Ebonylife Film presents Sharon Ooga (Oloture), Omoni Oboli (Alero), Blossom Chukujekwu (Emeka), Omowunmi Dada (Linda), Lala Akindoju (Blessing). Director, Kenneth Gyang; Director of Photography, Malcolm J. Mclean ASC; Story by Mo Abudu, Heidi Uys, Yinka Ogun, Craig Freimond, Temeday Abudu; Screenplay by Yinka Ogun, Craig Freimond. . © 2019
Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s Potomanto (2013) is a 2.0 thesis in illegal organ harvesting in Nigeria. It’s a well organized and profitable business entity for the Nigerian actor Olu Jacob played Bankole. He made millions of dollars, harvesting the kidneys and livers of young teenage boys in Lagos, with the pretense of sending them abroad. In the end, Bankole was busted by the hardcore retired police officer, turned investigative photographer, Adane (Adjety Anang), and his estranged wife, also police detective, Alice (Yvonne Okoro) and undercover Interpol agent, Susan (Marie Humbert). In the dark of the night, the trio plotted how to get their man busted, and they did—a believable narrative.
I didn’t have to mention the characteristics of Manso’s Potomanto. Still, I just feel I have to, so everyone could understand the difference between Potomanto and Oloture. Oloture is not an entrenched story in its thesis statement, if there is any such statement at all. No, there is none. Emeka (Blossom Chukujekwu). An editor of Scoop newspaper, or magazine, never correctly stated in the story, has a mission to investigate human trafficking in Nigeria run by the ‘madam,’ Alero (Omoni Oboli). He works with a young woman, not too professional but a cub, named Oloture (Sharon Ooga). She is embedded into the prostitution ring in Lagos. Oloture makes friends with Blessing (Lala Akindoju), who leads her to the madam that traffics young girls into Burkina Faso and then Italy. A billion-dollar industry.
It seems effortless how the trafficking itself is all done. It is cumbersome, though. First, the recruitment: a known and trusted candidate must have to bring you to the madam. Second, madam sizes you up: nipples must pointedly stand out like a bulb of a cocoa pod, and a beautiful face. Thirdly, she must be a virgin. Oh, lastly, the sum of $1200.00 to make the trip. It is an unwritten oath never to expose the business of madam. The penalty for snitching on madam is death. Your head cut off your body, phew, just like that. Didn’t we see when the leader cuts off Blessing’s head with a machete after catching her with a cellphone, assuming she has been communicating with someone?
After the required number of girls have paid their required fees, the madam initiates them into a herbal and voodoo society. They are stripped naked, their pubic hair scraped and burnt and mixed with the blood of a ringed-neck white chicken and smeared into the wounds pierced at their backs. The ceremony ends by lying down in a coffin and take an oath to Aunty Alero (Omoni Oboli). “I Ehi, do swear that if I dare cross my sponsors, I will find myself in a coffin, and so shall it be.”The ceremony ends with the girls receiving passports. Lastly, they are packed in a school bus and driven across the border into Burkina Faso.
The construct of my opinion stems from the postscript, “Oloture,” meaning, “Endurance.” This movie is not about endurance. We can comfortably call it “subduance.” Undercover personnel of the Scoop is planted and embedded in the Lagos prostitution ring to investigate human trafficking. She’s a virgin, alright, that barely escapes a greasy older bear of a man, who takes his blue pills and his condom on hand, ready to pounce on her and devour her in a single bite. Oloture narrowly escapes through a bathroom window even as she scrapes her elbow.
In another instance, Oloture did not, however, outsmart the bigshot, Philip, who drugged and raped and deflower her innocence. Alero invited Oloture to an exclusive party in the heart of Lagos. She felt Oloture: her butt, breast, and posture, at that party and felt right about her. As a final test, Oloture was to hang out with Sir Philip, a wealthy politician. “Let me take you around to show you the splendor of my estate.” The show of splendor turns out to be drugging of Oloture, raping and deflowering the young journalist. She won the trust of Alero to join the group of women to be exported to Italy.
One thing, however, Oloture got carried away. She is sold on going abroad; you may think she turned yellow. I must think so too. At this point, she has committed unethical journalistic principles by succumbing to the transgressions against her. All she does is to make a note of it in her diary. The next time she meets Emeka, her boss, this is the conversation they have.
Emeka, “You haven’t been taking my calls…? You are acting strange….What is going on? Are you going to say something or not? What happened at the party?”
Oloture, “Nothing. Just a party. Rich people doing what they love to do. I meet the trafficker. She has agreed to take me to Europe.”
Emeka, “Well, that’s what we wanted, right?”
Oloture, “The story is not finished.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am saying that there’s so much more to this story that needs to be told.”
Emeka, “I don’t know where this is coming from. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not up for conversation anymore. It’s over. I need you back at the office. You’re off the story.”
Oloture, “Look, Emeka, this is no longer your story. It is now my story. Some so many people need to be brought down. And I will get to the end of it, with or without you.”
The terse conversation between Emeka and Oloture makes me believe if I could whisper this to you, that Emeka is falling in love with his partner, Oloture. But the partner has tasted the part of the world from which she cannot turn away from. Remember? She’s embedded in a dangerous criminal ring, the script says. We see Oloture go through the ritual and the animal sacrifice; lie in the coffin and take the oath. She witnesses the beheading of Blessing. And worst of all, she lost her virginity to Sir Philip. Oloture invested a lot in the enterprise. She has crossed the Rubicon, and boards the bus, and crosses the border to Burkina Faso.
By Oloture and Emeka single-handedly pursuing this mission seems false. No single journalist can go after a well-fortified billion-dollar smuggling operation, like going after a neighborhood crook. And looking at Emeka standing at the border watching his partner hurled into trafficking abroad, with no help from the Nigerian Federal Bureau of Investigation, does not ring true. The script steals itself its goal.
In Manso’s Potomanto, it takes Adane, Kathy, Susan, and Alice, all officials of the law, in a beautiful plot design to bust Bankole: Adane and Alice estranged couples. Adane ad Susan in love, and all in the pursuit of Bankole. Oloture has this plot defect. Even as linear as the story wants to be, the writer should have established supporting plots to embellish the story. Emeka could not even get help from the law. It even seems he’s running a parallel private investigation with the Nigerian Federal.
For instance, Majid Michel, Ramsey Nouah, Jim Iyke go in pursuit of criminal gangs. If one gets confronted with a challenge to save a partner from being abducted, all hell will break loose. Majid will run through Lagos traffic, as Bill did in Being Mrs. Elliot. Fly over cars, his pen thrown far away, and a gun he snatches from an officer standing by, way up in the air, shouting, “Give me the way, give me the way!” Blossom lamely stands there, like a baby losing its toy to a bully. He didn’t go back to Sir Philip like he promises, “We’re coming for you and your sick friends.” Sad.