Omotola: Women Tell me I'm their Role Model

"Omosexy: The biggest film star you've never heard of." That's how UK's The Sunday Telegraph's Stella Magazine introduces +Omotola Jolade-Ekeinde in a recent interview. The queen of Nollywood spoke to the publication's Ben Arogundade on her career, family, and humanitarian concerns. Below is the full interview.

Omosexy': The biggest film star you’ve never heard of 

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, aka 'Omosexy’, is the queen of Nollywood. She’s appeared in more than 300 films, pulls in 150 million viewers for her reality-television show and has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

She scores a zero on the Hollywood Richter scale. She has never starred in a major motion picture. Her most recent film, Last Flight to Abuja, means nothing to devotees of Netflix and LoveFilm.

"Again, Genevieve Misses the Point," Azuh Arinze Responds to Genevieve's Reaction

Genevieve with Azuh Arinze

My attention has just been drawn to the twitter handle of Genevieve Nnaji (@GenevieveNnaji1) where she alleged that she did not grant YES International! magazine the interview published in our Vol. 3 No. 15 edition with the caption: ‘I Want God To Bless Me With The Right Man & A Good Family’. 

First, I want to thank her for at least not also denying me. Or even saying that she has never met me. Secondly, I know she resorted to this for two reasons. One – because of the headline. And two – because she confided in a mutual friend of ours that she still hasn’t forgiven YES International! for making its debut on June 19, 2011 with a cover story entitled: ‘All The Men Who Dated And Dumped Genevieve’ which she considered displeasing.

Well, I have always made it clear that my brand of journalism is progressive-minded, not withstanding that I belong to the celebrity journalism genre. Without sounding immodest, I can say with every sense of responsibility that I first encountered Genevieve as a budding actress who needed encouragement at the time, which I gladly offered. And if I can still recollect very well, I don’t think any other journalist has interviewed her as much as I have.

Now, to the main issue: If at all Genevieve had taken time to read the full interview in YES International! instead of the disjointed and abridged ones ruling on the social media, perhaps she would have seen where it was clearly stated in the introduction that the interview was conducted ‘Long before super stardom beckoned’.

Nollywood's Funny Lot: Who's the Funniest?

We know these faces. We see them everyday on our television screen. Some call them clowns; others, buffoons.  But love them or hate them, we know that they're Nollywood's best, skilled and talented comedians, masters of their craft and role models in their own rights. They brighten our day and annoy us in equal measures with both their wit and idiocy. But we love to watch them "display." I stumbled on this old school picture from Azuh Amatus collection (ShowbizPlus with Azuh Amatus) and thought it worth sharing. Take your pick and let us know who your favorite is. (Postscript: RIP Baba Sam Loco Efe, Africa's best and consummate thespian.)

Genevieve Nnaji: "I Want God to Bless Me with the Right Man and A Good Family"

Long before super stardom beckoned, I had this innocent but interesting interview with +Genevieve Ifunanya Nnaji, recalls +AZUH ARINZE, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Yes International Magazine. I must, however, confess that I stumbled on the tape again only days back, while wading through my archives. I’ve transcribed and extracted some of her candid thoughts which she shared with me. Particularly those I consider to still be relevant.

Born on May 3, 1979 into the family of Benedatte and Theophilus Nnaji, Genny, like I enjoy addressing her, hails from Umuebi – Amuzu in Aboh-Mbaise, Imo State. The fourth of her parents’ eight children, she attended Kemstar Nursery and Primary School, Surulere, Lagos; Methodist Girls High School, Lagos and Girls Secondary School, Akwakuma, Owerri, Imo State. Dazzling and delectable, sumptuous and sexy, sweet and svelte, she is unarguably and indisputably the reigning pride of Africa in the make-believe world.

One of our biggest and richest, the single mother of one (Lily) who has in her kitty some of the most coveted award trophies and to her credit some of the most lucrative endorsement deals poured it all out to me. Trust me; you will definitely enjoy this…

Nigerians and Birthdays: How We Celebrate

+Nigerians are, by nature, celebratory animals. Point black. We love our parties, the +Owambes with no apologies. And when we party, we party real big.

Recently, a number of events kept me thinking about how we celebrate, as a people, as a nation. As I researched the topic, I came across Prof. Niyi Akinnaso's beautifully written piece on Nigerians and Birthday Celebrations and thought it's worth sharing, albeit abridged.

"The celebration of birthday anniversaries is one of the acquired cultural practices from the West that NIgerians have overextended in the process of domestication, just as they have overextended the use of titles and honorifics. This is particularly true of the +Yoruba ethnic group, whose cultural and linguistic practices I have had the privilege to study professionally as an anthropologist and linguist. A unique feature of the Yoruba is the encapsulation of their rich cultural tradition in various genres, such as Odu Ifa, Ijala, and Oriki. Unfortunately, much of it has been sidelined by Westernisation, Christianity and Islam.

...perhaps no acquired Western practice is as elaborated by Nigerians as birthday anniversary celebrations. Our forefathers never celebrated birthdays. To start with, in the absence of writing and accurate record keeping, they did not know their exact birthdays... Birthdays are the most ubiquitous and the most elaborated among person-oriented events. In today's literate families, birthday celebrations begin at age 1... The elaboration of these celebrations is particularly evident in adult birthday parties, especially at ages 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80.

Lagos na Waa. Eko for Life

"Lagos has never been, will never be, and has never aspired to be like New York, or anywhere else for that matter. +Lagos has always been indisputably itself, but you would not know this at the meeting of the Nigerpolitan Club, a group of young returnees who gather every week to moan about the many ways that Lagos is not like New York as though Lagos had ever been close to being like New York. Full disclosure: I am one of them. Most of us have come back to make money in Nigeria, to start businesses, to seek government contracts and contacts. Others have come with dreams in their pockets and a hunger to change the country, but we spend all our time complaining about Nigeria, and even though our complaints are legitimate, I imagine myself as an outsider saying: Go back where you came from! If your cook cannot make the perfect panini, it is not because he is stupid. It is because Nigeria is not a nation of sandwich-eating people and his last oga did not eat bread in the afternoon. So he needs training and practice. And +Nigeria is not a nation of people with food allergies, not a nation of picky eaters for whom food is about distinctions and separations. It is a nation of people who eat beef and chicken and cow skin and intestines and dried fish in a single bowl of soup, and it is called assorted, and so get over yourselves and realize that the way of life here is just that, assorted."

"The first commenter wrote: Rubbish post. Who cares? The second wrote: Thank God somebody is finally talking about this. Na wa for arrogance of nigerian returnees..."

 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

What do you say?

Fela's Right?: Shuffering and Shmiling, and the God Question

Remember that 2003 New Scientist survey which suggested that Nigerians are the the happiest people on earth? I'm not sure how many Nigerians actually believed that. But a lot of us did reference it once in a while to buttress our bonhomie nature. Well, Forbes magazine thought ten years was enough for us to bask in that euphoria. So, in January this year Forbes burst our bubble by informing us that Nigeria is now twentieth among the saddest nations on earth. So much for (un)happiness surveys!

Well, my intention is not to ask what, if anything, has changed with the Nigerian peoples and/or character in the last ten years to warrant such a swift shift from one extreme to the other, but to revisit the perennial question: How is it possible for such happiness (with or without the New Scientist survey) that we witness in Nigeria to co-exist with the obvious hardships most Nigerians experience?

No doubt, there are as many responses to the question as there are Nigerians, and more. It's said that joy and smiles are of God. Cheerfulness has a gravitational pull to it, like nectar attracting the bee. Little wonder we are naturally drawn to joyful people. Joy is spiritual, as well as valuable in our spiritual life. And as James Martin, SJ, puts it in his Between Heaven and Mirth, "Joy is happiness in God." This joy exists even in the midst of suffering.

Now That We Have A Jesuit Pope...

It’s now a month since the world was pleasantly surprised (on Wednesday, 13 March) with the election of Pope Francis, the 266th Roman Catholic pontiff.  The new pope said in good humor afterwards that his fellow cardinals had chosen him from “the end of the world.”

And by that singular auspicious act of God, the cardinal electors set Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, as the pope of many firsts: the first non-European pope in almost 1,300 years, the first pope from Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere, the first pope to take the name of Francis, and the first Jesuit pope. Ever.

I emerged from the library, where I had been all day, on time to join the BBC’s live coverage wait for the white smoke from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. My eyes glued to my mobile device on my commute home; I couldn’t thank God enough for digital media technology. The intersection of the mundane and the spiritual.  All serving one purpose.  God’s.  And then my delight, my joy about twenty minutes later at the pronouncement of the much-awaited “magic” words: Habemus Papam! (“We Have a Pope”).

London School of Economics Screens First Nollywood Movie

(Entertainment Express)--"This is definitely a cheering news for all lovers of the Nigerian motion picture industry globally known as Nollywood. Recently, the prestigious and famously revered London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), United Kingdom, proudly screened its first ever Nollywood movie, Ije: The Journey...to its multiracial students and stakeholders."

"The Nollywood-Los Angeles collaboration, produced and directed by youthful Chineze Anyaene, a multiple-award winning filmmaker,  was shown at the Global Media and Communications post-graduate program's weekly interaction. The duo of Omotola Jolade-Ekeinde and Genevieve Nnaji are the lead acts in the pulsating and suspense-filled flick. The diverse audience in attendance at the event in the Graham Wallace Room, spanned four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and North America). Also in attendance was the Program Director, Prof. Terhi Rantanen.

"At the post-screening discussion afterwards, the viewers, most of whom were encountering Nollywood for the first time, offered pointed and critical reviews of the film. They discussed its framing of contemporary socio-cultural issues of transnational migration, legal justice, gender representation, identity, stereotypes and family, among others.  Some expressed

Africa My Africa?

"Can the African continent truly afford the luxury of glossing history or sweeping its painful lessons under the carpet in an endeavor to enter mainstream world acceptance, especially of the 'progressive,' 'radical' affirmation? If the history of the African peoples has no significance, then the continent's present claims to existence are sham and do not matter to anyone."

Wole Soyinka, Of Africa

Mediocrity: The Bane of Nigeria's Trouble

"What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys
the very fabric of a country as surely as a war--ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption, and debauchery. Nations enshrine mediocrity as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and other base elements of the society, by silently assenting to the dismantling of systems of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic, racial, political, or special-interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today."

Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country

With this, Achebe acknowledges that the trouble with Nigeria does not rest with its leadership alone. Any Nigerian who accommodates, tolerates, and/or encourages mediocrity in any way contributes to the trouble with Nigeria and the resultant decay in our society. 

Arise, O compatriots

Nigeria's call obey

To serve our fatherland...

The labor of our heroes past

Shall never be in vain...

The Trouble With Nigeria

"The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically
wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership."

Thus, Chinua Achebe diagnosed Nigeria's problem in 1984. Almost thirty years after, what has changed?

O God of creation
Direct our noble cause
Guide our leaders right...

You're What You Read

I had a most beautiful week, two weeks ago.  It was a week of reading.  I read like never before in a very long while.  Voraciously.  It’s like the Spirit, a holy one, of the books, possessed me.  Indeed, an angel of the books touched me. I had woken up at about 2:00 AM and literally pounced on my books, devouring everything on my path.  I read till daybreak and then through the whole day.  I just read and read.  And I am still reading. 

Ah, the joy my reading brought me that first day.  An enduring joy.  You see, my day is most made whenever I’m able to read something before hitting the sack at the end of the day.  But often my busy schedule and the exhaustion it occasions don’t allow me that little indulgence of mine.

So this particular day, as soon as the angel of the books woke me up, all I did was read, read and read.  I read. I kept turning the pages.  I completed two books I’d been reading and started new ones.  I read everything from history to politics, economics, biographies, leadership, personal development, and short stories.  I read Prof. Kenneth Onwuka Dike’s cerebral classic, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830-1885 and his selected speeches, Issues in African Studies and National Education.  I read Robert Greene’s amoral, cunning, ruthless, and equally instructive bold volume, The 48 Laws of Power and Robin Sharma’s international bestseller, Greatness Guide 2: 101 Ways to Reach the Next Level.

Few days later, at a book fair organized by the youth of my parish in view of an essay writing competition (I worked with them on that), I bought three books: Fela: This Bitch of Life (by Carlos Moore) The Caine Prize for African Writing 2011 To See the Mountain and Other Stories, and The Whispering Trees: Short Stories (by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim). I immediately set down to devouring them. That Spirit of reading that possessed me won’t just let me go.  And those three too, I was done with in no time.  I savored the moment.  Every bit of it.

Chinua Achebe: Lessons From A Personal Encounter

I first encountered Professor Chinua Achebe in the early 1990s—through his works, that is.  I had read Things Fall Apart in secondary school and was fascinated by the story of the tragic end of Okonkwo, its main character. Partly, my fascination owed its spark to Pete Edochie’s first-rate interpretation of Okonkwo in the 1980s NTA’s adaptation of Things Fall Apart.

That chance encounter with what is today the most widely read book in modern African literature set off an enduring relationship with the literary giant behind the book.  Ever since, I have read that enduring masterpiece, my all time favorite, countless times. 

My love affair with Things Fall Apart goes beyond its stellar records: an all time bestseller, with over 12 million copies sold in more than 50 languages in 55 years. Its attraction for me lies in its audacity to tell the African story from within. And it tells its story in a way that is as facile as it is fascinating.  Written in 1958, the book boldly challenged the arrogance of the Outsider who arrogated to themselves the right to speak for Africa and by so doing denied its history. 

Africa has a past; it has a history. And that’s what Achebe wants his African readers to know, that “their past…

Yes! Magazine 2nd Annual Lecture: One Month After

Almost a month after the 2nd Annual Yes! International Lecture/Cocktail Party held at the Niteshift Coliseum in Lagos on June 19, accolades still pour in from all corners of the world for an exceptionally successful event. The event, which the media have dubbed "a winner on all fronts," attracted dignitaries and stars from all works of life and had the Guest Speaker, Dr. Leo Stan Ekeh speaking on Running A Successful Business in Nigeria. It also saw the unveiling of the rich and colorful 2nd Anniversary Edition of Yes! International Classics magazine.

In its post-event press release expressing their gratitude to the guests, who arrived "from the East, West, North and South, including those from outside our shores," Yes! International states: "Having confirmed and re-confirmed that they would spend that Wednesday, June 19, 2013 with the Yes! family, some of our special guests blew our minds with their acts of kindness and love.  The Guest Speaker, Dr. Leo Stan Ekeh, flew into the country from the United States of America hours before the event--just so that he doesn't disappoint us; Apostle Anselm Madubuko rushed in from Kenya just to say the opening prayer and fly back again; Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio had to defer her appearing before the panel investigating the gruesome murder of her three brothers just to show us love; Mr. Yomi Badejo-Okusanya had to cancel a previous appointment just to accommodate ours; Bashorum Dele Momodu arrived from Ghana that morning to let us know that he truly cares; Oba Dokun Abolarin had to depart Osun State and his kingdom on time so as to give us his royal blessing...We could go on and on."