Asurf Films Ltd., presents, Frank Donga (Akande), Rahama Sadau (Aisha), Maryam Booth (Binta), Ibrahim Daddy (Ibrahim), Alhaji Issa Bello (Alhaji Sule) Hadiza Solja (Amina), Toyin Aimakhu-Johnson (Yetunde), Tomwa Kukoyi (Aboki), Production Manager, Judith Adu; Director of photography, Asurf Oluseyi; Story, Asurf Oluseyi, Gift Imafidon, Toni Adesina; Screenplay, Toni Adesina; Executive Producers, Abi Babalola, Asurf Oluseyi, Babatunde Babalola; Producer/Director, Arsurf Oluseyi. ©2017.
“This year’s award for best original screenplay goes to…”
A man graduates from university with one of the rarest disciplines: animal husbandry and science. There’s every likelihood he couldn’t find a job in Nigeria less Lagos. After four years, and with his National Youth Services program behind him, Akande couldn’t find a job. We meet him on a street in Lagos holding a placard asking for a job. He’s a determined fellow, wanting to be his own boss. In the next scene, he runs into an egg-seller and spills her ware onto the street. He runs from there as the entire neighborhood runs after him, but luckily saved by an Akada driver, Ibrahim (Ibrahim Daddy).
Since he drops his wallet at the scene, he has no money left to pay Ibrahim, but from that incident, they strike a friendship that lasts them to the end of the story. Ibrahim is an absentee-cattle rarer from Kaduna whose father, Alhaji Sule, rares them for him as he comes to Lagos from time to time to raise cash by riding Akada.
Already Akande has been rejected by his girlfriend of three years, his only sister wants to make a houseboy out of him and even the neighbors are out to take advantage of him. He overhears a cattle business conversation Ibrahim has with one of the Akada boys and he gets interested. He ends up in Kaduna with Ibrahim. Things didn’t get better in Kaduna with the cattle investment, but he stays on as a pupil-teacher. Along the way, he befriends Aisha (Rahama Sadau), who volunteers to be his interpreter at the school, but a village outcast because she has lost two husbands and a baby, and therefore is a witch. And Binta (Maryam Booth), Ibrahim’s younger sister.
The eureka moment in the life of Akande comes when out of his intellectual background, he stumbles on the importance of cow dung in the life of agriculture, and that Kaduna has enough cow dung that could be turned into manufactured packaged fertilizers for farmers everywhere in Nigeria. Akande, and his team partners, Binta and Aisha, start packaging cow dungs and selling it to farmers in the market and online. In the end, when this new agricultural invention becomes wide known in Nigeria, and Akande’ becomes a household name, he secures a $500,000 loan to build a biogas plant in Kaduna.
The theme of Hakkunde is Akande himself. He the main character is the theme in the story. The story is about how the natural development of Akande from the rough terrain of Lagos where he holds a placard on the roadside for work, where a girlfriend of three years says bye to him, “After four years of university and two years NYSC behind you, and still no job. Boyfriend, I’m tired. Have a nice life, goodbye forever.” And a whole neighborhood runs him out with batons, bottles, sticks, machetes, and stones. It’s like the spirits of Lagos have got enough of him and want him out.
Then goes to Kaduna and his life changes, not meteorically but systematically: He becomes a pupil-teacher, when the cattle business he goes to Kaduna for, failed, and he faints to the ground, but with his face up, then the echo of his sister’s voice comes back to him. “the way you go Kaduna, na so you go come back,” he stands back on his feet and becomes creative. The leaflet his sister had angrily dashed on the table in front of him in Lagos, bearing, “Dung Made Millionaires,” which he had tucked in his pocket becomes his eureka moment. He found a literal gold in the business of cow dung.
He lines up his two women friends, Aisha and Binta, who were never friendly with each other, but he’s able to unite them and both eventually become partners in his famous manure business and soon procures a United Nation loan and at last fulfill the greatest achievement of man, by marrying Aisha. Then too, Akande’s presence in the village improves the economic life of Alhaji Sule and discovers the disease that had killed Aisha’s husbands. To back my reason, there’s not a scene where Akande or issue about him isn’t discussed in the film. It’s all about him. This story, therefore, is a character theme.
The hidden motifs in the story or call them subthemes are in the scenes where Akande is sacked by his girlfriend in the restaurant and leave. On his t-shirt, he had it written, Live the Life You Love.”That is the sense of his being audacious. And when he runs amok in the egg seller and spills her eggs, and both fall on the street as she cries over him. There’s a storefront road sign nearby that reads: “God Is Able.” The storefront sign is beckoning to us the life-changing development ahead of Akande. From here on, Akande runs into Ibrahim, the Akada friend who plants the seed of cattle and animal husbandry in his head, that lands him in Kaduna. And on the van in which he arrives in Kaduna is written: “God is Good.” The motif on the van is heralding to us the good tidings that await, Akande.
One thing about Hakkunde as I watched the film that keeps nagging at me is its visual impression. The shots on the screen and its warm glow please me a lot. Then I delved into the technical aspect and discover that the video camera shot in this movie is the latest camera technology called Red Epic, and the videographer used filters that gave monochromatic characteristics to the film. Its high resolution and exposure give texture and professional-grade only measured in commercial value.
“…The award for the original screenplay of Hakkunde goes to Tomi Adesina.”