Some Shot At Nollywood

Does Nigeria Indeed Have a Film Industry?
By Ola Balogun.

I read with some interest the article by Tunde Oladunjoye in ThisDay of Friday June 3rd on the recently concluded Cannes film festival, which he attended along with a number of other Nigerian journalists.

Although his article is informative in a number of respects, I however find myself constrained to take him up on a number of issues, most especially because it is glaringly obvious that he has deliberately gone out of his way to distort and misrepresent the views I expressed at the Cannes festival in the course of my presentation at a seminar on the aesthetics of African film. I will disclose the motivation for his sly underhand attacks against my person (rather than my views) in due course.

Generally speaking, I am tired of having my views on Nigerian home video production misrepresented, and I would therefore wish to provide your readers with an opportunity of hearing directly from me on this important subject, because the Nigerian public and Government have often been misled over the years on the issue of how best to create a Nigerian film industry.

Among other things, Tunde Oladunjoye wrote that 'Ola Balogun carried his tirades of the Nigerian home video to Cannes as he digressed and spent a long time during a discussion forum organised by Radio France International to talk down (sic) on the Nigerian home video'.
Oladunjoye further claimed that other Nigerians present at the forum 'were unanimous in their condemnation of Balogun's position, saying that he has no right in (sic) criticising figures quoted in a publication as untrue without presenting the true figures'.

I believe that I should first start by pointing out that Hon. Tunde Oladunjoye is in fact one of the co-authors of the nonsensical publication on the Nigerian home video industry entitled 'Nollywood' that I singled out in my presentation at Cannes as a blatant example of incoherent and illogical reasoning. Oladunjoye is however not honest enough to inform Nigerian readers that he has an ax to grind with me, having found himself and his co-authors at the receiving end of my denunciation of their shallow and often contradictory depiction of the Nigerian home video industry.

Let me also state ab initio for Oladunjoye's information that I am not used to digressing, having spent many years of my life in academic pursuits. His problem in suggesting that I digressed when I spoke about the Nigerian home video phenomenon could well stem from the fact that he may not have been able to follow my presentation properly, since I spoke entirely in French for the benefit of the vast majority of the audience present at the seminar.
I hope your readers will be kind enough to take the trouble of trying to understand what I said at Cannes, and why I said what I said.

Let me first explain that my presentation, which was on the subject of aesthetics in African films, covered three main issues. Before I began my presentation however, I was obliged to point out the incongruity of a remark made by a fellow-Nigerian who had contributed to the debate by expressing the opinion that there could not be said to be African literature or African music or African plastic arts, but that all literature and art in the world was of a 'universal' nature.

The fellow-Nigerian in question also went on to say that the existence of Nigerian literature was deemed to have achieved world standard only because the Nobel prize for literature was awarded to a Nigerian author some years ago.

I found my fellow-countryman's position intolerable, and I was forced to point out that as descendants of the people who build the pyramids of Egypt and went on to establish the ancient empire states of Wagadou (also known as Ghana), Mali and Songhai at at time when the Nobel prize givers were virtually still living in caves, we have no need to wait for these folks to tell us whether or not we have literature. I also pointed out that Africans had been prominent in many aspects of the creative arts, ranging from architecture to poetry, music, dance and cloth-making for thousands of years before white people ever set foot in Africa, and that we therefore have our own standards of aesthetics that have nothing to do with western standards or orientations, just like the Asiatic peoples in Japan, Korea, China, India etc have their own aesthetic standards that are distinct from what my compatriot claimed to have identified as 'universal' forms of literature, music, painting etc.

Let me now add in passing that I find the fixation that has arisen in Nigeria about the award of a Nobel literature prize to a Nigerian to be a rather unhealthy indication of a form of inferiority complex, the more so as most Nigerians have never actually taken the trouble of reading Professor Wole Soyinka's work.

As anyone who has taken the trouble of looking a little more deeply into these matters is well aware, the Nobel prize process is full of politics, and is also often reflective of the collective cultural, social and political agenda of the western nations. It thus comes as no great surprise that the Nobel Committee never saw fit to award their peace prize to African giants like Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah or Patrice Lumumba, and that they waited until Nelson Mandela had been released from 27 long years in prison before awarding him a joint prize alongside Frederic de Klerk, a blatant incongruity. It is also interesting to note that the Nobel peace prize was shamelessly awarded to arch warmonger Dr. Henry Kissinger, the unrepentant architect of so much death and suffering in Latin America, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos...

Let me finally also deliberately digress further to point out that some of the most outstanding writers of the twentieth century, such as Graham Greene, were never awarded the Nobel literature prize, and that quite a number of deserving African authors, such as Ayi Kwei Armah, Chinua Achebe and Peter Abrahams have not been deemed worthy of the prize, whereas many obscure and unknown writers from other parts of the world have been singled out for the Nobel award.

And now back to what happened at Cannes : As I have indicated, my presentation covered three issues. First, I pointed out that for one to speak meaningfully about the aesthetics of African films, one has to assume that Africans have indeed been empowered to express themselves extensively in the film medium, which happens not to be the case at the moment. I then explained that the inability of Africans to utilise the film medium to present Africa meaningfully to the outside world was not only due to the negligent inability of African governments to support film and television production in our various countries, but also to the tendency of certain westerners to usurp the right to speak about Africa, when in fact most of those claiming to be 'experts' on Africa know next to nothing about our continent. I illustrated my point by denouncing the atrocious activities of television crews that are sent periodically by the BBC, French television, Dutch television, German television etc to report on African countries.
Anyone who has met some of these television crews is well aware that they are most often headed by people with poor educational background who know little or nothing about the history and culture of their own country, not to speak of being properly informed about Africa. Their usual modus operandi when they land to report on 'famine in Africa' or other such derogatory subjects is to spend as much time as possible enjoying life by the pool side of luxury hotels, emerging from time to time to receive briefings from the diplomats of their respective countries and from fellow nationals operating as businessmen in the country they are visiting. Most of these folks are neither competent film makers nor well-informed journalists, with a result that their corny output can be recognized a mile away : they simply get a cameraman to film traffic in the streets and people passing to and fro, then paste irrelevant commentary consisting of tit-bits they have gleaned from their Embassy representatives in an incoherent manner on these images. It is easy to observe that this is the nature of most of their 'special reports' on Africa.
I explained all this in order to be able to denounce the fact that it is from people like these that western public opinion often gets to learn about Africa, rather from the Africans themselves, hence the paucity of genuine information about us.

It is this topic that brought me to the issue of the Nigerian home video, because I set out to explain why so many western countries are falling all over themselves these days to send camera crews to report on Nigerian home video production, which has suddenly become one of their favourite topics, second only to their apocalyptic descriptions of Robert Mugabe as the 'worst dictator in world history since Hitler'...

Why all the sudden interest in the Nigerian home video on the part of those who never see anything good in Africa? People of Oladunjoye's generation are too young to know that we have been there quite a number of times before...

In the case of Nigeria, they suddenly claimed in the sixties that the greatest living Nigerian writer was the late Amos Tutuola, whose quaint and ungrammatical writings in the English language the western media held out as wonderful examples of African 'spirituality' and 'literary inventiveness', without troubling themselves to find out about the Yoruba story telling traditions from which Tutuola lifted most of his material. Their self-proclaimed love affair with Tutuola gave them a wonderful opportunity of being patronizing about quaint African writers who were trying so hard to express themselves in English, even though their grammar and syntax was all muddled up...

The phenomenon of Oshogbo art, an artificial art form that was singlehandly mid-wifed by Ulli Beier and his wife Susan before our very eyes was another godsend for the western press in the early years following Nigeria's independence, at a time when they steadfastly refused to ascribe any merit to the work of the leading Nigerian painters and sculptors of the day, such as Erhabor Emopae, Yussuf Grillo, Ben Enwonwu, Bruce Onabrapeya, Agbo Folarin, Demas Nwoko, Ben Osawe etc.

In rather the same manner today, the western media are delighted to be able to uphold the crude and childish output of the Nigerian home video as examples of the best that Africa can offer in the field of film.

Based on this perception, I went on to dissect the book that was launched at the Cannes film festival about Nigerian home video entitled 'Nollywood' by Mr. Pierre Barrot, who had Tunde Oladunjoye as one of his main collaborators for this publication (Oladunjoye was one of several people who wrote chapters in the book).

As any Nigerian who is familiar with European languages is aware, film and video are not synonyms in English or French. Film refers to a product that is presented on celluloid, as opposed to video, which is presented on tapes, video cds or dvd for television broadcast or for the home video market.

It is therefore quite amazing, as I pointed out at Cannes, that one finds in the very first paragraph of page one of the book 'Nollywood' co-authored by Tunde Oladunjoye the extraordinary claim that 7,000 (seven thousand!) films have been produced in Nigeria between 1992 and 2005!

This is obviously a nonsensical claim, because Nigeria has only been churning out VIDEO PRODUCTIONS at this point in time, and not FILMS.

The difference is not merely a matter of semantics, because it explains why there were no Nigerian films on display at the Cannes film festival, where professionals from all over the world were gathered to show, buy and sell FILMS. There is no scope for video productions in any of the major film festivals of the world, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, etc., which are all dedicated to the film industry, and which exist to showcase films presented on celluloid.

Because facts are stubborn (as someone once said), the claim by Messrs. Pierre Barrot and Tunde Oladunjoye that Nigeria is the third largest film producer of films in the world after the U.S. and India in the book 'Nollywood' falls flat on its face when one observed the situation on the ground at a film festival like Cannes. Why did the 'third largest producer of films in the world' not have one single product on display at Cannes, when a host of African countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and South Africa collectively had over twenty films on display in the various sections at Cannes, not to speak of Vietnam, Poland, India, China, Thailand, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium etc, which collectively had hundreds of films and hundreds of film makers present at Cannes?

What does that say for the claim that Nigeria is the 'third largest producer of films in the world'? What about the Berlin film festival? Why was not a single one of the seven thousand Nigerian films that Oladunjoye and co. talk about so glibly about in their book not shown at the Berlin film festival, where a South African film was awarded first prize? How about Venice?

Most ironically, Hon. Tunde Oladunjoye and all other Nigerians present at Cannes joined me in observing that there were no Nigerian products at Cannes, not only because this was a film festival that had no scope for video production, but most importantly, because the Nigerian home videos are of such atrociously poor quality in terms of film making skills that they cannot be taken seriously for one minute among film professionals!

Most unfortunately, this is the sad fact that is being kept hidden from the Nigerian public.
As a further illustration of the kind of disinformation that is being spread by publications like 'Nollywood' and the 'sambo-style' television documentaries that are currently proliferating in western countries about Nigerian home video production, I analyzed the statistics presented in the book, which claimed on page 41 that the total turnover of Nigerian home videos in the year 2003 amounted to 12 billion naira or 75 million Euros (which is well over 100 million dollars)!
How were these fantastic statistics arrived at ? The authors of the book claimed that 1,137 (one thousand one hundred and thirty seven) home videos were made in that year, and that an average of 38,000 (thirty eight thousand) copies of these home videos were sold, and that each made an average profit of 66,000 (sixty six thousand) euros, which comes to close to N12million for each!

Can anyone seriously be saying that Nigerian home videos make an average profit of N12 million (twelve million naira) for each one?

I have heard many strange tales before in my time, but this must be one of the strangest!
The authors of this remarkable book then go on to produce another round of even more confusing and meaningless statistics on the following page (page 42). This time they quote the Federal Minister of Information as having stated in December 2004 that the average net income of each Nigerian home video amounts to N5 million naira, a little less than 30,000 (thirty thousand) euros, while an unknown Nigerian named Francis Onwochei was given a platform at the Berlin film festival to claim that Nigerian home videos earn 100,000 euros, i.e. N18 million (eighteen million naira!) each on the average...

Now, it is interesting to note that in his article in ThisDay of June 3rd, Hon. Tunde Oladunjoye claims that I was roundly 'condemned' by fellow Nigerians for failing to produce my own statistics when I poured scorn on these cucoo-land statistics. However, in one and the same breath, he quotes his own warning that 'it is easier to get water out of stone than to get a reliable statistics (sic) on the home video industry in Nigeria'.

If this is the case, where does Oladunjoye expect me to get my own set of statistics from, since I neither make home videos nor am in any way associated with anyone who does?
It is trite logic to point out that if I can reasonably demonstrate that the basis for the statistical data advanced by the authors of 'Nollywood' are palpably false, there is absolutely no need for me to produce any other set of statistics of my own. I am sure that even my six year old grandchild can understand this much at her tender age. For instance, if someone comes forward to claim that General Sanni Abacha was born in 1965, I do not need to go and identify the midwife who officiated at his birth in order to prove this statement false. I merely need to point out that this would mean that he enlisted in the Nigerian army before he was born, and any reasonable person would immediately perceive that the alleged date of birth cannot possible be true!

Similarly, I do not need to produce any set of statistics to show that there are no objective grounds for accepting the claims that over 40,000 copies of each Nigerian home video are sold, and that they each make profits ranging from N5million to N18million naira. How does anyone establish how many copies of these home videos are sold, beyond the self-serving claims of the marketers? Who certifies the numbers that are placed on sale? Do the marketers pay tax on their sales, so that the volume of sales can be computed on the basis of tax returns?
Since the answer to all these questions is a big and resounding no, how can any reasonable person accept such figures as a basis for calculating how much income is made by the Nigerian home video industry?

Unfortunately for Oladunjoye and others, I am not in the business of self-delusion, so I am not in a position to participate in their delusional fantasies about the fantastic financial success of Nigerian home video production. I am yet to meet, observe or be shown any individual who has grown fabulously rich making home videos, as would surely be the case if the kind of figures that are being bandied about were to be true. - It could well be however, that I live in a different Nigeria from folks like Oladunjoye, and that they are privy to privileged information that I do not have access to!

The third and final part of my presentation at Cannes is one that I unfortunately did not have time to devlop properly, as I was not given the opportunity of fully completing my presentation.
In this part of my presentation, I had planned to explain that the aesthetical dimension of African film making would receive a big boost if a country like Nigeria were to have a film industry, an easy goal to achieve if only the people in government would listen to what some of us have been trying to tell them for the past thirty years... It would have been all the more easy for me to make my point because South Africa, a relative new comer to film making, has rapidly transformed itself into one of the greatest success stories of the present decade in this field.
South Africa was present at Cannes with several films (Oladunjoye is wrong on this point), and had made a tremendous impact over the previous twelve months in festivals as diverse as Toronto (which specially showcased South African productions); Venice; Berlin (where a South African film won first prize); Gottenburg; Rottterdam; Burkina Faso (where no less than three South African film won various prizes); New York and even at the most recent Oscar awards ceremony in Los Angeles, where a South African film was in competition for the best foreign language Oscar.

It is interesting to note that the South African film industry officially rakes in over $30 million a year according to the Cannes Festival edition of 'Callsheet', a specialized publication devoted to South African films (from figures based on proper statistics backed up by audited accounts from different sectors of the industry).

Not surprisingly, South Africa, which had a major presence at Cannes, hosted visitors, media persons and potential co-production partners each day in a major pavilion on the Cannes sea front. Many deals were concluded there, and further groundwork was laid for the future expansion of film production in South Africa (one of the largest and best equipped film studios in the world is currently under construction in Cape Town).

Against this background, should anyone really be surprised that I am so impatient and scornful of the claptrap contraptions and crude amateuristic productions that pass for a film industry in Nigeria?

I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when I read that one of my colleagues suggested that Nigeria too should have had a pavilion at Cannes. What would the Nigerian Federal Minister of Information and the Head of the Nigerian Film Censors board have been doing in this Nigerian pavilion, since Nigeria had no films to show or to sell? Would they have been cooking eba and egusi soup to sell?

The saddest aspect of the whole situation is that in the last few years, the Nigerian federal government has spent over five times what it would have taken to establish a genuine film industry, but the Government has been taken to the cleaners each time by a variety of con artists embedded in the civil service!

One of the favourite ploys of these con artists has been the claim that Government first has to build film laboratories if Nigeria is to have a film industry. Based on this spurious claim, the equivalent of about $2 million was extracted from the Federal Government to build a film laboratory in Port Harcourt about a decade ago. The said laboratory was officially declared open by President Obasanjo as one of his last acts in power during his previous tenure of office, but this supposed laboratory has since disappeared without a trace, having never processed even one single foot of film!

Another round of the same scam went into operation a few years ago, when someone again sold the Federal Government a fresh dummy about the need to build a colour film laboratory. This time, the Government was told that the water in Lagos was not suitable for film laboratories, and that the new laboratory therefore had to be built in Jos. Once again, between 3 and 5 million dollars were pumped into this wasteful venture, but as of today, the said Jos film laboratory is no longer in existence. (I stand to be challenged on that!) In all the time it was said to be operating, the Jos film laboratory only processed one full-length feature film. Not surprisingly, this was a film produced by the author of the entire fraudulent scheme!

Today, we are witnessing more of the same trend. The government is now being told by some people that the best way to establish a Nigerian film industry is to organize film festivals in Nigeria. Already committees are being formed all over the place and budgets are being allocated for this spurious purpose. However, no one has stopped to ask how Nigeria can claim to host a film festival (as distinct from a video festival or a television festival) if Nigeria does not make any films?

I have decided to henceforth say no more on the subject of the inflated and immodest claims of the Nigerian home video crowd, the vast majority of whom have no clue whatsoever about what films look like or how films are made.

As a lifelong film enthusiast who must have watched several hundreds of films from all over the world in my lifetime, (including some like 'Spartacus', Singing in the rain', 'Kwaidan' , 'West Side Story', 'Kagemusha', 'The treasure of the Sierra Madre', Pather Pachali' , 'The bridge on the River Kwai', 'Dr Jhivago', etc. that I must have watched dozens of times), I can quite confidently state without fear of contradiction that the current output of the Nigerian home video practitioners leaves much to be desired in terms of quality and content. It is because I believe that this can improve that I have not been afraid to expose myself to venomous personal attacks in order to point out the shortcomings of what currently passes for film production in Nigeria.
My position is inspired by love for Nigeria and Africa. If I am to be condemned for believing that great works of art can be produced by Nigerian film makers, then so be it! I am unrepentant!