Whilst growing up at the fall of the twentieth century, and the rise of the twenty first, the first thing I embraced was Nigerian movies. I was ushered into the then glamorous world of Nigerian movies even before literature itself. Curiously, however, this is one area of my life which I have not attempted to mention in my numerous writings. I have no explanation for such an important omission either. But now, I feel the strong urge to share with you the magnificent influence that Nigerian movies and their artistes had upon my little self in those formative years.

I have written elsewhere and in countless other platforms that I schooled and partly grew up at Ubang, a highly exciting community in Obudu Local Government Area where females speak a different dialect from their male counterparts despite residing in the same community.

There were two great men who lived at New Jerusalem, Ubang, and whose houses shared a common boundary. In my book, Souza Boy, I gave detailed explanations how the name ‘New Jerusalem’ came about, etc. These two men – Messrs Richard and Abel, were the two people who hosted us every evening. Their compounds were our cinema houses in those distant days, frequently offering us nights of free entertainment (apologies to Cyprian Ekwensi). Permit me to say that these men were ‘rich’ farmers in an agricultural community bustling with life, where cocoa and bananas were the primary crops upon which the entire community relied for their source of financial income. And so it was through these plantations that these two men excelled so greatly. In fact, Mr Richard, in his early sixties like his colleague, had the only storey building in all of Ubang, Alege and Ukpe villages at the time. It was this building that projected his fame throughout the nine villages of Ukpe, the seven villages of Alege and the three villages of Ubang. The storey building was all that you needed to drive home your point when one made reference to him.

Every evening we would throng to these compounds, and our hosts would turn on their power generators, and they would ensure their television sets were brought out to the middle of the compound. It became a tradition that after the day’s studies at school, and after consuming the evening’s meals, we went straight to the movies. And whilst watching these movies, there was a kind of orderliness that now amazes me, and which occurred quite naturally. Those of us who were children sat on the bare floor, very close to the television set whilst the older people carefully arranged themselves behind us, and in a circular shape, in such a way that any late comer would find no difficulty in catching the action on the screen. Reactions erupted from these gatherings at intervals, particularly when something odd, strange or utterly absurd took place on the screen. Today, after these years, whenever I see a gathering of people at football viewing centres across Lagos, it reminds me of how we gathered in those distant times.

Although we still were at that stage when moonlight play delighted us so immensely, the movies injected into our lives a new form of excitement which we embraced from the depths of our hearts. We returned to the moonlight games on those rare evenings when our hosts, for reasons for which they were not responsible, failed to switch on their generators.

We had such boundless passion for our local movies, so much so that we looked forward to the hour of dusk with exceptional excitement. I did not know at the time that our movie industry was at an embryo stage, yet chunning out such quality works. Today, when I think about those excellent works, Nollywood seems to me like a child who began to walk after only a fortnight before collapsing into the arms of its hopeless mother at a time the legs ought to have attained considerable maturity. How ironic! You may indeed argue that I saw these movies through the eyes of a child, but it is my personal opinion to assert that excellence has a unique language which cannot be concealed.

A myriad of Nollywood movies thrilled us then, such classics as: True Confession, Karashika, Highway to the Grave, Most Wanted (which we called ‘Four Girls’), Blood Money, Full Moon, Evil Men, State of Emergency, Witches, End of the Wicked, Igodo – The Land of the Living Dead, Last Burial, Final Burial, Ijele – Son of the Masquerade (where Sam Dede dazzled me), Oracle, After School Hour, Black Powder, etc had magnificent influence upon us. Shortly afterwards emerged: Issakaba (Sam Dede’s main break), God Where Are You?, etc. So interesting were these movies that after watching them during the night, we would be moved to act out all that we saw on the screen the following day in our playful gatherings. The action would begin with only a few people in attendance as audience members, and gradually the crowd would swell to the extent that a visiting person may run into the skewed conclusion that a professional theatre group had visited the countryside for a tour or something like that.

On one such occasion, we acted Issakaba, with real cutlasses and other relevant apparatus, and I played Ebube (Sam Dede’s role in the movie). I must warn that it is not vanity that makes me announce here that my performance was greeted with a rousing standing ovation from our ‘audience members’. Such praise used to come often that it usually would reflect its effulgence upon my small person. And indeed, our presentation in its entirety was a reasonable simulacrum of the original movie that we were passionately imitating. I simply think that we were a bunch of highly gifted children growing up in that rural part of Africa.

It follows therefore that these movies formed in me my strong affiliation with the drama genre of literature, which has been my favourite literary genre for a very long time. It was during this period that I equally embraced the great works of Professor ‘Zulu Sofola under dramatic literature. Worthy of note also is the fact that it was these movies that imbued in me the very strong desire of becoming an actor, for I was overly confident that I could be an excellent thespian. That I am yet to feature in any Nollywood production is not a testimony of my lack of talent in that field.

Generally, there abound several ways through which a good work of art should seamlessly manifest its effect upon its consumer(s), and these movies were not bereft of these fundamental qualities. I remember in particular that on the nights we watched ‘End of the Wicked’, ‘Karashika’ and ‘Witches’; the images and soundtracks, quite antithetical with contemporary Nollywood productions, were so real that we all were gripped with unusual degree of fear so that some of us no longer dared to sleep alone at night. We could no longer dare to face our dreams alone. We were now walking in two separate realms – the real world to which we truly belonged and in the fictitious world created by the imaginative geniuses of the movie artists. And it was in this latter world that we earnestly wished we were part of. We seriously wished we were part of the action that unfolded right before our very eyes. Such is the effect of a good work of art. When a member of your audience appreciates your work to the extent of being drawn into an unknown territory or terrain which you have created, then something electrifying has happened, quite beyond the artistic imagination of the artist himself.

In ‘God Where Are You?’ (Drama) The acting appeared so natural that even the soundtracks employed should find their place among the best I have heard. I recently re-visited the movie, and what I saw justified and even strengthened my earlier supposition. Superb delivery from Pete Edochie, as usual; along with his twin ‘daughters’, whom I have made several futile attempts to reach out to. Such is the indelible impression that this movie has left on me. Whenever I see any great thespian or read a well written work of literature, I often do feel the urge to have a conversation with such thespian(s) or author(s).

In Ijele and Issakaba, where the impressive Sam Dede announced his immense talents, Nollywood has two works that should feature comfortably in the country’s ten greatest movies of all time.

Dear reader, you are at liberty to accuse me of being fuddy–duddy, but I do not oppose to such diametrical contradictions, all I can tell you is that I have a very strong passion for excellence which cannot be compromised. When a piece of art is excellent in my own subjective assessment of it, the century in which it was produced or created is never put into consideration at any point. The reason for this is quite simple, I cannot put up with mediocrity or ordinariness. We live in separate worlds. I, on my part, live under the genuine conception that the existence of mediocrity in any branch of life is an unacceptable defect, and is a major factor which militates against the development of humanity, society and particularly African civilisation.

My heart is saturated with sadness, for I feel this treatise echoes like a eulogy, being rendered on the night of Nollywood’s funeral. The present proliferation of crass works into the industry is lamentable! It is a catastrophic fall from excellence to the humiliating standards of mediocrity. Poor storytelling, lack of suspense, hasty and substandard production, etc. have all inflicted a major deformity on an industry whose ancient foundation was laid on excellence.

The story of Nollywood is tragically unique, and completely at variance with the conventional nature of evolution, where maturity manifests with the passage of time. This explains why Nollywood produced classics at the time of its birth, before everything culminated to such utter regression as is evident in today’s market. In fact, mediocrity has become so pervasive in Nollywood that the industry has, albeit involuntarily, ceded majority of its followers to their counterparts in far away Europe and America.

As an African, my problem with some of the movies from Europe and America is that most of them serve for mere entertainment and momentary escape from the brutal realities confronting us as a people. Often the issues which are discussed in these movies have no relationship with the problems facing the Nigerian and indeed the African audience. There is a crucial need for the African audience to be well informed about their own territories and to understand the problems plaguing us as a people. This, in drama, can only be achieved if the creative piece itself is excellently presented in every assessible angle. As an individual, I have a very strong aversion for mediocrity. I have expressed here already a smidgen of this detestation. This is why I feel the strong need to write on a topic, say: ‘Pursuing Excellence in Africa’. Sorry, by the way, for this digression.

One of the fundamental problems responsible for the sharp decline in Nollywood’s quality is that priority has been so placed on monetary value that excellence has been crumpled and dumped into the waste baskets of some of these practitioners, whose incompetence continues to sink the industry, unchallenged. It turns out that the victim is the innocent consumer at home, who must absorb such crummy works against his own wish. The current situation lives you with the question: ‘where are movie giants such as: OJ Production, Great Movies Ind Ltd, etc?’

I am on the verge of making myself available for roles, but it must be said that Nollywood, like the Nigerian state itself, is currently battling with a dire ailment and wholesale cleansing is part of the requirements that should facilitate its return to health.

Elias Ozikpu is a born lover of justice, an autobiographer, thinker, playwright, novelist, essayist, polemicist and a social commentator. He is the author of Souza Boy – available from the Nigerian Writers Series and The Book Company Limited, Lagos.




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