From Nollywood To Nollynude – Joshua Oyeniyi

Photo Credit: www.compareafrique.com

Mark Twain, in his famous quote submitted that “twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by those you did.” Hence, I will not be one of those who waited for history to call them to question. Whilst thinking up on this piece, I could hardly repress the gust of thoughts that my mind experienced but one thing I got out of my thought world is that our society’s  moral fabric has been disgracefully shredded. While some of us know this but shy away from the subject matter, many others are yet to awake to the mischief set to unleash on our society until our enervated consciences are further rent. It is sad enough that some members of the international community have been bickering over the recent signing into law of the anti-gay bill by the President Goodluck Jonathan. 

There have even been some obfuscating threats from shrouded quarters that foreign aids to this country will seize. As much as I shake my head at the shameful, selfishly-warped description of human rights by distorted minds, I will like to ask the pro-gay-rights in Nigeria and Africa if they have really thought through the repercussions of letting every tide from these Western rascals get the best of us. Soon enough, every conceivable evil might become enshrined within our laws as rights if we keep canvassing against the very basic laws that have held the larger majority of humanity together for thousands of years. In essence, robbery, assault and rape might, before long, become permitted by law. Where were these western reprobates when Nigerians were locking heads over child marriage bill a few months ago? If this multiplicity of licentiousness is anything to reckon with, then we are, indeed, at the threshold of human destruction.

But, these said, I am turning the searchlight on one other rust that is eating us up from within. In the last few years, our entertainment industry has witnessed a lot of growth and improvement in both quantity and quality of production. From music tracks, to music videos and then to movie production, there has been a steady increase in the faith that Nigerians now have in our local entertainment economy. More so, it is a delight to see our own nollywood stars rubbing shoulders with their Hollywood counterparts in various movie classics. However, while it is good development that we are making this progress and gaining global recognition, it appears we have rubbed shoulders too far! A comical south-western dictum has it that “ti ibowo ba ti koja igunpa, o ti di konfu”, in the English translation, “when courtesy and social interaction are done to an unprincipled extreme, they breed problems”. With the recent dive into music videos and movies with highly offensive cum explicit images, we are in for some troublous times. If none or a very few people are talking, then our children and the coming generations will curse us for the calamities that will befall their days. While walking through a major street in Gwagwalada, Abuja, I stumbled upon a movie poster outside a sales outlet and was baffled. Staring me in the face was the picture of a scantily cladded young lady with virtually every feature that makes her a woman starkly exposed to the world. The producers gave the movie a caption that ridiculously depicted females from a particular south-south state as sex objects. I refuse to yield to the temptation to mention the captions of several movies with explicit content as doing so would give undeserved publicity to these unscrupulous producers and their movies. Nigerians witness, on a daily basis, the shameful cum degrading display of womanhood in the name of movie production. That there is a market for soft porn (I can find no better name for such explicit movies) is no reason enough to throw caution into the air and expose our minors to such obscenities. Many young adults barely have the moral strength to resist the amoral suggestions that trail the thoughts after seeing such pictures, how much more the movies. It is high time our movie producers began putting the entire viewing audience into consideration when they go to set and stopped thinking only about their pockets. There is no worse definition for wickedness.

We can take no more of mentally-daft actors and actresses who have no self-dignity and want to transfer same to our viewing populace. We have had enough of brazen actresses who, daily and weekly, shamelessly flood our internet space with lewd photos of their poorly-clad bodies; even claiming to have the support of their husbands and families for their ‘career’ (I wonder what career this is in this first place). What an evil! If unemployment is an excuse for expressing willingness at the immoral desires of movie producers that females bare it all in their movies, then soon enough, we should have all our unemployed females turn cheap movie prostitutes.

I mourn at the gross irresponsibility of whoever approves such movies and music videos for public consumption (I thought we have a film and video censor board). Little wonder our newspapers are daily flooded with rape stories of worrying dimensions with an all-time high incidence record. Our society is constipating with moral filth and its way out has become, seemingly, the unleashing of moral crimes on fellow humans. Now is the time to call our entertainment industry to order. Even in the United States, Hollywood does not recognize adult movie stars in its awards ceremonies. Nollywood must cease from releasing nollynude pictures and our music video producers must apply caution to the images they let out to our public space. Let’s preserve the little sanity we still enjoy in our society.

Joshua Oyeniyi is a writer, radio presenter and public speaker from the University of Lagos and writes viaprince.oyeniyi@yahoo.com

The views expressed above are solely that of the author and not of stephenladoye02.blogspot.com or its associates.