A crown for the ‘father’ of Nollywood

He read Theatre Arts and Film Production at the NTA College, Jos, and graduated in 1986.

In 1987, he worked as the promotion general manager of Power Mike, the late wrestler, after which he took to beating the streets of Lagos for four years in search for a job. He wanted to see if he could make a career from acting. In 1992 he made the film, "Living in Bondage". He thereafter broke the jinx and the future of the motion picture in the country started to take shape.

His venture into acting was as a result of the fact that he wanted to offer his kinsmen- the Ibos- the opportunity to watch movies at home since they were not used to going to cinemas. He currently runs his own studio, Videosonic Studio and Communicraft at Ogba area of Lagos State and runs two programmes on the TV.

He spoke to Business Day immediately he was honoured at LIFF. "I am a producer and an actor and the father of Nollywood, so to say.

"After school -I studied film making in school. For five years there was no opportunity to showcase the talent I have, which is film making, so I was frustrated. I could see a lot of artistes hanging around looking for job. At that point, the cinema culture of the country was almost non-existent, as it is now. There was a lot of decay in infrastructure, no security of life and property and so, people could not go out to cinemas. So, that was a big blow to celluloid production in the country. Coupled with the fact that before one could produce a movie, one needs a big budget to do so and we did not have such amount of money, and when you have that kind of money you needed to go abroad to shop for the film stock you needed and the professionals who were to do the job. So I said to myself ‘ I will not die with this burning desire to make a film, I need to do something’.

"It took me four years of hawking to see if I could raise the money to make a film, it was not possible. My attempts at borrowing and begging did not yield anything either. I was begging and almost got frustrated when I was directed to Kenneth Nnebue, who was then a film marketer. He teamed up with me to produce "Living in Bondage", which I produced and technically directed. This made great impart and from that one film you can see now what has happened globally. I am happy, I feel like an accomplished father who is happy seeing his child grow. In fact, no body here, that is an actor since 1992, that I will not be able to tell when he joined the industry. Because it all started from me, its either I got you in or someone I got in got you in. It is a beautiful thing to see my children and the industry I pioneered working this well. I never planned it to be this big; I was only going to tell a story to my folks, my kinsmen, the Ibos who did not have the cinema culture. I thought to my self, " let me take films to their homes so they could enjoy what other were enjoying. Today that idea has turned out to become a global phenomenon; believe it, Nollywood has conquered the world and the face of movie making is Nollywood.One can not take it away, and soon, you will begin to witness the steady decline of celluloid production, and no matter what the whites do to sustain it will never stand.

"We have taken away the old and we will establish the new format, the alternative format for making movie, cheap, comfortable and to have almost the same quality in production. It is almost encompassing, because it opens the vista, opportunity for young people, who ordinarily cannot afford the money to make films.

"This year I will be doing annual film lecture, where I would start educating people. I have seen that we have plateau in the industry for a long time, and I intent to begin to gather every of my sons and daughters in the industry and begin to educate them on what I call the story telling quality of Nollywood, the thing that makes Nollywood thick".

Outside that, one needs sustain the good in the industry and what needs to be removed will be removed during the annual lecture.

"Living in Bondage" is still the Hallmark of production, it has not been equaled"