Odunlade Adekola (Bayo Oguntade), Toyin Abraham (Oduak Oguntade), Chimezie Imo (Nimbe), Kelechi Udegbe (AK), Broda Shaggi (Abu), Rachael Okonkwo (Tina), Molawa Davis (Ralph) Doyin Abiola (Peju), Ojewole Timilehin (Benji). Executive Producers/ Producers, Folarin Laosun, Oluwaseun Dania; Director, Topi Alake; Director of Photography, Segun Oladimeji; Script Writer, Moshood Yakubu Olawale. © 2019.
Gone are the days when Nollywood uses specific titles for their movies like “My Wife’s Sister Lure Me to Her Bed.” They have certainly moved away from that formative Nollywood period, and now we have titles like Nimbe coming off the beltway. I like evocative titles like Nimbe. You would think, who is Nimbe? Why name the project, ‘Nimbe?’ And does this name have ethnic, or Yoruba value? Well, that is precisely the question I came off with after watching the film. And if so, what is the relationship between the name and the theme of the story.
Nimbe reminds me of Tom Brown School Days (1857) classic novel primary schools assigned for literature in all English speaking enclave of West Africa. We all witnessed, among the rowdy gang of pupils, that formed a circle around two boys and watched them fight. Some of us must have been a victim. I was. Lots of boys picked on me. Puny as I was, boys always took advantage of me, so I had boys about me that were fat, and fiery looking. The taunting of Nimbe (Chimezie Imo), by the schoolyard bully, Benji (Ojewole Timilehin), could not stop at the school but continues to the town square. Benji beat and shamed him in front of a crowd of townsfolk, and at home, his father added another dose of harassment and abuse.
While watching Nimbe, the tumultuous father-son relationship between Bayo Oguntade (Odunlade Adekola), and his estranged son Nimbe, makes me remember the relationship between Bull Meechum (Robert Duvall ) and his eighteen-year-old son, Ben Meechum (Michael O’Keefe) in The Great Santini (1979). Mr. Meechum, with the rigorous military training and ethics, only knows how to fight, but does not know how to love his son or anyone. He has a raging temper and anger for his son to a point when the son could not stand him any longer, and one day faces him with a fight. Udoak, too, reminds me of a friendly lady I had who eventually divorced her despicable husband. Every time she wanted a civil discussion with her ex-husband, she said she’ll hold his hand and read to him from the Proverbs in the Bible. She had to do that to supplicate his anger. Bayo is the despicable type.
She needed prayers for Bayo’s temper not to flare every time he walked in the door, though, never opened a Bible and prostrates before him. She sometimes stood up to him, even as a slap or two would shut her mouth. This one time, she, her son, and her husband Bayo are quietly eating dinner in the living room. He spills his usual bile and turned the evening dinner into chaos.
Bayo, “You cook food, and it tastes like wood.”
Udoak, “Everything about your life, Papa Nimbe is sadness…The little house where we suppose to live in love, peace, and unity, you’ll be squeezing your face all the time…especially with the fact that you’re not handsome. These things break my heart.”
Bayo, “You’re talking to me like I don’t have brain.”
Udoak, “I don’t know now.”
When he stands and about to slap Udoak, Nimbe too gets up to excuse himself from the scene and his father stops him.
Bayo, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Nimbe hisses at him. A scene to watch. He is about to slap Nimbe when the boy arrests the slap in midair.
Bayo, “Holy Shaolin!”
The patriarch of the Oguntade family has some regrets in his life. Time is almost passed him by, and he regrets missed opportunities, but he thinks his son can make up the losses by shoving seriousness, and physical strength into his son without equal attention with love and care. In school, he wants his son to excel without home support. Nimbe could not stand to the only bully in his school; even when he gets him tripped over and wasted his father’s soup, he had sent him to buy. Out of anger and shame, Bayo Oguntade holds his son by his wrist, like Okonkwo would do Nwoye, and forces him to dwell with Benji in a public square. Nimbe gets trashed and comes home to another dose of name-callings and molestations. Bayo doubts his birthright to the boy and expects some man would one day come and lay claim to the “bastard.”
Amid the tumultuous family relationship, the mother, Oduak Oguntade (Toyin Abraham), of Nimbe is in the middle of it all. She is torn between father and son. She will not challenge the husband for the unfortunate habit of sending the boy to buy him alcohol but can refuse to buy him school books. Bayo consistently rebukes Nimbe to the point of not standing him. Nimbe spends all his time in his room. Oduak won’t say anything to her husband lest she gets rebuked as he threatens her with whipping so many times. Some reviewers would look at this movie from the point of view of drugs and it’s influence on the kids. I look at it from the point of neglect of the parents, not paying attention to the kids. You can remember the need for father and son relationship in the eyes of Ralph when he entered upon his father in the living room. He didn’t want money, he only wanted to talk, but no. “Go into the room and you’ll find some money on the bedside…and help yourself,” he showed him, money love.
Another young adult who cannot find love and care from his wealthy parents, Ralph (Molawa Davis), befriends Nimbe. When he had walked into the living-room when his dad is busy on the computer, all his dad could say to him is, “go in the bedroom, look on the left side of the bed, take some money and go help yourself.” Since all he gets from his parents is money and uses it to buy him drugs, and alcohol, he finds company in Nimbe and introduces him to drugs and a notorious drug-dealer in the community, named AK (Kelechi Udegbe). The two young adults become friends in a sense to provide solace for each other, but soon, Nimbe’s drug use becomes habitual and starts missing school. The tearjerking and memorable scene in the film takes place here when the mother catches her son in the dope house.
Udoak, “What do I have? And I have suffered a lot for your sake. How could you do this to me? Nimbe, you break my heart.”
Nimbe, “Mummy, I’m really, really sorry. I promise I’ll be good, henceforth, I will go back to school tomorrow. Please stop crying.”
Udoak, “See, I don’t want you to beg me. What I want is for you to stop going to that place. I don’t want you doing that thing again; it kills people. You’re the only hope I have. Do you want people to make jest of me because of you?”
Nimbe starts to cry when he sees his mother in tears.
Udoak, “You broke my heart, and I’m hurt. If anything happens to you, my life will ruin.”
Nimbe breaks and hugs his mother; she too hugs her son and both cry in each other’s arm.
The subplot in the story introduces us to Ralph, befriending Nimbe, in turn, introduces us to AK, who, when Nimbe presents him, his portrait on his birthday, adopts him in his fold of drug addicts, as a younger brother. If Ralph introduces him to drugs, AK introduces him to the use of firearms, as under his guardianship, directs him to kill somebody and to shoot straight at the forehead. He gets closer to AK’s only sister, one he watches like a huck, but disappointingly she gets pregnant by another lowlife and has an abortion and died in Nimbe’s arm.
Nimbe’s parents want to reclaim their only child from the street, so they follow him into the ghetto and find him sitting among girls, smoking marijuana. The father stands over him. Nimbe could no longer come home. He is a drug addict, and he has killed someone, under the command of AK. “Nimbe! Nimbe!” yells his father to him.
Nimbe stands from among the girls and faces his father. The father turns to Udoak.
Bayo, “Udoak, when did Nimbe start coming here and hanging with these bad guys? How come? Nimbe, you’re smoking? I’m ashamed of you. You are a disappointment.”
“Enough! Don’t you dare call me disappointment? You are a disappointment.”
Udoak, “Are you okay? Shut your mouth.”
Nimbe, “No, mum, I am not keeping quiet. I’m done keeping quiet.”
Udoak, “Don’t you know that’s your father?
The parents want to reclaim their only child from the street, and they follow him into the ghetto and find Nimbe sitting among girls smoking marijuana. The father stands over him.
“Let me tell him how he has failed as a father. What have you done for me to make you think you can come in here and claim me.”
Udoak, “I want us all to go home and settle this. If you don’t, I will stark myself naked in front of everybody.”
Nimbe, “Sorry, mum. But this is home now.”
The parents leave Nimbe alone. The next day on campus, he terrorized the whole school when he shoots Benji in the forehead for calling him an imbecile. The schoolyard brawl in Tom Brown School Days does not in any way measure up to the shooting incident in Nimbe. It could be a tragic phenomenon cropping up in Africa because life doth imitate art. As for Bayo, the uncontrollable anger brings him untold disasters. First, Udoak washes his pants that he keeps his one point five million nairas winning lottery ticket. And the worst tragedy was the loss of his son. He lost Nimbe after he kills Benji, and the law put him away for life. This movie is a cautionary tale for most parents who won’t have time to check on their kids and show them love and care. Indeed we will be missing out on the most crucial period in the lives of our growing children. Good movie.