By Simeon Mpamugoh

Former diplomat and erudite filmmaker,  Olatunbosun Balogun, popularly known as Ola Balogun carries in candourmory a rich record of the significant things that have transpired in the Nigeria Art and Culture Sector, covering the personalities and the issues. With candour, he reveals, in this interview, facts that give better insight into occurrences in the sector and also pulls the curtain aside to throw light on things not previously known and which would shock not a few people. Relax, read, enjoy and learn.

 

Balogun in Yoruba is the title of a leading warrior, who is the second in command to a king, or warlord. How come Yoruba bear it as a name?

I was brought up in the military tradition. Like you rightly asserted Balogun is not a name but a title. We are the generals of the Oyo empire. I was taught some things in childhood. It was transmitted by family and it is from generation to generation. Balogun was the first man who was the original general of the Oyo empire. They gave him some inoculation and it is still in our blood. So, I have some powers if it comes to war. I have been to the war front. At the Ministry of Information where I was working, during Nigeria’s civil war, we used to accompany some journalists to the war front. I can say that most of the Army officers of African countries are cowards because when they tell them to accompany us to the front, immediately they hear the boom of the gun, they go back, asking the journalists to move in front if they so wish. So, the only person who was serious during the war was Benjamin Adekunle of the Black Scorpions. He was not a British-trained general, he was an African-trained general like me. He had raw power. He was everywhere during the war and his tactics were too much for Biafran soldiers. He was the one who fought the war and won it. Some soldiers were just trying to waste time and collect money here and there just like they’re doing now with Boko Haram. They are not fighting any war with the sect except for pecuniary gains. So, the officers who went to the Nigeria Second Division Battalion in Onitsha included Muritala Muhammad who performed woefully during the war. He wasted the lives of many of our people. This is not the case they told me. I witnessed it. He wanted to cross straight from Asaba to Onitsha. And people were telling him that those Biafran soldiers were not Boys Scouts, they also had guns, he rebuffed them and insisted he was going to cross. The Biafran soldiers killed a lot of Nigerian soldiers as a result of his stubbornness. From that time, the Second Division didn’t advance one mile. They were in Onitsha till the end of the war. Muritala Muhammad got fed up, left the battle and went away. It was seen as an indiscipline for a military man. So they brought another general, Commander Ibrahim Bata Malgwi, an Owambe general. They were just partying till the war ended. Even the Biafran soldiers crossed the River Niger and entered the Midwest unnoticed.

With such lapses on the part of Nigerian soldiers. Why did the war not go the way of the Biafrans?

This is because the concept of Biafra was dead from the beginning. The Eastern Nigeria is not made up of Igbo people only. The riverine areas were occupied by Ijaw in Port Harcourt on one side and Efik/Ibibio on the other hand. Once General Gowon said that he was creating 12 states the Ijaw people of Rivers State got their state and Efik/ Ibibio got their state, finish! The war was over. The 12 states were created at the declaration of the war and the war was lost from that time on. Ojukwu wasted the lives of the people because Biafra could not succeed as a landlocked entity. They had no access to the sea. They killed many of the Ijaws and Efik/Ibibio because they said they were loyal to the federal soldiers. That is why after the war, Ijaw people didn’t allow the Igbo to come back to Port Harcourt. They seized their property because they literally ‘peppered’ them during the war because they were fighting on the federal side and so Biafran soldiers killed a lot of them. So it was a waste of lives and property because the Ojukwu-led Biafran war could not succeed. It so happened after the war I was an  Information Officer in the Nigeria Embassy in France. I was the Number 3 man in the Nigeria Embassy in Paris. So, we discovered documents which showed the reason why Michel Dabre and Mauricheau Beaupre were supporting the Biafra war. It had nothing to do with humanitarian concerns at all. Ojukwu signed an agreement with the French government to supply them oil under the Emergency Response Action Plan (ERAP) through Total Nigeria for debt arrears. So, the Biafran insurrection was about oil. It is the same thing about the French talking about safeguarding democracy in Niger Republic. It is not about democracy but uranium. The French government came to support Biafra not because of anything humanitarian but oil, which Biafra didn’t have. That is why the French government went to court with its puppets like Houphouet Boigny and Ali Bongo Ondimba to recognize Biafra and it used Gabon to supply weapons to Ojukwu but it could only come by air because Ojukwu did not have the riverine areas. So, that war was lost, and more than 2 million people died for nothing. When I heard that Nnamdi Kalu wanted to create another Biafra, I saw it as a smack of foolery.

How did your working life with the Ministry of Information aid your exploration into the film industry?

After my first degree in France where I studied Literature And Arts and excelled as one of the best students above everyone including French students in their literature and institute, I was expected to go on for my Master’s degree programme in Literature before I fell in love with film. There was this very serious civil servant, a Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education who came to Paris for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) meeting, his name was Mr Durosinmi-Etti. Those days when Nigerian senior civil servants went abroad for conferences, they didn’t go about looking for where to shop. They would stay in their hotel room from there to the conference and back to their hotel room. They dressed very simply. So, I went to the hotel where senior civil servants were staying and asked for Etti. When he was told that a Nigerian student wanted to see him, he told them to bring me to his room. When I got into his hotel room, I told him that I was finishing my first degree in Literature and Arts as a scholarship holder of the French government through the Nigerian government and that I wanted to change to filmmaking. He asked me: “Is that what you want?” I said yes. He said, “Okay, good.” That was how I was transferred to go and study film. The calibre of civil servants of those days was far superior to what we have today. Durosinmi-Etti was a serious and receptive civil servant who received complaints from Nigerian students in France. He never drove any student who wanted to see him away. He gave everybody an audience and he didn’t go night clubbing whenever he was at a conference in France. He made a difference between civil servants then and what we have today where civil servants travel for conferences abroad and embark on shopping sprees and jamborees. Recently, the President had to forbid half of the people who wanted to go to the United Nations General Assembly because they were not going there for any purpose other than to shop. The era of Etti was different. I was lucky when I came back to Nigeria after my film studies at the old Institute of Cinematography in Paris, which is an institute for higher film studies to be employed in the Federal Ministry of Information as a scriptwriter. We were producing documentary films. Among my colleagues then was my best friend, Frank Abiodun Aig-Imoukhuede, a journalist and poet who was the father of Aigboje, the foremost banker and the first African Co-Chairman of the Global Business Coalition on Health (GBC Health). Our families were very close, and our children grew up together. So, I knew Aigboje when he was four years old, alongside his siblings: Erekpitan and Oluwakemi who married Otunba Subomi Balogun. Kemi is the youngest sister of Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. But he is a big disappointment because he was brought up in a house full of books. His mother, Emily, was a curator at the National Museum, and his aunt, the sister of his father, was a very important novelist and writer. His uncle from his father’s side was one of the best people to head major companies in Nigeria. He was the managing director of blue chip companies and from a very sophisticated family. I later saw him hobnobbing with rich bush people. What is he doing with such kind of people who were ignorant bushmen? Just for the love of money, he followed them around. I saw that lately he went to Mr. President and claimed that he was creating a foundation that would be giving money to civil servants. That is nonsense and disappointing. I knew this man when he was a child. He came from a good home and he is not supposed to be hobnobbing with ignorant bush rich men and fraudsters.

From your views, it seemed there was a time when we were getting governance right both in the creative and other sectors of the economy…..

I was trained in the civil service by the generation of civil servants who were trained by the British. Let me put it this way: those people who were later described as super Permanent Secretaries like Allison Akene Ayida, Philip Chukwuedo Asiodu, and Ahmed Mohammed Joda, who was my direct Permanent Secretary. Abdul Aziz Atta was from the Atta family of Igbirra in Kogi State, their sister is Judith Atta who was an ambassador and their brother Abdulmalik Atta was my ambassador in Paris, the same family of brothers and sisters but different names. These brands of civil servants were already graduates at Independence with cars. They were in the same generation as Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Yusuf Grillo, and Bruce Onobrakpeya. They were already emancipated from school while we were still schoolboys at Independence. I was one of those who participated in the march past on 1st October 1960 at Race Course. I was in Form 3 and I physically saw the British flag go down and the Nigerian flag go up and since then governance and indeed the film industry have been down and in a terrible situation.

The quality of our films in particular started depreciating immediately after the Civil War. What happened, taking it before the Independence period was that the British never intended to leave Nigeria. The colonialists understood that we would revolt eventually because they had faced that rebellion in Vietnam and they were defeated. They also faced a serious rebellion in the British Malaya now Malaysia and that was the first major rebellion against colonial rule. The British were unable to overcome them because they divided them ethnically; the Malays on one side and the Chinese on another side. Most of the rebellions then were led by the Chinese. The British convinced the Americans and French that they could help them do the same thing in Vietnam which they failed. They failed because, by that time, China had become independent. It was a semi-colony before the Second World War but in 1947, the Chinese had a revolution, and the Chinese came to power. So, there was a common border between China and Vietnam and they could supply them with weapons. Eventually, the French and Americans lost Vietnam. Now, there was an uprising in Kenya against the British. The British called it mau-mau. It is not mau mau, but the Kenyan Land of Freedom Army. It was led by Tethan Kimathi who was the leader of the uprising. Jomo Kenyatta had nothing to do with it, it is just that the British arrested him as one of the educated people who they suspected of being a mastermind of the uprising. And these people gave the British a hell of a time. It took the British more than three years before they could overcome. The reason the British were successful was that nobody could supply the Kenyans with weapons. They suppressed the war. The French also faced a serious situation in Cameroon with the Union of Populations of Cameroon (UPC).  We had people like Ruben Um Nyobe and Felix-Roland Moumie who were killed in Geneva, Switzerland by the French agents who put up a puppet master called Ahmaaour Babatoura Ahidjo. That is how Ahidjo came to power from 1960-1982 as the first president of Cameroon; the French killed Cameroonian nationalists. Part of the problem now in the Niger Republic is that the French government prevented the real leader of the Independence movement from coming to power under Sawaba, the Union of Popular Forces for Democracy and Progress. They drove them away and held on to power. This present government that was overthrown was the offshoot of that government installed by the French people.

During your time script writing was strong and it took into consideration our history, ideology and culture….. 

Yes. Again we were trained to do that and we were university graduates employed in the ministry. We did it properly; myself, Frank Aig-Imoukhuede and others and none of us who were involved at that time were not educated. We made documentaries about Nigeria and its different ethnic groups. I made a film about Nigeria entitled, Eastern Nigeria Revisited. I was very close to Anthony Ukpabi Asika, who performed wonders for Ndigbo but he was not recognized. I happen to know directly that Ukpabi Asika and Yakubu Gowon saved the Igbo after the war. When the war ended some people wanted the Igbo to be punished by seizing their properties all over the country. Some of them were advocating severe punishment for Igbo people but Gowon stood his ground and said “No Victor, No Vanquished!” He implemented the 3Rs policy of reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation with strong support from Ukpabi Asika. Yet Gowon was still hated by the Igbo. They don’t understand that Ojukwu was the real culprit of the war. And now, Nnamdi Kanu, who is an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is being misguided to believe that he can achieve independent Biafra. I see him as an untutored and confused young man with British nationality either because he was born there or he married an Oyibo woman.

How did he come into the agitation?

One Ralph Uwazuruike recruited him to run Radio Biafra in London because he (Uwazuruike) could not live in London because he didn’t have the papers. Some of us know that it was a scam because they were allegedly selling fake passports to illiterate Igbo traders and youth telling them that they could travel the whole world for more publicity for the realization of Biafra and that was the essence of the set-up of the Biafra Radio in London. But Uwazuruike and Kanu quarrelled over money and it divided their career and they came to Nigeria separately. It so happened that at that time, there was a prominent Igbo politician who was active and high ranking in Jonathan’s government who supported Nnamdi Kanu faction because he saw it as a way to shield himself from corruption. But when Muhammadu Buhari came to power for cosmetic reasons, his government claimed they were going after corrupt politicians and the man was among the first set of politicians who were arrested. And when Nnamdi Kanu was arrested in Kenya, he was so timid that they arrested him with all his computers and devices. He had complete evidence of who was sponsoring him. Even before then, we knew that one time the Senate President of Nigeria was allegedly fingered. He planned to destabilize the country so that he would not be prosecuted. That was how Nnamdi Kanu’s faction became prominent. He had money to rent crowds. He started with renting crowds and later was joined by unemployed youths.

What is your impression about some Nigerian films in terms of annotation of shot sequences and brainstorming?

There are no Nigerian films. What we have is video production. Scriptwriting is key to filmmaking. You have to have a coherent story, well-scripted before you go to film. That doesn’t happen in Nigeria now. The people behind those video productions are not professionals. It is the same thing happening in music, people want to get rich quickly, and they are not interested in film as an art form. Let me tell you how film production started in Nigeria. The story has been wrongly told by many people. Some will tell you that the film started with Hubert Ogunde, and others will say that it was with Ade-Love. These are blatant lies. These people are not filmmakers. They are actors who raised money and collaborated with people like me who made the film. I made films such as “Aiye” for Ogunde. He doesn’t know anything about filmmaking. He was an actor who provided the funds. Can you say that Heinemann Educational Books Nigeria (HEBN) publisher is the author of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart? No. He provided the business environment while Achebe is the author. So, the person who directs the film, chooses actors and actresses and tells them what to do, directs the cameraman and the editing is the author of the film. But they will tell you that someone who is an actor in a film is the author of the film. 

I made a film called Amadi. It is an Igbo language film. It was shot when I returned home to Nigeria after the civil war. I was a diplomat in France right from the time of the war. I came home, I was head-hunted by Professor Hezekiah Oluwasanmi who was setting up the Institute For African Studies at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. He went out of his way to pick a few of us he felt were major Intellectuals to set up the Institute. He brought in people like me, Agbo Folarin, Akin Yuba, Wole Soyinka and Ola Rotimi to the institute and told us that he wanted to create the institute, the first of its kind in Africa. He said that he didn’t want us to teach but to use our discretion to research and project African Culture. It was a hotbed of intellectuality. Prof. Oluwasanmi was an extraordinary human being. He was a classic human being who created the University of Ife. Awolowo didn’t know anything about it. He only brought money as a politician. Professor Hezekiah  Oluwasanmi wrote the project for free education in the whole West alongside Professor (Mrs) Ibukunoluwa Awosika. The ideas and strategies for the university came from Profs Oluwasanmi and Awosika while Awolowo brought money for the implementation of the project.

You have been in the history and culture world of Nigeria for more than 55 of 63 years, post-independent era. What has evolved from Nigeria?

What has truly evolved from Nigeria is corruption and the core of money and this has destroyed our history and culture as well as our music. What happened was that we were the generation of Nigerians who started making films. I started making films at the age of 21. After Amadi, I made other films like Ajani Ogun, Ija Ominira, and Black Goddess. I also directed titles brought by people like Hubert Ogunde and Ade-Love. They brought money from one of their villagers from Oro, Kwara State by the name Adedoyin who was a millionaire. Ade-Love brought the money and also imported the novel “Freedom Fight,” by Adebayo Faleti, which I adapted for the script to make the film. The same thing happened with “Aiye”. I had a fallout with  Ogunde because he wanted me to allow him to take credit for the film but I told him that “it was because I have respect for you. I hardly charge you any money. And now you want me to forgo the credit for making the film?”  No. I told him. He went to the British who didn’t care and they made the film and remained anonymous. Ogunde claimed credit for the film after “Aiye.”  Of course he didn’t know enough about filmmaking, the same thing with Moses Olaiya Adejumo popularly known as Baba Sala, I made Orumoru for him. He thought it was easy seeing somebody standing with a camera and directing. Making a film is much more than that, there is more homework that goes into the making of film. But at the end of the day, they all failed eventually.

Of all my films, Black Goddess has been impressive. It was my major production in 1978. When it was shown at a film festival four years ago in Paris, the place was jam-packed and there is an American foundation called Martins Consheshen,  a major filmmaker who later declared the film to be part of the heritage of humanity and must be preserved at all cost. But some Italians wanted to play a foul game so I stopped the process. I’m going to do it now with a French film institute called Cinematic Consheshen because they have my films in their archives. Ajani Ogun was my first Yoruba language film adapted. I realized that Yoruba travelling theatre had a formula which could be adapted to film, that is tell a story with songs and dance. And I had a great collaborator in the person of Late Duro Ladipo. And since his exit, I have not been lucky to find another collaborator in the Yoruba theatre like him. Others are either selfish, not well educated or too much of a womanizer with too many children and can’t concentrate on the job. 

Of your films, which of them gave you a break from money and prominence?

I have never had a break as such but the film that put me on the map internationally was Black Goddess.  Incidentally, I didn’t make the film in Nigeria. I made it to Brazil. It was the first collaboration between Brazil and Nigeria, and Africa in general. It was also the first time a black man was directing a film in Brazil. It was quite an epochal event because there is a lot of racism in Brazil, just like in America. So I made a lot of impact in Brazil that instead of being one of those carrying luggage in a film set, or one of the actors, an African, Black person was the box on the film set. It was indeed a major event.

As an Aba-born Yoruba man. How did your upbringing in God’s Own State contribute to your choice of filmmaking and music?

The day I was born was like winning a lottery ticket, a gold medal. I was born into the hands of very caring, civilized and educated people. My father was a senior lawyer and our house was full of books. By the time I was three years old, I could read and write. I was only going to primary school to play. I knew more than a teacher. My mother as I later got to know was the first woman to publish a Lagos-based newspaper in Nigeria. That was long before I was born because I didn’t have the full details. But when she was in Aba, she was a dynamic organizer with the Red Cross Society. My father had a circle of friends like Chike Obi, Ubani Ukaoma, Dr Alvan Ikoku, the father of Mazi Samuel Goomsu Ikoku, who was a politician, and Magistrate Adesigbe. These people were not gossiping each time they gathered in our sitting room and they were not talking about women and that was why we could be allowed as little children in the corner of the sitting room playing quietly while they were conversing. And we could hear them talking about important international political issues, philosophy and Shakespeare. They were educated people. My mother’s set of women were used to going for boardroom dance with fanciful clothes and accessories. These were a highly civilized set of people. However, the reason I said that the day I was born was like winning a lottery ticket was because my parents were so liberal in their approach and outlook on life that if you reach our house, you’ll see about seven to eight children dressed the same way, going to the same school, eating the same food and you wouldn’t know who is the child of the owner of the house, the tribe of the child or the child you picked up from the street. That was why Igbo was the first language I spoke because all my childhood and playmates were Igbo. My parents didn’t discriminate. I learned the Yoruba language later. I first spoke the Igbo language and pidgin. I went to primary school in Christ the King Cathedral (CKC),  Aba. My parents were so liberal that when I showed an interest in music and dancing, they bought a mask for me called “Ulaga”. In early 1950 I wrote an article entitled, Christmas at a party. I had my Ulaga which we used to dance around the town and that was where my interest in music started. L

We had the cinema during the colonial era and now we have the Nollywood era. But the cinema has been compromised…..

Let me tell you how it all began. In colonial times, we were seeing films that were made about Africa but presented in a false narrative and image.  Films like Sanders of the River, featuring Orlando Martins who was a Nigerian and a wonderful African American actor. The colonial masters created an image of Africa as they understood it. There was a chant like “Aiyee Okooo, aiye Okoo,” we were watching these films. There was another one entitled: Undersea Kingdom. The funny thing is that in those days in Aba, we would go to the cinema at night: Rex Cinema, Emmy Cinema etc and at about 9.00 clock when they were about to start the film, they would play music with lyrics like “Are you ready?” Yes! Are you ready(2ce) Joe? Before the film came on, there would be a commercial that would herald it. The most popular one which we used to watch before the film began was the Barclays Bank advert produced by Sam Akpabot: “Barclays Bank, make una put una money dia! Barclays Bank e go grow plenty dia!” It was an animated film with background music produced by Sam Akpabot, a wonderful man I met later at the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University. In the daytime, we would have a travelling dance troupe from Guinea called “Chakakpom.”  It’s onomatopoeia. They used to do acrobatic feats, which I think could have influenced Ikpokiti, a similar acrobatic dance style.

The cinema was, so to say, a symbol of the cultural centre because it harboured displays of musical concerts culminating in film shows in the night. And my parents were liberal to the point of allowing us to go watch those shows. We were guided by the older boys. One particular person who was raised by my mother is Smart Sunmi Cole, a famous Nigerian photographer. He claims he is from Sierra Leone but this is not true. He is an Igbo man. His real name is Smart Nwubani. We lived together at 47 St Michael Road Aba and he was living at Hospital Road, next to Travelers Lodge where you have Dan Satch and His Atomic 8 Band of Aba, a famous band. My mother paid school fees for him to go to technical school in Aba. The reason my mother took him as a protégé was because he was much older than us and my mother trusted him to take us to football matches. I used to ride on his shoulders. But now he claims to be virtually of the same age as me. Those of us who grew up in Aba know him very well. He is not from Sierra Leone. My mother personally paid for his school fees when he went to technical school in Aba. He was often in our house and he has a way of ingratiating himself with different families. He was always having meals in our house. I asked him one time if he knew a woman called Mrs Ronke Balogun. What he used to come to do at St Michael Road, Aba. He couldn’t provide an answer. It is very ungrateful of him that he couldn’t acknowledge Ronke Balogun who did not know him from Adam but took him in and paid his school fees. 

That is a digression on how Nollywood came about. What happened was that there was a television production those days: Mirror In The Sun,  where we had people like Lola Femi Kayode, Matt Dazie, Amaka Igwe Peter Igho etcetera. Those soap operas were being funded by Ad Agencies like Lintas. We had amazing Nigerians working with Lintas like Erhabo Emokpae. Suddenly sponsorship of the ad agencies dried up because there was a general economic crisis and the middle class was squeezed out. You know that we were making films those days, processing the films abroad and there was plenty of money. Nigeria was awash with money immediately after the civil war and we used to have film shows in the National Theatre and people would come with their families and watch the same film three times. In those days Naira to dollar was equivalent. And those of us in the middle class, university lecturers and senior civil servants used to take our families on a holiday overseas every year. It was a time of boom. I would say that Gowon was the best head of state Nigeria had ever had. It was in his time we enjoyed the wealth of Nigeria. He gratuitously gave Udoji awards to every civil servant, which put so much money into the pockets of civil servants. I remembered how people were riding bicycles with a fridge on their heads along Marina Lagos. We were paid several months of salaries as a bonus. Gowon did well for Nigerians. If he had not been the head of state during and after the civil war, Nigeria would have broken up. He is modest, natural and low-key. He held Nigeria together with the help of Awolowo. Now, when the economy collapsed and the television soaps stopped being funded by the ad agencies, Chris Obi Rapu, who was working with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) came up with a brilliant idea of making these soap operas and sending them directly to the public domain instead of making it for the television. That was how he made a film entitled, Living In Bondage with one of his friends by the name Obiegbuna. So, Chris Obi Rapu made the first Nollywood film. Anyone saying something different is lying. It was from there that home video, otherwise called Nollywood films started and many people rushed into it because they saw it as an avenue for making money. The films were marketed by Balogun, Onitsha and Alaba-based traders. It became such a booming industry. 

However, Amaka Igwe created a big lie in the young industry. The Nollywood films were bringing in huge money on investment until she created false statistics she planned with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala under Jonathan’s government.  Unfortunately, she passed away before the scam could be perfected. A version of it was carved out by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led government with the support of Onyeka Onwenu. She was also involved in the One Million Man match. Although Peter Obi was rumoured to have been the one funding it, he covered up his tracks very well. He was alleged to be the one behind it financially because Charles Oputa (Charly Boy) and his fans were part of it. So, Onyeka Onwenu’s track record in politics leaves much to be desired. She set up a programme and invited some of us to Victoria Island, Lagos. Present at that event were Stella Oduah, Doyin Okupe, and then Minister for Niger Delta, Peter Goodday Orubebe. She concocted the programme based on Amaka Igwe’s earlier plan and some of the unwary filmmakers went and collected loans to make films. They are still paying those loans today. She also played some roles as an agent of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience in Abuja. I have not seen her for a long time but I know that she is ambitious politically and PDP was able to use her.

It later became an all-comers affair…..

After the series of productions began, people who didn’t know anything about filmmaking rushed into putting together all kinds of stories, just to make money but this was short-lived as one Emeka Mba who was one of the chief executives of Multichoice destabilized the system. He convinced some operators in Nollywood to start selling their films for $2,000 per film to Multichoice, which I saw as a disaster. They have not recovered from it and it is what destroyed the Nollywood industry. If people could watch Nollywood films on television, they have no reason to buy them from the market again. That is how the budget collapsed and people started making films at a ridiculous budget of N2 million because all they were aiming at was to recover enough money when they sold films at $2,000 to Multichoice. The model which Chris Obi Rapu set up was that they would make these films properly with enough budget, and to be marketed by specialized people otherwise marketers in Balogun, Onitsha and Alaba International markets respectively. And the model was bringing in a good return on investment (ROI). But once they shot themselves in the foot by selling it for peanuts because they felt that would popularize the films if the films were showing on the television, but Multichoice are not paying what the film is worth. Emeka Mba outwitted them. He made them sign the contract and once some people started selling their films for $2,000 only to Multichoice, others began to sell at the same price.

All the while, we have not had a government that truly believes in our film and entertainment industry. What is your view on this?

Yes. You are quite right. Since 1960, we have not had a government that truly supports the Art and Culture sector. Did you know that in the early 1960s, if you went anywhere in the world and you said you were a Nigerian, they would ask you, what part of Ghana? Why? This is because anytime Kwame Nkrumah was travelling, he would take along musicians, people making Kente clothes and a set of cultural troupes with him. His visits shot up the name of Ghana and the name of Ghana was on the lips of every foreigner everywhere you go, whereas people like Tafawa Balewa had no interest in the art. When he was travelling, he was going with dull civil servants and his visit was not noticed. That was why if you were a Nigerian in those days, you would be embarrassed because anywhere you go in America or Europe and announce that you are a Nigerian, they’d reply: “Hey! What part of Ghana? Because it was only Ghana they were hearing. This is the importance of culture but since 1960,  Nigeria has not had anybody who has been an effective Minister of Culture. Lai Mohammed was a disaster as Minister of Information and Culture. He never organized any cultural fiesta. Otunba Segun Runsewe was a con artist and failed as the Director General of the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC). Because he was born in the North and speaks the Hausa language, he became closer to some northern traditional rulers who recommended him to be made Director General of the Council. He indulged in a lot of malpractices in the agency. The then Minister for Information and Culture sacked him twice but each time such ill-fate befell him, he ran to the northern emirates and put pressure on them to reinstate him and he will be reinstated. He made a lot of money off the agency. I was a victim of his maladministration. When my group, Iroko Band, was to travel to the United States of America to play, some civil servants in the Ministry of External Affairs directed me to him. When I met him, he told me he was planning to take some troupes abroad to popularize Nigeria’s name but since I was going already, why can’t I have support from his agency? He asked me to put in an application for N2m, which I did, not knowing that he never intended to give me the money. As soon as the money was released, he pocketed it.  We’d gone and come back but I kept on going to Abuja for our money until someone took me to the file and said; “Baba, this money has already been collected and spent by Runsewe, and he will tell you that the file was lost.” Even when our band went to play during the transition from Jonathan to Buhari, he called some of us to perform in Abuja without a budget and contract letter. He paid from hand to hand whatever he liked and there was no argument, no query. You couldn’t even see him. I was surprised that he was finally sacked from the agency and replaced with Sally Mbanefo. He turned up again like a bad penny as head of the National Council for Arts and Culture. I asked some people how he did it, they told me that he contributed a lot of money to Buhari’s second-term campaign. How can a civil servant have so much money that he could contribute to a political campaign? It doesn’t make sense. And he is still carrying out what he called a cultural festival – people dancing. Is that culture? That’s not culture and he does it every year.

We also have the National Films Corporation (NCC) which has been a bonanza for corrupt people. The first Director General of the Corporation used the northern sentiment that the film laboratory should be transferred to Jos. He advanced his reason saying that the water in Lagos is not good enough for a film laboratory. That was how millions of dollars were fleeced away. The film laboratory only processed one film, which was his film, under Brenda Shehu who was the Chairman, of Nigeria Film Corporation. To be sure, the film corporation in Nigeria has never funded any Nigerian films. It has never contributed to the making of films in Nigeria. And if you look at the yearly national budget, millions of Naira are earmarked for the corporation but it doesn’t play a noticeable role in the film industry. Instead, the corporation diverted the money to erect buildings everywhere. 

We also had Afolabi Adesanya, the immediate past Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the corporation. He was alleged to be involved in corrupt practices. His latest scam was that he told the German Cultural Institute that they wanted to be making archives of Nigerian films by the British before Nigeria’s independence. I begin to wonder, so there is no Nigerian film that has been made by a Nigerian which can be preserved in the film corporation archives? Only the films made by the British before independence and millions of dollars provided by the German Cultural Institute? This is nonsense! 

And these people can’t tell our story any better….. 

The British made a documentary film with their jaundiced view of what Africa is; the darkest Africa. And that is what Afolabi Adesanya said he was preserving. All the films that were made by Nigerians like: “Dinner with the Devil”, and “Ajani Ogun”, etc are not preserved by NCC. I maintain that the Nigerian Film Corporation has never contributed to filmmaking in Nigeria. Instead, millions of dollars were scammed off to build a laboratory that has not processed any Nigerian films. 

What are the kernels of the story in Alpha and Amadi?

Before I came back to Nigeria, I made a film entitled, Alpha. The film was very intellectually artistic. In a sense, it was a mistake in terms of the audience’s response to it. I had a group of friends like Lindsay Barrett, Jimi Solanke, Bill Hutson, James Campbell and Emilia X starring in the film. It’s an art film. I had tried to show the film when I came to Nigeria but two to three people would turn up every night. It was a disaster. I said to myself it is okay, we have to do something that connects with the public. That was how I made it with John Chukwu and Jab Adu. Amadi was a story about a young man who decided to go back to the village and start an agricultural project. It has a touch of romance with a beautiful setting but the cameraman I called disappointed me. I had to do the camera work myself and I wasn’t proficient at it but days afterwards I learnt it. When I was in film school, we were trained in the context of an established industry where you have all the collaborators: cameraman, sound engineer, etc. It was when I came to Nigeria that I had to teach myself camera work, my wife became the sound engineer and I became my editor. I had to learn in the field. If I had known, I wouldn’t have wasted two years in film school learning the theories of films. It is not only the theories you need, you also need the practical exposure. What most people don’t know is the need to be apprenticed to people who have done something you can learn in the books. If you want to be a goldsmith, for example, you don’t learn it in the books. You have to learn it from people who are goldsmiths. If your way is how to play a talking drum, you have to be with the people who are doing it. So, to learn about filmmaking, you have to be apprenticed to filmmakers. Our generation that made the first films made films that were swept aside. Nollywood people started from scratch and they made serious mistakes we made 20 years ago and that is why there’s no film industry. When you talk about the film industry, there has to be a steady source of funding and production personnel who are skilled and trained. In Europe or America, when you call yourself a director of photography or cameraman, you have to have been trained for some years, you have to have a track record of participation in the industry, you have to climb the ladder step by step, from assistant before you become a cameraman and up to director of photography. We don’t have that in Nigeria. Anybody can get up and call himself director of photography and it has been happening because they have these automatic cameras, just point it and shoot. But if you don’t know what you are doing, you get bad results because the camera is a robot. It’s measuring the light it is seeing. So if you put somebody in front of a window and put the camera, it thinks that it is the light behind that is measuring and the person’s face will be black. So if you don’t know it, you’ll think anybody can take up a camera and start shooting without knowing how to light. The sound, you cannot hear it properly, even the actor and non-actor. The truth is if you want to be successful in film you have to learn how to reproduce the emotions because somebody who has lost his mother doesn’t necessarily have to start rolling on the ground and start shouting. Sometimes when something terrible happens to you, you are too stunned to open your mouth and when you look at the person, you’ll know he has suffered a serious setback. That’s what a film is supposed to do but in Nollywood, they will be shouting “I will beat you now….” And they will perform some magic, shoot a gun and the person will catch the bullet. That is not a film. And this is why our films have not been watched by anyone else but by Nigerians and Africans.