Nigeria’s Hottest Cake & Export

It has been out of the oven for decades, well-baked, and still hot.

They talk about oil, gas, cocoa, and even 419. These are drowned out in a world that keeps changing and is full of replications.

The real deal for them lies somewhere that nobody probably adds to the calculations, yet the topic or item is not new.

Literary arts wield the power, hold the Midas touch, and wear the armband if Nigeria’s panoramic system is fragmented into its eclectic diversity.

They radiate tradition, glamor, and the phases which are more or less bridges between the two extremes.

The country’s ideal vehicle in which this talent of gold has been conveyed is its movie industry, simply sloganed  ”Nollywood.”

If there are any people whose artistic acumen better told the cocktail story of the Africans, then they are probably the Nigerians.

Nollywood is one of Nigeria’s finest products, some have said it is the finest.

The deceased veteran actor Justus Esiri usually performed big roles in political cloaks such as a president or chairman of a political party who steered the vessel or plots in the movies capably, albeit he was always depicted as a villain. He performed his role as an autocrat with finesse and emerged heroic for his aptness even when his ways drifted to anticlimax.

 

An actor like Pete Edochie was committed to his big man roles, often caught in some mishap after swimming the high tide of bliss at a cost to others. For God’s sake let’s be very candid about this. Nigerian actors are superb, they play and mirror lives in their facets very naturally and thus bring home to audiences, the combinations in life as they are.

Talk of the unflappable Zack Orji, the ever-snazzy Liz Benson, the stirring Patience Ozorkwor, the pizzazz Mike Ezuoronye commands, and the rare breed of an actress called Joke Silva. These days, people are forgetting the following because they are fading away or they chose to opt out over reasons that are not readily known. Many of the Nollywood stars have kicked the bucket though.  The list to be mentioned, however, does not place them in negative pigeonholes if there are any except to underline their sterling roles in the business of acting.  Olu Jacobs, Shan

George, Edith Jane, Saint Obi, Ernest Obi, Genevieve Nnaji, Ini Edo, Eucharia Anunobi Ekwu, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, Rita Dominic, Emeka Ike, Desmond Elliot, Clement Ohameze, Francis Duru, Gentle Jack, Ernest Asuzu, Monalisa Chinda, Chioma Chukwuka, Sam Dede, Kate Henshaw, Rich Oganiru, Tonto Dikeh, Paul Obazele, Sandra Achums, Ndidi Obi, Stella Damasus, indeed breath cannot catch all the numbers in the tall list.

 

 

A visit to Abuja in 2012 landed me in the tragic news about the death of one of the movie industry’s titans, Enebeli Elebuwa. The bad news was awash in the newspapers and I experienced a burning sensation in my colic as a result. He was one of the icons of Nollywood who fitted into the roles of ”no-nonsense and domineering tycoons or drug barons”. Franca Brown and Patience Ozorkwor walked perfectly in the roles of termagants, for in African societies, particularly those in the sub-Saharan part, there are women who rave and rant in an ill-tempered and overbearing manner.

Easy to be identified was one of the early birds in the industry, Segun Arinze who played the role of a rebel with a touch of class. His closest associate in such characterizations has been Jim Iyke whose shade is ”hooliganism”.  Kenneth Okonkwo and Kanayo O Kanayo are portrayed as reckless, whose actions boomerang with austere backlash.

Their sins always followed them, and they ran when nobody pursued them. They alone saw the apparitions, sometimes they sighted them in their driving mirrors or water in the cups from which they were about to take sips. These trouble-makers then take to their heels, only to find that which they tried to avoid hanging in front of them in the opposite direction.

 

The African way of telling us spirits are transcendent, thus beyond the range of physical experience.

The character who played hard to get, even to the most attractive woman, Saint Obi died in May 2023.

A death that nudged me to the awakening to ask in a soliloquy as to what is happening to the big movie stars of Nigeria.

For a period the galaxies were falling like flowers dried up and loosened in plant sockets after having been hit by a sudden heatwave.

My brother, my sister, you will be hit hard if you googled the checklist on this tragic occurrence.

Another remarkable aspect of Nollywood is the use of personalities to fit character roles.

The old man will act the old man’s role in the movie, the boy who shares similar looks with an elder is made his son, and this is made to give the genetic dimension of human relations.

The comical renditions by Aki and Porpo, Sam Loco Efe and Nkem Nwoh, and the staging of Emeka Ani, Chiwetalu Agu, and Alex Usifo amongst others as wicked characters worked to perfection.

They raise the stakes so high, only for things to fall apart in the end.

 

The Nigerians make sure their films embody African traditional religion and beliefs. This is so important to Africans as a good number of people are not Westernized. The ”white man”  knows they are real entities and hence couched words as their titles.

Ghosts, necromancy, occultism, superstition, witchcraft, and secret rituals are but a few of the acts of spiritism which are defined by its founder, Allan Kardec, as ”a science dedicated to the relationship between incorporeal beings (any matter having no material existence) and human beings.”

These movie-makers are able to draw out emotions with their creativity, giving the audience the opportunity of relating to several life situations as a take-home experience.

Excellence is also found in the veteran Olu Jacobs, the husband of Joke Silva, who was one of the foremost Nigerian movie stars to feature in a British television series.

 

The contrasting tales between cities and villages are well-told by Nollywood to the effect that the old settings that depicted phases of the transitions to modernity are cherished and maintained by indigenes. Here, we are not to forget the village elders and the gossipers whose conversations fit into Shakepeare’s style of letting auxiliary characters shed light on latent aspects in his dramas.  Helen Ukpabio, a Nigerian film producer shot into instance prominence for tickling a vital nerve in the Africans with her religious-based plots that pitted Satan against God. The fact is, the African people are religious.

They believe a communion with God, their gods or deities is potent enough to secure them or provide their needs, and in some sense, this event looks like a substitute or the alternative path to that which is achieved through practical means in the mundane world. Nollywood has found a means of baiting conservatives from their mental enclaves, one of these being the additional role of orthodox medicine in health promotion. Afam Okereke is another producer whose movies always make a hit.

His plots are well conceived and crafted, with scenes that telescope into each other seamlessly to their logical sequences. The late Obi Madubuogwu was a producer and actor. His storylines were solid, and they held viewers glued to their sets in union with the melancholy that billowed from the movies he directed.

There are the Zeb Ejiros, Tchidi Chikeres, Adi Williams’ etc who made the Nollywood culture thick from behind the scenes. It is worthy of note that some of these producers acted in roles as well.

 

 

One of the explosive movies from Nollywood was one called ”State of Emergency”. It was a masterpiece. Talking of movie titling, a few come to mind in the feast offered by Nigerian celebrities. ”Our Great Ancestors”, ”Professional Bachelor”, ”De Bishop”, ”No More Love”, ”Tears From Holland”, ”Political Control”, ”Fair Game”, ”Who Will Tell The President”. ”The Corridors Of Power”, ”Immaterial”, ”Gold Diggers”, ”The Most Blessed Among Women”, ”Black Powder”, ”World Of Commotion”, ”Confusion”, ”Total Confusion”, ”Abuja Connection”, ”The Only Solution”, ”Disguise”, ”Deadly Alternative”, ”Dangerous Love”, ”Lifted By Grace”, ”Living Dead”, ”Dead End”, ”Igbudu”, ”Rituals”, ”Issakaba”, ”Crisis In Paradise”, ”Broken Marriage”, ”Wedding Fever”, ”Crime Planner”, ”Hunters”. You will lose count if you attempt to go through all the items. It is exciting to find literary devices in some of the titles. ”Living Dead” is an oxymoron that is the placement of words with opposite meanings close to each other. ”Gold Diggers” might deceive you into taking the literal meaning but here it is the metaphoric definition ”opportunism”.

 

 

 

Nigerians are accused of being ”419”. They are variously marked as dishonest. That would amount to using the brush for a few or some to paint all Nigerians, unfair to say the least. These are mirrored by Nollywood with the tacit message to society’s people to change bad ways or, come to a bitter end. 419 is a negative that is not akin to one geographical territory. Crime and sin are everywhere, and these are replete in the news. But then, Nollywood represents another tide directed at sweeping the negatives away through education. It talks to Nigerians, all Africans, and indeed the world.