General Buhari.
If they can shoot movies on Ebola, Bring Back Our Girls, Fuel Subsidy, World Cup among others, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Ermm, I hope General Buhari isn’t the fat, bearded man in the poster. This people had better be serious! President Jonathan was ‘well-represented’ so how can Buhari be this fat? Maybe it’s Asari then. #okbye

Nollywood cannot afford to lose Goodluck- Charles Novia writes

Let us admit it – we have never seen any President so besotted with entertainment like Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, especially the movie-making sector. And this is not a satire. Yes, his detractors may point at “weakness” for entertainment as a signpost of an unserious mind frittering the commonwealth on ‘joli-joli’ matters!
Even the opposition may grumble loudly that the lively engagement with the Nollywood is essentially exploitative and window-dressing – to the detriment of more important and critical sectors of the national economy.

However, no one is in doubt that the life and essence the Creative wayfarers was initially ignited by Bayelsa governor, the much maligned Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, immediate boss of GEJ around year 2000. With dizzying state support and elaborate razzmatazz, the duo of Alams and GEJ wallowed in the sudden euphoria of showbiz and the attendant media opulence only comparable to IBB’s romance with PMAN’s ding-a-long of 1989 – 1992 when Tony Okoroji was the majordomo.

It was no surprise GEJ flowed with the momentum when fortune made him supplant Alams as Gov. of Bayelsa in December 2005. Yet, for all his enthusiasm for professional revelries, the make-believe could not have believed their luck when good ol’ providence thrusted GEJ, again, into greater prominence.
In quick succession, he moved from Vice-President to Acting President and eventually President within years! By 2011 when he assumed office, on his own stamina, the Nollywood romance had blown out of the creek waters. The two lovebirds were careering giddily on a thoroughfare peopled with great thespians, gifted producers, immaculate directors and of course a coterie of charlatans and ‘waka-pass’.
With technocrats within the federal service and the movie industry, different modules of foundational interventions were crafted – and cash-backed like never before. Millions of naira were mentioned, which ballooned, to the consternation of nay-sayers, to billions of naira in creative “stimulus packages”.
In the past ten years of GEJ’s unstinted romance with a powerful sector of the entertainment community, it is very uncharitable (even for inveterate detractors) to say that Jonathan has not “performed”. You may quarrel with the impact or management of his interventions; you may yap him and his people for mystifying the process and access to the several GEJ interventions in the Artsworld.
You may claim he has lost similar interest or attention to details in other critical sectors of the Nigerian state. However, no ONE can simply dismiss his unprecedented regard, affinity and seeming devotion to the people, practice and promise of Nigeria’s movie-making community and allied sectors. In his six years as President, GEJ has arguably awarded more national honours to our artistes than all the past regimes rolled together!
So, when you hear and see leading lights of Nollywood rooting aggressively for GEJ; when you read famed voices shouting on the roof of their cyper-pages and declaring the ceaseless glory of GEJ; when you read otherwise quiet prima-donnas spit fire and engage in internet-‘gra-gra’ with many of their tele-fans…for the sake of their beloved Moses (Jonathan) – you really must understand and appreciate their position – enlightened self-interest (a completely natural instinct).

They are not ‘bought’, ‘turn-coats’ or ‘ass-licking’ – against their will or legacy. They simply are paying good back to the man who has brought them a load of luck – and thus enhancing their means of livelihood, and embellishing their relevance. No pun intended.

This 2015 presidential election is a watershed for Nollywood. They cannot see anything in the “Change”-troopers to indicate that their groovy-train will go on; GMB has not even for once coughed about any plans for Nollywood, one of the major revelations of the 2014 rebasing parameters! It does appear that GMB does not even know that Nollywood exists – beyond gyrations at campaign rallies!
So, stop yakking at Nollywooders if they have little or no sympathies for GMB – he is disconnected from them in the past decade, at least. And within that same period, GMB’s main opponent has been their God-sent. Most assuredly I say to you: a good friend is difficult to find – and keep; Nollywood can’t afford to lose this Goodluck. God forbid!!

How Nollywood kills people in Nigeria | By: Abimbola Adelakun

Anyone who has ever seen a Yoruba film on a fairly regular basis in Nigeria would be familiar with this mundane storyline: A man is unsuccessful in his business ventures (or, if a woman is unable to have a child); the person takes his/her case to a spiritualist who could be a babalawo/pastor/ Muslim cleric; the spiritualist instructs the victim to carry out some rituals that would strike at the root of his/her affliction; not long after, his/her mother (or stepmother) takes to the street, confessing to witchcraft and reading out a long list of atrocities she has committed.
The conclusion of the story: A crowd of spectators, entertained by the “witch”‘s “confessions,” take it on themselves to stone the woman to death. And after her demise, his/her victim’s business begins to prosper. If a woman, she gives birth to either a set of twins or a male child. Having seen a number of these films, especially the ones produced by semi-literate filmmakers and packaged for a largely ill-informed audience, I am pretty familiar with how the theme of triumph of good over evil is usually treated. There is insistence on materialising evil through a physical body, and in many cases, aged females are the culprits.
Sometimes, you watch the barbarism peddled in these films and wonder what the job of the censors’ board is, really. No, these filmmakers are not totally ignorant of the several diseases associated with senescence; they just feed a social neurosis that seeks to unload all our imaginations of the workings of evil on a scapegoat. When we have identified one, we proceed to destroy it so we can get a sense of collective purging from the effort.
A recent example: A newspaper headline screamed, “Bird Turns to Old Woman in Lagos.” From the way the reporter narrated the story, you would think s/he witnessed the transmutation of the old woman who was described as a “nonagenerian.”

Read through the story and you will not find editorial intrusion in the account; no attempt to probe what happened beyond reporting illiterate “eyewitness” accounts that insisted the old woman fell from the sky while flying to Ibadan from Lagos. It seemed the reporter and his/her editor believed the idle spectators who claimed they saw some birds flying when one fell from the sky. But think about it, who, in an environmentally polluted Lagos, does bird watching at 7am to notice three flying? Did they see these three lone birds in the sky with their korokoro eyes or binoculars? And what is so special about flying birds that they noticed these ones?

Did it even occur to the crowd that when the “nonagenarian” said she fell because she was tired, it was on account of her biological age and nothing else? And could it be that the driver of the van that claimed she fell on his truck fabricated the story of a woman who fell out of the sky because he didn’t want to be held responsible for hitting her?

Most disheartening, however, was the mob that almost lynched the poor woman. People have become so inhuman that the sight of old and weak people no longer compels any sympathy in them. Up till now, I wonder why there was no proper investigation by the Police. Even after the woman’s children had shown up and confirmed their mother had issues, should the Police not have gone after the various participants in the near-lynching and charge them for incitement to commit murder?

But the question persists, why are people convinced witches do fly even though nobody has ever seen one?
I know some readers will argue about the existence of evil forces; insist witches truly exist; and if our ancestors believed witches could fly, they sure must know what they were talking about. Perhaps. All these stories, as pervasive as they are, have never been independently verified. They exist in our imagination and not even the most vociferous defender of the existence of witchcraft has ever seen one woman turn into a bird. These things are created in our imagination by popular culture and then become self-reproducing such that we believe our own fiction.
This is why I blame Nollywood; although, I should clarify that “Nollywood” as I refer to it here is not about all the films produced in the Nigerian film industry. I am specific about a particular genre of films produced in Yoruba language and which tries to toe the line of the late Hubert Ogunde’s cinematographic depiction of evil, witches and witchcraft. I speak of those particular films with linear themes that see the world through only a dual prism of white/black, evil/good. These films are quite popular and are packaged for a market often without enough intellection to filter fantasy from reality.

A lot, of course, has to do with a culture of superstition in which we were raised. While the Oyinbo created Harry Potter and sorcery, hardly any Oyinbo believes that witches fly on broomsticks. In this part of the world, we are steeped in certain cultural beliefs that we have not outgrown. I think a lot has to do with our transition into modernity that was not properly mediated at some point.

When people who were already immersed in cultural beliefs about witchcraft were exposed to Ogunde’s films, and they saw the animation of transmutation and flying witches, it simply sealed their existing beliefs and some of them were locked into that mode ever since. The medium was too credible for transmutation to be incredible. Things are not helped by religious institutions that propagate these beliefs to boost what they sell. The filmmakers, seeing as they have a working formula, continue to sell the same stories about malevolent forces and their exaggerated power over human existence.

Some people, unfortunately, just cannot think outside the oversimplified narratives they see in Nollywood.
When they hear about old women flying from Ibadan to Lagos, they believe it because they already saw it in a film. When old women who “confess” to evil acts are stoned in a film, they want to lynch one in real life too because they think that they are contributing to a good cause by destroying evil. Life, for them, is simply an extension of a Nollywood drama.
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Abimbola Adelakun is a journalist, PUNCH columnist and fiction writer. She lives in Lagos , Nigeria.

Tchidi, Talk Not | By: Charles Novia

One of the best brains we have in Nollywood would be Tchidi Chikere, a celebrated scriptwriter and movie director. With an impressive body of work in the past decade and a capacity to discover new stars or to enhance sagging careers of others, Tchidi is not a personality one can ignore in Nollywood.
I have known him in a professional capacity for close to fourteen years and I relate well with him in the few instances we have met and had discussions. Tchidi has a burning desire to make a change in Nollywood, to shoot movies which somehow should re-calibrate society’s moral journey. I particularly love some of his movies for the uncanny way he brings out everyday characters in simple lifestyles and turn them to complex evolutionary beings in complex situations. As a movie director and a scriptwriter, Tchidi is gifted. Very gifted. Take it from me.
In my usual no-holds-barred critique of his acting, I would be less charitable in my accolades. But I am not writing this to detract from his credentials as a celebrated auteur. I am writing this out of concern, perhaps more professional but with a huge personal slant to it as well. It is a well-known fact by now that Tchidi got married to an actress, Nuella, a few days ago. First of all, Tchidi, I must congratulate you on that. Whatever the opinions people have, we must all respect the wishes of consenting adults when it comes to tying the knot. He made a choice and we should respect that, no matter how much the slanderous anonymous commentators on social media think they know.
That Tchidi got seperated from his former wife, Sophia who bore him three children is perhaps unfortunate but like I said, consenting adults take decisions which they believe is best for them at certain stages in life. Such decisions might come much anger and recriminations and would always leave scars in the hearts of both parties. Divorce or seperation are never pleasant. My concern in this case has to do with the open fights between Tchidi and Sophia on social media AFTER Tchidi’s new marriage. On face value, it would seem to have started with Tchidi’s rant on twitter a couple of days back against his ex-wife.
The tweets were quite shocking and less than charitable, to say the least. Though from the tweets, one could psycho-analyse that Tchidi was really angry, hurt and perhaps deliberately hitting below the belt at his former wife. My first reaction when I read those tweets on a blog was one of shock. Those tweets were totally uncalled for. Totally. Granted, they might have been written in a miasma of negative volcanic emotions but total restraint is required from a man in those kind of circumstances. And such restraint is justified when the mother of your blood children is involved!
Sophia had a riposte which I read as well and she had a moral right to respond too. But something tells me that Tchidi would wish to fire another salvo at that response and thus start a social media bric-a-brac which would inflict more wounds on all parties. That is why I had to write this open opinion. In Nollywood, and perhaps to a small extent the entertainment industry in general, most of the creatives tend to look away when acrimonious matters befall one of their own. First reactions would be one of aloofness, followed by private gossip in meeting places. Sometimes, colleagues and friends of such personalities would whisper malicious things about the subject in private while pretending to be all coy and concerned when they meet the suffering subjects in public. Oh Yes! My sector have some psychophants and pretenders as with politics but isn’t that how life goes?
Perhaps Tchidi and Sophia are being wrongly advised by masquerading friends? Or maybe they are not even being advised at all by anyone but are just ventilating on social media, giving bloggers more hits and the country one more piece of idle gossip? Whatever the case, I will openly advise Tchidi to stop further tweets or replies on this matter. For the record, I don’t know Sophia or Nuella and haven’t met with any ever and don’t wish to. My concern, as a father, is for the kids from Tchidi’s first marriage and perhaps future kids from this new marriage. Do not celebrate your misgivings on social media. Sheath the swords. Think of the children. The children. The children.
Those poor kids are going through indescribable torture and pain already. You don’t need to add fuel to their discomfort. Angry words once written and published are hard to take back, even with the passing of time. Celebrities are human too. That you see us on the screens or read about us does not make us less human than the other fellow. Fame and fortune only hide our foibles and finnicks. But we are human. However, whilst we are human, there are expectations of decorum we all must adhere to. And if it is just for the kids, Tchidi and Sophia (and perhaps Nuella) must adhere to the dictates of decorum.
I am not writing this to take sides or blame any of the parties involved. I am writing this openly because whatever linens being displayed by all parties in the open should be brought down immediately.
May God help all parties pass through this period and bless them all as they move on to the next phase of their lives.
Amen.
Credit: Charlesnoviadaily.com

Movie veteran, Patience Ozokwor to launch 3 business outfits

I don’t think there are actors/actresses who don’t have other streams of income asides acting. Maybe very few of them. Nollywood movie veteran, Patience Ozokwor has also joined the growing list of actors investing in other businesses.

Known for her controversial roles (wicked mother/mother-in-law) Mama Gee as fondly called will be launching her three new business outfits; a salon, restaurant and boutique on 29th March 2014. The place is called Wendy’s Place, the event will take place at House 3, Coal City Garden Estate, Enugu.

OMOTOLA JALADE-EKEINDE DEBUTS ON AMERICAN TV SERIES TODAY

Top-notch Nigerian actress, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde will be making cameo appearances on American TV series, Hit The Floor today; her debut on US TV. The beautiful enterpreneur and philanthropist tweeted about the show yesterday.

@Realomosexy: "Okay! Finally its on Monday,9pm! #HitTheFloor ! My U.S Tv Debut! God is good y'all. Hehehe…@HitTheFloor @LADevilGirls #Ifactory @VH1."

Hit The Floor; an American drama television series on VH1 series, created last month revolves around Ahsha, a girl who joins the NBA Cheerleading team the Los Angeles Devil Girls, unaware of the treacherous and tempting world that follows.

Renowned Senegalese singer and music producer, Akon will also feature in the series.

Go Omotola

GENEVIEVE NNAJI, FUNKE AKINDELE, NSE IKPE-ETIM, OTHERS ENDORSE MOVIE MOMENTS

Moments (www.momo.com.ng); an authentic entertainment portal for news revolving around top-notch film stars is set to debut in Lagos, Nigeria.

Published by Movie Moments Limited, a wholly Nigerian Nollywood media and awards company founded in 2012, it seeks to be the premier destination for everything Nollywood. Movie Moments Media offerings are designed to engage users with online content and free services on the Web.

Billed to launch on February 18, 2013, Movie Moments seeks to become Nollywood’s premiere news source where Nollywood enthusiasts can access latest information, movie trailers, photo shoots, locations occurrences and gossip.


The announcement of the upcoming launch on social media was warmly received by Africa’s leading woman Genevieve Nnaji, Present AGN president, Ibinabo Fiberisima and Nollywood sweethearts, Funke Akindele, Doris Simeon and Nse Ikpe- Etim.

“Welcome to the industry, I have high expectations about the launch of Movie Moments, well done,” Genevieve Nnaji says.

The incumbent AGN President, Ibinabo affirmed that “It keeps getting better and better. The industry is booming, We have waited for this for years, and can only hope that Movie Moments is a trend-setter”.

“I am eagerly looking forward to the February 18 launch date,” Nse Ikpe Etim confessed.

NOLLYWOOD PRODUCER TO RELEASE GAY MOVIE

First of its kind! What will a gay movie from Nollywood look like? Nollywood producer, Dickson Iroegbu is fully set to release one soon.
Titled 'Love 58', sources say some Nollywood actors rejected the script others will feature in the movie include Kanayo O Kanayo, Clarion Chukwurah, Halima Abubakar to mention a few. It is expected to drop this month.

SAM DEDE SECURES RIVERS STATE GOVERNMENT APPOINTMENT

As far as Nollywood is concerned, actor cum university lecturer would always be a force to reckon with. Known for epics like Issakaba and Battle of Love, Sam Dede has carved a niche for himself in the motion picture industry.
The good news however is that like his colleagues, Hilda Dokubo, Richard Mofe-Damijo and others Sam Dede has just gotten a job placement in the Rivers State Government, precisely.
Disclosed by the State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari on Wednesday 18th January 2012 in Port Harcourt, Sam Dede is now the new Director General Rivers State Tourism Development Agency.We hope all our Nollywood practitioners won't leave the screen for government office o but all the same they've paid their dues.

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