Faced with what seems like a veritable threat to their means of livelihood and survival, major players in the Nigerian movie industry are closing ranks and taking the battle to the movie pirates, while calling on the government to come to their rescue with stiffer legislations and penalties. Gboyega Alaka reports
It’s a hot Tuesday afternoon in the heart of Ikeja, a commercial axis of Lagos noted for its huge trading and white-collar business activities. Expectedly, traffic was tight and fast nearing a gridlock situation, as it was just past lunch hour. This will continue until close of business around six o’clock, when more vehicles will be join up. The fact that it had rained the evening before also means that the heat was more intense and both those already on the road and those peeping from their high rise offices know they are in for a ‘swell’ journey back home. This was certainly one of those days they’re all going to hate working in Lagos.
But not so for the street traders, who are already meandering through the long stretch of vehicles, taking advantage of the bad situation to do brisk business and make quick money. And not so particularly for the poorly clad teenagers brandishing movie CDs and literally shoving them through the windows of cars and buses that have their glasses wound down. As one of the boys shoved the CDs into one of those tightly-packed 16-seater buses, this reporter’s eyes caught a glimpse of October 1, Kunle Afolayan’s yet to be released block-buster movie. One of the passengers immediately reached for it and started negotiating. Within minutes, money and goods changed hands. As if catching the bug, a couple other passengers quickly made their purchases, as the bus eased forward and the boy-seller moved quickly to another vehicle. The lucky passengers had bought their own copies of a movie currently showing at the cinemas at N5,000 per head at a meager N500. Who would blame them? They can now get home, loosen their ties, possibly have their bath and watch in a relaxed mood. Probably on weekends too, they would invite their family and friends, and they would all have a private viewing session in the comfort of their living rooms. And when they are done and tired of watching, they’re going to lend it to friends, who would repeat the same ritual as described above, and those would most certainly also lend it to some other family and friends. The extension goes on and on and on, such that even the buyer soon gives up on the CD’s where about. After all he bought it with just N500 an equivalent of two English pounds
Yet these are only pirated CDs high-jacked from God-knows-where and massively reproduced and pushed onto the streets. Without doubt, their proliferation also effectively puts paid to the revenue that should ever have accrued to the original owner of the work. Surely, there would no longer be any need to drive and go see the movie at the cinemas.
And yet this is a film reputed to have cost a whopping N115million, out of which Afolayan, who was not available for interview at the time of working on this story, reportedly confessed that he had only raked in just about N100million from its special screening and showings at the cinemas. Aside being one of the most expensive films ever made in the country, it has also been largely adjudged the best ever. The film also features some of the best collection actors across the country and beyond; the likes of Sadiq Daba, who played the lead; Kayode Aderupoko, Kehinde Bankole, Kunle Afolayan himself, Kanayo O. Kanayo, Ibrahim Chatta, Bimbo Manuel, and even distinguished industry outsiders like Deola Sagoe. In recognition of its quality, the movie has also amassed series of top quality awards, including Best Featrure Film, Best Screenplay and Best Lead Actor, Sadiq Daba, at the 2014 Africa International Film Festival; it also won nine of the 12 awards at stake at the 2015 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards notably in the Best Movie of the Year, Best Movie Director and Best Actress (Kehinde Bankole).
According to Yinka Akanbi, a playwright and film and music producer, who runs Pisces Audio Visuals Limited, in Ikeja and says he was taught play-writing by the legendary late Ola Rotimi at the Obafemi Awolowo University, this is the scenario across the city of Lagos, and possibly Abuja and other major Nigerian cities. It is also this annoying scenario that got him going after the movie peddlers one faithful afternoon in April this year. He’d been driving on a Lagos road one afternoon and suddenly saw copies of October 1 being brandished and pushed at commuters in traffic. Immediately, his instinct told him something was wrong. He tried to call Afolayan, to confirm, but couldn’t get through; and then he put a call through to Tunde Kelani, a senior colleague and a revered veteran in the industry, who confirmed his fear that it had not been released and also told him matter-of-factly to “better go and sit down, that it’s a terrible situation.”
Power of anger
But Akanbi somehow was not going to just go sit down. For a moment he snapped, got into an altercation with the pirate agents hawking on the street, and subsequently confiscated all the CDs in the teenagers’ charge. Inadvertently, Akanbi had started a fight-back.
The pictures went viral on social media, notably facebook, where Akanbi has a huge followership, and an awareness was gradually been created. Less than one week after, another big player in the industry, Yemi Shodimu followed suit. In a picture that had the usually suave and calm actor looking really mean, Shodimu held out copies of October 1 that he had confiscated, with the caption: “Come on Let’s stop this (sic) bastards before they stop us. More seizures today.”
As if galvanized, a huge crowd of frontline actors, movie producers and other auxiliary professionals in the industry marched to the office of the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, a couple of days later to register their grievances. The group which includes the likes of Tunde Kelani, Jide Kosoko, Adebayo Salami, Iyabo Ojo, Yemi Shodimu , Tunji Bamishigbin, Yinka Akanbi and Kunle Afolayan amongst others.
Kelani lamented how the theft of their creative and intellectual properties by some dubious people has reached a really critical level, and demanded an immediate government intervention; else it might be swan song for the promising industry.
Their latest victim, Kunle Afolayan also told the governor the pathetic story of how his highly celebrated but yet-to-be-released movie got into the market ahead of him; while the governor, who acknowledged that piracy is a global problem, in turn promised his support at furthering the battle from legislative angle.
Asked what spurred him into action, Yinka Akanbi said “It is anger. Anger at the fact that you have so many ideas you want to express and the fact somebody out there is saying you cannot, because the moment you finish work on a project, they are out there on the streets and nothing comes back to you. I have gone to school as society requires; I have my masters in Theatre Arts; I am doing my PhD currently, and at the end of the day, one has nothing to show for it? Could you believe that everything Tunde Kelani has produced has been pirated, everything including his retirement? And these people do it with so much impunity!”
As if connecting by telepathy, Yemi Shodimu, responding to the same question at a different place and time also said “Anger is one. Anger at what has been going on for so long and disenchantment about the unfortunate things happening within the industry. I also feel the deprivation within the industry, as in the inability of players in the industry to reap from their sweat…. I think I probably just snapped. Here are works being sold on the streets, even when they had not been released.”
Continuing, Shodimu, who said even Oleku, a Yoruba film set in the early sixties, released about a decade ago, where he played the lead, was also hugely pirated, said what irks him most is the impunity with which the pirates reproduce the works and go hawking them on the streets in broad daylight. “I think there can’t be a better word to describe it than impunity, because you just see the bravado on the part of the pirates. They don’t give a damn about the owner of the work and the law and they just keep doing it. To imagine that a lot of investment has gone into these works, and for somebody who obviously did not lift a finger to just smile to the banks, while the owner of the job languish in debt and penury, is just ridiculous.”
He also spoke of the perennial damage being done, which he said is grave. “Make no mistake about it. When you have an investor that goes the whole hog to put a creative work together, he expects to reap from it, so as to reinvest into another project; but this hinders him or her. And the multiple effect of this is the greater danger, because we cannot afford to unleash the people in the industry into the about market. We cannot. And for that reason, all hands have to be on deck.”
Akanbi on his part said the piracy menace “is killing. It is as painful as death. There is no way you will shoot a film in Nigeria and you would not have to get entangled in some kind of debt. Some of us have had to sell our cars and every other sellable to raise money for some films. You can imagine how much was spent on October 1, probably N100million. Let’s say N50million was loan and the rest goodwill. What the present situation spells is that he has squandered that goodwill. Anyone who has watched the clean copies being sold on the street will definitely not need to go viewing at any cinema. Once they’ve infiltrated your work, you don’t get anything again, because there is no way buyers can differentiate.”
Asked to quantify the damage the pirates are inflicting on the industry and the economy in figures, Akanbi said that surely would run into billions of naira. He said the situation is so blatant that most of the pirates’ distributors insist on selling to only retailers willing to buy 1,000 copies and above. Usually, he says the real retailers are hiding somewhere in a corner of the streets, waiting to collect their money back from the visible teenage hawkers in the traffic.
He said “Piracy is like a canker-worm that eats up the foundation of your work, leaving the whole business to collapse.”
Frustration and dearth of creativity
Shodimu is very wary of the frustration that follows this blatant rip-off. “The whole situation is frustrating to the producers. Look, people go out there to take loans, people use their properties as collateral in an attempt to access loan and give life to their creativity, hoping to reap something in return. So aside the artistic satisfaction you get in seeing your creativity come to life, it is supposed to be a commercial success. But when this is not allowed to happen, how do you go to the next one? Disenchantment sets in. It’s also a big invitation to unemployment. Don’t forget, each production is tied to hundreds of people: the technical hands, the artistes, the creative hands, the distributors, the marketers….”
Worst of all, he says, is that the creative mind is endangered. Art is endangered, because the creative mind is not been nourished with the expected reward and satisfaction. “You ought to nourish the mind with the feeling that what you’re producing is bringing rewards. If within you, you know that you’re working for some faceless cabal, you’re just disillusioned!
“Kunle woke up to find his work on the streets. And we’re talking about the best film ever shot in this country. Imagine the resources expended on bringing those great actors from within and outside the country together; a post-production done in and outside the country; and then you just sit back and some idiots take it over and cheapen it! It’s the same with 30 days in Atlanta. You won’t believe that that one too has been pirated. Imagine the amount of money that went into it: the trip abroad, the artistes, the crew, name it. Add these to the emotional investment that went into it.”
Like corruption, like piracy.
It was former Chairman of the EFCC who said “when you fight corruption, corruption fights back.” Victims of piracy will tell you that fighting back is not an exclusive preserve of corruption. The Yinka Akanbi’s of this world, the Charly Boys of this world, the Kunle Afolayans, Gabosky, his appointed marketer and all those involved in intellectual property creation, will tell you as a matter-of-fact that piracy fights back, and in a real bloody manner too. Although when pointedly asked if he does not feel endangered fighting these people, whose modus operandi has been likened to that of drug syndicates, Akanbi agrees on the one hand, saying “they are worse than a drug syndicate;” but tend to undermine them on the other hand, when he said: “One thing I know is that they are not as powerful and organised as we think they are.”
Akanbi’s latter response might stem from the feeble response he has so far got from the boy-traders hawking the CDs on the streets. Some of the artistes and stake-holders, who have however tried taking the battle to the real kingpins in their Alaba International Market den, will however tell you a different story.
As far back as 2005, when a group led by Charly Boy, Kenny Ogungbe, Kenny St. Best amongst others stormed the dreaded pirates’ base to challenge their damaging actions, they literally came back with bloodied nose. Female gospel singer, Kenny St Best left the market in rags, as the Alaba goons didn’t spare any respect for her sex and gave her the same treatment as the men.
Most recently, Gabriel Okoye, aka Igwe Gabosky, a popular movies distributor, with whom Kunle Afolayan had entered an agreement to distribute his films, raised an alarm that the movies he had been contracted to distribute were already being massively reproduced and sold.
The battle almost toed the ethnic cum political line thereafter, when an obviously annoyed Afolayan, a Yoruba, lost his cool and stirred the hornet’s nest, when he allegedly tweeted that the main cabal behind the criminal business of intellectual property theft otherwise known as piracy in Nigeria is populated by people of Igbo extraction. Coming on the heels of a heated election campaign that divided the country along tribal lines, it was no surprise that a lot of people of Igbo extraction went for his jugular.
But Gabosky himself, an Igbo, publicly supported Afolayan’s claim, reiterating that about 99% of the people involved in professional theft of intellectual works at Alaba are Igbo. He fingered Ubakason Plaza and Obosi Plaza as the den of the pirates and wondered why Nigerians are always quick to cover up criminal acts with tribal cloak. He wondered why his kinsmen were trying to mix criminality with politics, saying that “A criminal is a criminal and should be pronounced a criminal, whether he is a Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa.”
Gabosky also revealed that “The people in piracy are the big men that you see around. Some of them are former stakeholders who have found lucrative jobs in piracy under different guises.” He said their manner of operation is to pirate the works at night and then sell to miscreants in the day.
His attempts to confront the cabal along with the Nigerian Copyright Commission, NCC, ironically turned out to be a wrestle with the devil. That confrontation resulted in a bloody battle that left one of the policemen with a broken skull.
To underline their boldness, the pirates, days before releasing October 1, had allegedly called Gabosky, asking him to negotiate with them; else he would not sell the movie beyond one week before they infiltrated the market with fake copies. It could therefore safely be deduced that it was his refusal to negotiate with criminals that led to the high-jacking and release of the movie, early April.
Not willing to sit back and watch, Gabosky has also at different times, taken the battle to the criminals. At different for a, he has spoken of how he has had to mobilize the police and even some military boys with huge sums of money, to storm the Alaba den of the pirates. While they were able to confiscate some CDs and make some arrest, Gabosky however lamented the bold resistance put forward by the crooks, narrating how they came out to fight back with sophisticated weapons.
Gabosky revelation on invitation to negotiate tallies with one made by another player in the industry, Foluke Daramola, who once narrated on TV how she was prevailed upon to negotiate with a pirate, who ‘sat confidently behind a huge desk,’ if she ever intended to make any returns from her movie.
Like Gabosky, Foluke declined the insulting invitation, and found herself on the losing side.
Comedian Ayo Makun aka AY, might seem to have opted for the easier way out, when he instructed Gabosky (also his distributor) to release the movies in the substandard copies that the pirates usually sell. But Gabosky, it seems, does not believe in the negative mantra of joining them, if you can’t beat them.
He lamented that the same treatment being given to October 1 has also been given to his other franchises, including Half of A Yellow Sun, 30 Days in Atlanta; which he said the fake copies hit the market just as he was preparing to release them.
The above therefore establishes the fact that the pirates may be far more powerful than the stick wielding fake video vendors, who tried to attack Akanbi, penultimate week.
But the artistes seem to be prepared for this battle. Shodimu says “We’ve never been under any illusion that it will be a tea-party. Even robbers protect their loots. What we’re doing is only a reminder to our people in authority that they’ve got a lot to do.”
Akanbi on his part says, “now that they have started attacking and fighting back, it means we have to take the battle to another level. We need to let them know that they cannot continue to mess with our livelihood. “
Way out
With this renewed vigour, will the artistes be pushing for the arrest of the street peddlers, with the hope of tracing the chain to the final sources?
Tunde Kelani, arguably one of the biggest and most respected players in the industry says “No, no, no. that is not the objective. The objective is that the law and punishment specified for piracy offences is not strong enough. I think it’s about three months or a fine option of N100, 000. That is nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a stipend; and we’re talking about something that is destroying the economy of the country and threatening the means of livelihood and survival of some people.
Displaying copies of all his past works that have been pirated, Kelani said “these are all the works I have done all my life; they are supposed to be my retirement benefits; but that’s all gone now, because once they hijack and flood them into the market, we simply cannot compete.”
Way out for him would therefore be to be proactive, educate the people not to patronise pirated products and get the government “to elevate piracy to the level of financial crimes and drugs, and create an agency to combat it, like the National Drug law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).”
Akanbi on his part said the practitioners will have to wait and see, following the march to the office of the governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola.
The solution for him therefore is to criminalise the offense, adding that he was recently told that piracy is a civil offence.
He also said “the interpretation of a law depends on those who are interpreting it, adding that the government in power also determines the general air of lawlessness or otherwise. “
Shodimu on his part says piracy is so hurtful that any penalty other than the death sentence would suffice.
Alaba International Market, the source and the cul-de-sac
Expectedly, a visit to Alaba International Market, ordinarily reputed as an electronic market, revealed nothing more that the labyrinth of shops and alleyways, plazas and an array of some of the latest home entertainment electronics and appliances. This reporter actually got a friend within the market to point out a couple of buildings where he suspected the illicit productions were being made, packed and shipped into the Lagos market and beyond, but nothing more came out of it, as mute seemed to be the response to all further enquiries. He said on a good day, you could get any movie you need on request, but said you have to be a familiar face, to be able to purchase some of the contraband CDs in huge numbers, as no-one is ready to take any kind of risks with strangers. He revealed that times without number, law enforcement agencies and artistes have stormed the place, some resulting in fierce battles, to arrest ‘the boys,’ but said they always find ways to ‘settle’ and get on with their business.
A young man, Uche, who will give no other information order than being a printer, admitted knowing fellow printers who have made fortunes from printing movie jackets for the pirates. He said that in itself, is one huge business opportunity that he himself is trying to break into. At least, no one will accuse him of any illicitness in that one.
A chance discussion with one of the movie hawkers in the traffic of LASU-Volks, along Badagry Expressway, also revealed nothing. The boy, an Igbo, who refused to give his name or allow his picture taken, said the CDs were given to him by his oga (boss) and said where and how he gets them is not his business. Following more questions, he because suspicious and asked if this reporter wanted to purchase CDs or ask questions: “Oga, wetin now? You wan begin sell CD? I beg, me I no want wahala o.”
And that effectively put paid to the questioning. Further attempts to speak with the other hawkers was mission impossible, as it seemed our friend had spread the word to them, not to say a word.
One thing was however sure, these peddlers parade some of the hottest movies CDs in the country including: October 1, Ole ku, Oyenusi, 30 days in Atlanta, and any kind of American movies you want to see.
Someone actually boasted that the only film you may not find in Alaba, are the ones that are yet to be shot and produced.
