The Nollywood in all of us

That Nigerians are cold-hearted con artists. That Lagos is a ghetto where the average pedestrian doesn’t second-guess scamming any random, unsuspecting foreigner in the regular day’s struggle for survival. That law enforcement is dominated by irredeemably corrupt criminals complicit in the vices they claim to fight. That no good can come out of Nigeria, things being so bad the diaspora-based citizen is dead-set on severing ties to their roots after emigration.

It appeared as though these bogus stereotypes are the thematic premise of the Nigerian-American director Faraday Okoro’s 2018 crime thriller titled ‘Nigerian Prince’. In the film’s denouement, an advance-fee scam artist beats a compromised justice system to get away after collaborating with the police to pull off his last con. The central character resigns to fate after a desperate attempt to escape his failed country where the average professor of law is so poor they lack basic internet access and stable electricity. An amoral officer gets away with murder and no narrative element rejects an allusion that Nigerians will uphold mysterious wealth without recourse to its source.

One ambitious go at audio-visual storytelling in contemporary Nollywood with a reasonable narrative premise that explores a clear message is Kunle Afolayan’s ‘Anikulapo’, the second project in the producer’s three-film deal with Netflix. There, it is clarified that downfall is the ultimate consequence of greed and betrayal. In reality, it is not often the case that villains always suffer the repercussions of their actions. Yet, the film deemed it vital to portray this to feed creative completeness and social consciousness.

In ‘Blood Sisters’ is a story that sees two die-hard friends put a photographer to death for threatening to rat them out over a covered-up murder, but the culprits get away with no jail time. Such twists, it could be argued, bear certain consequences that potentially influence the psyche and moral judgement of the viewers. This line of argument risks losing sight of cases where movies are decidedly made to entertain; where the producers opt to oppose the norm. However, they still raise questions on the extent to which creatives consider the social implications of their storytelling beyond the imperative of entertaining.

How about flawed plots that give credence to inaccurate stereotypes and stoke sentiments in ethnically charged Nigeria? What about films that distort the national image to service negative perceptions for profit?

Nollywood’s storytelling has seen an evolution over the last two decades. During its inception in the early 90s, the burgeoning industry was inundated with low-budget productions that had little technical sophistication but possessed that authentic charm that resonated with audiences. Titles often focused on traditional themes and morals that drew on folklore, myths, and legends. The narrative style was heavily influenced by Nigeria’s oral tradition, incorporating elements of suspense and humour. These movies were distributed in VHS tapes, CDs, and DVDs that quickly hit markets across Africa, dominating the late 90s and early 2000s.

With the transition from analogue to digital filmmaking came better editing techniques and enhanced visual effects. This shift led to genre diversity, enabling Nollywood to tell a broader range of stories. By the late 2000s and the early 2010s, production value had improved but storytelling struggled to keep up.

Nollywood cracked into cinema and drifted towards contemporary topics of corruption, political unrest, poverty, and everyday struggles. These stories mainly entertained but also educated and sought social change, resonating with audiences who could relate to them. But amid these ambitious attempts were concerns that some visually appealing productions didn’t have as much depth in scripting and plotting.

The emergence of more talented filmmakers, actors, and screenwriters would bring a fresh perspective to the industry, introducing innovative storytelling techniques including nonlinear narratives, complex character arcs, and generally nuanced filmmaking in ways that broke the industry’s creative boundaries.

By 2016, Netflix had entered Sub-Saharan Africa and ramped up activities in Nigeria two years later, providing broader avenues for distribution and access to a global audience. With that came international exposure as films gained recognition at festivals and landed distribution deals beyond African markets.

The pandemic’s onset in 2019 drove more penetration for digital streaming sites as cinema revenues crashed due to social restrictions that later eased in 2021, at which time Nigerian viewers had lost appetite for local titles due to the storytelling problem. Netflix licensing became the story vetting criterion for local titles among viewers who feared staking their funds on yet another film theatre disappointment. Cinema revenue kept growing only due to repeated hikes in ticket pricing, not more theatre patronage.

Partnerships with international filmmakers and the adoption of foreign techniques over the last three years changed this to birth a selection of Nollywood epics and originals targeted at the global audience. Authentic productions commissioned by streaming giants for export have continued to hold stories from Nigerian filmmakers to international standards, with Netflix pointing out in its socio-economic impact report that adopting best production practices is needed to widen Nollywood’s sphere of influence.

The rule of thumb in fiction is that stories must have a clear narrative premise, a fancy phrase referring to a statement of what happens to characters as a result of a story’s core conflict. This principle rules the fate of characters based on their actions. Hence “downfall is the ultimate consequence of greed and betrayal” would be expected to hold true as a premise throughout the film ‘Anikulapo’, with at least a compelling explanation expected to exist if the situation happens to be otherwise anywhere in the story.

But we see titles that stray from this conventional rule, reeling out scattershot subplots that ultimately defeat the film’s central premise. The portrayal of stereotypes, objectification of women, glorification of violence, and ideally hollow storytelling that amounts to cultural misrepresentation are also very much rife.

Perhaps one recent example got the video streaming giant Amazon Prime embroiled in a ₦10 billion defamation suit when its first original production in Africa arguably overstretched its creative licence to portray the local Eyo masquerade closely tied to cultural identity as a gang of murderous criminals and the Isale Eko suburb in Lagos as a den of robbers, with no subplot dedicated to suggesting otherwise beyond a caveat. A counterargument, if one is to point out though, could be that the Jade Osiberu-directed crime drama was only telling a fictional story where criminals opted to dress up as the Lagos masquerade to commit crimes undetected, not a case of depicting the culture itself as being dominated by killers and murderers in real life.

How does repeatedly telling the same kind of skewed stories affect the psyche of the viewing audience? Doesn’t this get in the way of positive self-perception for an average viewer who grew up being exposed to Nollywood home videos? In the media, Nigerians are fierce and sometimes blind critics of their own fragile country. Do scriptwriters not see how flawed stories rob citizens of national pride and morale?

Motion picture is more than entertainment. As a reflection of society, movies propagate ideology during conflicts, even at the risk of coming across as propaganda. They document history, culture, and zeitgeist, teaching values and reinforcing norms. Films have been used to deliberately score sociopolitical change, advocate social rights, and spark policy conversations in structured industries and developed climes.

In Nigeria’s oral tradition, storytelling had miniaturised audiences and was done through stage plays or physical gatherings where community leaders got to vet narratives before they were propagated to the younger population, reaching into the minds of listeners to influence thought and behaviour. But in the current age of motion pictures, modern technology like digital streaming and OTT video has guaranteed unhinged cross-regional access that raises the stakes for the kinds of stories movies push. Nollywood especially has, over the last three years, achieved increased international visibility that is shaping global perception of Nigeria. But who is gate-keeping to ensure that the need to create appealing audio-visual content that achieves market fit and fulfils profit-seeking motives does not detract from the message?

There are select filmmakers who have gained something of a reputation for refining their craft and even training directors and scriptwriters to plug an apparent talent gap that, perhaps, could partly account for why Netflix would, for instance, invest a diminutive $23.6 million in Nigeria within the six-year window of 2016 to 2022, at which time it put $125 million in South Africa. But the multi-faction Nollywood that makes an estimated 2500 films annually is bigger than five to ten filmmakers known to be doing it right.

As streaming continues to gain ground, filmmakers are opting for limited cinema runs in favour of digital distribution but the National Film and Video Censors Board lags behind, lacking the legal power to regulate online content. The consensus among filmmakers happens to be that any storyline quickly passes through, so long as it contains no nudity or political undertones that put the ruling government in a negative light. Streaming has also long been the go-to distribution method for filmmakers looking to evade censorship, even when being censored isn’t necessarily a negative thing.

Nigeria’s cinema revenue is projected to hit an arguably conservative estimate of $12 million by 2026 from $6.6 million in 2021. The video streaming segment could also spiral up to $26 million at around the same time, from the $14 million recorded in 2021. It is evident that the pervasive cultural impact of Nigeria’s vibrant movie industry has woven into the reality, aspirations, cultural nuances, and the ultimate identity of the citizens who primarily consume its stories, further creating a prism through which the outside world sees Nigeria and Nigerian citizens.

The Spanish producer Alex Pina’s crime series ‘Money Heist’ follows a gang of social misfits who undertake to run a robbery that took five months to plan. They study all potential outcomes, infiltrate the police, and beat law enforcement to rob the Bank of Spain and subsequently empty the country’s national reserves in an attempt to free an arrested gang member. In the end, they ride on a state-owned chopper and saunter into the sunset with their loot intact as the Spanish government opts to save face and stave off an economic crisis. One can easily say the film glorified robbery, but the filmmakers balanced it out by ensuring the robbers lost their top team members in brutal off-the-book executions. The robbers were also humanised in a way that makes viewers empathise, opening the film to multiple interpretations. The state itself was then portrayed as having illegalities and flaws of its own that make it deserving of civil disobedience.

There are productions that make it overt that they’re out to entertain. But if they won’t have a social impact angle, then the producers might as well ensure the movie or series tells a complete story without misrepresentations.

How are Nigerian creatives looking at filmmaking for social impact? How are local regulators working to “reasonably” influence global streaming giants to abide by Nigeria’s local censorship regulations without stifling creativity, discouraging the industry’s growing foreign investment, or disrupting revenue generation? Does Nigeria have enough market leverage to negotiate this? Until local authorities can answer these questions, Nigeria and the average citizen may continue to bear the brunt of consuming potentially harmful material and pushing suboptimal stories.