By David Ajiboye

Nigeria’s government is asking cinemas to stop showing a science fiction film, District Nine, that it says denigrates the country’s image. Information Minister Professor Dora Akunyili said that she had asked the makers of the film, Sony, for an apology.  She says the film portrays Nigerians as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes.

An actor from the film said that it was not just Nigerians who were portrayed as villains. The Malawian actor, Eugene Khumbanyiwa, plays a gang leader with the nickname of Obasanjo, also the surname of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The film is about alien refugees who set up home in a South African shanty town called District Nine. It is a loose allegory about apartheid and recent violence by South Africans against foreigners. Professor  Akunyili said it clearly took aim at Nigerians.

“We feel very bad about this because the film clearly denigrated Nigeria’s image by portraying us as if we are cannibals, we are criminals,” she said.
“The name our former president was clearly spelt out as the head of the criminal gang . The information minister said she had ordered the Nigerian film and video censors’ board to ask all cinemas to stop showing the film and to confiscate it.

“I have also formally written to Sony Pictures Entertainment, the company that produced this film, demanding an unconditional apology for this unwarranted attack on Nigeria’s image,” she added.  She also said she had asked them to review the film with a view to remove “all offending portions that injured our image as a nation”.

Akunyili said said Nigeria was now hitting back with a policy of “rebranding”, after allowing the international community to define the country based on the behaviour of “[a] few criminals”.  She said that Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry was also being pressed to help portray Nigeria in a better light.

But Mr Khumbanyiwa said Nigerians in the cast did not seem worried by the portrayal of their country. He suggested that the film, which depicts people wanting to eat aliens to gain the superhuman powers, should not be taken too literally.  “It’s a story, you know,” he said. “It’s not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don’t even exist in the first place.”

By David Ajiboye

One of the pioneers of the thriving Nigeria movie industry otherwise known as Nollywood, Chief Lere Paimo, MFR aka Eda clocked 70 years on Friday, 18 September, 2009. The birthday celebration was a huge success considering the known faces in the Yoruba sector of Nollywood that graced the event which was held at the Genesis Suites, Ibadan.

Eda cutting 70th B Cake

The celebrant, a profilic traditional movie producer has produced works like the evergreen historical movie Ogbori Elemesho and several others.
A holder of the country’s national honour of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (MFR), and a traditional title holder of Are Arobabojo of Ogbomosholand.
Chief Lere Paimo has won several local and international awards. He was part of the team that won the gold medal with their presentation of Oba Koso during the Commonwealth festival in 1963.
He’s married and blessed with children.

Eda and the Royal Father

Eda Dancing

Eda Posed

Actor performs at the Party

Actors Actresses at the party

Eda and friends

Performers

Faces at Eda's Birthday Party

Revelers at Eda's Party

Faleti

By Ali Baylay

A Venus Film productions.Starring: Van Vicker, Jackie Appiah, Kofi Adjorlolo, Kalsoume Sinare, Rama Brew, Gavivina Tamakloe, Yvonne Nelson; Editor: Dapo Ola Daniels; Assistant Producer: Ali Samba; Producer: Abdul Salam Mumuni; Executive Producer: Abdul Salam Mumuni; Director: Frank Rajah Arase. 150 mins.

The princely cast of Gollywood’s finest really do an excellent performance here, to boot, and in fact this movie got me sold to Gollywood movies. As you can see, I’ve been all about Nollywood, but since  I discovered Tears of Womanhood, a Gollywood classic, I  believe  good movies do come from Ghana’s woods, such as Princess Tyra. With its fairy tale nature, this movie will take you to a fairyland where stories like Cindarella may seem a joke.

Princess Tyra is not our typical royalty versus peasant kind narrative; it is a kind of story about a royalty kicking against the mores of a palace,  in exchange for the common life. Your guess is good as mine where such kingdom exists in our part of Africa, but this prince sure looks like a future king of Morocco than the true negroid prince of lower Sudan.

I did not have the patience to sit through part 3 of this movie, ’cause I live in the first world and no one movie will put my life on hold for three hours straight. Princess Tyra  is a good movie though, one of its kind coming from Africa today. Imagine, two royal families promised each other a child in marriage so both kingdoms could cement relationships. It turns out  Prince Kay (Van Vicker) has turned liberal, scorning everything royale in exchange for common life. He doesn’t believe that in this “ 21st century people still indulge in those barbaric rites”, he queried at one point.  At the other end of this tangent,  is a saucy, spoilt brat, Princess Tyra (Yvonne Nelson), who can put on hold the hustle and bustle of a supermarket, just so she can buy an item or two.

Prince Kay is turned off by Princess Tyra’s stringent royal tradition and principles, who declares that, “the wishes of mortals the gods command.” And she has  frequent outbursts with not a dint of romance in it. He, runs from a princess, “who’ll not have my peace”, he laments. But for Princess Tyra, “Where thunder and lightning strikes birds don’t fly”, she boasts of destroying whoever stands between her and her desire for the prince, because, “vegeance of a woman is like a burning bush”.  

In the middle of it all is a common maid, Maafia (Jackie Appiah) who massages the prince’s feet in a rite once and later in a queer bathroom incident, falls under the romantic rader of the prince. We did not see the two (prince and maid) mate, but not long after the maid’s mother dies of asthma attack, Maafia leaves Ilugbo Kingdom in search of Prince Kay to report her pregnancy to him but instead meets the prince’s mother, the Queen, and reports her pregnancy. The Queen doesn’t handle this news well.

The story gets sticky when writer employs another plot  and character, Ashley to merely resemble Maafia and gets Ashley pregnant by the prince , and both by bizzare plot twist, meet side by side in a hospital. Camera and edit can pull all kinds of  tricks but this Maafia look alike coming into the story sure put a damper and unbelievable feeling to the story. I marvel the fact that writer created a three dimensional character for Jackie Appiah’s role (maid, Ashley, Maafia) , only that in narrating such a wonderful fairy tale, story and character have  to be linear in nature, or not even Cinderella could have survived as a timeless tale with such muddled plots. Prince Kay would have gone on pulling all the stops to get to his one and  only cinderalla, rather than easily fall for a look alike and gets her pregnant too.

By David Ajiboye

A grave silence descended on an Ikeja, Lagos State Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, as an 18-year-old man, Amusa (surname withheld) told the court how he was allegedly raped by a 39-year-old actor and producer in the Nigerian (Yoruba) Movie Industry, Alhaji Rasaki Olaniyi, alias Tunji Alaso.

An emotional Amusa told Magistrate T. A. Omoyele that the popular actor
drugged him with a fruit juice drink, held him captive, raped him and wiped the semen he released on him with a white handkerchief.

The victim said: My name is Amusa (surname withheld). I am 18 years old. I
work as a fuel attendant at a filling station in (area name withheld). Alhaji Oni film (as he referred to the alleged rapist) came to my filling station to buy fuel. He started chatting with me and asked me what time I would close from work. I told him that I close by 10:30 pm. He told me that the job I am doing was not good for me and that he would help me to get another job that will be better than being a fuel attendant.

“He gave me his phone number and address and promised to give me a job. I called him later in the week and he asked me to meet him in his house at AIT Road, Okofilling by 6:00p.m. I got there by 7:30p.m. and met some men in the sitting room. They told me to go and meet Alhaji Oni film in the bedroom but I began to feel that something was wrong. I told them to call him out but they insisted that I go inside his bedroom to meet him.”

Amusa continued: “When I entered the bedroom, I saw Alhaji Oni film in his underwear. He asked me to sit down and offered me a drink. I refused to drink and told him that I wanted to leave as it was getting too late in the night. He refused to let me go and ordered me to drink the fruit juice or they
would force me.

“When I refused, he called the two men I met earlier in the sitting room to hold me down and they forcefully poured the drink in my mouth. “In the next five minutes, I discovered that my body was weak I did not have power to move and I immediately felt like sleeping. I saw Alhaji removing his underwear and started raping me by putting his penis into my anus. He released his semen on my body and wiped it with a white handkerchief.

“He later asked the two men to open the door for me to go. When I got home, I was supposed to go to work but I could not go because I was feeling the
pain. I later noticed that I could not excrete through my anus or urinate. I called my father and told him what happened between me and Alhaji and he took me to the police station to report the case. That was how they arrested them and brought them to court.”

Amusa’s narrative did not go smoothly as counsel to the defendant interrupted him several times, which elicited objections from the prosecuting lawyer and generated heated confrontation between them. The magistrate, however, calmed both parties down for the session to continue and adjourned the matter to October 13 and 15, this year