Nollywood Prayer Warriors–The Movie Just Got Real By Chinedu Ekeke

My friends understand my
reluctance in referring to the
Nigerian movie industry as
“Nollywood”. For me, the name
represents all that is wrong with the
industry: lack of imagination, half-
baked dramas passed down as
movies, regurgitated scripts. I don’t
understand why we can’t name ours
Tinapa, Surulere or New Haven so
as to represent locations where
these movies are acted, or industry
players gather more often for
meetings. Forcing an industry to
sound like its American counterpart
is the worst form of intellectual
laziness.
This is even more so when the
original industry they sought to
imitate was named after a physical
location. And for an industry which
stock in trade should be creativity,
that imitation in its identity
highlights an unwillingness to bring
newness to the world of movies. In
their lack of originality, they
unwittingly send out a signal about
their low standards. Their movies
carry this badge into every home.
But this isn’t about their name. This
is about their blindness to the
Nigerian reality and their seeming
forgetfulness of the line between
screen dramas and real life
challenges. For the purpose of this
piece, I will still refer to the industry
as Nollywood.
In Nigerian movies, every life
challenge is solved by prayers.Full
stop. The brain is rarely challenged
to explore physical possibilities, to
soberly recall causes of effects, and
apply solutions that could be
lasting, and ultimately help others to
not get into similar situation. It’s
not that prayers don’t work; it is
just that Nigeria’s problems aren’t
in any way related to insufficient
prayers.
Recently, Nollywoodians and some
of their singing counterparts
convened somewhere to ‘pray
against untimely death’ in the
entertainment industry. They
probably assumed the spirit of death
was after their industry, a reason for
which prayers were invoked. It was
a real-life replay of all they’ve been
acting and feeding on, a typical
Nigerian movie.
Well, their fear is understandable.
Last year, a couple of actors in the
movie industry died. And since
death is a mystery, safety against it,
at least in the interim, can only be
acquired from divinity. So they
prayed, and sang, and clapped, and
danced. They decreed, and cast
away the spirit of death, and then
believed their decrees had been
established.
Well, it isn’t a prayer issue. I do
believe in prayers and their ability to
move mountains. But I also believe
in understanding such basic issues
as life expectancy. It is low in
Nigeria. And it is that way because
of bad governance. All the well-
governed countries in the world
have very amazing life expectancy
years. Actually, life has got so good
now that people are expected to live
a lot longer than the biblical seventy
years. Improvement in modern
medicine has made this possible. In
Monaco, it is 89 years. Japan is 83.
France is 81. UK is 80, Canada 81,
United States 78, Nigeria 52,
Afghanistan 48, Zimbabwe 51,
Somalia 50. While the serious
countries are enjoying longevity past
the biblical 70 years, the unserious
ones can’t even live near 70, except,
of course, those in government,
their business fronts and associates
and their relatives who could all
afford medical trips to these
countries where healthcare system
is working.
It should surprise everybody that
Nollywood prayer warriors do not
know this. There are too many
reasons why people die in their
numbers in Nigeria, and lack of
adequate healthcare system ranks
top.
It is also not true that the untimely
death has been peculiar to only
Nigeria’s entertainment industry. In
fact, what is happening there
currently is a reflection of how bad
it is in the entire Nigerian society.
People die in their numbers! Our
huge population silences major
tragedies that strike many families.
People only complain about the
ones they know. And in a population
of 160 million, how many ‘ordinary’
citizens will their deaths get to be
heard by the entire nation?
Countless deaths can’t – and never
will – make newspaper headlines.
By January 30th, my friend, Ifeanyi
Umeh was buried. He died a month
earlier, during the yuletide. He was
29. We knew in our university years
while I was a campus reporter in
Students Union law court. Ifeanyi
was a counsel representing an
impeached SUG President in a suit
filed by the president himself. His
brilliance dazzled everybody and
made the Students’ Court the
cynosure of all eyes on campus.
What killed him? He wasn’t even
sick. He just slumped during a
wedding ceremony, conked out and
died after two days. It’s easy to
point accusing fingers at witches
and wizards, or wicked uncles and
‘village people’ – who themselves
are victims of government-induced
poverty and lack, and may not even
be connected in any way to the sad
incident. If there was a functional
hospital in his village where he
slumped, two days could have been
enough to revive him.
There are many other Ifeanyis. Our
roads alone have consistently cut
short the lives of many. And far from
the ignorance of merchants of
religion, the deaths aren’t caused by
witches and wizards or ‘blood-
sucking demons’. The deaths are
caused by roads in total disrepair.
Between the time CD John and MC
Loph fell victims of our terrible
roads and now, who knows how
many unknown youths who have
been consumed?
Our Nollywood prayer warriors
should therefore understand the
challenge that we all face: that bad
governance is robbing us of long life
in Nigeria, and that in their movies,
people should be made to know how
this evil thrives. They can highlight,
using the instrumentality of their
movies, how bad leadership cuts
lives short, instead of the lies about
witches and wizards in the villages
which their movies portray.
But they may not. Our Nollywood
actors and actresses – many of
them – were part of those who
endorsed the presidential aspiration
of Goodluck Jonathan even when he
had no history of performance in
public office. OnyekaOnwenu’s
‘Run…Jonathan…run’ song still
plays in my head.
Before you start defending the
‘rights’ of Nollywood players to
choose whoever they want, I should
state here that such choices must be
made with a clear reference to the
candidate’s antecedents. Endorsing
people for the sake of the money
they will dole out to an industry
lacking in creativity should be
frowned at by commentators. The
choice Nollywood made in the last
election – and they helped stir up
the attendant sentiments among
women and men who watch them –
still haunts us all till today.
Instead of prayers against untimely
death, they should begin now to
define what good governance means
to them, the role of government
corruption in citizens’ untimely
death, and the right mix of qualities
they seek in those they want to put
in government next time. That’s
more reasonable. It isn’t like praying
is unreasonable. It’s just that
bothering God with a demand to
clean up the mess you created isn’t
godliness in any way. It is folly.
The countries that enjoy over 80
and 70 years lifespan did not get
there by prayers. In fact, many of
them aren’t even known for
endorsing any religion at all. They
are simply reaping the benefits of
responsible leadership. Their
leaders, rather than steal from their
treasury like we witness here, invest
massively in health care, education
and research, security and
infrastructure. In such countries,
local celebrities do not just back
candidates who give them free
money to share for electoral
contests, they back those who they
are sure, based on their past, can
keep the society functioning
optimally to the benefit of the
majority.
When next Nollywood wants to cast
and bind the spirit of untimely
death, they should remember that no
Japanese wastes energy doing that:
for a parent in Japan knows that
their baby born today will live up to
83 years (except an earthquake
strikes, or something just goes
awfully wrong).
China doesn’t have churches and
mosques littered everywhere. It is
even doubtful if the country officially
recognizes God, but the average
Chinese lives 74 years. That’s how
countries work.
Let men handle the affairs of men
excellently, then and there God will
manifest. Even in the countries that
don’t know God, his wonders are
implemented by responsible leaders.
Let’s leave God out of our
wickedness and rebuild the country
we’ve killed.
You can join Chinedu as
@Nedunaija on Twitter, for the
continuation of the conversation