An Nwa Boi Story
A Kayode Kasum Film present Stan Nze (Afamefuna), Kanyo O. Kanayo (Odogwu) Alex Ekubo (Paul), Atlanta Bridget Johnson (Amaka), Segun Arinze (CSP Gidado). Director of Photography, Emmanuel Igbkeke; Writer, Anyanwu Sandra Adaora; Director, Kayode Kalsum; Producers, Olawumi Fajemirokua, Kenechuwukwu Egbu, Alabi Omobayowa. © 2023
Afamefuna merely celebrates the Igbo man’s business acumen: “The Igbos have the inner eyes to know the right place for business.” Their business ingenuity and the wild wind drive in pursuit of fortune can make an ordinary man like me look like a sissy. They have an immeasurable but enviable drive about them. Kayode’s Afamefuna treatise is an appropriate subject of George Orwell’s Art is Propaganda.” Kayode Kasum is simply blowing the ethnic Igbo horn to the point of glorification. To wit:
“An Igbo Man doesn’t beg. An Igbo Man mustn’t steal. Hard work. It’s not a charm. Igbo is beautiful. The Igbo business empire…It’s built on core values like brotherhood and hard work.” “I will teach you something the university won’t teach you…. Many years ago, especially after the war…. (shouts) Afemefuna!”
He jumps in his seat, “Sir!”
“Afamefuna!”
“Yes, Sir!”
Odogwu holds on to his two ears and calls again, “Afemefuna!”
Afam holds on to his two ears as well, “Sir!”
(Beat) “War did something to us. War is not good. Many years ago, business in Igboland collapsed, especially after the war. Igbo people doing business, if you have ten thousand pounds in your accounts, you are given only twenty pounds. We started with that, working hard, struggling, and slowly building and rising until we arrived here. Igbo is beautiful.”
A Nwa Boi Story. Yes, we agree that Afamefuna (Stan Nze), the story’s lead character, is a village boy brought into the city, wet behind his ears like Ponmile’s (Toni Afolayan) father did one morning and handed him over to be apprenticed for one day in the auto mechanic shop in Mokalik (2019)—a sober tale of apprenticeship in a mechanic shop. Mokalik introduces us to the universal College of Learning trade in classrooms without a hallowed wall. Odogwu assures us up there when he addresses little Afam, stressing, “Igbo is beautiful.”
The thrill in Mokalik ends on a good note. Certificates are awarded even as crumpled as they could be after the completion of training, unlike in Afamefuna, where a well-behaved, honest, and promising student like Afam is awarded management of a store. It’s a little bloody here in Afemefuna, though. The central theme here is betrayal, while love could be a minor theme. The film starts with the interrogation of Afam by GSP Gidado (Segun Arinze).
I have a personal story—a digression sort of—about Paul (Alex Ekubo) and Afamefuna’s relationship plot. In secondary school, I slept in a room with many bunk beds away from boarding home with a fellow student partner, not a friend, but attended the same school, Ahmadiyya Secondary School for Boys, and the same class. This Joe was a fancy talker and a dresser and couldn’t find time to study. He stole my grade card and erased my name–true story. When I confronted him, he almost murdered minor me for disgracing him, he said. There are such people. Paul is such a character: this clean-cut city rat. He believes in dressing nicely, drinking a beer or two, or smooshing his boss, Odogwu’s daughter. He messed himself up that way.
Then, too, he dabbled in the Hausa, Danladi conglomerate’s bid to take over Odogwu’s building material store. You bet Paul got off the table with a reasonable sum to get Hausa invaders to buy Igbo business. Can you imagine? Danladi Brothers company sabotages Odogwu’s shipment waiting at the harbor, but it is saved only by Afam’s swiftness and goodness. He got to the port, pulled some strings, and released the shipment. Good job, Afam. When Odogwu promotes and hands over a store to Afam, Paul is offended and animus toward Afam for “stealing” his good fortune. Afam has always been good to him, Paul. Yet Paul’s bitterness towards Afam comes to a head; after presumably accusing Afam of stealing his rightful fortune, and adds insult to injury when he marries Amaka.
Amaka had not taken to Afam. She wants the roughrider, Paul—an epicurean of sorts. Narcissist! Paul’s character doesn’t care much about tomorrow; he wants to live today. Only today. He’s a bad boy—one of those spoilt brats who can swear to their mother’s milk that they won’t hurt you in one minute and go on breaking your heart in the next. All he wants is to live big on Amaka’s money, which she, too, pilfers from her dad. Amaka must have been tired of Paul’s lies but not want him dead. I mean, tired only in Paul’s absence. Those first love. She still always had Paul at the bottom of her heart; see her cry in the scene when Afam breaks the news of Paul’s demise. She cries not for Afam’s DNA discovery about the boy but for her loss—the death of Paul.
The beef between Afam and Paul reached a fever pitch. Just now, Paul is having two counts of defeats. Afam stole his good fortune with the company and went on to steal his intended wife, Amaka, with whom he had a pregnancy. Paul doesn’t want to take defeat lying down; he turns into Afam’s blackmailer. Even when Afam volunteered to pay his loan with the gangsters, he kept bugging Afam for more money. He even threatened to tell the world about his secret rendezvous with Amaka and her little son, Lontana. By so doing, Paul has overplayed his hand, and Afam has come to the end of the road. Something gives. Paul is one day found dead on a soccer field!
I feel Kayode Kasum is writing an Ode to the supremacy of Igbo ethnicity. I understand. They are a tribe that was, according to my ignorant mind, marginalized after the Civil War. We may not go over those war wounds. Those are incidents in the life of an Igbo man Odogwu doesn’t want to visit. An Igbo man to have weathered those gruesome years and started life with only twenty dollars each to a household was an unequal feat. Now, in our present day, the Igbo man has grown into a mammoth economic giant in Nigeria.
Rolake didn’t weigh heavily on the human relationship between two Igbo men, as Afam and Paul personify here in the microcosm. We see how Odogwu hammers the Igbo ethnic drive and money-making morals into the ears of Afam yet never stresses the humanity-to-humanity aspect. The only area I found fallacy in Kayode’s Igbo supremacy treatise, bedecked in brotherhood for a fellow Igbo, is the biblical Cain and Abel brotherhood myth: Cain: “Let us go out to the field,” and when they were in the field, Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him. I’ve got it; Rolake says, “Never go rouge on an Igbo Man!
Afamefuna’s gross Nigerian box office take-home was a handsome 55 million Naira in Nigeria alone this month. I have been following Kayode for a little bit. Kambili: Whole 30 Yards (2020), Sugar Rush (2019), and Soole (2021) are some of the works I have reviewed and published on this site, and all will be listed in volume ll of Nollywood Film Reviews. In Sugar Rush, Kayode had a ball with the youthful Nolly crop of girls like Adesua Etomi, Bisola Aiyeola, and Bimbo Ademoye. See them fighting to keep the $800,000 from crooks and all. In Soole, the passengers on the bus to Enugu on Christmas Eve almost murdered one another over a duffle bag full of United States dollars. Kayode’s characters always stumble on some fortune. Afamefuna ends in tragedy for a difference.