Golden Effects presents, Ademola Adedoyin (Obadare Adeyemi), Chedima Ekile (Stella Maxwell), Kunle Afolayan (Jire), Zack Orji (Dominic Maxwell), Tina Mba (Mrs. Maxwell) Ayo Akinweale (Oba Adeyemi), Binta Ayo Mogaji (Olori Omolade), Ken Erics (Augustine), Peter Johnson (Pascal), Akinrule Akinola (Arinze). Producer, Lasun Ray-Eyiwumi; Director, Kunle Afolayan, Shola Dede. © 2017.
I am not that old to have witnessed the Biafran or, Nigerian civil war, or at my rudimentary age in life and school when this incident in Nigerian history was taking place. The tragedy that befell Nigeria, where brothers killed brothers, has been over forty years. But to date, the remnant of that experience persists, and I personally call it, from the Igbo point of view, ‘The Ojuku Effect,’ and cross over Edo State into Yorubaland, their point of view is, ‘Gowan Effect’. Peace was forged in the country, though a shaky and untrusty one, like a dam hanging over a village.
I never have seen tribes that are so suspicious of one another than the Yoruba and the Igbo in Nigeria. Of course, popular media has been bringing so much of the story to us, but I’ve never seen any that follows up with a solution to the tribal demise plaguing these most populous tribes in the country, Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa.
My Igbo and Hausa Wife didn’t address the solution and we see two young kids run daggers into their chests because the parents couldn’t accept their union. In King of Thugs, Sylvester Madu (Igbo) his character named Dave Ojuku (Ojuku?) locks horns with Kelvin Brooks Ikeduba (Yoruba) over similar hatred of one’s tribe, when the Yoruba brother was killed in an incident, that started with Anita Babalola, Yoruba woman found in the company of Igbos. The incident ended with a Yoruba death, followed by a bloodbath between the two tribes, which continued to the end of the film with no solution. Here in The Bridge, I thought sure Kunle will attempt at solving, what’s eating the Nigerian popular ethnics to be so animus to one another. He didn’t. What made me think so, is the title of the project, The Bridge. Well metaphorically, it could be a bridge too far to cross.
A bridge by definition could be a structure built to span a physical obstacle such as a body of water, a relationship between a community or people. It could be a section of music that will return to the original, like when we hear James Brown commands his instruments in Sex Machine, “Take it to the Bridge!” Upon seeing the title of this film, I applaud Afolayan that finally, we’ve got someone who is going to address the subject squarely and positively. Poor him, he couldn’t. I guess it’s too sticky a problem to toy with even in a popular medium.
The story of Stella Maxwell (Chedinma Ekile) the rich and educated Igbo girl, a medical doctor, and Obadare Adeyemi (Ademola Adedoyin), an ordinary Yoruba prince, an airplane pilot in his own right, is one of the stories that demonstrate the ever-growing concerns of the youths in Nigeria looking forward. Nigerians can adore their children to bring home an Oyibo but cannot swallow that same kid bringing home a wife from another tribe. The parents living with the sins of yesteryear, won’t give a chance to the young to unite.
The Bridge I presumed would wrestle with this subject, when two young adults fall madly in love with one another, each having burgeoning careers in medicine and piloting with brighter futures ahead of them. But alas, one is Yoruba prince and the other is an upper class, young Igbo doctor. “It can’t be.” “It won’t be!” Cried both parents.
Dominic Maxwell, the Igbo, (to his daughter) “You came all the way to tell us this, a family we do not know. Ask for your hand in marriage and you give him your consent? Your daughter got herself married to that bastard, she told us about.”
Steller’s Mother, “A Yoruba boy. Yoruba, one who eats palm oil soup. Yoruba, eh?”
Dominic Maxwell, “Leave us (beat) Now Stella.”
Stella, “Yes Papa.”
Dominic Maxwell, “My Sweet mother. From the day you were born, through your growing years…your schooling years, through your years as the daughter of this family, you’ve never once disappointed me. Never! …in fact, sometimes I worried about you, wondering how a child can be such an epitome of perfection. You never once made me angry… Now this matter of, you’re telling us that, you want to marry some punk from the South West, I will consider it as the first error, your first error in this whole wide world. After all, you’re just a child…Don’t interrupt me.” I will forgive you for this error just this once. You will never see that boy again… you will never again mention his name… and you will never marry anyone from anywhere unless our tribe, our culture, and our tradition.”
On the other side in the Yorubaland, Oba Adeyemi’s father:
King, “Do you want a stranger to be your queen? A girl we have not yet seen. A girl we have not yet known any of her parents. Then you go and bring somebody, some nonentity, and declare her your wife! I hope you understand my words. Now you go there and cancel that proposal. And don’t let me hear anything about that in this palace.”
Doth stands the situation between Oba and Stella getting married. The two lovebirds take chance on each other and marry without the consent of the families. Abominations! After the marriage and the cloud of imminent danger I sense gathering over the two families, we are heading for an untold tragedy, Romeo and Juliet turned upside down.”
Stella has wreck at night and dies in the Yoruba forest. Oba breaks the news to her family, and the family wants their daughter home for funeral and burial. Jire (Kunle Afolayan), Oba’s pilot friend, warns Oba not to follow the body to Igboland but he refuses. On his way back home after he delivers the body of Stella, he’s waylaid by Augustine (Ken Erics) an unfortunate suitor of Stella, and his gang, stab him and bury him alive in the forest. He’s found alive by the police but before they could get him in town, he has died. Both Stella’s body in a mahogany coffin is placed side by side the plank coffin he was laid in alive. We still get to see the love birds holding hands in their afterlife.
The Igbo girl dies in the Yorubaland and the Yoruba boy dies in the Igboland. What an irony. Parents of both Oba and Stella go on to bury their dead.
Again, I must visit the title of this film. Why “The Bridge?” Whereas the movie is made intendedly to found a solution to the hatred between Yoruba and Igbo, we can rightly refer to it as The Bridge. But to name this classic as The Bridge could only be justified by the fact that Oba is waylaid in the bridge and attacked and buried alive in the forest nearby. To be honest I almost wanted to call your film, The Breach.
Should the preservation of our culture bring our damnation?
NOTE: The Yoruba and Igbo are not preserving culture, they simply destroying and causing damnation for the young generation due to the “Gowan effect” and the “Ojuku effect,” trust me.