Popular Film Director Blasts Gambian President For Giving Nollywood Stars Plots Of Land
After the Gambian president gave plots of land
to Nollywood stars and some actors and actresses from Gollywood, Gambian
filmmaker..
Prince Bubcarr Aminata Sankanu who says the country does not have the
luxury of giving out lands to foreigners when a lot of Gambians are yet
to have a good home has called out the president reminding him he won’t
be there forever and so shouldn’t give out what belongs to all of them
to foreigners. He also called on the Nollywood and Gollywood stars not
to be fast to develop the land saying they should have a rethink.
Those that benefited from the land gift includes;, Monalisa
Chinda,Patience Ozokwor, Eucharia Anunobi, Ejike Asiegbu, Francis Duru,
Segun Arinze, Kanayo O Kanayo, Chinedu Ikedieze, Osita Iheme, Rukiat
Masud, Tony Umez, Ngozi Ezeonu, Chika Okpala (Zebrudaya) Harry B
Anyanwu, and so many Ghanaian stars.
Below is his long but interesting note.
First of all, various Nigerian and Ghanaian media outlets reported that
the President of my country HE Alhagie Yahya AJJ Jammeh has recently
allocated portions of our Gambian lands to some Nigerian and Ghanaian
entertainers. The fact that we Gambians have to know about this from
second hand sources speaks volumes on the way we are treated as
non-humans by those running our country. Jammeh is a temporal President
and not the everlasting private owner of the commonwealth of our Gambian
fatherland. I for one respect him and endorse his freedom to do
whatever he pleases within the parameters of the Reasonable State and
Realpolitik but if he touches certain red lines, I will speak truth to
power without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.
The senseless wastage of our scarce resources on money-hungry foreign
musicians and movie stars is scratching on those red lines. I am
therefore calling on the named home video peoples not to rush in
developing the land that President Jammeh reportedly allocated them. For
over 10 years, we have been reading reports on how Nigerian video film
stars, and of late Ghanaian ones, are airlifted into the Gambia to serve
as presidential event decorations. They are rewarded millions from our
Gambian tax revenues without measurable lasting benefits to our creative
economy. If at all the monies are from President Jammeh’s personal
savings before he became President of the Republic of The Gambia on the
22 July 1994, I for one would not care. But the funds that are wasted on
the Nigerian and Ghanaian hustlers are generated through our taxes and
remittances and we have the right to speak out on it.
After all, we are the ones sweating for the monies. The Gambian economy
is on life-support at the time of writing this piece. Without our
Diaspora remittances and the bailout from the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), we would have long seen a Burkina Faso-styled mass
revolution by the hungry and tired Gambians. President Jammeh’s strength
lies on the weaknesses and pettiness within the ranks of those fighting
to end his rule. The greedy Nigerian and Ghanaian entertainers
“chopping him dry” are too blinded by our free government money, free
food and free sex with some local girls to see, feel or understand the
silent sufferings of the voiceless Gambians.
Secondly, it is an open secret that President Jammeh does not feel
comfortable supporting highly professional and ethical Gambians. This
self-denial does not give the Nigerian and Ghanaian wannabe stars the
birth right to milk our poor nation dry. You don’t need to be rocket
scientists to know that Nigeria and Ghana have more geographical space
and other resources than our little Gambia with a total territorial size
of just 11,295 square kilometres. Land is scarce and highly sensitive.
Our Gambian courts are currently inundated with protracted litigations
over land disputes across the country. Governments come and go but the
people and their land problems will remain. No sane person can guarantee
that the Jammeh government will continue to rule the Gambia for the
next 20 years. Being a Nigerian or Ghanaian so-called celebrity will not
immune you against future court appearances over land and other
contractual disputes. Future governments have the prerogative to nullify
land allocations and revise destructive decisions of the current
regime. Feel free to ignore my sincere advice, go ahead to develop the
“donated” land and invest in Gambia at your own peril.
Thirdly, I will not blame the local population for the rising
anti-Nigerian and anti-Ghanaian sentiments that are fuelled by the
irrational decisions of the powers that be. If you snatch away the
meagre resources of scared and disadvantaged communities and share them
among fat and parasitic entertainers from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, South
Africa, Jamaica and other places, you invite trouble into the nation. I
am a responsible Pan-Africanist and believer in African solidarity
among the people without the hypocrisy of the political classes. Direct
exchanges among the diverse peoples of African descent on fair terms are
better for me than the divide-and-rule tactics of the corrupt elites.
Successive Nigerian governments have been blindly sending lawyers and
judges to assist in building a progressive Gambian judiciary but most of
them ended up as corrupt mercenaries ever-ready to jail more Gambians
just to appease the executive branch of the Gambian government. You now
wonder about the sources of anti-Nigerian slurs that you could hear on
the streets of the Gambia? That said, African solidarity does not mean
taking away from the poorer Africans in this case Gambians, to pamper
the richer and fatter Africans, known here as the hustling Nigerian and
Ghanaian home movie people. Personally, I have put more money into the
Nigerian film industry since 2006 without insisting on quick returns on
investment. I love Nigeria and I believe in the Pax Nigeriana - that is
Nigeria’s leadership role in Africa and the Black Diaspora but that does
not mean I should not question things that go wrong between Maiduguri
and Calabar. I visited the country in 2008 and deliberately avoided the
limelight but my behind-the-scene contributions towards mutually
beneficial inter-African solidarity in the creative industries remain
strong. I have people across the various segments of the Nigerian Cinema
between Kano and Lagos to confirm my silent activities. I don’t need to
be running after the Nigerian or African politicians and business
leaders for charities and photo opportunities in order to show the whole
world that I am contributing my quota towards the advancement of Africa
in my natural fields of expertise and passion. Ghana is also not absent
on my agenda. I have been screening Ghanaian films in Germany,
welcoming promising Ghanaians talents and cooperating with Ghanaian
Diaspora groups in Cologne since 2006. I need not talk about other
African or Afro-Caribbean countries.
Fourthly, Gambians don't value their own talents. For years, they
preferred patronising Senegalese and other fly-by-night musicians while
expecting them to build the local music Gambian industry. The same
blunder is being repeated in the movie industry. Our local movie talents
are living from hand to mouth while the hustling fly-by-night Nollywood
and Ghana folks are pampered with our taxes and remittances. If you try
to reason, they would say you are jealous. Why would we be jealous when
some of us are blessed with the expertise, global connections and
confidence to thrive across the international film scenes? I for one can
afford the luxury of staying out of the competition for publicity,
movie roles and photo sessions with politicians and remain a relevant
behind-the-scene thinker on African Cinema. I just pity the local
talents who cannot speak their honest minds on the state of affairs. No
one will build Gambia for Gambians. The Kenyans, Ghanaians, Tanzanian,
Sierra Leoneans, Liberians, Ugandans and others used to wait for some
Nollywood noise-makers and hustlers when the digital home video
phenomenon started 20 years ago but along the line they realised that
they had to take the lead in building their respective national film
industries. In the Gambia, it is a crime to be innovative and think out
of the box. Patriotism there is about telling lies to the powers that be
and inviting foreign stars to collect presidential gifts that will be
shared among those who facilitated the access to “His Excellency
Professor Doctor President Alhagie Yahya Abdul Aziz Jemus Junkung
Jammeh, Babili Mansa, Lord of the Bridges and the greatest Pan
Africanist of all times.” Correct me if at all I left something out of
the glorious name!
Fifthly, the pioneers of postcolonial Nigeria Cinema before the digital
age relied on some healthy degrees of social responsibility and
self-reliance to build an industry from scratch. It is a shame that for
the past decades some of Nollywooders and accidental home video people
have been prostituting themselves to political desperadoes across the
African continent. Their filmmaking is no longer about checking and
balancing the African political classes or raising social consciousness.
The derogatory names “Nollywood” and “Gollywood” are synonymous to the
“greed is good” mentality. It is all about playing, partying and vanity
at the expense of taxpayers. Their monotonous home videos are mainly
regurgitating the missionary and jihadist propaganda that everything
culturally African is evil and backward while promoting the aggressive
proselytization of the Western neo-colonialists and Middle Eastern
Trans-Saharan slave traders as the only superior options for
acculturation that Africans must copy at all costs or end in hell.
Hallelujah! Allaw Akbar! To the lords of the White and Arab masters must
be the great glory at all times: say ameen! The perpetuation of the
self-hate coupled with skin bleaching, fake hair and the obsession with
“Onyibo” America and materialism aside, some of the so-called stars
over-rated their political levels by aggressively campaigning for the
defeated Doctor Goodluck Jonathan in the last Nigerian presidential
elections of 2015 and took home millions in fees or gifts. They
over-rated themselves by mistaking the hype and photo opportunities with
dictators and questionable business people as political gravitas. If I
were Dr. Jonathan, I would have asked them for a refund. Yes, they have
the right to be actively involved in the domestic politics of Nigeria
and their home countries but when our ill-advised Gambian government
waste our meagre public funds on them, I for one will challenge them. As
a film director and producer, I make stars but I don’t worship them. I
don’t care if you win all the film or TV awards under the sun and get
all the global publicity and the fattest bank accounts in your industry.
That will not make me run after you like demi-gods. You will only get
the respect you earned through your comportment, sincerity, modesty and
social responsibility. I am allergic to greed!
Sixthly, the Boko Haram neo-jihadist group is engaged in genocide
against Nigerians and Africans in the name of Islam but not a single
Nigerian director, producer or actor has so far shown the bravery with
patriotic and social responsibility to make a serious film on the Boko
Haram mass murder. The Malians and Mauritanians were brave enough to
make a film on the misuse of Islam for violence. Watch “Timbuktu” (2015)
directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. Another Malian sensitization and
resistance movie against religious fundamentalism titled “They Will Have
To Kill Us First” (2015) directed by Johanna Schwartz will be in
circulation next year. Nigerians cannot say money is the problem as they
have more resources at their disposal than the brave Mauritanian and
Malian filmmakers and actors. Frustrated by the apparent cowardice in
Nollywood, I recently asked one of my local Nigerian contacts to write
and send me a movie script on the local war on terror so that I can take
the risk of making a film that will challenge the senseless killings in
the name of Islam. If the Malians were to waste their meagre resources
on the Nollywood stars to tell their African stories, the religious war
of the Tuareg region would still be boiling hot like the Boko Haram
cancer. For the citizens would not have had the local content and
credible chance to be sensitised on the menace of religious bigotry
through the power of film. Boko Haram is technically doing what
countless Nigerian home videos are doing to the African Personality -
destroying the African social fabric and values and replacing them with
imported lethal ideologies. People will readily attack President Obama
and the Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS) for
defending homosexuality but would blindly support Nollywood and Boko
Haram for promoting ungodly acts of adultery, cheating, lying, greed,
rape, robbery, corruption, decadence, hypocrisy and fake un-African
lifestyles. My powerful article titled “Are Nigerian Filmmakers Afraid
of Boko Haram?” will be published soon.
Finally, I don’t blame the Nigerian and Ghanaian hustlers that much for
exploiting the gullibility and destitution of some narrow-minded African
cabals and peoples. As I pointed out above, Gambians don’t sincerely
value their own talents and President Jammeh or those who control his
presidential ears are repeatedly showing that they are more comfortable
dishing out luxury vehicles, land, villas, cash in foreign currencies
and diplomatic passports to visiting praise-singing stars some of whom
could be struggling to pay their bills as all that glitters is not gold,
while badmouthing, marginalizing, imprisoning or neglecting the sincere
Gambian talents. The “lucky” few Gambians will get some hundreds of
thousands of Dalasis, from time to time but in exchange for blind
loyalty or maximum shut-up. Personally, I see it as a blessing in
disguise that President Dr. Yahya AJJ Jammeh has so far not given me a
dime for my Gambian film industry projects. This has granted me the
clear conscience, creative freedom, street credibility and elite
authority to talk freely, do my things independently on my chosen terms
and speak truth to power whenever I deem necessary without hypocrisy and
the guilt of eating his presidential monies. I will be in Gambia later
this year to continue from where I stopped in contributing my quota
towards the development of our Gambian creative scenes without begging
or waiting for anyone.
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