Towards the Nationalisation of Nollywood: Looking back and looking forward - A Reading of the Thematic and Economic Trends

Abstract

The contradiction in its emergence in the early 1990s has helped to contextualize the lack of enthusiasm which greeted the Nigerian video film industry from the ashes of a colonial legacy and structure. Linked to emerging urban popular culture (Okome and Haynes), the now transnational cultural product (Adejunmobi) seems to have left the universe of a national cinema behind, opting to be a voice of the African continent. For two decades now, ingenuity and prolific creativity in Nollywood's march towards becoming a cinema industry have never been in doubt even though life for the vast majority of the population remains unchanged.

Using the example of Nigeria's golden film era and the recent video revolution and building on the work of Jonathan Haynes, Onookome Okome and Moradehun Adejunmobi, I intend in this paper to discuss certain features of what constitutes a national identity for an industry, and to identify from the past, present while attempting to project into the future efforts and conditions aimed at enabling the nationalisation of this phenomenon. To be specific, this contribution to the larger discussion on the national tenor of Nollywood will synoptically focus on the thematic and economic trends to describe this cultural productivity from the indigenous landscape to the global.

The paper, without being ambiguous however leaves the reader to draw his own conclusion on whether the industry can become a true national patrimony.