By David Ajiboye

Recently, the African Movie indus­try has seen a sig­nif­i­cant surge in the pop­u­lar­ity of African films  around the world. This is mainly due to the amaz­ing tal­ents of some of Nigeria’s finest actors. One notable Actor who has made an impact is Nkem Owoh. He has secured for him­self a mas­sive fan base from the liv­ing rooms of Lon­don to the countryside’s of Free­town.  Nkem Owoh is a Niger­ian come­dian and movie actor. His name, Nkem, means, My own. He starred in the 2003 film Osuofia in Lon­don.

 In 2004 Owoh was one of sev­eral actors who was tem­porar­ily banned from
appear­ing in movies by Nigeria’s Asso­ci­a­tion of Movie Mar­keters and Pro­duc­ers, who argued that the actors demanded exces­sive fees and unrea­son­able con­tract demands.

There have been rumours of Nkem Owoh being paid 1.75 mil­lion Naira
($14,000 US Dol­lars) for this film, although in real­ity he may have earned sub­stan­tially more than that, con­sid­er­ing his pop­u­lar­ity and that the movie was filmed across two con­ti­nents.

He is also known for per­form­ing the song  “I Go Chop Your Dol­lar” about advance fee fraud. The song was fea­tured in the film The Mas­ter in which Owoh plays a scammer.The Eco­nomic and Finan­cial Crimes Com­mis­sion and the Niger­ian Broad­cast­ing Com­mis­sion banned the song. Below is an excerpts of an interview with the comedian.

How has it been so far?

There has been the neg­a­tive and the pos­i­tive sides. It’s like every other thing in life. I believe once you have the zeal and God gives you the health, you have to forge ahead. When­ever I meet the hill I believe I have to climb the hill and that’s life. So I just take this indus­try and what God has given me and I thank God for the spe­cial tal­ent which I never rec­og­nized, until peo­ple started rec­og­niz­ing in me. Now, when I look back­wards I always feel I have
some­thing that peo­ple love and I am happy and I thank God for that.

Com­edy in Nige­ria

Com­edy was intro­duced at the incep­tion of this branch of art as slap­stick. At that time, you would come across peo­ple putting on funny glasses, like the one I am putting on. I am the only per­son autho­rized to wear a sun­shade at night. You see peo­ple try­ing to whip up laugh­ter from dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. But now we have grad­u­ated to a level that you can really make peo­ple laugh even if you are putting on suit. If God gives you a gift, it is not an easy thing. I talk, you laugh. I don’t know how I do it, some­times. I am embar­rassed.
A long time ago, I was asked to say the prayer at a func­tion and I said in Jesus name and peo­ple started laugh­ing. I take my prayers very seri­ously and I became very embar­rassed. You see there are good and bad sides to those things. Any­thing you say, you wouldn’t be taken seri­ous even when you are dis­cussing seri­ous issues. It hurts when such treat­ment is meted to you. But I think it is more on the pos­i­tive side.

Most paid comic actor

I haven’t said that I am the high­est paid. It depends on what you mean by pay­ment. I feel very happy as one of the high­est paid comic actors, and I am not com­plain­ing.

Embar­rass­ing moment

It depends on your def­i­n­i­tion of embar­rass­ment. What you might con­sider embar­rass­ing to you might not be embar­rass­ing to me. Except when you begin to go into my fail­ures in life that’s when I get embar­rassed. But if you are talk­ing about every­day life, I don’t get embar­rassed eas­ily. I might, I don’t know. May be along the line as some­body might do some­thing. I have not seen or heard before and be embar­rassed.

Stronger than pain

It went like any other movie. We are not act­ing for our­selves, but for the peo­ple. The crit­ics and view­ers’ opin­ions deter­mined the qual­ity of the film. Act­ing with Kate Hen­shaw was fan­tas­tic. Kate is some­one who has a mea­sure of the char­ac­ter­is­tics I have. So we blended, it was nice and the film came out fine.

Niger­ian movie indus­try

The indus­try is very big and heavy. The thing is that we stay here and do not know the weight of this indus­try because prob­a­bly every body knows the other per­son in the indus­try. But when you go out­side the shores of this coun­try even out­side your state, you could see the impact we have been mak­ing not only in Africa but around the world. I am talk­ing from expe­ri­ence.

Worst day

The worst day in my life is when I will make peo­ple laugh too much. I don’t like mak­ing peo­ple overdo things. I don’t think I have ever had a worse day. I am a per­son who believes that the world is like that. You go up and down. If I have some­thing peo­ple could describe as the worst, I have hope that I can always sur­mount it.

Between fam­ily life and act­ing

It’s very tough thing to do but by the grace of God we are try­ing to marry every­thing together.

The Hol­land expe­ri­ence

I was not arrested in Hol­land last year. It was a kind of expe­ri­ence that left a bit­ter taste in my mouth. For a bonafide cit­i­zen of a rec­og­nized coun­try to enter another coun­try and peo­ple saw him as a sec­ond class cit­i­zen. I was there and their police came in their num­bers about one hun­dred of them. They came in their ambu­lance, on air, police dogs and all that. They told me to end the show. I told the man it’s unfair. I told them that if I was the per­son they were look­ing for, they should take me, but should not embar­rass the audi­ence. The man said no and that caused my anger. After that, we arranged and staged a demon­stra­tion to relate my own side of the story. If that was the option left to us, I don’t think we were wrong in fol­low­ing it. Nobody arrested me the way it was reported.

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

By David Ajiboye

She’s known as an actress but Uche Jombo has many titles to her name – she is a mathematician/statistician, actress, screenwriter and now you can add producer to that list! Uche is making her production debut with the movie – Nollywood Hustler which she also stars in. The movie is co-produced by Games Men Play producer Emem Isong and directed by Moses Inwang.

Nollywood Hustler takes a comedic look at Nollywood; the real stars and the wannabes. This star-studded movie stars Ramsey Nouah, Monalisa Chinda and Lancelot Imasuen acting as fictionalized versions of themselves. Charles Inojie stars as the wannabe producer and Uche Jombo as the wannabe actress. With the supporting cast including talented actors Ejike Asiegbu, Susan Peters and Bishop Ime. Below are photos from the set of the movie which recreates a red carpet event tagged ‘Celebrities Give Back’ with real celebrities walking down the carpet as themselves and talking about their projects and the act of giving back. These celebs included Genevieve Nnaji, Ini Edo-Ehiagwina, Ngozi Ezeonu, Kalu Ikeagwu, Muma Gee, Zik Zulu Okafor, Vivian Ejike, musical duo Bracket, Kevin Luciano of Questionmark Entertainment, rapper Sasha and Julie of WOW magazine.