What actually led you to acting?
Two things: talking about credentials, I am an engineer, but potentially then, I saw myself as an actor. There is a difference between your credentials.and your potential but both are very important. Education is not negotiable, you just have to go school. I am an electrical electronic engineer, but I see myself as an actor. I just thought to myself after my graduation that I didn’t want to be like every other graduate on the streets, who will be looking for job after school. I asked myself what I could do within me and I said since I had been into acting, while I was in school, I should settle for acting. You know it sounds funny at times when I think of what happened. There was one of my friends, Niyi Akinmolayan, we happened to be in the same University, he was a year ahead of me at the Electrical Electronic Department Fellowship Drama Group. Today, I see him doing wonderfully well in the industry.
So, what do you consider to be your biggest achievements in Nollywood?
What I would consider as my biggest achievement in Nollywood is being able to make movies that have touched lives, and which address issues in our society, and acting in movies that have changed people’s lives and orientation. The biggest of them is that I have been able to serve in the capacity of the Chairman of the Guild of Directors, where I was able to sanitise and put standard in place on how things are being done in the industry. I have been able to contribute my own quota to the industry and to an extent to sanitise the industry and balance it. Being the pioneer Chairman of TAMPAN’s Guild of Directors has been one of my greatest achievements and I’ve been able to make impact through that.
You are one of the stars of the industry, how do you think Nollywood has evolved over the years?
Nollywood is not where it used to be. You can see around you that our culture is coming back and we are getting our projects in bigger foreign platforms. Everyone is trying to buckle up and do better movies. Nollywood is actually evolving and our people are trying to do something great and we are having more sponsors and I think that’s a very big break for Nollywood. In the past, Nollywood was self-sponsored, people did projects based on how much they could get from friends, savings and loans. Now we have investors coming into the industry and it’s making life easier for everyone.
What do you think are the biggest opportunities and threats facing the industry today?
To me the biggest opportunity and threat facing the industry today is the fact that the industry is not properly regulated and it’s a very big threat to the industry. If you look at it from the angle that there was a time in Nigeria when we had banks everywhere and at a point the federal government said for banks to operate they needed to meet up with certain capital base, some banks left, some merged to form other banks. Today, every now and then, the government is coming up with new policies for the banking sector and it’s strong. In our own industry where we do not have a proper gate, anybody can wake up and say ‘I am a filmmaker’ and it’s a big threat. We are trying to build a glass house and we are not being conscious of who is out there and who is going to throw stones into the house. I believe that one of the biggest threats we have now is that we are not properly regulated. We are too porous, we have people just jumping into the industry, so many people in the industry don’t even have business in the industry. Buy, do you think Nollywood has impacted Nigerian culture and society? For every movie coming out of Nollywood, especially language movies, we’ve been able to sell our movies, language, culture and tradition to the younger gen- eration and even to people in the diaspora. Nollywood has really impacted our culture. There are some languages that I learnt through movies. There are some proverbs I learnt through movies. I would say that Nollywood has really impacted the Nigerian culture and society. We can do better and that is why I say every time we want to make a movie that we should make movies that will impact lives because we don’t know where that movie is traveling to and how far that movie will go. For every movie you make, it’s like you are creating a life that will live after you after you are dead and long gone.
What role do you believe Nollywood can play in addressing social issues in Nigeria?
I understand the fact that Nollywood is called showbiz; show and business. In those days, Nollywood was known for preaching, making movies that deal with social issues in the society and we try as much as possible to pass messages. People shifted away from the show and are more focused on the business and I believe we should be able to combine both. People make movies and at the end of the day you will be asking what is the moral of this story? It can be entertaining but has no moral lesson, and no message is being passed across, so we get carried away with the fact that we want to entertain people. I believe that for every nonsense movie you see on the street, a minimum of one million people will see that movie. I believe it’s a tool we can use to sanitise our society, address social ills and I believe it goes a long way because people will recognise and reckon with what they see.
How has social media influenced your career and the perception of Nollywood stars?
Social media is the new baby in town. It has come to stay and there is nothing we can do about it like I tell people. Social media is a two-edged sword, it can protect you and it can cut you. It can make or break you, it depends on how you are able to manage it. It has actually broken so many barriers. When I joined the industry, you needed to have someone to mentor you and a shoulder to ride on. Social media has given that leverage to everyone. You don’t need anyone to be whatever you want to be now, you can leverage on the social media. If you are creative enough with content you can take advantage of the social media. If all you know how to do is to cry, you can pick your phone, cry and post it, one day someone will need somebody to cry and they will contact you.
So, how significant is Nollywood’s contribution to Nigeria’s economy?
For every time you are making a movie you have so many vendors and if you look at the number of movies that are being shot in Nigeria daily or in a month, you will know that Nollywood is one of the greatest employers of labour in Nigeria at the moment. Apart from that, every December, you see how Nollywood movies gross so high. Indirectly, it has created employment for many people through that. If you take it from the angle of preproduction, location, food vendors, transporters, the fuel they use, hotels, apartments, costumers, post production in the studio, marketing, media, cinemas, you will see that Nollywood has really created employment and it has contributed to the economy of the country.
What steps do you think can be taken to further boost the industry’s economic impact?
Well, I thinking the government needs to give us more enabling environment. I keep saying it all the time that if the government starts doling out cash to all filmmakers, we will take the cash, make movies, but we might not return them and they may not make as much impact as giving us an enabling environment. If I want to make a movie and I want to make use of the airport, I should be able to have access to it, make use of government facilities, and I should be able to have good security, while making my movies. I should be able to have access to stable electricity. I should be able to have my cast travel down to any part of the country without fear of being kidnapped or getting involved in an accident due to bad road network. The government can just give us a good and enabling environment. I believe we can thrive more and make more good movies if we have policies that can protect our intellectual property. See the way some people pirate movies and at the end of the day nothing is being done about it, all these things are what discourage us. They should give us a good environment, make policies that will protect our intellec- tual properties, give us all that we need to thrive; trust me, Nollywood will be a great industry like the oil sector. We are like a gold mine that is yet untapped.