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Are You Killing Nollywood, Nigeria's Movie Industry?
20 August, 2003 11:13:00
By Sola Osofisan
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Mortal Sin, a Nigerian movie
I was at a friend's the other day and a tape was slipped into the VCR for us to watch. It was a Nigerian movie, one of the most popular staples among the Nigerian community based in the US. We watch American movies of course, but we love Naija made movies to a fault. Why? Perhaps they have become another of the series of strings we hold on to sustain our memories of the motherland so far away. That is definitely an issue worthy of extensive study someday.
One of the ladies in the room, probably in her early 20s, a college student around here, boasted confidently that she had seen the movie we were about to watch. Curiosity piqued, I asked her how many Nigerian movies she had seen, hoping for another informal attempt at measuring our reaction to these products in America.
Lots, she said. A lot.
Define a lot, Iurged. Give me a number.
I can't, she replied.
You don't have to be specific, I encouraged her, really hoping for something. Just give me a general idea. One hundred? Two hundred? More?
Much more than that.
500?
More.
It didn't look like I was going to get more than that out of her. Okay, I said, you have watched a lot of these movies. You're a student, but you also work. You stay with your parents, so you have a little change leftover. How many of the more than 500 movies you have seen did you buy? She looked at me like I was an aberration, a jack springing out of some unbelievably stupid box. Buy? I could see it was a totally alien thought to her.
None, she said.
None. Did you rent any of them?
No.
So, where did she get so many to watch? She got them from friends, acquaintances, people around her. Believe me, when Nigerians abroad decide to watch Naija movies, they watch them. A friend brings you a bag of 10 movies, all secured from strange corners.
Another friend had with her a huge CD case full of video discs. They were all Nigerian movies that had been duplicated for her by another friend. From looking at that pack, I could tell that it couldn't be anything less than a hundred VCDs in the pack, different titles, not a single one of them the original item. I was in a state of shock. How in the world are Nigerian movie producers to make money from their productions if piracy is the order of the day in the Diaspora where they should be able to earn hard currency?
In 1997, I entered a popular Nigerian "arts" store on Central Avenue, Newark, with an attorney friend. I was new to the US then and was pretty interested in the Nigerian movies on display in the store. I asked the guy at the desk if he had Tade Ogidan's Hostages, one of the hot movies back then. Yes, he said. He could make a VHS copy for me for (I think he said) $2.
I almost passed out. I had worked on that project in different capacities and I knew what the crew had gone through to have such a ground-breaking product shot as far back as 1992-93. I knew the producers were not making enough to justify all the sweat back home, and here was this clown offering me a tape that had my credit conspicuously on it for $2. I should be selling it to him, not the other way round. Who gave him the permission to make copies for profit? Who did the work and who reaped the gains?
Little instances like these form a larger picture of what is going on in the Nigerian community abroad (think Italy, UK, Germany, etc.), isolated pockets that combine into a larger global pool that is drowning our growing industry back home. Imagine the foreign exchange the producers could have earned if we all paid a fair price for the movies we watch.
Of course, the producers are partly to blame for not setting up proper structures to legitimately make these movies available here. I know, however, that they lack the resources and support at governmental policy level. The few producers like Tunde Kelani powerful enough to have private structures abroad officially market their movies are also handcuffed by all shades of limitations.
On the other hand, Nigerians are generally not a patriotic lot when it comes to matters such as this - patronizing Nigerians, buying products made in Nigeria. We think it is our god-given right to get anything free if we can. That is really one of the key reasons parastatals running the electricity, water and telephones in Nigeria are perpetually in trouble - we owe them and we do not pay. We carry this attitude abroad with us, but western agencies have been designed to take their pound of flesh from your side if you owe and do not pay, and so we do not try it with them. We go to Blockbuster to rent DVDs and VHS tapes, paying more than $4 per tape for 48 hours, but we are unwilling to buy a Nigerian movie for about the same price? We would rather get it from a friend free.
These movies are pretty easy to buy these days. There are legitimate websites selling them. Many African stores proprietors also ship them into the country to sell at ridiculously marked up prices. At least they paid for it in Nigeria!
Well, as Abami Eda would say, dis na unfinished matter!
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