Nollywood: Who Will Tell Our Story?
By Ken Ike in ThisDay Newspaper
Published: October 30, 2006
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Nollywood is a great prospect. Shimmering with so much potential it is yet to find its focus. That focus could be cultural renaissance, the stamping on the world stage of our laudable heritage and our contemporary uniqueness as peoples of Africa in a global world.

But this dream will require governments and real investors who will commission and produce epics, blockbusters, or simple stories depicting our ancient kingdoms, ancient feuds, ancient alliances, ancient technology; the administration of the Benin, Oyo, Onitsha, Calabar, Songhai, Mali, Ghana and Sokoto Kingdoms; the exploits and wealth of Mansa Musa; the Jihads that brought the Caliphate; the republicanism of the Igbo; the fateful contact with the White man; the fall of the kingdoms/nation states to colonial rule and the momentous battles leading thereto; the evolution of our modern state; it’s traumatic history and varied personages; and much more.

We have so many stories to tell! And these can be told, not in the academic dryness of documentaries, but through the human angle with these events/histories as a background. In telling the story of the momentous clash and fall of the Benin Kingdom to the British forces, for instance, there is no reason why it should centre on the Oba and his family. It could instead be the story of one of the king’s generals who leaves his young family to serve his king and nation and the life-touching experiences he garners in the process; the betrayals and patriotism he encounters; and the effect on his family.

How did the Fulani come to rule in Kwara; how were the groundnut pyramids of Kano made and what interesting human-angle stories can be told about the life of some of the merchants; what of the famed struggle of the Tiv’s for the survival of their unique identity; how important was the palm tree in the Eastern parts – what Achebean delightful tales can be woven around this natural treasure and its peoples; how did the fattening culture of the Calabar begin; how was Port Harcourt founded; what of the spectacular durbars of the Northern aristocracy and the masquerade festivals of the Southern peoples.

Who will tell our story?
What of our myths and fables and folktales? Can we not weave delightful, incisive and heart-touching stories out of them? Cinderella & the Prince and Beauty & the Beast were in fact Western folktales until they were filmed and now used for the education of our own children who then grow up assuming that straight hair is more blessed than nappy hair and lighter skin more desirable than ebony hue.

Yet we have many such fables. Who will tell of the myth of Ala and Chi-Igwe and their harmonious outworking that produced rain and ended drought in the kingdom of Umuani . Or must we be just content with the Battle of the Titans? Who will tell of the Hausa Bokwei and Banza Bokwei and the slaying of the serpent in the well? Will the creative writers from the Southwest not clarify for us non-natives the figure of Esu and his “trickster” image or do we accept him as the local version of the Christian “Devil” that the early translators of the Bible into Yoruba say he is?

Who will tell our stories using the vehicle of film, of Nollywood?

Where we do not, foreigners will continue to tell it from their perspective, a view that is often jaundiced or plain ignorant. They will continue to tell us that Egypt had no Black civilisation or Black Pharoahs; that all modern progress is attributable to them; that we had no political organisation or nation-states before their arrival; and, that their own witches as represented in Harry Potter are benevolent while ours are malevolent.
Sure there are unsavoury things in our past such as human sacrifice and the killing of twins but which society is free of an unsavoury past? We must tell our stories warts and all. Out of this will develop cultural and national identity and pride in our Africanness; in our necessity as an essential part of the global family. It must begin with knowing ourselves first; becoming rooted in our soil.

A sage has already remarked that:
“True progress for each people lies solely in the development of its own culture adapted to the soil, the climate and the race. Man must become indigenous in the purest sense, if he wishes to develop …“ Look at a Chinaman when he wears a top-hat, or a Japanese or Turk for that matter! Caricatures of European culture! Look at the Japanese woman who nowadays dresses herself in European clothes, and then see her when she wears the costume of her own country! What a difference! How much she loses when wearing clothes alien to her country! It is indeed a great loss for her!

In the advancement of its own culture alone lies true progress for each of the peoples!” I am of course not advocating a return to the past hook, line and sinker. Cultures must grow upwards or they will stagnate and retrogress. Ours have stagnated for too long. We must look into what we have and develop the good therein, not throw everything out and adopt wholesale everything foreign.

So who will tell our story? And who will tell it in an upbuilding, non-frightening, knowing and responsible manner? The absence of the latter is perhaps symbolic of all that is currently wrong with our beloved Nollywood. The thousands of films dished out yearly are influencing our values negatively without the producers or anyone being aware of it. In the typical Nollywood film, the lead is never responsible for his downfall; his drunkenness, brutish behaviour, and perhaps fast life, are not the real reasons for the failure of his business. It is his evil stepmother whom he has never hurt all his life. She in fact psychically pushed him to drink, to misbehave. In Nollywood, a car crash is never without some “remote control” by an envious neighbour, it is never the drivers’ fault or a normal mechanical fault or the myriad of bad roads in the country. All the sorrows arising from human weakness are excused away, attributed to a negative force greater than man’s freewill.

Therefore, in the society you see millions of people who live in this denial of their culpability. You hear them talk of what has happened to them without any shame as to what they did, or did not do, to give rise to such happenings. When they can find no one specific to blame, they attribute it to the “devil”; even though all known scriptures do not attribute the power of coercion to the devil, just the power of lure.

This attempt to abdicate responsibility for our thoughts, words and deeds, for our omissions or commissions, has become the kernel of our public and private life. And Nollywood has a blame in this for reinforcing it. Nollywood did not originate it; it has been slumbering within us for a long time. But the movies have made it fashionable; have given a stamp of authority to such beliefs, after all, if Omotola’s character lost her fiancé due to the diabolic charms of her rival, the break-up of my engagement must also be attributable to someone! There is no room for introspection; it cannot of course be my fault. That is not my portion!
So do not blame me for this article; it is not my fault, I am only telling our story!

• Poet, Journalist and Literary activist, Ken Ike is the Co-founder and Slam Master of the Abuja Literary Society, and the Managing Editor Abuja Yellow Pages®. He’s at: info@africamediagroup.net.