Lou-Ellen Clara Films, Adunni Ade Production Film Tribe present Sola Sobowale (Ifeoma) Aduni Ade (Sister Veronica), Femi Jacobs (Ifebuchi), Lateef Adedemiji (Julius), Shawn Faqua (Driver), Soibifaa Dokubo (Yunisa) Mike Afolarin (Maxwell), Meg Otanwa (Justina), Bukonmi Oluwashina, Kelechi Udegbe, Gold Ikponmwosa (Pastor Oko), Teniola Aladesi (Clara). Director, Kayode Kasum; Producers, Aduni Ade, Lou-Ellen Clara, Writers, Stephen Okonkwo. © 2021
A literati once warned reviewers as critics on literary projects, “Have you come close to your subject? Did you get close enough to read its face and proper anatomy? Did you look at it twice, its tissues, and muscular systems; for the third time, and maybe a fourth look, at it? The beating heart with a bundle of muscles, tissues, and fibers. And the pathology of it all? Go back and take another look at the heart. This carries the spirit, the embodiment of the soul. Then tell me, do you quite know the subject you want to dissect and tell the world your findings?” The Author.
The above conversation pertains to my experience with Soolé, the movie. That was the mistake I made with it. Indeed, I never took a second look at it. I dismissed it as a farce. Just on an impulse, I, however, look in on it again. My God! Lo and behold! Athena, Saraswati, and all the goddesses of creativity in art and literature wouldn’t have forgiven me. Upon my second attempt at watching Soolé, I found a piece of art, a literary gem tucked away, and way away in its crevices. What the Yorubas or Nigerians call Soolé, is what Sierra Leoneans call Poda Poda. Ghanians call it Tro-tro. A teeming and nourishing ground for local drama.
Let me put you straight on the story as it all started. A Catholic Sister Veronica (Aduni Ade), haggles fare with the coach Driver (Shawn Faqua), to Enugu in a heated Christmas season. This is followed by another client who wants the Driver to deliver her a midsize valise to an unknown person in Enugu. She generously pays her due fare and gives him a tip for his cold water. That said, the coach gets on its merry way to Enugu. Before long, and before leaving Lagos, the coach takes in a young lady Justina (Meg Otanwa) who has a valise similar to the one the Driver took charge of delivering. Soon, the coach is full of passengers all bound for Enugu.
Dear readers, Writer Steven Okonkwo sets us up with a microcosmic Nigerian community including all major ethnicities, Cultists, Christians, Muslims, and Born-Again Pastor, the likes of The Meeting (2012), in which a cross-section of people––Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, rich and poor, meet in the reception room in front of the minister of land. It is as riotous as it is funny. In Soolé, the born-again Pastor Oko (Gold Ikponmwosa), one of the ill-fated on board, takes the stage, to preach the word of God. Even though most passengers were against his voice especially standing over them, yet, with one hymn song, almost everyone joined in singing and the song woke the Christian spirit on board, on this trip to Enugu.
Then the coach is waylaid by a machine-gun-toting gang of robbers, in demand of the midsize, green valise on board. All passengers alight from the coach and lay face down in the middle of the road, while the search goes on. They get the valise belonging to Justina (Meg Otanwa), which the robbers later find, and therefore disappointed, hold nothing but plastic sex toys. At this point, I should bring in Oby’s line she expressed in Ijogbon (2023). Before she chunks the handful of diamonds they were fighting over, into the murky river: “The diamonds are not a blessing …they bring out the worst in us…not anymore!”
One of the passengers, John (Lateef Adedemiji), had had an idea of his own to claim the valise but was discovered and tied to a tree by the wayside. But then like we say, curiosity kills the cat–– all passengers decide to see the content of this valise that has drawn so much attention. And all gathered around, and the valise was found to be full of crispy United States dollars. The money in the valise becomes the apple of discord among the passengers. While most have agreed on sharing the loot, Ifeoma (Sola Sobewale) of King of Boys: The Return fame, hatched a plan of her own, and her henchmen attack the coach, kidnap the vulnerable passengers, and take them to her hermitage. Here, at the hermitage, we find another side of Ifeoma. She illegally kidnaps and harbors young women, here, her hired men have sex with them, get them pregnant, and later sell the babies for money. You may not believe me if I said so, that the ill-begotten money in the valise is Ifeoma’s made up of selling babies abroad.
This is how Nollywood cooks us an allegorical story, by loading all the different characters, in a coach bound for Enugu. Maybe the writers didn’t want to bring tribal, religious, and class sentiments to the fore of the drama. But they are there in plain sight. Now here is a man who abandons his pregnant wife to follow wherever the money in the valise goes (greediness). Joseph (Lateef Adedemuji) is tied up on a tree by the roadside in the middle of nowhere because he wants to steal the wrong valise (thief). By the resolution of this movie, only a few of the passengers left as most were killed, including the man who abandoned his wife, the Born-Again priest. Ifebuchi (Femi Jacobs) closes the dilemma of the writers by applying the voodoo magic that he uses to overpower Ifeoma and her gang of killers.
Kayode Kasum and his partner writer Steven Okonkwo curated characters similar to the characters, Ralf, Jack, Piggy, and Simon, in William Golding’s allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies. Better yet, the pilgrims in Canterbury Tales. Here, Driver is the host, of the pilgrims on the journey to Enugu, this Christmas season. Imagine the innocent Hausa, Yinusa (Soibifaa Dokubo), the savagery of Ifeoma, and the religious hypocrisy of Sister Veronica (Aduni Ade), who couldn’t be a model for Justina; she has been there and done that before she wears the robe. And the Born Again Pastor Oko (Ikponmwos Gold), who’ll scam fellow passengers by selling them religious leaflets––relics as the Pardoner in Canterbury Tales––and Ifebuchi, a college Professor, who has to resort to voodoo magic and get away with the money. The ensuing dialogue exchanges between these passengers, present them as nothing more than allegorical elements used by the writers. It is like they are (writers) telling the world out loud through a microscope: This is what everyday Nigeria looks like!