Austin fair Nwaulu
This is a chilling and thought-provoking story of a wannabe actress just back from Asaba, the Delta State capital where suspected hustlers are said to have taken over home movie making even as they still produce in quick successions but hardly conform to the norms of the profession.
Imagine if the likes of Liz Benson, Joke Jacobs, Alex Usifo, Genevieve Nnaji, Jide Kosoko, RMD and all the key players in the contraption now called Nollywood were asked made to pay instead of being paid, would there have been a movie industry in Nigeria?
Thus, one’s gain and happiness is that you have been featured in a movie and automatically made a star of Nollywood which is definitely a complete opposite of what obtains in the entire movie world.
That is what obtains in Asaba where pretenders apparently in search of a means of livelihood, disguising as movie producers, directors and allied personnel, now reside. There, they equally meet with desperate and innocent young men and ladies in search of movie roles and exploit them in every way possible.
Asaba, which emerged after some lull in Lagos as another production ground, simply operates its own version of Nollywood and their victims are unaware of the tricks and keep falling.
“I saw hell while there. With my little knowledge of the industry, I know that artistes are paid, fed, costumed, transported and accommodated but I encountered the reverse. In fact, artistes catered for everything and some even paid to be given their respective roles. Forget about sexual harassment because it’s already a norm there.
Even as they still shoot movies that some hardly see the light of the day, do it in a ‘papapapa’ (hush-hush) manner, they have their crowd, all the same. What with the increasing number of people that want to become movie stars. But unfortunately, with what I saw, count me out if what Asaba does is what obtains in Nollywood as a whole.’’
The upcoming actress who would not want to be named for security reasons, further revealed that someone who posed as a producer once asked to give him N50,000 so that he would put her on Youtube which is the same as a movie and she will automatically become a star!
“One thing that some of these so-called Asaba moviemakers seem not to know is that they look so hungry and unkempt that eagle eyes would suspect them but how many people care. For instance, the national identity card is traded with all around. I have one already, but pretended not to and one man asked me to bring N33,000 for it. yet I got mine at N23,000. It’s like there’s no uniform price for it from the national level.’’
She divulged a lot of other unprintable happenings in Asaba and neighbouring cities, such that we sought the reaction of Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN) National President, Mr Emeka Rollas whose reactions were apt engaging.
“First of all, we have engaged in a rebuilding process. A lot of things, expectedly, went wrong from past administrations. For instance, we’ve just finished a meeting with the state excos on a wide range of issues. And we are dispatching a team to go and fish those that carry out the illegalities. It cannot continue that way.
On the identity card issue, we have placed the cost at N18,500 from the N23,500 it used to be and it is going to be uniformed nationally. Those who trade with it will be punished accordingly. In fact we have a machinery in motion to curtail all the excesses.’’
Also commenting on the issue, one of the pioneer star actors who is presently the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the AGN, Prince Ifeanyi Dike simply snapped; ‘’Yes, a lot of dirty acts are being perpetuated at venues outside Lagos and Asaba is about the hottest. It is done out of desperation, no doubt because no sane and trained moviemaker can descend as low as collecting money from people he is supposed to pay. The development is really unfortunate.
As for the upcoming artistes who patronize them and pay, they are equally doing so out of desperation but I wonder how far they would go. We’ve done enough of enlightenments for them and yet they still prey to the hustlers. Some of these so-called producer/directors, they do not belong to Nollywood but people battling to survive and using the industry’s name.’’

Source : http://newstimesafrica.com/news/if-asaba-moviemakers-belong-to-nollywood-i-weep/