As Our Actors Seek Public Offices, by Charles Novia

I applaud the guts of some of my colleagues in Nollywood who have been coming out on social networks with Posters and Press Releases about their intentions to run for elections for Public Offices in 2015.

And I really must commend them. Wholeheartedly.

They deserve a platform to contest. And that is as far as my commendation goes. Because the question they should be asking themselves should be:

1. Do they really think screen popularity translates to poll popularity? If they do, then they are in for the greatest shocker of their lives.

2. Have they made deep political incursions into their wards and councils to intimate the voters about their ambitions? I am talking about real tours of political duties and not some silly wave-of-the-hand tour at the fawning crowd who are more delighted at seeing the screen gods than going out to vote.

3. Are they just coming out to declare their intentions to contest, knowing in their hearts that they stand no chance of even getting the tickets from their Parties but just hoping to be game changers by ‘settlement’ in which later in the next dispensation they get one plum Government appointment?

4. If they are following in the footsteps of their predecessors in the industry, RMD, KOK, Tony Oneweek Muonagor, Onyeka Onwenu etc then they need to know something. Those guys WORKED for their positions. They did not just wake up one day and jumped into politics.
They went through the painstaking rigours of humility, patience and political servitude. In other words, for you to be a king, you must get off your high horse and turn to a servant in politics. Your popularity ends at the doorstep of your political godfathers.

5. The most important question to ask is this: Do they have the money to sustain their campaign? Personal funds and private support funds will be expended to fuel ambitions and at the end of the day, a loss is emotionally and financially scarring.

6. Do they have the balls for dirty politicking? Because it’s gonna get dirty. Very dirty. So dirty.

I write this as a prick of their conscience. Those who know me amongst them, as I suppose all of them do, would attest to the fact that I speak with no fear nor favour if I consider you my friend or colleague. This is not any different. So that we don’t get it wrong. please know that I whole-heartedly would canvass for many in my sector to be part of the political process. But that career curve takes incisive planning and ego-breaking subservience.

That they are coming out is commendable. It takes guts.

It’s just that Nollywood is not structured for political humiliation. It is structured for public adulation. There is no nexus for both in the present scheme of things.

Sources: Charles Novia Daily