*******presents Kanayo O. Kanayo (Okonkwo), Ernest Obi ( Christopher), Francis Duru (Steve), Sulaiman Adora (Da Jang), Reykia Attah (Kaneng), Adora Nancy Adibua (Laraba), Pete Eneh (Mazi Arouma). Story, Edwin Joha; Screenplay, Bond Emeruwa; Director Of Photography, Mohamed Abdullahi; Executive Producer/Producer Okoro Ugwu; Director, Ndubuisi Okoh.
My name is Ali (Writer/Publisher), I’m a Muslim by faith. My wife’s name is Ophelia. She’s a Christian by faith. Why so? We are hailing from the West African enclave with greater religious tolerance, where some Aunts and Uncles and first cousins are either Christians or Muslims, and we care less; where both the Muslims and Christians celebrate Ramadan and Christmas with abandon. We are all children of God, and therefore we are our brothers’ keepers.
Igbo And Hausa Bride is a tragedy and tells a microcosmic tale of the present day Northern Nigerian society. Christopher (Ernest Obi) loves Laraba ( Adaora Nancy Adibua). Christopher is an Igbo and Laraba is a Hausa. Christopher is a Christian and Laraba is a Muslim. They both grew up as next door neighbors, and naturally, they fall in love with each other and wants to get married. Would there be a better marriage than that, marrying someone you played hide and seek with, and someone you’ve known all your life? But no. Hausa tribe didn’t say so. In fact, the Quran denies you too. No, a Catholic couldn’t marry a Hausa Muslim girl. It couldn’t happen in Northern Nigeria.
Igbo And Hausa Bride opens with a dream sequence. In his dream, a dagger-stick-spear-cutlass, and a knife-wielding mob are chasing Christopher. Mob catches up with him as he falls and they come upon him, bludgeon him with machetes, daggers, spears, sticks, and knives. Christopher wakes with a start from the hideous dream in his living room. What a Phantasma!
Steve sees Laraba with her parents at a clinic, and he rushes to tell Christopher, he saw his Hausa girlfriend, sick at the hospital. Christopher leaves the shop where he works and rushes there. We know from this point, Christopher, a Catholic and an Igbo, is secretly dating Laraba, a Hausa Muslim girl.
Laraba’s poor parents want her to marry a young Hausa Senator, not to her liking. She loves her Igbo, Christian boyfriend. Christopher at dinner in his father’s house tells them about him in love with a Hausa girl, and they go berserk. ” Are you going mad?” his father would ask. “what the hell wrong with you?” his only friend Steve (Francis Duru) would ask, and added, “If you think the Hausas gonna let you marry their Muslim daughter, you’re gone plum crazy.”
The conflict in the story is set at a high voltage when both Christopher and Laraba, with daggers to their chests, were asking their parents to grant them their wills for marriage. “Why did you send me to school Baba (Buku haram vindicated), why did you deny me the only thing I’ve ever loved, please Daddy let me marry Christopher! “NO,” Da Jang (Suleiman Adara), says. Christopher on his knees crawls and prostrates himself in front of Laraba’s father, begging and crying to him so he can let him marry his daughter. He says, “NO!”
Christopher’s parents and Laraba’s parents, lost their children as they commit suicide while all look on. The suicide is a tragedy that in nature resembles Things Fall Apart in many places. It’s even funny that one of the actors, Kanayo O. Kanayo, is named Okonkwo in the story. Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart refuses to accept the ways of the Whiteman and was afraid of the foreign Western culture encroachments. Knowing that he couldn’t fight the white man and his culture anymore, and his own tribesmen siding with the new culture, he commits suicide.
Christopher and Laraba commit suicide knowing that the parents weren’t going to give in to their demand. And to end it all, they decide to die together and just maybe, they’d be waiting for each other in Hades, and later march hand in hand at the gate of Heaven.
I guess that’s enough of my religious diatribe. I won’t let that stand in front of my analysis. Igbo and Hausa Bride has a linear plot. It starts out like Who’s Coming To Dinner but quickly metamorphosed into Romeo And Juliet. It’s a gripping story of two innocent kids falling in love with each other but society’s mores couldn’t let them have their way. And what makes it stand out the more is the performance of Nollywood giants like Kanayo O. Kanayo’s rough Okonkwo-like posture and demeanor; the simple and playful-like manner of Francis Duru, and the drudgery of Ernest Obi with love for a Muslim girl.
What is again striking about this movie is the photography. It has the look of black and white, but it isn’t. Excuse me if I’m wrong, the cameraman must have used filters to give it the color of mercury as in photography, just like the dusky look of the surface of planet Mercury. What the Director of Photography is trying to achieve here is, to let the story follow the oppressiveness of the dream sequence. Watching the movie itself, besides the beautiful story line, is oppressive by its grayish look. It is not color attractive for entertainment. Unless for critics and film buffs, no one wants to sit through this movie. It is dreary in every sense. But hey, the theme suggests so. For a tragedy, the film is best suited in its gray appearance. It shouldn’t appear sanguine. Even unfiltered black and white shot wouldn’t have done this story justice.
Looking back at the theme of this famous story one would assume that, the death of Christopher and Laraba in the arms of both parents personifies the destruction of Northern Nigerian society, which isn’t ready to accept other tribes or religions in their midst, lest in marriage. The world around them is changing as we hear the cries of Laraba to her father: ” Daddy why did you send me to school?” Now, that’s a loaded question, with so many answers. “Didn’t I learn in school that man has the right to determine his or her fate?” But the father says, “NO!” So, she takes control of her fate by committing suicide. Ops, the falcon cannot hear the falconer! What a lesson Northern Nigeria should learn.
Igbo And Hausa Bride addresses a social problem and will, therefore, be difficult to review. Social projects in films have one purpose, and that is to either caricature the present cultural aspect, good or evil of the society. Films like Who’s Coming To Dinner is one social project. Who’s Coming To Dinner, enjoyed popularity at a time when dating, lest marital affairs between black and white were unheard. And with the civil right movement, desegregation is schools, black and white mingling and doing things together; the film doesn’t play much value to the audience anymore. In a sense, fans today watch and classify that movie only as historical, and not as entertaining.
Same goes to Igbo And Hausa Bride. Watching this film leaves the audience astounded. That such disparity exists between people of the same country and locality is unheard. However, in another century, when the North must have come to grips with the current state of affairs of the world, the movie will no longer be relevant. For such subject to last, the producers must have universalized the theme, instead of just Northern Nigeria. However, as long as the social problem in Northern Nigeria persists, Igbo And Hausa Bride have value.