As Nigerian Film lovers watch the imbroglio between the two film giants exchange words on the pages of newspapers and efforts reached to calm the duo seems not to have achieved positive result so far, Ajayi Bamidele of www.ashiwaju.org spoke to Mr. John Okafor (a.k.a) Mr Ibu on the way forward to resolving the lingering crisis in the nation Actors Guild of Nigeria President's Seat Tussle.
What led to the
recent silent battle between you and the National President of the Actors Guild
of Nigeria, Miss Ferebesima Ibinabo?
Before God and man, I don’t have
anything at the back of my mind advising her, she is a professional as well as
every other person in the film industry, what I did was just to advice her, she
keep on insulting me, calling me an illiterate and that I have been going to
President Goodluck Jonathan to beg money, to my best of knowledge,
I feel my advice in not an insult to her, but you know that best advice always
bite the ears, but I don’t blame her, she can go ahead and insult me to the
level she feels in her mind, and where ever she feels it’s okay for her, let
her go ahead and keep insulting me.
I am not insulting her, well I take her insult because she is the president of the Actor Guild of Nigeria, but I tell you, she will finish her tenure, if she wants to go like four time more, but one day she will come down and be an ordinary member like me and another person will be there, then she would see how another person who will take over from her will perform, then she will see the difference in her administration and that of the other person.
I am not insulting her, well I take her insult because she is the president of the Actor Guild of Nigeria, but I tell you, she will finish her tenure, if she wants to go like four time more, but one day she will come down and be an ordinary member like me and another person will be there, then she would see how another person who will take over from her will perform, then she will see the difference in her administration and that of the other person.
What I wanted to do was to make chance
for her to write her name in gold as the president of AGN, am not interested
in the seat of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, no no! no!! no !!!
I want to tell you, she is already
calling me an illiterate, what I am trying to tell her now is real, that she
cannot via for a second term when she has four cases pending in different
courts unsettled.
You cannot say you are viaing for a second
term, when almost all the chapters have two chairmen each, where one is
following you and other following another person, If you are a real president,
why is it that real members of the Actor Guild of Nigeria are not working,
while non members are working, on occasion while you are the president.
How can somebody come to buy a role,
the producers will give them roles because they want to pay big money .
What stops our national task force, we
have been having national task force before, that always go about to check who
are not real member of AGN, who are almost everywhere to picket who are not
members of the Actors Guild on Nigeria, what stopped them from working,
She cannot ask why me single handedly
set up Nollywood Actor Guild in South Africa and brought down their
documents, why can't she also ask why I single handedly set up Actors Guild
of Nigeria in Torino, Italy?, And she cannot also ask why Nollywood Actors
Guild was set up in UK just by me? If I don’t want her good or the good
of AGN, why would I be doing all these and each time I do it, I call the
national body to send me license to me for them to operate and they do, then
whatever money they demanded, they pay me and I brought the money home to give
the board of trustees.
Let
me cut in, In some of the write-ups we read. You were seen as someone being
sponsored by Clarion Chukwura, her opponent, to bring her down just to make
Clarion be more relevant in the industry, what’s your take on this?
To the best of my knowledge, I feel
that anyone is eligible to contest the post of the president of the Actors
Guild of Nigeria, they are not even being paid, it’s a volunteer thing, you
don’t need to insult anyone before you get there.
I advised Clarion Chukwura, if she
knows anywhere she has gone wrong or she might have done anything affecting
Actors Guild of Nigeria before, she should try and make it up, so that she can
have a good record before she can think of wanting to contest any
election, that is the advise I gave to her.
Another one is that I went to
investigate one or two things from the board of trustees of the Actors Guild on
Nigeria and asked them questions, I know I talk to Okey Bakassi, he is my very
good friend and Okey Bakassi told me the whole truth and I told him fine, I am
leaving Actor Guild of Nigeria and I made the move to set up Screen
Association of Nigeria (SAN),I am the one that made the move.
If Actor Guild of Nigeria cannot
accommodate me, If AGN cannot accommodate genuine advices, where AGN as big as
Nollywood, we do not have national office, we don’t have film village where
people would pay as a recreational centres and watch film also to snap
photograph with Nollywood Actors or Actresses of their choice and we get small
money from them.
Why is it that we Actors Guild of
Nigeria don’t have cameras we can rent out for shooting and make money for the
guild, rather than going to individuals and hire cameras, why can’t we buy
buses and rent it out to anyone that shooting production anywhere, why are we
going outside to hire cameras?.
How much is bus, how much is cameras, I
know very well that we are capable of getting allocation anywhere in the
country and in all sizes, because Federal Government gave us money, all they
could do is to go house, collect the money, process it and eat it alone.
In one of my visits to senate president
birthday’s party at Oturukpo, Benue State, I begged the government to
stop giving Actors Guild of Nigeria cash because we don’t know how to use it, I
told them to give us landed properties, if we don’t have money to build,
we can get sponsors to develop the properties for us, at least we will get
edifices that we will call Actors Guild of Nigeria Projects
What is your advice
to the President of AGN and the Nollywood practitioners on how to move the
industry to an enviable height that the Hollywwod of America and Bollywood of
India are currently enjoying?
My advice I have for her is that I want
to urge Ibinabo to first rescinds her decision to run for another term for now
and call a meeting for peace, call all the stakeholders to a round table
meeting, all the state chairmen, bring them together, all the states that have
two-two chairmen, bring everybody together, with the board of trustee
members, everybody will come around, we will dissolve their offices and we
will then reelect them legitimately.
Let us have peace in our places, if we
can achieve this peace in Actors Guild of Nigeria, every other thing will
follow in line, even if she says she wants to go for a second tenure, everybody
will say go ahead because we have peace.
All of us will follow her go to court;
cancel the court cases she has in the court, because this entire thing is
placing us bad light.
It’s a big distraction to us, where we
have viruses in the industry that we are trying to look for a way to attack and
other thing is now attacking us from somewhere. We have piracy to attack; we have
homosexuality to attack and so many other things that is attacking the industry.
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