Nollywood's Evolution and Staying Power

Nollywood Associations and Guilds 1

Source: afromixent.com

1. Actors’ Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Emeka Ike/Ibinabo Fiberesima, 08033256486, 08062777777
2. Alliance of Nollywood Guilds and Associations (ANOGA), Comrade Victor Ashaolu, 08067314252.
3. Arewa Film Makers Association (AFMA), Aisha Halilu,  aisha.halilu@gmail.com
4. Association of Itsekiri Performing Artistes (AIPA), Prince Young Emiko, 08023213980
5. Association of Movie Producers (AMP), Zik Zulu Okafor, zulufilms@yahoo.com
6. Association of Nigeria Theatre Arts Practitioners (ANTP), Comrade Victor Ashaolu, 08067314252.

The Feminine Mistake

Artwork by Lorna Simpson; source: more.com

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)--I first knew there was such a thing as blue mascara because of Aunty Chinwe. She came to visit my mother one Saturday, her braids held sleekly at her neck, her caftan’s silver embroidery gleaming and her lashes the bright color of a crayon. Against her dark skin, they were striking.

“Aunty, your lashes are blue!” I said.

I was 11.

“Yes, my dear. It’s blue mascara,” she told me with a smile. She was always smiling, eyes crinkled, teeth very white.

I liked most of my mother’s friends—funny women, kind women, brilliant women, and there was the one soft-spoken man—but only to Aunty Chinwe would I say something like that. Aunty, your lashes are blue!

She had an air of endless tolerance, of magnanimous grace; she turned every room she entered into a soft space free of the thorny possibility of consequences. With children, her manner was that of an adult just about to hand out lavishly wrapped gifts, not for a birthday or Christmas but simply because children deserved gifts.

I sneaked into the parlor whenever she visited, and sat in a corner, and eavesdropped on her conversations with my mother. Because she drank Fanta elegantly from a glass, I eschewed bottles and began to drink my Coke from a glass. I loved simply to look at her: petite, graciously fleshy, with a dark-dark complexion that made people think she was from Ghana or Gambia or somewhere not Nigeria where beautiful women had indigo skin. At her clinic she gave injections with the gentlest touch.

Raised Catholic, Inspired by Pope Francis

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Onitsha, Nigeria; source: Reuters

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)--As a child, I loved Mass, its swirl of music and rituals. My family went every Sunday to St. Peter’s, the Catholic chapel at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. It was full of perfumed people: gold pendants at women’s throats, their headscarves flared out like the wings of giant butterflies; men’s caftans crisply starched; children in frilly socks and uncomfortable clothes. Mass was as much social as spiritual—an occasion to greet and gossip, to see and be seen, and to leave consoled. I loved watching the priests sweep past, all certainty and majestic robes, behind the sober Mass-servers holding candles. The choir sang in Igbo and English, each song a little plot of joy. I loved the smoky smells, the standing and sitting and kneeling, the shiny metal chalice raised high in air charged with magic and ringing bells. The words of the liturgy were poetry.

Campus Love

Nnenna Omali; source: bellanaija.com

(E. C. Osondu)--I’ll tell you about love.

I know more about this four letter word than you’d expect. On an unrelated note, maybe not totally unrelated, I have always had a little pet peeve. You know I have never liked those musical boys groups like Boy’s To Men and Backstreet Boys crooning on and on about love and loving and winning and losing and running away and coming back to love. What do they know? What have they experienced in their young lives? It is a different thing when a battle-scarred lover like BB King is groaning out such a song. You can tell he’s been there and done that, got the scars, authentic scars to show for it and he’s keeping it real y’all.

Anyway, where was I ?

Yes, as I was saying I was chased out of the university that I attended for one year because of love. I had to take the university entrance exams for a second time to get into the second tier university from which I eventually graduated. This particular kind of love was not the whispering kind. It was rather the kind that screamed and grabbed one by the shirt collar and commanded— follow me. My story is a little bow-legged, but I will uncrook it’s leg for you.

Oriki for Onitsha Market Literature

Source: ecx.images-amazon.com

(Ikhide R. Ikheloa)--Someone once asked me to respond to the interesting question: Is Nigerian English the same as Nigerian pidgin? 

My response: There is pidgin and many variants are spoken in Nigeria. And there is English and many variants are spoken in Nigeria. Debating the idea of one Nigerian English is as useful as saying that there is ONE recipe for cooking egusi soup (yes, soup, NOT sauce!). 

There are ways of speaking, and ways of expression that are distinct to various sections Nigeria. And it is often possible to tell where someone is from based on how they handle the English language. Some of the best masters of English are from Nigeria. And some of the worst are from Nigeria. What is mildly hilarious is that it is the latter that usually spends precious time correcting the former. There is something about some Nigerians and the attainment of knowledge or whatever; they like to wear it loudly like a Rolex watch,